About Amanda

Oct. 2013

Born and raised in a San Diego suburb, we typically ate food prepared from boxes, mixes, and cans. I don't recall freshly chopped onion or minced garlic ever being thrown in a warm, oiled pan. The only raw and fresh stuff we ate was salad and dairy products. We also used every type of typical household cleaner out there: Dawn, Pledge, Clorox, Shout, Tide, etc. To disinfect something, we used bleach. My mom was also a little over-the-top back then about being clean, so many of our cleaning products were out every day or every other day.

In high school I ran cross country and my coach was, and still is, avidly healthy. She taught a Foods class, which I took, where we learned about cooking and eating healthy. I learned how to chop vegetables, mince garlic, and that cooking from scratch can be easy!! Naturally, my mom and dad were pleased that I was learning more about cooking and asked me to practice my skills at home. I did, and this helped me prepare for cooking meals when I got married. Sometime during high school, I began taking over-the-counter allergy medicine regularly and often had terrible headaches. These two things continued through college and into marriage. I moved to northern Orange County, California for college, where I didn't have much choice about my food selection since I ate in the cafeteria, and I didn't know anything about the stuff in my cleaners and care products yet, so skipping past those years and on to married life...

A couple years into marriage, I soaked in the information out there about injustice in the world; I really can't even remember what probed me to dive into researching it at that time. What?! How does this relate to my natural living blog?! Waiiiiit for it... I learned that fair trade products are of higher quality and pay fair wadges to their employees. Often organic items come from smaller companies that care more for their employees also, so I began buying more organic and fair trade items when I found it reasonable. I also learned the difference between "organic" and "natural," which I'll go into at another time.

A few years later, my sister-in-law became pregnant and decided to cloth diaper. I had NO IDEA that still existed and was a viable option! I watched and learned. I filed that away and decided to make my diapering decision when I was pregnant. That day came, so I did a little digging and decided to also cloth diaper. Researching cloth diapers also led me to be cautious about the other things I fed and put on my baby's body. One time I was watching a video by Candid Mommy on YouTube about the sunscreen she chose for her kids. She mentioned the Environmental Working Group, which opened a can of worms for me and has led me down the path I'm on today.

When I got pregnant, I stopped taking allergy medication and headache relievers. Near the same time, I had stopped working, and thus was not wearing make up or perfume as often. I was surprised to find that I wasn't suffering allergies as much after I stopped taking medication. I'm not sure when I stopped having headaches often, sometime during 2012 probably. Now, I rarely have a headache or suffer from allergies! 

My husband, son, and I now live in the Central Valley of California with orchards and all sorts of fresh foods growing all around us!! There are two Farmer's Markets weekly for most of the year, farm-fresh milk easily available, and we get fresh, local, organic produce delivered weekly. Amazon Prime is our friend for things we can't find here or aren't close.