Mommy Greenest

Healthy Living, Less Judgment

  • Home
  • Book
  • Categories
    • Healthy Living
    • Mommy Greenest Approved
    • Eco Beauty & Fashion
    • Natural Parenting
    • Latest Buzz
    • Green News & Events
  • Mommy Greenest Guides
    • Guide to Going Green
    • Guide to Eco-Friendly Fashion
    • Guide to Healthy Eating
    • Guide to Natural Parenting & Pregnancy
    • Guide to Green Beauty
    • Guide to Healthy Cleaning
  • About
    • Standards & Disclosure
    • Privacy Policy
  • Home
  • Book
  • Categories
    • Healthy Living
    • Mommy Greenest Approved
    • Eco Beauty & Fashion
    • Natural Parenting
    • Latest Buzz
    • Green News & Events
  • Mommy Greenest Guides
    • Guide to Going Green
    • Guide to Eco-Friendly Fashion
    • Guide to Healthy Eating
    • Guide to Natural Parenting & Pregnancy
    • Guide to Green Beauty
    • Guide to Healthy Cleaning
  • About
    • Standards & Disclosure
    • Privacy Policy
  • Eco Beauty & Fashion

    Mommy Greenest Loves: Ocean + Main

    October 11, 2022 /

    I recently featured LA-based sustainable fashion innovator Ocean + Main in the newsletter. The sustainable fashion innovator crafts limited-edition clothing in inclusive sizes, often from upcycled sources and just released its annual sustainability report and launched a #preloved program. Nope, this is not sponsored but yes I am OBSESSED.

    read more
    Rachel Sarnoff 0 Comments

    You May Also Like

    brunette in black pants and shirt with red necklace on city sidewalk

    4 Rules of Thrift Shopping

    January 3, 2014
    actress pleasant wayne from entourage on eco fashion

    Pleasant Wayne Takes On #ShopDrop2016

    January 8, 2016
    eco watch father's day

    Father’s Day Gift: Nordgreen Eco Watch

    June 3, 2020
  • Eco Beauty & Fashion

    Ask Mommy Greenest: My Daughter Wants A Sustainable Prom Dress – Help!

    March 18, 2022 /

    Today, I’m debuting a new column: Ask Mommy Greenest. Please share your questions in comments on this post and I’ll answer in a new one. Thanks! Jane asks: My daughter wants a sustainable prom dress. There is so much conflicting information out there – how do I know what’s really sustainable? Some of the “eco” brands are so expensive. How can I get her a dress that’s good for her and the planet – without breaking the bank?

    read more
    Rachel Sarnoff 0 Comments

    You May Also Like

    girl holding 10 handbags against white background

    Mommy Greenest Approved: thredUP Online Consignment

    November 19, 2014
    brunette in black pants and shirt with red necklace on city sidewalk

    4 Rules of Thrift Shopping

    January 3, 2014
    pretty blonde woman in green dress laughing

    Mommy Greenest Exclusive: Jen Boulden

    April 10, 2014
  • thrift shop tag discounted 50%
    Eco Beauty & Fashion

    How to Thrift Shop

    May 2, 2016 /

    We’ve talked about the environmental impact of fast fashion. Plus, how to sell your used clothes—and make money. But what will you do with that cash in hand? Please don’t turn around and drop it at the mall, where it’s difficult to find brands that don’t wreak environmental havoc. Save your closet—and the planet—and buy preloved! I’ve been buying used clothes since high school and at this point 95% of my closet is from a thrift shop, consignment store or swap party. But for a lot of people, just the idea of shopping preloved gives them the heebie jeebies. Fear not, friends! You can save yourself a ton of money…

    read more
    Rachel Sarnoff 1 Comment

    You May Also Like

    Dry Shampoo Challenge: Could You Wash Your Hair Just Once A Month?

    May 9, 2022
    Slugging is a beauty trend that’s trending on TikTok, where petrochemical products are promoted. Try my vegan slugging solution for natural beauty!

