More Green For Less Green

Wearing Baby In A Woven Wrap

2011-09-27T22:29:00.006-04:00

I am a guest blogger on the Beltway Babywearers site today writing about how wearing Baby V in a woven wrap has helped me thrive as a parent despite chronic back pain. Check it out here.

While a high-quality woven wrap is not cheap, it is one of those things that is worth spending a bit extra money on upfront to get a lifetime (or more) of use out of. People shell out hundreds of dollars for strollers, which have pieces that eventually will wear out or break. A carefully selected woven wrap will allow baby to be toted from newborn days to early childhood and then left in good enough condition to resell for most of its initial value or to hang on to for passing to the next generation someday.

Name brand woven wraps generally are made in Europe, which has strict standards of production, and made from natural fibers. Wrap companies generally do their weaving in small batches, creating true artisan products. Wraps also can make impromptu blankets, table cloths, nursing covers, shirts, forts, sturdy hammocks, etc.

It is rare that I get enough excited enough about a product that I to want to start a collection, but wraps are so comfortable, functional, beautiful, natural, re-sellable, and enduring that they've caught my attention!

You can find used wraps in various brands, colorways, and sizes for sale here.

For a primer on all things wrap related, check this out.

Bulk Freezer Cooking and Glass Food Storage

2011-08-01T12:38:00.005-04:00

We are big on cooking in bulk and then creating freezer meals with the rest. I figure, if we are going to go spend the time cooking and cleaning up the kitchen afterward, we might as well feed ourselves as many meals as possible from that effort. Because meals last so long in the freezer, we can get a versatile stash of meals built up and rotate through them so our palates don’t get bored.

We've experimented with once-a-month-cooking (OAMC) from cookbooks and blogs. We’ve prepared food in bulk at Let's Dish (which we really enjoy and makes a fun date night but is a splurge for us cost-wise). Ultimately, we've discovered that cooking and freezing our tried-and-true normal recipes works best for us. Some of our favorites include white chicken chili, hummus, sweet and spicy pork, French dip, and cranberry carrots.

While zipper plastic bags and foil pans are options for storing meals in the freezer, we avoid disposable products. Plus, I don't like heating food in plastic. Given that, glass seemed like our best bet. We decided to go with Pyrex because it is safe for freezer and oven and the lids are BPA-free.

Pyrex is not cheap, so we built our stash slowly. Several years ago, I stalked the advertisements for Black Friday for the sets that we wanted. I am not a tidy-house person, but I do love a tidy cabinet, so we decided to pick several sizes for our Pyrex and just get those so they could be organized easily.

Rectangles in three sizes on the left
Rounds in four sizes on the right
Lids by shape and size in the middle

Our families love to use wish lists for gift-giving, so I added the exact sets we wanted to my Christmas list and let the family know that duplicates were great. That started things off. Over time, I continued to ask for Pyrex sets for gift-giving times plus I check for them on clearance shelves and each year we look for them on Black Friday and get more.

Pyrex also now offers water-tight lids, which is great for bringing defrosted soup to work for lunch. Pyrex does make glass lids, but these merely sit on the container and do not seal. Here are Pyrex’s food storage containers.

Baby's First Foods: No Jars, No Blenders, Just Real Food (Baby-Led Weaning)

2011-07-18T15:11:00.012-04:00

Baby Boy V is now a solid food eater! As people who minimize buying packaged food, jarred baby food was never on our radar. Packaged foods just create so much waste. While recycling is great, we try to do things in this order: reduce consumption (or do without), reuse something already produced, and then if there are no other options: buy something new that can later be recycled.

We talked about making our own purees, but that seemed like a lot of work. Something like the Beaba Babycook makes it look easier, but what a price tag! Biggest of all, the idea of purees—and of babies eating special, separate food— just struck me as a cultural thing rather than a universal baby well-being issue.

Enter baby-led weaning (BLW) also called baby-led solids (BLS). This method feeding, where babies feed themselves from the family meal, seemed like the perfect choice for us. The book Baby-Led Weaning by Gill Rapley was a comprehensive resource for understanding the amazingly compelling how and why of this method. The Adventures in Solid Foods blog is another wonderful source.

As V approached six months* old, he blossomed into being ready for solids per BLW guidelines. One week before his “semiversary” he became a sturdy sitter and he went from just lunging for our food to actually mock-chewing while hubby and I would eat. V had already been able to bring toys to his mouth with confidence, doubled his birth weight, and no longer had a tongue-thrust reflex.

*The six-month mark is key to BLW, but there is compelling evidence for six months as a benchmark no matter one’s solids method.

From the first week, we offered a variety of foods that generally corresponded with what we were eating:

Apple Take 1- We picked up a slice of apple from the farmer's market and let V explore while being worn close to daddy in a mei tai. He licked it twice then dropped it. Take 2- We offered another slice at home a few days later. V wasn't a fan that day either. We'll try again later.
Pear A thin slice of pear was a hit! V got off a few bites and swallowed his first food
Pork We shared from pit barbecued pork with V while eating out. He scowled at it, then mashed it around for ages in his mouth, tried a few times to swallow it, then spit it out.
Squash I pulled this out of mixed vegetables that I was sauteing for a wrap for my meal. V was tired and melting down.
Mango This was too mushy and slippery to stay in V's hand for more than a few licks. We'll try again with a heartier piece.
Water V did great with having a few sips of water from a small glass with a curved edge.

In week two he tried
Lettuce I pulled this off my sandwich while eating lunch at Chick-Fil-A with friends. V licked it, ripped it, then threw it on the floor.
Roast beef Beef au Jus was on the menu at grandma's house, so I have V a slice to hold and explore. He got off a few tiny bites and swallowed them.
Eggplant Take 1- I pulled a long wedge of eggplant out of a sauteed veggie wrap I had made for myself. He loved it and sucked all of the flesh out, leaving just the skin. V's cheeks and thighs (where he had banged the eggplant)turned red after. Perhaps something else in the wrap bothered him or maybe garlic and onions cooked in the same pan. He cleared right up with soap and water.
Pizza crust I gave V a bit of crust from a thin pizza that had a wee bit of tomato sauce on it. He like it.
Cucumber I am allergic to cucumber, but I know this is a very rare allergy our doctor said food allergies are not passed down. Cold cucumber is supposed to feel great on sore, teething gums, so I wanted V to give it a try since he got in his first two teeth that week. V mashed on it happily for a minute, then dropped it.
Pineapple Fresh off the grill (but cooled down). It was a hit, even if quite squishy.
Asparagus This was perfect for a little hand to hold onto well. We served it microwave-steamed.
Banana I am banana-phobic so hubby gave V this at breakfast while I was asleep.
Oatmeal V fed himself with a spoon from daddy's bowl
Tuna Steak We have V a small chunk of grilled tuna steak. He was ambivalent about it--just like his parents.

V will still get most of his nutrition through nursing for some time to come. But, for now solid food is great fun for experimentation, socialization, and exploring new flavors.

Crib Part 2: Choosing an Eco-Friendly Mattress

2011-07-11T22:09:00.009-04:00

I am not hysterical about conventional products, but I do try to be an educated consumer when I buy something new. I'll be honest. Often what I find is depressing. Mattresses fit this trend. Most conventional mattresses (for babies and adults) are made with things that are concerning when one really looks into them:

Polyvinyl chloride (PVC) This plastic is restricted in the European Union in children's products. It can leech when put in the mouth (think soft, plastic children's toys), its production is bad for the environment, it is made from politically-charged crude oil, and it can off-gas.

Polyurethane is not regulated for carcinogenicity, it facilitates the life of dust mites, and it is highly flammable which means it must be treated with chemicals to be allowed in products.

Chemical Fire Retardants These end up in measureable amounts our bodies, breastmilk, meat we eat, etc. and are associated with thyroid and hormone changes including decreased fertility.

Knowing all of this, I continue to sleep on my 10-year old conventional mattress (for now), but I wanted to start baby V off on something healthier. In preparing for baby, we used the organic mattress suggestions in Baby Bargains as the basis for our research. Here is what I thought about the suggested brands (which I've divided into two categories):

Seem Like Greenwashing

Colgate Eco Classica 1- This one is a greener option, but not as excellent as I was looking for. I am leery of anything soft made from bamboo. The amount of processing it takes to turn bamboo into fabric is anything but green. $190

Sealy Posturpedic Springfree- This contains soy which is another one of those things, like bamboo, that sound great but actually are very taxing on the environment. $199

LA Baby Organic- Baby Bargains talks specifically about the one sold at Costco. When I looked into it when I was pregnant, it came across as having an organic cotton cover, but being otherwise conventionally made. It smacked of greenwashing to me. Some of LA Baby's mattresses seem to have more potential, but I do have to wonder what corners they cut to have such a huge price gap between them and the solidly green brands (for example saying no toxic chemicals versus saying no chemical fire retardants as on the solidly green brands. Does that mean they use a non-toxic chemical fire retardant and who is defning non-toxic since the government allows mattress companies to use something that I find toxic but they don't.) The Costco version is $107.

Solidly Green

Natura's Latex Mattress- I wasn't interested in latex at the time and I was intimidated by needing a wool cover for this mattress. I am now more educated on the benefits of latex mattresses and wool for water-proofing and would be open to this brand now. Non-organic models run $360, organic are $530.

