Green Spring Cleaning

My house needs a THOROUGH cleaning. Things have been very busy with my jobs and all the regular things we do from day to day (notice my lack of blogging) that I've fallen behind on the housecleaning.

I know I'm bit behind the March Spring Cleaners, but I have a late Spring Break this year. So after Easter, I'm going to start deep cleaning, room by room. Real Simple magazine had a nice article on homemade cleaners that got me thinking, and I found the Hip Organic Mama's blog, which has tons of recipes for cleaners and great information about cleaning products that are healthy for you and the environment.

So early next week, I'll give you an update on my cleaning and the recipes I tried.

I Went To Aldi's!

So I finally made it to Aldi's. It's taken me awhile because it's almost a half an hour away in a direction we don't usually travel.

So, imagine my excitement when I got a mystery shopping job to do at Aldi's! So now I had a little more incentive to get there. The mystery shop pay was not as good as the other grocery stores, but at least it was a chance for me to check out Aldi's at last.

I thought it was a really nice, clean store and the people who worked there were friendly. And those of you who recommended Aldi's to me were right, the prices are good.

The downside was that they didn't have a wide selection of foods my family eats. We don't buy everything organic, but we do always use organic milk, which they did not have. In fact, I didn't see any organic products (I could have missed them). They did have a line of foods called "light and fit" and I bought some of that kind of yogurt and rice cakes. A lot of their foods were processed and had lots of sodium (which we need to avoid for my husband's high blood pressure).

So in a nutshell, here are the pro's and con's
PRO:
-inexpensive prices

CON:
-25 minutes away
-can't use coupons
-not a large variety of healthy/organic food

I think if I lived closer to Aldi's I might stop in for some basics, because I DID actually like the store, it just didn't meet my needs. I have to say though, many of the prices were comparable to Target's, which is 5 minutes away instead of 25- and I CAN use coupons at Target, which also has a larger selection of healthier foods. As far as veggies go, our local farmer's market starts soon, so I can get fresh organic local vegetables there.