    Vegan Slugging, Naturally

    February 28, 2022
    honey jar and half lemon

    Five Minutes to Natural Skin Lightening

    August 26, 2013
  • Eco Beauty & Fashion

    How To Sell Used Clothes

    April 4, 2016 /

    We all know to avoid the fast fashion habitrail of buying a five-dollar t-shirt because it was on sale, only to have it sit at the back of your closet for decades. And now that so many people are jumping on the Konmari bandwagon—finding joy, everyone?—there’s a lot of closet clean out going on. But what do you do with those clothes you’ve rejected? People, listen up: Here’s how to sell used clothes.

    read more
    Rachel Sarnoff 1 Comment

    You May Also Like

    woman showing edun label at back of dress as part of fast fashion revolution initiative

    Let’s Start A Fast Fashion Revolution!

    April 14, 2015
    love goodly subscription box

    Inside LOVE GOODLY Conscious Subscription Box

    August 3, 2015
    illustration of girls in red and black dresses

    How to Clothes Swap

    January 24, 2014
  • Latest Buzz

    #ShopDrop2016 on Between the Racks!

    January 25, 2016 /

    “The point of the challenge is to show how much waste is produced from buying new clothes every month, so while you are pledging not to go to the mall, that doesn’t mean you can’t shop. Buying secondhand is completely OK! With that said, I’m making my pledge to start today!” Read the rest of the post on Between the Racks. Thanks for the shout out, Morgan!

    read more
    Rachel Sarnoff 1 Comment

    You May Also Like

    text on white background

    MG Makes DailyMakeover

    March 12, 2014
    brunette woman against white background

    MG Food Dyes on Kids in the House

    June 24, 2014
    Cover of Northwest Review literary journal illustration of a woman wearing a "the future is female" t-shirt for abortion story.

    Abortion Decision: Will Morning-After Pills Be Banned Next?

    November 11, 2022
  • Eco Beauty & Fashion

    Shop Drop Challenge 2016

    December 14, 2015 /

    Need a New Year’s Resolution? Sign up for Shop Drop 2016! Take the Shop Drop Challenge and pledge not to buy any new clothes for 30 days, choosing like-new consignment, thrifted and swapped fashion instead. Shop Drop 2016 begins January 1st! Why? To break the fast fashion cycle. The average American woman spends $60 on clothes and trashes six pounds of textile waste each month. If the 160 million women in America took our 30-day shop-and-drop pause, we could save nearly one billion pounds of landfill waste. Yes, that’s billion with a b. Right now we have 213 people signed up, and our goal is 1,000… representing 6,000 pounds of landfill waste saved. Thanks to…

    read more
    Rachel Sarnoff 396 Comments

    You May Also Like

    Ask Mommy Greenest: My Daughter Wants A Sustainable Prom Dress – Help!

    March 18, 2022
    mommy greenest shop drop challenge woman in mall with shopping bags

    Mommy Greenest Shop Drop Countdown!

    January 12, 2015
    holiday gift bracelet

    How to Give A Holiday Gift That Gives Back

    November 10, 2015
  • Green News & Events

    H&M Closes the Loop On Recycled Fashion

    October 14, 2015 /

    H&M seems determined to do the right thing–it just might take a little longer than the company intended. Take their new recycled denim capsule collection, for example. The five recycled fashion styles for men and women are set to launch in February 2016–and represent a program four years in the making.

    read more
    Rachel Sarnoff 0 Comments

    You May Also Like

    Toronto goes dark during Earth Hour

    My Earth Hour Fail

    March 18, 2015
    Jennifer Beals for Dollar Store Campaign

    Jennifer Beals Stands Up 2 #DollarStores

    July 17, 2015
    chemical movie poster featuring baby boy

    Chemical Movie Must See

    April 16, 2015
  • Green News & Events

    Eco Fashion Innovator Closes the Loop on Down

    September 16, 2015 /

    Down is getting more responsible. Last year, eco fashion innovator Nau joined forces with The North Face and Textile Exchange to support the Responsible Down Standard, which helped businesses using down move away from birds that were live-plucked and/or force-fed. Awful, right? But now Nau’s taking things a step further by using 100% recycled down. Since I’m all about recycled eco fashion, this video just about made me cry. Plus: Slashing pillows and slo-mo feathers? What’s not to like!  

    read more
    Rachel Sarnoff 1 Comment

    You May Also Like

    chemical movie poster featuring baby boy

    Chemical Movie Must See

    April 16, 2015
    Jenna Elfman and Mommy Greenest Rachel Lincoln Sarnoff on Hallmark Channel's "Home & Family" show.