NaturalMat- This is a phenomenal, artisan-made brand. The mattresses are made of coconut husk, latex, or mohair which are awesome options. They run about $400, which seemed too steep. In retrospect, we should've considered this option more seriously.

Naturepedic- The ultimate hybrid between coil mattress with waterproof cover and natural: organic materials, no PVC, no polyurethane, no chemical fire retardants, made in the USA, comes with a lifetime warranty. This mattress does contain some non-natural components (like the waterproof cover), but they've selected materials that do not concern me. The price is not cheap, but not exorbitant at $250-400. Even the most basic model seemed ample for our needs.

We decided to go with Naturepedic because we could register for it at Buy Buy Baby and then use a 20% off coupon (they take both Buy Buy Baby and Bed Bath and Beyond coupons). We wanted a no-compromise mattress, but we also wanted a palatable price tag. Even factoring in the discount, this would be our highest ticket baby item. But we couldn't think of a better item to splurge on: babies spend about two-thirds of their time sleeping. Also, since most of V's gear was given to us used, purchased used, or is on loan, we could make this fit in the budget.

We watched Craigslist for awhile to see if a used Naturepedic would come up for cheap (one of the sealed, wipe-clean kinds that would be totally healthy used), but no dice. In the end, we were very fortunate that my family chipped in and bought the mattress as a shower gift.

What a great gift! Baby's mattress, complete with a blue bow.

Newborn Baby V Sleeping on a Naturpedic Mattress

Crib Part 1: Choosing an Eco-Friendly Crib

2011-07-03T23:08:00.003-04:00

We have always planned on being a co-sleeping family during the nursing years, but figuring out how that would work logistically in our small bedroom took some time. Bed-sharing seemed like the most simple, logical option. After all, bed-sharing is a very safe, healthy way to sleep when done properly (info on how and why: here and here) and is the lowest-gear configuration. But, it wasn't a fit for us. I thought we'd be crowded in our queen-size bed and we don't have space for a king-size. So, we thought we'd borrow a full-size co-sleeper from a friend and keep that in our room for the long haul, plus have a crib and twin-size bed in baby's room just in case we needed to switch up our sleeping arrangements. As I realized how much effort I was putting into picking the healthiest crib and mattress, we eventually decided to ditch the co-sleeper plan and just sidecar baby's crib to our bed so he could get maximum usage out of the equipment we were putting so much thought and money into. Join me for a multi-part series on choosing a bed for baby: choosing a crib (this entry), choosing a crib mattress, and how to sidecar a crib to an adult bed.

Choosing a Crib

I knew that I wanted a crib that was made of solid wood rather than with pressed wood product like medium density fiberboard (MFD) or particle board. The glue used to hold together the bits of wood that makes up these composite materials contains formaldehyde (a probable human carcinogen) and they off-gas volatile organic compounds (VOCs) for several months. Many mass produced cribs are made with a blend of real wood parts (albeit often soft woods like pine) and composite parts (such as a drawer underneath) and off-gassing is a genuine issue with them.

Additionally, I wanted the wood to have either an eco-friendly finish or no finish. I was a crib gnawer as a baby, and I figured that our baby might also spend some time doing some soothing chomping on his crib rails (crib rail protectors exist, but are made of plastic which we avoid).

I consulted the ever-popular Baby Bargains book and got a list of green cribs and had sticker shock. I figured that as much we love cheap, simple living, this was one area that I was ok with splurging since a baby likely spends more time in a crib than any other single space, but wow. WOW!

Romina cribs are made of beech with a beeswax finish and range in price from $700 to $1,100

Pacific Rim makes unfinished wood cribs that are $1,000+

Stokke Sleepi is made of beech and is a lovely oval shape, but the round mattress and curved sheets make an expensive crib even pricier

Ducduc cribs are fabulously modern and run $1,000 to $2,000+

Capretti's green cribs Verde and Fino are $1,600-$1,900 and I am not sure that they are still in production

Thank goodness for the lone dirt cheap option: Ikea Sniglar. Sniglar* is a very basic crib made of solid, unfinished beech and is a mere $70. It does have a fiberboard base, but…well—I am just too cheap to pay a thousand bucks for a crib. This was in the realm of being a reasonable compromise. Especially because the Sniglar has some versatility: an adjustable-height mattress and one side can be removed to create a toddler bed (or, even better for us, a sidecar configuration on to an adult bed). Ikea has cuter cribs, but Sniglar is Ikea's only unfinished crib.

Before making a decision, I stalked Craigslist for used** versions of any of these cribs. Even though the Sniglar was cheap, a used one would be even cheaper and the base would probably be done off-gassing. Time went on and no Sniglar came up. A couple of the premium brand cribs came up but not for a price that was acceptable to us. So, we bought the Sniglar early enough that it could air out for a few months. When we went to pick it up, we were happy to see that it is a little more attractive in real life than the stock pictures make it out to be.

The Sniglar was fairly easy to put together, which was a good thing because I assembled it in the living room and it is wider than our bedroom doorways. Oops! Eventually we got it out of the living room and into the guest room (decorated to be baby V's room someday) where it aired out until we moved it in our room when he was born.

Sniglar airing out in the guest room/someday V's room

*There is a precautionary recall out on some Sniglar cribs. Ours was not impacted, but it looks like an extremely easy fix if you have one that is part of the recall.

**I am pro used cribs, but it is vital to make sure than any used crib meets current safety standards. Here are several resources: Crib Information Center (the latest information and a list of recalls), a summary of things to look for, and a long list on choosing a crib.

Rain Barrel Installation Part 2

2011-06-19T06:46:00.000-04:00

The University of Rhode Island lists some great benefits to rain barrels:

Rain barrels conserve water and help lower costs (a rain barrel can save approximately 1,300 gallons of water during peak summer months).

Rain barrels reduce water pollution by reducing stormwater runoff, which can contain pollutants like sediment, oil, grease, bacteria and nutrients.

Rain barrels can also be arranged to slowly release the collected rainfall to areas that can soak up the water, reducing stormwater runoff and increasing groundwater recharge.

Here is more on our rain barrel installation:

(See Rain Barrel Installation Part 1 here if you missed it.)

Installed!

We used cinder blocks (thank you Freecycle) to raise the rain barrel so the spout is high enough to fit a large watering can underneath (this factored into our measurements before we cut the downspout). I've been stalking Freecycle for trellising to put around the cinderblocks to hide them and make things look nicer.

Lesson Learned

Vertical cinderblocks are tippy. When our barrel got full and heavy, it went for a tumble (and even more of the paint is scraped off). We rearrange the blocks horizontally to be more stable.

Overflow Preparation
The rain barrel fills up surprisingly quickly when we have a storm, so a full-size overflow spout keeps things moving. Also, we already have water issues, so we wanted to make sure the overflow was getting routed to the sewer as efficiently as possible.

Mosquito-Free Zone

Because any standing water can become a mosquito breeding ground, we pop these plant-and-wildlife-safe mosquito dunks into the barrel a few times per season. Technically, closed mosquito barrels, like ours, are not at risk for becoming breeding grounds, but I'm happy to be extra cautious and add the dunks.

Final Thoughts
Rain barrels are very low-pressure, so it is helpful to have two watering cans--one can fill up while the other is being poured on the garden. It would be great it there was some way to connect a rain barrel to sprinkler hose and get that to actually work, but I just don't think the barrel affords that kind of water pressure.

Yes, it takes some effort to fill up the watering can(s) to water the plants, but it just takes a few more minutes than dragging around a hose, and it is a good way to get in a little exercise, saves money, and can keep your lawn or garden growing strong during water rationing.

Remember, rain barrel water is not potable. Thoroughly wash produce grown with it before eating. Do not use rain barrel water for washing hands or swimming.

Want to make your own?

Here you go.

Or, if you live in the Northern Virginia area, check this out. At workshops in July and October 2011 you can build your own rain barrel for $52 or buy one for a mere $62.

Rain Barrel Installation Part 1

2011-06-15T23:45:00.006-04:00

Our second year of Square Foot Gardening is off to a good start, as is our second year of watering the plants from a rain barrel. Commercial rain barrels are pricey, and I am not wild about buying new plastic items, so we started searching Craigslist for used rain barrels. When we found a listing for new rain barrels made from reclaimed 50-gallon food drums for a mere $35 each, we were sold! Well, we were sold enough to put them on our Christmas list as our number one wish (our families are big on wish lists).

We installed one rain barrel in the back of our house last year. Here’s how it went…

Painting It White
I used exterior primer and paint. It looked good for a couple of minutes before it got its first couple scratches. I should’ve put a clear coat on top. We might just go with the blue when we install the one in the front, especially now that we have a bright blue front door and are working on blue shutters.

Installation
After carefully measuring how high we want the rain barrel, hubby bravely hand-saws through our brand, spanking new downspout.

Time to connect the shortened downspout to the rain barrel.

In Part 2: lessons learned and more pictures.

Vacancy: Cozy, Warm Bat House

2011-05-23T10:57:00.005-04:00

Because one bat can eat anywhere from hundreds to one thousand small bugs in an hour, we wanted a bat house in hopes of attracting the critters to our yard to act as natural mosquito control. Our bat house is a single chamber bat house made in the USA by Wildlife’s Choice and was purchased from Wild Bird Center.

