Grandmother and former nurse Linda Sones sells organic cotton baby and children’s clothing and accessories, and natural, organic baby toiletries online at SonesUK.

I have written a number of posts about the benefits to both the environment and ourselves of buying organic cotton. I feel that some of these benefits are negated if, for the remainder of the garments life, it is washed in detergents and chemicals which are damaging to our environment and ourselves. So I would like to share with you some of the eco-friendly non-toxic methods of stain removal that I have researched. Some may have been well known to your grandmother and she may have passed them on, but some will be new. But I urge you to check labels and use your own judgement before you proceed willy nilly with these suggestions. One important tip to remember if you have treated a stain and put it through the wash is to check if it’s worked before you dry it. Once it has been dried it will be almost impossible to remove

For the removal of oil or fat stains, even tomato sauce if it is dry, try cornflour rubbed into the stain and left for about 20 minutes then brushed off with a soft cloth or brush. This may need several applications for a good result. Speed up the process if you wish by placing a paper towel above and below the treated stain and running a hot steam iron over it.

Stains from fruit, including wine and tomato sauce disappear when boiling water is poured over them in a bowl.

Ball point ink stains can be tricky. Soak in milk. It may take a while and need a top up but it does work. Apparently this also works on chocolate and even blood.

Rust stains can be cleared with application of a layer of salt and lemon juice squeezed over the top and then rubbed in.

Vinegar is the tops when it comes to multiple uses. For wine spots on cotton treat within 24 hours with white distilled vinegar applied directly to the stain and rubbed. Then clean in accordance with instructions on the label.

This next is not exactly stain removal but it is a good tip. To freshen baby clothes add one cup of white distilled vinegar to each load of baby clothes during the rinse cycle, it will naturally break down uric acid and soapy residue and leave the clothes soft and fresh. This treatment helps any clothes to rinse better it does not harm the fabric but will dissolve alkaline in soaps and detergents.

To remove chewing gum pour straight vinegar over it to saturate. This works even better if you heat the vinegar first. Another suggestion is to use basic hair shampoo (without inbuilt conditioner) on stains on washable materials, work it well into the fibres, but carefully if it’s delicate. Follow up with your usual wash.

One thing which is great for nappies and whites is natural sunlight which helps to bleach out stains but this is a summertime only solution here in the United Kingdom.

I hope that you will find some of these tips helpful.

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One of the stops on our recent family summer trip was Keveral Farm. It’s situated 5 miles east of the town of Looe in Cornwall, England, and just a 15 minute walk from the seaside village of Seaton. We stayed in one of Matt’s tipi’s, nestled in the woodland on the farm. From the tipi, looking around, there wasn’t anything man-made in sight, you couldn’t hear any traffic, the only sounds were those of children playing in the orchard camp site further up the footpath.

We stayed in the larger of Matt’s two tipi’s, and the one that was situated out of the farm’s camp site. In the camp site was another slightly smaller tipi, and a yurt belonging to another resident of the farm called Oak, who makes and sells cider by arrangement. The orchard camp site has a composting toilet and a solar powered shower, a geodesic dome climbing frame for the children, a large camp fire area, and taps with drinking water. The yurt and tipi are available to hire, and a small number of pitches are available if you want to bring your own tent. The site is car-free, making it perfect for children to run around with relative freedom. This does involve bringing your car to a point a few hundred metres from the campsite, offloading into wheelbarrows and making your way down a gentle slope to the camp site.

The prices for yurt and tipi hire are very reasonable, and an alternative to a paid visit is a working visit or WWOOFing, where in exchange for 6-7 hours work per day on the farm you are fed and given accommodation usually in a small caravan.

Keveral Farm is an organic farming community established in 1973 whose farm-based activities include horticulture, a veg box scheme, the camp site, orchards, apple juice and cider production, preserves, woodland and tree work, joinery, mushrooms and herbal medicine.

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All the clothes that I sell in the SonesUK shop are designed with cloth bottomed babies in mind to give plenty of room for the slight additional bulk. This set me thinking about the pro’s and cons of using cloth nappies. When my children were tiny there was really not a choice but now there is a vast range of disposables and cloth nappies to choose from.

First of all a good place to start might be some facts and figures produced by local councils.

• Every year we need a forest the size of Wales to provide all the paper we use in
  Britain.
• 1 tonne of recycled paper saves 17 trees from being cut down.
• 7 Million Trees are cut down each year just to make disposable nappies.
• If you use disposable nappies your child will use an average of 5,000 from birth until potty trained.

Not so many years ago a cloth nappy was simply a square of towelling which was fastened onto baby using two lethal looking large safety pins. Now the range available is astonishing you can have a one piece nappy, a shaped two piece, pre-folded, terry, a flat nappy used with a stuffable style cover, waterproof covers, liners, booster pads and swim nappies. The large pins have been replaced by snappi nappi clips and nippi nippas and I am sure there are many more. Modern cloth nappies then fit really snuggly. It is argued that children wearing cloth nappies become potty trained more quickly because the child is able to detect some wetness. This awareness encourages the child to use a potty.

Some of reasons for using disposables might be convenience, not having the bother of washing or perhaps your child goes to day nursery. It is also suggested by manufacturers that disposables prevent nappy rash. I would argue that there is no reason for a child in a cloth nappy to have a higher incidence of nappy rash. A child’s skin is very sensitive and nappies need to be changed frequently to avoid prolonged contact with wee and poo which are the cause of nappy rash. Avoid using biological washing powders apart from the fact that they are not eco-friendly they can cause rashes. Or perhaps you might consider a nappy laundry service which may not be as expensive as you would think.

Many childcare providers will be happy to accommodate children in cloth nappies providing you have chosen an easy and reliable type, and provide a sealable bag for storage of dirty nappies. If all this still sounds like a lot of extra work, perhaps a compromise would be helpful just consider; using only one cloth nappy per day will save 365 disposable nappies being thrown away. So from little oak trees etc. etc.

Just two more factors to consider

• In the next 10 years about 800 million people will be added to the global population.
• As the population consumption and wealth increases so does the amount of waste we produce.
• We have used more goods and services since 1950 than in the rest of human history.

Well I hope this gives you some food for thought and you may even decide to swap to cloth nappies.

Information obtained from: The Complete Cloth Nappy Guide & Colchester Borough Council