    MG Joins Jenna Elfman on “Home & Family”

    May 10, 2013
    Jenna Elfman and Angie Everhart at Saving Innocence sex trafficking awareness event

    What We Need To Know About Sex Trafficking

    August 13, 2015
 Older Posts

Welcome! I created this blog in 2008 as a resource for healthier living with less judgment. I'm a mother of three, former journalist, and co-founder of the (shuttered, sniff) sustainable beauty and fashion site EcoStiletto. I was Executive Director of the nonprofits The 5 Gyres Institute and Healthy Child Healthy World and appeared as a sustainable lifestyle expert on "The "TODAY Show" and "CNN Headline News," among others. Oh, and have you checked out my TEDx talks: Trash is Ruining Recycling and Can One Straw Change The World? Today, you can find me here. Let's keep in touch! xoRachel

https://youtu.be/sOol1MIgois

rachellincolnsarnoff

Who else is reeling from reading this incredibly p Who else is reeling from reading this incredibly powerful and terrifying book? Let’s discuss. #amreading #barbarakingsolver #demoncopperhead
My local dog park has been transformed into a pet My local dog park has been transformed into a pet cemetery. Spoiler alert: the duck dies. #onlyinla
Last week, my husband asked me what experiences we Last week, my husband asked me what experiences were on my bucket list. Today he surprised me by checking one off. #falconry #hawking #bucketlist #bucketlistadventures #valentinesday
Things I learned recently. 1. Ritual works. A r Things I learned recently.
 1. Ritual works. A room, a desk, a coffee shop. Paper and pen or antique typewriter. Someone changes his shoes like Mr. Rogers before he sits down at his desk, another does visualizations. For months, I switched into writing brain by exiting my office, where my work desktop lives, and sitting with my laptop (wifi off) in a chair next to the window in my bedroom. I now recognize this as a ritual.
 2. Quality, not quantity. Maya Angelou rented a hotel room and wrote in it for six hours a day. (She asked the staff to take all the art off the walls, so she wouldn’t be distracted. And she drank sherry.) But many of us are working writers - by this I mean working at something else while maintaining a writing practice. We squeeze it in where we can. Currently, I get up at five so I can write for an hour before starting work at seven, a luxury made possible by remote work. I rarely have a concentrated stretch of time, and yet I keep chipping away at my novel, one paragraph or page (on a good day) at a time. 
 3. It’s a practice. Until recently, I didn’t believe that writing every day was that important. I would sit down and write for eight hours and then not for weeks at a time. (I was also a working co-parent of three children. So there’s that.) Now I’m trying to write every day, even just for 30 minutes. And what that means is when I’m doing something else — working or driving carpool or yoga or walking the dog or cooking or watching television — a part of my brain is still with those characters and re-entering the scenes is easier. 
 4. Writing is a tap you can’t shut off. Waking up in the middle of the night to scribble in the dark. Dictating a note to Siri in the car. Pinching your arm in a dark movie theater so you’ll remember a word when the lights turn on. Today I realized that one of my main characters has freckles and another needs to find a credit card and a third is smelling vanilla. All of these realizations happened while I was doing other things (see above). That’s writing, too. 
Right? 
#AmWriting
Exiting the @pacificmfa womb and headed into the w Exiting the @pacificmfa womb and headed into the world, proud of brilliant graduates including @allisuuunshines and @krazykenzer14 and honored to be on this path with @kburmz_ and @katiesumers and @rwrowe21 and too many others to name “jumping and dancing and skipping” and writing and reading and listening and thinking. I am profoundly grateful for this community and fellowship that is truly life-changing, and I read this poem TODAY which is further proof the universe is listening.
THE DAYS (abridged)
If only I could live my life, not write it,
I’d have double the experience
and be better at nothingness, at being present.