The Organization for Bat Conservation has great information on their site on how to select or build a bat house, optimal placement, and more. Following their guidance, we installed our bat house directly against the house on the sunniest side. The sun warms the bricks and box, which makes it a snugglier place for bats to hang out. 15-18 feet above the ground is the optimal height, but we had to factor in our house shape, how trees cast undesireable shadows on the box, and where the guano (bat poo) will fall (i.e. not directly above any windows we keep open).
It can take six months or more for bats to discover the house and take up residence. Though we are nearing six months, our house still seems to be empty. We check for inhabitants by seeing if any guano has collected on the ground under the bat house. Once we get some resident bats, we may plant ornamental grass under the bat house so the guano can fall into that and compost naturally, rather than building up on the playable part of the lawn.

Make Your Own Kitchen Cleaner

2011-05-04T22:47:00.002-04:00

Ingredients:
1 t washing soda
2 t borax
½ t shredded castile soap (Shredding tips here. I prepare several bars worth at once.)
2 cups hot water
Essential oils

Supplies:

16 oz spray bottle
Funnel
Skewer
Measuring cup
Measuring spoon (teaspoon)

Directions:
Add dry ingredients to bottle via funnel. Don’t worry about dry ingredients sticking in the funnel at this point. Add the water via the funnel to rinse the dry ingredients down into the bottle. If the mixture clumps and sticks in the funnel, use the skewer to break up the clog. Add the essential oils directly to the bottle, so none is wasted by sticking to the funnel. For the kitchen mix, I like 2 drops tea tree oil, 5-6 drops of sweet orange, and 2-3 of bergamot.

Shake before using. Spray and wipe with a dry cloth. For especially sticky spots, spray and wipe with a cloth saturated with clean, hot water.

Yes, it really works! I have been using this mixture for several years and it was part of The Big Clean when we bought our trashed foreclosure home.

(This recipe is based on the Castile Cleaner recipe found in the fabulous book Green Clean.)

Greeting Card Mobile

2011-04-30T02:02:00.005-04:00

I was inspired to make a greeting card mobile for baby V after seeing one on another blog. Rather than having the cards from my baby shower sit in a drawer gathering dust, or go into the recycle bin never to be seen again, the mobile allows us to appreciate the cards every day.
For my base, I cut off the top from an octagonal box that a flower vase came in. From there, I used copious amount of hot glue to affix the card cutouts to every surface of the box—inside and out.

The mobile is suspended with an arm that came with a commercial mobile that we happened to have one on hand but suspending it from a hook in the ceiling would’ve worked even better than the arm. Long hanging distance is the key to good movement. The sunshine-shaped parts spin well, but the others don’t have long enough strings. The mobile moves gently with drafts from an open window, fan, or vent. Sometimes I “wind it up” by twisting the ribbon that holds it to the arm.

It ended up taking several hours—much longer than I thought—but it turned out wonderfully.

Detail shots:

Milk Carton Garden Markers

2011-04-15T20:44:00.006-04:00

Don’t toss that empty milk carton in the recycle bin just yet! Armed with scissors, a hobby blade, and a Sharpie, it takes just a few minutes to create garden markers sturdy enough to weather through a whole growing season and beyond. For this year, I just cut off the printing from last year's carton garden markers and still had plenty of marker left.

Cutting away the flat surfaces from the curved ones

Sloppy cutting doesn't phase me, as only the very top part ends up sticking out of the soil. The whiter ones are from the section where the carton label is.

In the raised beds (with room for writing notes, if desired)

Depending on the plastic recycling guidelines in your area, your creations should still be just recyclable when you are done with your creations.

And Some Pictures!

2011-04-11T14:09:00.008-04:00

Picasa was being wonky, so I just got these pictures uploaded.
Here's our little guy:

Baby Boy Vaughn January 4, 2011
6lbs 12 oz, 19 inches long
Born occiput posterior at 40 weeks, 4 days after 63 hours of labor

( Check out his tiny, blue Kissaluv diaper!)

It’s Been Awhile

2011-04-10T10:30:00.002-04:00

Hi there. It’s been awhile! A year ago—to the day—I was fortunate get (and stay) pregnant thanks to a wonderful reproductive endocrinology team at Shady Grove Fertility. I had a pregnancy that knocked the stuffing out of me, hence not writing for so long, but baby boy Vaughn is here and he is a delightful three-month-old. Since Infertility Awareness Week is coming up soon (April 24-30), I want to share the link we shared with our support team as we started treatments. While every couple reacts uniquely to infertility—and hubby and I don’t align with 100% of the things in these articles—they are the best resource we found for helping family and friends navigate how to be supportive. I remember at one point during our journey, several of my favorite blogs went baby-crazy and I had to stop reading them. If you would prefer a baby-free version of this blog, you can access it here. I’ll be back with More Green for Less Green ideas soon. I’ve got a year’s worth of ideas stored up in my brain!

Master Bedroom Reveal

2010-05-27T20:30:00.000-04:00

I am so excited to reveal before-and-after pictures of our master bedroom with you! The room is just under 10 by 13 feet, so it is hardly a "master" bedroom by today's standards. But, we have worked hard to make it a cozy oasis.

First, some before pictures...

This picture is blurry, but if you look closely you can see some faint graffiti on the wall (a heart is the most noticeable bit). Our best guess is that it was done with white spray paint, but who knows. That heart bled through layers of primer-sealer! You also can see general damage to the wall. You can click on the picture to open a larger view.

Here is general filth on another wall-- in addition to the mystery filth stains, there actually is stuff dripping down the walls! The floors are very scuffed and water-stained. You can click on the picture to open a larger view.

Making progress...primed walls plus refinished floors. We switched primer brands midway and the trim is not painted, so the walls still look weird, but they are on the right track.

And now
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.
.
.
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how it looks today!

The paint color is a blend that I made myself after buying a too-dark color. That will have to be a blog entry unto itself! We still need to get the rest of our wall-hangings up and we will probably install a ceiling fan at some point.

I love having a TV for movies only, we don't have TV services to the house so everything we watch is deliberate. When I have TV, I tend to just get sucked in and watch to watch.

Having the aquarium in the room was a debate, as the little table is not my optimal style and narrow though it is, it take up space in a small room. But, I love watching our aquatic frog swim around--living art!

Behind the entry door to the room is the door to the tiny closet. Because I rarely have to wear ironed/dressy clothes, I need little easily-accessible closet space. So, I use this closet and hubby used the larger closet in our shared office, one door down. I use a closet in the basement for fancy dresses and off-season clothes.

Foaming Hand Soap

2010-05-24T20:06:00.004-04:00

Making foaming hand soap is super-easy and saves money by lessening concentrated soap usage. While you can certainly buy a foaming soap dispenser from Bed Bath and Beyond, Target, or online, I've chosen to reuse empty disposable foaming soap dispensers gathered from others. I figure, why pay for something new when I can get life out of something that would otherwise go in the trash or recycle bin? From Freecycle I've received empty Dial Complete and Bath and Body Works foaming soap dispensers. The Dial ones work great; I haven't tried the Bath and Body Works ones yet.

The recipe is simple: 1 part soap to 9 parts water. I just estimate 1/10 of the volume the bottle will hold. More soap to water is fine, so don't nitpick over the amount. Personally, I use Dr. Bronner's Unscented Baby Mild Liquid Castile Soap which is vegan, fair trade, organic, and friendly to the water supply.

Squirt in the soap then fill the rest of the bottle with water, leaving enough space for the bulky pump to fit in. Voila!

Sometimes I scent each batch of soap using essential oils (start with 10 drops, but you may need even double or triple that you get the level of scent you want), but usually I just leave it unscented.

HVAC Replacement--Saving Money on Major Appliances

2010-05-12T20:04:00.009-04:00

It is Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning (HVAC) replacement week at our house. Yay! We are replacing our broken system with one that is 1.75 times as large (so we can provide some heat to the basement) and twice (or more) as energy efficient as the 12ish year old dinosuar we had that could only run on emergency heat. Specs for the new system for those so inclined: 2.5 tons, 15.75 SEER, 13.00 EER, 8.50 HSPF

We looked into a geothermal system, but the just the drilling cost, not even including the actual system itself, was 1.5 times the cost of upgrading our electric system. Maybe in a decade or so when we have to replace this system there will be even better and affordable options for us, but for now we're sticking with electric.

We've been patiently waiting for just the right time to get the new system and the stars finally aligned to give us maximum discounts:

Comparison Shopping- We got quotes from four companies to really get an idea of costs, options, etc.
"More for the Money" Negotiation - We asked the two companies with the best prices to give us a bigger system for the same price so we could eventually heat the basement (hubby will do the ventilation work himself down the road)
"Match Competitors" Negotiation- We asked the cheapest company (who was now offering us the larger system for the same price) to match the warranty length of the competitors (bringing it from two years to five years). They said yes!
Vendor Coupon- Hubby found a coupon online for the vendor knocking off another $200
Manufacturer's Rebate- The system manufacturer is offering a $350 rebate right now
Cash/Check Discount- Accepting credit cards costs vendors money. Because we can pay with a check the HVAC company knocked off 2%. This is a great tip for many things that could be financed. We got 10% off our bedroom furniture by not financing.
Federal Tax Rebate- We'll get $1,500 back next April. See details on qualifying products here.
Virginia State Tax Rebate- The latest incarnation of this program began on April 28. We'll get $300 back. (Here is the complete list: Heat Pump - $300 Natural Gas Furnace - $250 Tankless Natural Gas Water Heater - $225 Clothes Washer - $75 Refrigerator - $60 Storage Natural Gas Water Heater - $35 ) Make sure your product meets the efficiency requirements! Not in Virginia? Check to see what your state is offering. The feds gave money to each state.