The page, I once believed, offers permanence,
sanctifying time, making it longer,
but now I see my words as susceptible,
even if digital, to fire, flood, misplacement.
To misinterpretation. To accidental
download by enemy. I don’t yet want them 
to be lost, but I dread the possibility
that they won’t self-destruct at the end
of my life, or the end of my lucidity.
Maybe I’ve been using paper all wrong,
committing to ink what should live in my head,
which is part of my body, which will not last…
Each night, I had written Here is what happened
like a kid whose pen makes her small life exciting,
then gone on mistaking the plot for the story,
as if the point of writing were writing.
-Adrienne Su “The Days” published in the New Yorker January 2/9 2023 (abridged)
#AmWriting #Memoir #Essay #Nonfiction #Fiction #WomensFiction #Stories #Story #WritersOfInstagram #Writer #Writing #WritingCommunity #PacificUniversity #PacificMFA #MFA
Searching for the sleeper wave. #amwriting #amread Searching for the sleeper wave. #amwriting #amreading #fiction #writer #writersofinstagram #writingcommunity #mfa
After the recent announcement of the fusion breakt After the recent announcement of the fusion breakthrough at Livermore — where my grandfather once worked as a chemist, that’s him on the right — many messaged me that the “climate crisis was over.” At the lab, lasers fused two forms of hydrogen into helium, which released more energy than it took to make it. And yes, this is amazing: Nuclear fusion releases no greenhouse gases and the waste is less problematic than what’s produced by nuclear fission, which is what my grandfather worked on. But the Livermore experiment — among many others — was able to produce just a small amount of energy and scaling its ability will take a lot of time, which we don’t have. Here’s what we do have: Wind and solar and regenerative agriculture, which are all eminently scalable now. As my grandfather might have said, “If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.” Photo: Bonestamp
#Climate #ClimateJustice #KeepItInTheGround #CleanEnergy #Motivation #MommyGreenest
I’m not big on resolutions, but I do believe in I’m not big on resolutions, but I do believe in ritual. Every New Year’s Day — and my birthday — I try to do the things that I want to be doing for the rest of the year. I spent the morning writing and then did some yoga and went for a walk with my family. I made posole for my son’s birthday party and ate said posole and it was delicious. I prepped a bit for work and played my guitar. All in all, an excellent start to another year. How about you? #happynewyear #newyear #resolutions #ritual
I have always been a writer. Published? Not so muc I have always been a writer. Published? Not so much. I published myself, obviously — MommyGreenest since 2008 woot! — but with other projects I tended to give up after a pass and internalize the rejection. But late last year, I read an essay by @elizabeth_gilbert_writer in which she described her process as tennis: Every time a story was lobbed back to her she sent it back over the net to another potential publisher. One in, one out. I took that to heart and each time I received a no, I swung harder. I still haven’t placed a story, but this year I published three nonfiction pieces — in the @washingtonpost, @nwreview, and @hippocampusmag. With encouragement from Kate McKean’s @agents_and_books newsletter, I submitted to over 50 agents who passed on my novel, but 11 requested the full manuscript and responded with notes (this will mean nothing to most people, but after enough time in the slush pile, querying writers gauge success by the detail of the rejection). No, this work is not lucrative and yes, it is a privilege to carve out the time and attention that it demands. Last spring, I was inspired by @jamiattenberg’s #1000wordsofsummer to schedule hour-long writing sessions, often at 5 a.m. before work, in order to chip away at a new novel that just topped the 50,000-word mark huzzah! Next week, I’ll join @pacificmfa peers in Oregon for my first in-person residency on the slowest train ever to an MFA. Cheers to all the creative people who can’t stop won’t stop trying to make sense of this reality through art. I am inspired by all of you.