Total savings (once we get back the rebate and credits): 40%

Bonus: Programmable Thermostat! The old system could not sync with a programmable thermostat, something that we had loved in the condo. I am so excited to have one again with the new system.

Tips for Hosting a Yard Sale

2010-05-05T23:14:00.000-04:00

We're planning a yard sale for May 15. Here are my tips from past yard sales:

Pick the right season- pick a season (or day) that is warm enough you want to hang out outside and cool enough to not be miserable.
Involve others- bigger is always better when it comes to getting people to stop at your yard sale. Invite family, friends, and neighbors to set up shop along with you. Then, advertise as a multi-family or community sale.
Advertise- I advertise on Craigslist and by posting signs.
- Craigslist: include date, time, address or intersection, and if you don't want early birds, say so! (Expect early birds and have in mind a way to deal with them. Early birds are usually looking for things dirt cheap or scour for valuable things for really cheap that they turn around and sell. I usually tell early birds to come back when we are all set up. If they start rifling through our stuff anyway, I never, ever give an early bird a great price. I think it is a rude practice and inevitably slows down my set up time every time.)
- Posted signs: Be sure to remember where you put your signs so you can take them down promptly. Make your signs clear and don't overwhelm them with details. Make sure you can read them from a passing car. Make the date and time large and use arrows. Use one color of paper and design style so people know they are following the right path. Put signs up at intersections near your house, but not too far away. Posting signs is illegal in many areas, so proceed at your own risk.
Don't make price tags- People will disagree with this, but personally I don't put a price on anything unless it is more than say $2 or $5. It is a waste of time, in my opinion, to tag cheaper items because people will haggle over everything anyway. Also if they talk to you about what they are getting you can upsell other things (e.g. "Did you see the bathmat that matches that shower curtain? How about both for $7?") Also, price stickers makes clean up tougher because if you are donating leftovers some charities (almost all in my area) will not accept yard sale leftovers. So, if you have good stuff left over that is worthy of donating you would need to remove every tag.
Negotiate less at the beginning of the day when you have the most time to sell things. But, as the day goes on be willing to sell cheap. To me, the point of a yard sale is to get rid of stuff with the added bonus of making some money. Who wants to lug all of that stuff back in if it doesn't sell?
Prepare lots of change and small bills and keep it close at hand. I like to wear my old reversible apron from waiting tables that has lots of pockets. Twenties and larger go into my pants' pocket for security, but smaller bills and change stay in the apron.
Use plastic bags. In my world, these are normally evil, but they are just great for yard sales. When people have paid for their items, tie it up in a bag. It makes it easy to see what is paid for if they stick around to peruse.
Hold the cash that people give you in one hand or set it on a table while you make change. I've had people try to scam me by saying they gave a larger bill than they actually did. Don't put their money in your pocket until proper change is given.
Keep track of the money you make. Either know exactly how much change you started the day with or keep a tally of each purchase. If you are selling items for other people, keep a small notebook and write down the price and their initials.
Table tops are premium real estate. While it is tempting to fill your card tables with knickknacks to make your sale look tidier, instead use table tops to feature the things that are most valuable. Use as many tables as you can! It is much easier for customers to see what you have.
Going through piles of clothes stinks. If you can keep clothes on hangers and hang them from a rack or tree branch, do so.

Building Raised Garden Beds

2010-05-02T22:34:00.008-04:00

Here's what we did:

Step 1: Gather untreated wood in proper dimensions

For us, this was a combination of reclaimed wood off Freecycle and new wood from Home Depot. All three of our beds are 4x4 feet. Two are six inches deep and one is eight inches deep to accommodate carrots. I really riled up Mr. Random Customer behind me in the wood-cutting line at Home Depot by getting untreated wood, which will eventually rot away. We figure, better to replace it in a few years than to have chemicals from treated wood leeching into our organic veggie garden. He was shocked by the idea of letting the wood rot and re-found us four times in the store to give us new ideas of how to prevent the wood from rotting. We stuck to our original plan. I really struggled with buying conventional wood, but I could not find lumber that was the right dimensions and Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) (or the like) certified, save for one bed-building kit at Home Depot that came with—oh irony—treated wood.

Step 2: Mark Starter Holes

Ascertain the width of the boards. Half of that distance is where you will make your mark. Our boards were 1.5 inches thick so our marks needed to be ¾ inch from the end of the board. Spatial things are my kryptonite and this did not initially make sense to me, but hubby explained that this will line the screws up precisely in the middle of the adjoining board in the next step.

Step 3: Bore Starter Holes

Pick the drill bit that is the appropriate size for your screws (be sure to use galvanized/outdoor screws). We bored three starter holes in each board. All three should be in a row go all the way through the width of the board. You will only make holes on one side of the board.

Step 4: Outline the bed

Lay the boards in the shape of the bed.

Place sides with holes against sides without holes.

Step 5: Prepare Middle Pilot Hole 1

Make a pilot hole to prevent the wood from cracking when you put in the screw: with the drill bit, drill through the middle hole of one board squarely into the middle of the adjoining board.

Step 6: Insert Middle Screw 1

Now, put in your first screw.

Step 7: Address remaining middle holes

Create a pilot hole and insert the screw for each of the remaining three middle holes. Drill and screw at each corner before moving to the next one, as your wood will shift slightly each time and pre-drilled pilot holes may not line up.

Step 8: Address remaining holes

Create a pilot hole and insert the screw for each of the eight remaining holes (two at each corner). Now that the frame's shape is secure, you do not have to keep alternating between pilot holes and screws. Drill all remaining pilot holes at once; then do a round of just inserting screws.

Step 9: Place the bed in the yard and watch the sun

The bed is empty and light now. So, place the bed then watch the sun on it. On a day I was home all day, I set a timer and on each hour I made notes as to the sun conditions and then checked back in another hour. The empty beds are easy to move if one position doesn't work out.

Optional Step: Create a bottom
(visible in picture above)

We are concerned about moles and groundhogs digging up into our beds, so we decided to put a galvanized wire "hardware cloth" bottom on the two beds that will be in the backyard.

Decide which side you want to be the top of the bed and put that side face-down.
With the bottom of the bed facing up, line up one edge of the hardware cloth with one edge of the bed, centering it.
Fold the sharp ends of the wire under. Staple-gun the wire down, using just a few staples.
Unroll the wire to reach the opposite side of the bed.
If the wire is too long, you could cut it, but we chose to simply fold it over.Make sure the hardware cloth is lined up to amply cover the remaining two sides.
If the wire will not line up, remove the staples on the first side with needle-nose pliers and try again. If it does line up, staple-gun the wire down.
Then, heartily staple down all four sides.

Cost

Lumber for three beds $26 (plus the free wood from Freecycle)
Galvanized screws= nominal cost, about $0.50
Hardware cloth for two beds: $26
Subtotal: $52.50

Still to be determined: supplies to keep the squirrels and birds away…

What’s In Our Freezer? Part 2: Letters H-Z

2010-04-26T08:00:00.000-04:00

See A-G here.

Hazelnuts These are great for snacking on and cooking with.

Hummus We love hummus in this house! Hubby has devised many amazing recipes I should share some time. We normally have chick peas in the freezer ready to go for a fresh batch of hummus.

Ice Cream

Molé

Mozzarella Block We buy a two-pound blocks of cheese, shred it with the food processor, then freeze it and just take out handfuls as needed. Do not freeze cheese that you want to slice later. Frozen cheese becomes crumbly.

Orange Juice

Peas

Pierogies These make a great, quick meal on a busy night or an easy lunch to take to work (boil them in the microwave).

Pumpkin Puree Here is what I did in 2008. This puree is from two 2009 batches.

Reduced Cranberry Juice My America's Test Kitchen cookbook has the most amazing cranberry vinaigrette salad dressing in it (I couldn't find an online link to share) that requires 100% cranberry juice reduced to one-third. Reducing requires enough time to make me want to blow off the recipe. So, I decided to cook down a whole bottle of juice at a time and then freeze the rest in the proper quantity. Now the dressing is easy to whip up! Cost-saving bonus: 100% cranberry juice isn't cheap (most cranberry juice is a blend of berries). Using the whole bottle for this purpose saves me from buying a new bottle each time I want to make the recipe, only to use a small amount of it. Of course, we'd drink the rest of the bottle, but I'd rather we drink the $2.50 stuff and save the $5 stuff for when the pure flavor really matters.

Rennet For making cheese with my cheese kit.

Roasted Garlic and Butternut Squash Cassoulet Homemade freezer meal from Cooking Light. It was plain for our tastes.

Sautéed Red Onions (with balsamic and dates) I love Rachael Ray's Blue Cheese-Onion Empanadas. The last time I made then, I made miniature empanadas instead of the big guys and ended up with loads of extra onions. I used some defrosted ones for the first time on bleu cheese, caramelized apple, onion pizza. Yum!