#AmWriting #Memoir #Essay #Nonfiction #Fiction #WomensFiction #WritersOfInstagram #Writer #Writing #WritingCommunity #PacificUniversity #MFA
Finally c-positive, which is a negative, but the p Finally c-positive, which is a negative, but the plus side is a cozy blanket, knitted with love by a friend, and this amazing book, sent to me by my mother, which includes this wisdom: “…it strikes me as a particularly dangerous fantasy…that someone might be able to live without…heartbreak or sorrow. Which I’m pretty sure you only get to do if you have no relationships, love nothing, are a sociopath, and maybe, if you’re enlightened. I don’t know about you, but I check none of these boxes.” Love love LOVE. Who else is reading/has read? Let’s discuss! #amreading #rossgay #essay #nonfiction #inspiration
Los Angeles is full of magical places, especially Los Angeles is full of magical places, especially this time of year. We got dressed up and went to one of them. Highly recommended. Happy holidays, everyone!
When your daughter is doing the crossword puzzle a When your daughter is doing the crossword puzzle and you know both the answer and the person in the clue.
#JennaJambeck #Plastic #CircularEconomy #BreakFreeFromPlastic #Motivation #Health #Wellness #MommyGreenest
Obsessed. #Natural #NaturalBeauty #CleanBeauty #Be Obsessed. #Natural #NaturalBeauty #CleanBeauty #Beauty #Perfume #NaturalPerfume #HenryRose #NotSponsored
Slow and steady wins the race. #SlowAndSteady #Ha Slow and steady wins the race.
#SlowAndSteady #HappyHolidays #HappyHolidays2022 #AmWriting #WomensFiction #WritersOfInstagram #Writer #Writing #WritingCommunity
It’s inevitable — in December, we take stock. It’s inevitable — in December, we take stock. 2022 was full of surprises, but one constant was me on top of a mountain, wearing some weird assortment of sun protection and smiling. What happy place did you return to over and over this year?
#Health #Wellness #Hiking #Hike #Motivation #HealthyLifestyle #MommyGreenest
Tighter than a ____’s ass in fly time. You fill Tighter than a ____’s ass in fly time. You fill in the blank. #hemingway #amreading #amwriting #writer #writersofinstagram
All parents are proud of their kids. That’s just All parents are proud of their kids. That’s just what we do. I’m no exception. For the last three days, I’ve been listening on repeat to my son’s first album, proud as a peacock. But I’m also a music lover and a musician and I would love this album even if Gabriel — known on Spotify as Garb — hadn’t made it. This is a concept album: The songs follow the trajectory of a relationship and connect viscerally to all the raw and unfiltered emotions of first love. He is accompanied by incredible jazz musicians — known here as the Rags — from the Berkeley music program, creating this really interesting folk jazz fusion. I am proud of what he has created and also of how brave he is to put it out into the world. Please take a minute to click through, listen and — most important — please share. Link in bio. Thank you!
#Music #Singer #Songwriter #Songs #Garb #garbandtherags
Have you heard about the movement to #RebrandThank Have you heard about the movement to #RebrandThanksgiving? It’s a reminder to disrupt historical myths and honor the heritage of the #Indigenous land on which we live. Check out resources @IllumiNative and the map at native-land(dot)ca. Today and every day I am grateful to be living here, on native Chumash and Tongva land.
#IllumiNative #Thanksgiving #HappyThanksgiving
So proud to know @maryhelenstefaniak who has not o So proud to know @maryhelenstefaniak who has not one but TWO books out this year! I can’t wait to read this collection of essays, which @valerielaken calls a “treasure trove of marvels.” Both of these fantastic humans and writers are faculty at @pacificmfa. I am so inspired by this community!
#AmWriting #Memoir #Essay #Nonfiction #Fiction #WomensFiction #WritersOfInstagram #Writer #Writing #WritingCommunity
Opened Rilke to this. Who needs the I Ching? #rilk Opened Rilke to this. Who needs the I Ching? #rilke #writing #writer #writersofinstagram #reader #readersofinstagram #reading
Load More... Follow on Instagram
©2023 Mommy Greenest
Ashe Theme by WP Royal.