Shredded Cheese A blend of food processor-shredded mozzarella and pepper jack to put on pizza

Spicy & Sweet Orange Sauce Leftover sauce from making this. This recipe took forever and the chicken was blah. The second time I made it, rather than following Pioneer Woman's instructions, I breaded and baked chicken cubes, served plain rice, and poured on the defrosted sauce. Quick, easy, and delicious! The sauce is worth it.

Tomato paste

Walnuts These are great for snacking on and cooking with.

Whole Fruit Bars Commercial kind. A yummy snack on a hot day. Really, I should make these myself.

Wine (red and white) Rather than letting a not-so-great or partially drunk bottle of wine go bad, we freeze it in ½ cup quantities for cooking with.

Wonton Wrappers For use in my favorite pumpkin recipe, Cooking Light's Pumpkin Ravioli with Gorgonzola Sauce.

What’s In Our Freezer? Part 1: Letters A-G

2010-04-24T09:30:00.001-04:00

Using the freezer for food preservation is a major strategy in keeping our grocery budget at $250 per month. I thought that taking a peek into our freezer might lend some insight into how we keep food costs down.

Almonds I purchased a 5 pound bag from BJs. I use these as a go-to snack and keep a bag in my purse. They are also great for toasting for salads and making pesto.

Artichoke hearts

Baba-ga hummus Homemade roasted eggplant and garlic hummus. Not great as-is. I will defrost and reblend.

Bailey's Irish Crème Mint This stuff is so good frozen!
I keep a small bottle of it in the freezer.

Berries I'm not a big berry eater, but these will be yummy on a dessert for guests.

Black beans We don't do canned beans. These were cooked in bulk and frozen.

Blood worms Food for our African dwarf frog.

Bleu cheese

Bread yeast Hubby is the bread machine king; I am new to Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day.

Brewing Yeast Hubby is a home brewer

Butter

Chicken

Chicken Broth Homemade

Chicken Scrap Bag for the next batch of broth

Chocolate chips

Coconut

Diced tomato

Egg Whites We have more than I thought! 4 containers containing various quantities: 2, 2, 3, 6

Film Hmm...I don't think we even own a film camera any more.

Freezer Packs Good for lunches.

French Onion Soup Hubby made this in bulk for lunches.

Gravy

Guacamole Homemade

Henna + Hair

2010-04-21T08:00:00.007-04:00

One of my non-green hold outs has been hair dye. I've experimented with many hair colors over the years, but reds tend to be my favorite. I'd considered using henna in the past, but it seemed staining, unpredictable, and overwhelming. Then I read an amazingly informative document from Catherine Cartwright-Jones who is doing her dissertation on henna. It made dying hair red, brown, or black with henna and/or indigo seem so doable. Here is some of her work: short version or long version. I used the short version as my guide to dye my hair red with henna. Below are my observations and tips, but not a step-by-step as the details in the linked documents are comprehensive.

Dying Hair with Henna Lessons Learned

Supplies:

Use a sturdy spoon for stirring; the little plastic spoon didn't cut it.
Use long dishwashing gloves to protect instead of wrist-length gloves. I ended up with a few stains on my arms before I made the switch to love gloves.
Put a cover on the henna as it sits for 8-12 hours. The instructions say to do this, but I forgot and the top layer got chunky. Also, henna has a distinct smell; covering it will help contain the odor. (I don't mind the smell, hubby dislikes it.)
A shower cap worked just fine rather than using plastic wrap as suggested.

Application:

I took up a hearty glop of the henna mix in my gloved hands and smeared it in my sectioned hair. It felt like smearing really thick mud into my hair and it was pretty fun.
I did drop a few globs on the floor, but there was less errant dye than I usually leave behind after using the squirt-bottle applicator that comes with boxed dyes. Clean up was easy and nothing in the bathroom was stained.
Henna is green, so it is hard to miss spots. Anything not plastered with green mud is pretty obvious!
I left the henna on for three hours. I looked goofy with my shower cap on, but was able to things around the house without creating any mess. The henna stayed on my hair and under the shower cap.

Verdict:

Click on image to open larger view

It worked! Check out the before and after shots above (left side is before, right side is after)
Initial color is rich, vivid and monochromatic, rather than being a helmet of a single shade
Post-oxidation color: to be determined after 72 hours
Afterward, my hair felt dry and tangled more easily than normal. I'm guessing this is either from the lemon juice or some residual henna left in my hair.
It is cheap! A box of hair dye costs up to $10, a professional dye costs much more. The box of henna cost $1.79 (100g for short hair) plus the cost of lemon juice.
Henna definitely takes more time than dying: letting the henna sit after mixing (I did 8 hours, but 12 is optimal) plus keeping it in the hair for two to six hours. Active time in preparation and application is similar, though rinsing did take longer.
No burning or itching on my scalp like with boxed dyes.
A downside is unpredictability of final color, but I suppose that exists with boxed dye as well.
Longevity of color: to be determined

Glass Cleaner

2010-04-19T08:00:00.000-04:00

I've used this uber-simple glass cleaner for years now with no problems. Then, I used it to clean the nasty, nasty windows at the new house and fell in love with it all over again.

Supplies:

Water
Vinegar
Spray Bottle
Bucket (optional)
Black & White Newspaper (at least a couple of weeks old)

Instructions:

Whatever the quantity desired, use a one to one ratio: one part water to one part vinegar. For most jobs, mix the water and vinegar directly in the spray bottle and squirt on. For heavy jobs, mix the water and vinegar in a bucket. Heartily apply it to the glass with a cloth or sponge.
With either method, wipe dry with the older, non-colored (or minimally colored) newspaper. The newspaper is abrasive enough to scrub off sticky grime but soft enough to leave a streak-free finish.
Repeat if necessary.

DIY Preserved Wedding Bouquet -- Critique 4 Years Later

2010-04-15T08:00:00.000-04:00

In honor of my fourth anniversary today, I thought I'd share how I preserved my wedding bouquet.

Supplies:
-Bouquet
-Thin rope or pipe cleaner to suspend bouquet
-Deep shadow box (mine is from A. C. Moore)
-Aerosol Hairspray
-Hot glue gun
-Hot glue sticks

What I did:

-The day after the wedding, I hung the flowers upside down in an unused closet using pipe cleaners.

-I left the flowers alone for 2-4 months until thoroughly dried out. Note that tightly closed blooms will take longest to dry. Warning: the flowers smelled awful for quite a while!

-Once dried, I sprayed them with Aquanet hairspray (I read on a website that this helps preserve them).

-I had to split the bouquet in two parts because they wouldn't all fit in the box without getting squished (this was a little traumatic as some little petals flaked off when I pulled them out of the bouquet).

-I used straight pins and hot-glue to tighten up the ribbon, making sure that the alterations would be hidden when placed in the box.

-Once thinned enough to fit under the glass, I hot-glued the 1/2 bouquet still in the ribbon into the box, concentrating the glue on the stems rather than the blooms.

-From the unused half of the bouquet, I cut the blooms off of stems and hot-glued them into the secured half to really fill out the side the viewer will see. (I was able to fit in every single flower still in good condition!)

Verdict: Some bits of flowers have flaked off and are on the floor of the box, the green leaves and stems browned, the white flowers have yellowed, the ribbon has faded some. But, overall, I would consider this a success!

Bonus Picture... Origami version of my wedding bouquet that hubby made for me on our first anniversary (traditional gift is paper)

Composting Basics

2010-04-12T08:00:00.003-04:00

Have you read about composting and been interested, but just don't know how to start? Because others have said it better than I can, I am going to link you to my favorite composting sites:

Multi-page article that takes you from the science of composting to actually starting a pile: How Stuff Works

Loads of info on anything and everything compost related: HowToCompost.org

For newbies and experienced folks alike: 75 Things You Can Compost, But Thought You Couldn't

For the science-brained folks, a Can I Compost It chart along with the why.
(Thanks for that link, Crunchy Conscience!)

My favorite book on composting is called Composting by Liz Ball and is part of the Smith & Hawken Hands On Gardener series. This book has a simple, non-gimmicky approach that I really appreciate.

Adventures in Deodorant

2010-04-07T22:39:00.008-04:00

Concerned about the chemicals in standard deodorants, I started experimenting with more natural brands and making my own. Here's what I've learned in the past year…

First, I went commercial and bought Tom's of Maine. It worked great for awhile, but then I started feeling smelly. Next, I tried rubbing a pinch of just plain baking soda in my underarms. It totally eliminated odor, but after a few weeks my underarms freaked out, turned red and splotchy, and started peeling. Eek! Plus, grains of it stood out on black clothing. Back to the drawing board--or rather, back to the Tom's. When I finished the Tom's, I gave J/A/S/O/N Organics deodorant a chance. That was a nightmare for my body chemistry. I am not a particularly sweaty person, but that stuff made me smell just awful. (In J/A/S/O/N's defense, they did respond to my complaint and gave me a coupon good for any of their products.) At that point, I came across a recipe from Little House in the Suburbs that looked awesome. I made it as instructed and even put it in an empty deodorant container. I loved how well it worked, but it kept crumbling out of the dispenser on colder days and melting out of the container on hotter days, and my pits started doing the peeling thing again. So, I shelved that and bought Nature's Gate deodorant. It did absolutely nothing for me. So, I decided to go back to making my own, but this time I'd take the Little House ingredients but make a custom blend for my sensitive pits and make it creamy rather than a stick.

More Green for Less Green Creamy Deodorant

Ingredients:

1/4 cup Baking Soda
1/2 cup Cornstarch
1/4 cup Coconut Oil
Tea Tree Oil

Supplies:

Lidded, microwave-safe container, 1 cup (or larger)—I use my beloved lidded Pyrex
Sturdy Spoon
Measuring cup
Microwave (optional)
Small cotton cloth (optional)

Instructions

Add cornstarch, baking soda, and coconut oil to container.

Microwave for 10-15 second and stir thoroughly. (You can omit microwaving, but it makes stirring easier.)

Add 15-20+ drops of tea tree oil.

Let cool. It will thicken as it returns to room temperature.

Take a small swipe of the deodorant using your middle and index fingers and massage it into each underarm. It will look slightly shiny on your skin briefly, but won't be visible.

If you are not applying this near a sink, keep a small cloth with the deodorant container to wipe your fingers clean with.

I do not use this immediately after shaving because the baking soda irritates nicks. One thing I do is shave less—just once or twice per week—and then use hubby's conventional deodorant on those days. Or, better yet, I'll shower at night, go clean-pitted through the night, and then apply the deodorant in the morning.

I have not had any problems with it staining clothes, being visible, quitting on me midday, etc.

Do note that the mixture changes viscosity based on temperature—it will be semi-solid in cooler conditions (right) but runny when warm (left). It works the same at either temperature range. I made a batch on hottest day of the year thus far and it was so runny that I thought my recipe must have gotten screwed up somehow. Now that normal spring temperatures have returned, it is thick like canned frosting.

Why it works: baking soda combats odor, cornstarch absorbs moisture, tea tree oil has natural antiseptic properties and smells good, coconut oil is the perfect base—it makes the deodorant spreadable. This oil is solid at room temperature but has a very low melting point. Simply touching it will transfer heat enough to melt it. You can find coconut oil at many grocery stores, just ask where it is.

P.S. For emergency pit spruce-ups, I keep a repurposed, small lip balm container filled with baking soda in my purse. Very occasional use of straight baking soda doesn't irritate my pits too much. Nothing combats smell like baking soda! Just grab a pinch and rub it in.

Living Room Curtains

2010-04-05T10:41:00.005-04:00

I love the large picture window in our living room and have been searching for just the right thing to use as a covering without breaking the bank.

First up--hardware to hang curtains. The house came with wooden brackets that were simple and unobtrusive. They were filthy, but usable, so I cleaned and painted them with trim paint (all trim in the house is Olympic Zero VOC, Ultra-White). We bought a super-long wooden rod at Lowes and painted it with trim paint. Total cost: about $13. Going basic with the hardware allows us to spend more money on the actual curtains—they thing that we want to be fun and stand out. At some point, I might find a way to spruce up the rod once we get the perfect curtains in there. But, for now they are a blank slate.

I thought about making my own curtains and went through loads of fabric books from a local store, but the ones I like best were over $40 a yard. No way! So, found these cuties on JCPenney's website for a mere $17.99 per panel (the price has since gone up) plus I had a coupon. I wasn't sure if the Light Jadestone colors were a match, so I picked them up at the store where they they were about double the cost—boo! I decided to take them home anyway and see them in the room. The verdict: we need four panels, 84 inches is too short, I hate the grommet top, when the sun shines through them they look orange and striped. But, the colors are good in the space and they add whimsy to the room, which I am totally craving. Our solution: order the too-long 95-inch curtains and sew them into pocket-top panels, hiding the grommets. I'll look for neutral sheets at yard sales to create a liner for them to avoid the sun/strip issue.

The curtains are ordered (they were back-ordered for a few weeks, now I see it is up to a few months for new orders), yard sale season is coming to find the sheets, and the total cost should come in at about $80, which is not cheap, but is a lot better than $120+ with the stress of sewing uber-expensive material. Could I go cheaper? Probably. But, this seems to be a happy medium of cost, ease, style, and buying new when it fits the bill but incorporating used items as much as possible (rather than buying new sheets or new liner fabric).

Our cheap rod (the grommet top just looks goofy to me) plus the too-short curtains with weird stripes in the sun.

But see the potential for cuteness? I love the rug/curtain color combo.

Worms, Glorious Worms!

2010-03-26T22:08:00.008-04:00

Worms have found my compost bin. I am so excited! Check them out!

Squeamish? Really, all you can see here is arrows.

Not Squeamish? Click on the image to open a full-size version and see the worms in all their cute, wriggly glory.

In addition to the worms, I can see some decomposition in my compost. It is happening much more quickly that my ground piles ever did, probably because I turn it more often and add new greens more often.

Speaking of ground piles, I made this simple chart awhile back for the pile at work since it was (theoretcially) a community pile. I could never figure out a good way to post it outside, so I never actually used it. My thought was laminated paper staple-gunned to a small wooden post, but I never actually did it. I am a private composter these days, but I wanted to share this chart in case it helps someone else.

Click on the image to open a larger version.

Happy composting!

House Update: A Moment of Glory, Many Moments of Humility

2010-03-26T20:42:00.013-04:00

Last Saturday I was thrilled to be featured on one of my favorite sites, The DIY Showoff. I now get to add this super-cute badge to my blog!

It was great to get an outside reminder of how far we’ve come on this house. Though I try to always see myself as a “have” rather than a “have not,” it is easy to get bogged down and lose sight of progress. So, yay for taking the house from ick city to a place we live and (mostly) like, in only four months. Yay that it has been over a month since we’ve seen a cockroach; the living room, dining room, hallway, and bathroom are painted; the office is 3/4 painted and the kitchen cabinet doors are 1/10 painted; our roof didn’t leak when we had all of the snow on it last month; we didn’t have any water problems even when all of the snow melted; and yay for all of that cleaning that kept on going, and going, and going but now in much of the house you'd never know about the previous squalor.

Now onto some big things facing us:

HVAC system is only partially operational and needs mega help. We can replace just the the dead (and not reparable) condenser unit with an new, but older model that is compatible with the 12-year-old air handler: affordable price, but who knows how long it will last, and it won't be energy efficient. Or we can replace both parts of the system for three times the cost, but we'll get some back at tax time and will have a cheaper electric bill. Our basement is not heated and neither of these plans include heating for the basement, but today one of the companies we are shopping offered us a system powerful enough to heat the basement at no extra cost if we go with them. Hubby would have to do the basement ventilation himself, but maybe we can get that negotiated in, too. It is tough to pony up the money, but in the land of counting our blessings, yay for that $8,000 first time home buyer credit that we never factored into our budget--until now.
Bathroom ceiling is falling apart and must be replaced. It was trashed from an old leak when we moved in, but fresh paint kept in decent for a few more months. Then, water started leaking in through the ventilation fan and it started crumbling. The leak is fixed, but the ceiling still needs to be replaced.

Please ceiling, don't get my cute shower curtain dirty!

View from inside the shower

The sump pump and pit need a total overhaul. Due to poor design, the pit cannot fully drain so gnat larvae have taken up residence. We have the actual gnats controlled with a mosquito dunk (also great for rain barrels and other standing water), but the larvae don’t seem to be effected. The previous owners pumped their kitchen and laundry wastewater through the sump pump and into the backyard, so the pit is just really gross, despite me diving into it and scrubbing multiple times (shudder). The pump itself no longer turns on automatically, so we have to check on it and manually lift up the float.

Sump pump on inspection day with kitchen & laundry wastewater flowing through it.

Cleaned up and wastewater pipe closed off. The brown powdery stuff is a natural enzymatic cleaner designed to clean septic systems and eat away grease.

Hubby and I are both taking a week off from work in April to do stuff around the house. It will be great to see how much we can get done. Here’s hoping for good weather! We will be having an open house/my birthday/thank you to the army of volunteers who helped us party in May.

P.S. If you are thinking about buying a home, please, PLEASE make sure you have a hearty amount in savings for the unexpected (separate money from an unemployment emergency fund). Our HVAC passed inspection, and yet here we are. We do have a home warranty, but they denied both our claim and our appeal. And, had they approved our claim, they would've only kicked in $1,500 before reaching the maximum per-claim amount. We knew that this house had many problems, but for every known problem--with any house, not just foreclosures--there are always more things that are unseen.

Still Have An Old Sigg Kicking Around?

2010-03-24T22:27:00.003-04:00

The voluntary Sigg recall is long over, but some people who missed the free replacement boat might still be wondering if their bottle has the old, BPA-containing liner. Here is how to tell:

If the liner is brassy (orange bottle) that is the old liner revealed to leech BPA. Use it as a flower vase or for whatever purpose you think up or recycle the bottle with other aluminum.

If the liner is opaque beige (pink bottle) you have a bottle from the first batch of the new, BPA-free liner. The bottles in the first batch were coated with too much liner, which--as you can see from the stringy thing hanging from the pink bottle--begins to peel off. If this happens to you, contact Sigg. They may replace your bottle.

If the liner is silvery-beige (black bottle) this is a bottle with the new, BPA-free liner and an appropriate coating of liner.

Beige New vs. Brassy Old

New Bottles
Too Much Liner vs. Right Amount

I am trying really hard to still believe in Sigg. I receieved great customer service from them right after the BPA news came out and again recently. Hopefully the new bottles are finally what Sigg promised from the beginning!

Indoor Seed Starting

2010-03-18T18:12:00.006-04:00

I started growing some of my seedlings indoors using the paper towel method that I read about at The Dirty Radish here and here. She refers to it as seed sushi, which I just love to say. Rebel that I am, I decided to start my rolls in lidded Pyrex (which I am obsessed with and own tons of) rather than plastic bags (which I detest, because we have a policy of washing and reusing them and it is a hassle). After a day-and-a-half, I realized that this was a mistake. The rolls dried out way too quickly with the greater air circulation between the rolls and the lid. I am a totally newbie at gardening, and though I have done obsessive amounts of reading, I really don't have much practical experience yet. So, enter the first of many mistakes I am sure to make!

Now ready to actually follow the guidance of others, I sanitized a plastic bag (yes, I actually used my nemesis, bleach) and put the rolls in there, as I should have done from the start. That did the trick! I still need to spritz the rolls about twice a day, but now they never totally dry out.

I am tickled with this method. At one week in, the eggplants and jalapenos were almost free from their seeds and the bell peppers had little root tails. At a week-and-half-in, I was able to plant some of my seedlings. The only bust so far is the rosemary, which is notoriously hard to grow from seed, so I don't feel too bad. Out of 12 seeds, only one shows the slightest sign of growth.

Thrifty girl that I am, I couldn't bring myself to buy labeling sticks when I ran out of the craft sticks I had on hand, so I cut up the lid of a large yogurt container and wrote on the pieces with a Sharpie.

Below is a picture of my set up in the basement with a mix of seedlings in potting soil and seeds still emerging with the paper towel method. The light chain isn't very long, so I've got a combination of the seed tray, egg cartons, and wood stacked under the heat mat to get the seeds close enough to the light. I keep my spray bottle of water upstairs so it stays warmer and doesn't shock my little guys by being too cold. The light is on a timer, I've got it on for 14 hours a day right now. The heat mat (not visible, it is under the green tray) stays on all the time.

Coming up in the world of indoor seed starting: I'll do bergamot (the herb, not the orange) and oregano; then tomatoes, ground cherries, and thyme; then marigolds; and possibly lettuce somewhere in there. After that, it will be time to sow the outdoor seeds.

Homemade Compost Bin

2010-03-16T09:32:00.004-04:00

In the past, I have kept a simple compost pile on the ground, with good results. When we lived in the condo, I composted on the grounds at work (read about it here and here). Decomposition went very well, but the compost never actually got used. Last spring, my coworker on the buildings team accidentally squished all of the compost back into the forest floor in a mishap with a rented tractor. (I think he was either trying to turn the pile or scoop up the compost to use it.)

When we bought the house, I started a ground pile at home and ditched the work one. That reminds me, that partial second year of compost is still sitting on work grounds and decomposing. I guess I should remind my coworker that it is there since it is time for spring planting to spruce up the grounds. It would be great to see it put to use! Anyway, back to the house pile...being that I started the pile in in December and then we had a snowy winter, the pile didn't do much.

When we moved into the house, I noticed that the previous owners left an old, beat-up, plastic trashcan with no lid. I started eyeing it as a potential composter. After all, if it could be free—or at least dirt cheap—I’d like to try bin composting. I totally believe in the simplicity and relative cleanliness of a ground pile, but I like experiments, and I like sharing them with you.

It took me some time to figure out exactly what to do with the trash can and to find the time to do it, but I finally did. Here you go...

With a ½ inch boring bit, I drilled holes around the sides and bottom of the trash can. As you may notice, I did not drill holes up to the very top of can. I did this for several reasons: to remind me to not fill it that high for weight reasons (I need to be able to flip it); to remind me to get multiple bins going for use at different times and not obsess over getting this one filled to the brim; and finally, some trashcan composters are used upside down with the top cut off, so instead of flipping it, you just lift it up. I wanted to leave as much structural integrity in that part of the can as possible in case I switch to that method.

Because the trash can did not have a lid, and we were not able to buy just a lid, we needed to make one. We recently got some building supplies from a Freecycler, so hubby cut some of that wood to be the lid. I then drilled holes in the wood to allow rain in. We bought a rubber cord with hooks on the end (from Home Depot) to hold the lid on securely.

I shoveled my ground pile into the composter, and I will turn it with a cultivator/claw. We bought both tools on Craigslist for $10 each.

So far, I’ve noticed that flying bugs like the composter. This was not a problem with the ground pile because no food was ever directly exposed to the air (it gets covered with browns). In the container, food may be pressed against a hole and thus draw attention. So far, that is the only drawback. In terms of adding food, it is much easier because I don’t have to dig it in and then obsessively cover it with browns. So, we'll see how it goes!

The Joy of Repurposing: 2 Minute $0 Decoration

2010-03-14T21:58:00.002-04:00

These gold, brown, and clear baubles came in a flower arrangement that hubby’s office sent us when we got the house. I just loved them and thought that they would go with our retro gold living room decorations, so I set them aside figuring that someday I could put them to good use. Enter this little candle holder that I received as a Christmas gift that I liked, but with just a candle in it seemed kind of plain. After having both things around for months, suddenly inspiration hit. 2 minutes of futzing and voila!

Reusable Cold Cup

2010-03-14T21:33:00.009-04:00

I recently bought this reusable, cutie Copco Cold Beverage To Go Cup from Bed Bath and Beyond for $7.99 (plus 20% off with a coupon). I rarely drink soda, but if I did, I would totally try to get fast food places to fill up this cup instead of their disposable ones. I do enjoy the occasional treat of a frozen drink at the coffe shop at work or a milkshake from Chick-Fil-A (which come in polystyrene cups—ick). The coffee shop uses my new cup with no issue, but I haven’t tried it anywhere else yet.

What I love about this cup

Reusable
Secure lid that is easy to screw on
Fat straw/stirrer, sturdy enough for chunks
BPA-free
Dishwasher safe
Affordable price
Feels solid
Tag is made from post-consumer recycled paper
Some places give a reusable cup discount
You can fill it up to the very brim and the lid still fits on without overflowing the cup

What I don’t love about this cup

Made in China
Made from virgin materials
I wish it came in more colors
Too big for the size of drinks that I usually get (but I show people that the middle of the brown section is 12 oz.)

Copco also makes a double-walled hot cup version that comes in several colors and features a sipping hole in the lid, just like disposable cups have.

Update: I brought my cup into a McDonald's for my annual Shamrock Shake and they used it without question. Added bonus, instead of filling it to the 16 oz point, which I estimated for the cashier, she filled the whole thing for me.

This guy is also great for drinking ice water out of. Sipping ice-cold water from a straw seems almost like a restaurant treat.

Decoration Inspiration

2010-03-09T12:20:00.005-05:00

As we continue to spruce up our house using as much as possible that is used, repurposed, and/or refinished, I crave do it yourself (DIY) inspiration. Since I am home sick today and I don't have the brain-power for writing or the energy much of anything, surfing the web is a good way to pass the time in between naps. Here are two of my favorite decorating-focused blogs that make me want to get better quickly and make the most of the beautiful spring weather that has suddenly appeared...

The DIY Showoff is a great blog that features the writer's own home (their barn patio blows my mind!) plus DIY links and instructions from many other blogs.

Young House Love is a pretty well-known site about making the
most of a smallish house. I love this blog because our houses have similarities and it gives me hope for getting beyond some of the big issues we face in our house.

From Trash to…Chicken Broth

2010-03-06T20:56:00.011-05:00

Mmmm, isn't that an appealing title? Probably not.

The phrase, "Waste not, want not," is definitely one of my mantras so with my latest cooking adventure, I took unwanted food scraps and turned them into chicken broth. It took very little effort and is dirt cheap. So, here's what to do:

Collect

Collect unwanted fatty chicken pieces. Whenever I cook with chicken breast, I like to remove any remaining white stuff. Whatever I cut off, I put in a freezer container. We use a Ziplock bag (a rare occurrence for us), but any sealable container will do. Just add the new meat on top of the frozen meat in the bag. Keep on collecting until you have a good amount. For me, this was a full pint-sized bag (about 1 ½ pounds of chicken scraps). Safety reminder: Do not leave your scrap bag out and do not add chicken pieces that have sat out. Despite my post title, don't treat your scraps like trash!
Collect unwanted vegetable scraps. When I cut veggies, I throw the unwanted, but still kind of appealing parts into a freezer container (not appealing parts go into the compost pile). Carrot tops are great for this, as are celery leaves, the bottoms of green onions with the little rooty bits, etc. Be sure to include only things that are in good, edible condition: thoroughly washed, not rotten, etc. We use an old yogurt container for this.

Cook and Cool

Defrost the chicken in the fridge or in a cool-water bath. (I was a bad girl and didn't do this. But, really you should. I will next time; I promise.)
Get out your slow cooker. Add the chicken and veggie scraps.
Cover it all with water. For me, this was 9 cups of water on top of 1 ½ pounds of chicken and a packed yogurt container of vegetables.
Add a few extra items for flavor. The veggie scraps should provide great flavor, but ¼ to ½ of an onion, a hearty sprinkle of pepper, and some garlic will really make it yummy. We ran out of fresh garlic (craziness!) so I had to use dried, minced garlic. You also could add salt, but I prefer salting each recipe to taste rather than salting the broth.
Cover and cook on high for 4 hours.
Remove all big chunks of chicken and vegetables.
Remove the crock from the housing, so it can get good air circulation around it. Let the crock cool down for 30 minutes or so. You want it to be cool enough to handle, but don't leave it out so long you violate the rules of the food safety "danger zone".

Clarify (the easy way):

With the lid still on, put the crock in the fridge. Let the broth sit overnight or for at least 4+ hours until the fat has risen to the top and solidified. It will be opaque and chunky when sufficiently chilled. Use a slotted spoon, skimmer, or smallish strainer to scoop out the fat. This should be very easy. It is not, you might have tried skimming too soon. I got impatient and tried too early two times. It was a waste of time.
(Too early; fat is clumping but it is still to early; fat is very white and clumpy--yay!)
For very clear broth, let the broth settle again in the fridge. Then use a ladle to very gently scoop out the clear broth from the top without disturbing the sediment at the bottom. I was able to get out half the broth this way before I got impatient and moved onto the next strategy.

Fat (mostly) skimmed off , sediment has resettled to the bottom leaving clear broth on top
For less clear broth, use a strainer to pour the broth from the crock into another container. Try a cheese cloth for more thorough straining.

Store It:

Portion the broth—I did 2.5 cup portions this time.
Use within one week if in the fridge or keep it in the freezer for as long as you like to keep things in the freezer. Some say six months in the freezer for broth, but I'm not picky--as long as it has stayed at the proper temperature during that time.

Improved Homemade Dishwasher Detergent

2010-02-24T08:17:00.005-05:00

I posted quite awhile ago about my homemade dish detergent (and why we use it over conventional) and how we were using it in spite of cloudiness. Reader Special765 suggested adding citric acid to the mix to help. That did the trick! It took us some time to get the amounts just right for our water conditions, but I feel like we finally have it perfected. Here is the new and improved recipe:

One Batch of More Green for Less Green Dishwasher Detergent
(Yields about 70 loads)

Dry ingredients:

3 cups baking soda
1 cup borax
¼ cup citric acid*

Wet ingredients:

Essential oil (optional)
Vinegar

Mix dry ingredients in a container and shake to mix. Keep wet ingredients on-hand for each load of dishes.

Shake dry mix before each use and then open container pointing away from your face. Moisture causes clumping and activates the citric acid so make sure your container is air-tight. We got a container similar to this at a yard sale for $1. For extra protection, consider adding a dried out brown sugar bear (or the like) to absorb any moisture. I suspect any piece of terracotta will do.

For each load, pour the detergent to the lowest line on the dispenser cup (for us this is 1 tablespoon). Most people use too much detergent and go to the top of the cup, but more is not necessarily better— and is probably not what your machine's user manual suggests. If 1 tablespoon is also the right amount for your machine, one batch of this detergent will last for 70 loads.

I add 2 drops of essential oil per load on top of the dry mix. Generally I use tea tree oil, which has natural antiseptic properties, but if I'll be in the kitchen I'll put in a smell I really love like bergamot or sweet orange since the scent will be released in the steam that comes out of the machine.

I've stopped using the rinse-aid compartment for vinegar. Instead, I put a healthy squirt of vinegar in the bottom of the dishwasher (between 1/8 and 1/4 cup). I use an old, plastic sports bottle with squeeze top for this. It is so handy to just grab and squirt! Adding more vinegar than the rinse aid dispenses seems to do the job better. My bottle is similar to this. Used ones are abundant and dirt cheap or free, so no need to buy new plastic!

This mixture is just right for the water in my area, but you may need to play with the ratios for water conditions in your area.

*To find citric acid locally check at an Indian grocer (probably the best chance for a good price, since they will likely sell by the bag and not in a pricey brand-name bottle). Also try specialty supply shops that sell things for making cakes, candy, soap, or cheese; or try a health food stores (e.g.Healthway, but it is pricey there). You also can buy it online.

Planning an Organic Vegetable, Herb, and Flower Garden

2010-02-22T09:45:00.009-05:00

I am so excited to start my first ever garden this year! In the past, I've grown a few flowers from seed with mixed results and did some flower transplants. So, this is a new game for me. Initially I thought I would try to grow ten herbs and vegetables—that seemed like a good number to get my feet wet. Enter the Southern Exposure Seed Exchange catalogue (great for Mid-Atlantic growers) and the Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds catalogue (fruits and veggies have never seemed so sexy and luscious as they do in this book), and a seed exchange. I decided to only purchase seeds that are not genetically modified organisms (GMO), so those two companies were great choices. I ended up buying all of my seeds from Southern Exposure because they are more local to me, but I did buy some Baker's Creek and Botanical Interests seeds at Merrifield Garden Center, and from a seed exchange I ended up with some Johnny's Select Seeds, Seeds of Change, and Burpee.

I now have the seeds for 28 veggies (some are technically fruits), herbs, and some companion flowers. So much for ten! Here's the list:

Plant	Variety
Basil	Sweet Genovese
Bergamot	Wild
Bush Bean	Blue Lake 274
Bush Bean	Purple-Podded
Carrots	Scarlet Nantes
Cilantro
Dill	Bouquet
Eggplant	Blush
Garlic	Beginner's Mix
Green Onion	Evergreen Bunching
Ground Cherries	Cossack Pineapple
Lavender	French Purple Ribbon
Lettuce, Mesclun
Lettuce, Romaine	Parris Island Cos
Marigold	African Crackerjack
Nasturtium	Jewel, mixed color
Onion	White?
Oregano	Greek
Parsley	Mitsuba, Japanese
Pepper, Bell	California Wonder
Pepper, Jalapeno
Peppers, Sweet	Carnival Mix
Pumpkin	Small Sugar
Radish
Rosemary
Thyme	Summer
Tomato	Cherokee Purple
Tomato	Roma VF, VA select

I have been reading blogs (the author of The Dirty Radish has been immensely helpful to me and even had me over to see her garden and eat some tasty treats and organized a seed exchange), reading books, cross-referencing, building spreadsheets, taking note of the sunlight at various locations each hour, etc. in preparation. It has been pretty overwhelming, but the plan is finally starting to come together.

One thing I wanted to do was capitalize on the benefits of companion planting—planting things together that are mutually beneficial. Since this will be an organic garden, I'd like to give the plants every benefit possible when it comes to pests, fertilization, healthy soil, etc.

Here's my COMPANION PLANTING CHART:

(Click to open a larger image)

Since we don’t know what the light at the house is like in the summer, I’ve decided to do three
4 foot by 4 foot beds in different places in the yard that all seem to get ample sunlight, but we’re unsure of what will happen to that light when the surrounding trees get leaves. I am still working out the last details of the other two beds, but the plan for the south bed is complete (until a more experienced gardener tells me otherwise). You will notice that this is not a traditional row garden; this is a square foot garden.

Here is the SOUTH BED LAYOUT:
(Click to open a larger image)

This first year, the garden might save us a little money. But, everything but the seeds is a one-time cost (and the seeds could be, if I gather them at the end of the season) and we’ll have enough homemade compost by next year to enrich the soil without purchasing fertilizers. In future years, we hope to save lots of money.

Our start up costs:

$30 for used tools found on Craigslist. Gloves were a gift.
$55 in heirloom seeds (supplemented with seeds from seed exchange)
$60 in seed-starting gear (purchased two sets containing growing flat, base tray, and dome; bought one heat mat and received another as a gift. Received a used grow light as a gift; any additional growing containers will be made from repurposed items)
$60 est. in wood for the raised beds ($20 for each 4x4 bed, I am doing three)
$150 est. for planting material (peat moss, compost, and vermiculite)
We will water the garden from rain barrels, which were a gift.

So, $355. We spent $318 at the farmer's market last year (May-October), but that amount includes some cheese and buffalo meat. Hopefully this year our summer diet will be very plant-based and gardening will save us money at the grocery store on non-plant foods. Plus, we will surely dry, freeze, or can some of our produce to use off-season.

Mold Abatement in the Basement

2010-02-10T18:38:00.010-05:00

Mold can be serious business, but I think that the hysteria about it enters the realm of being big business. Mold education is always a more effective first step than panic. Because the house we bought has some moisture issues, I looked into educating myself about mold and moisture problems and found some excellent resources that helped me feel very good about managing things in our new place.

First, I read A Brief Guide to Mold, Moisture, and Your Home, a PDF from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Then I took an online mini-course: Introduction to Mold and Mold Remediation for Environmental and Public Health Professionals from the EPA. I was able to complete all 9 chapters and all of the tests in one night. (This course is for general education, and is not a certification.) The EPA also has this great chart for cleaning. Home Depot and others sell mold kits, but proceed with caution. Mere traces of mold spores are expected; mold is all around us outside. Indoor mold growth (beyond a small, normal amount like in the fridge or bathroom) is really the problem.

Many people think that bleach is the default mold cleaner, but this is not correct. While bleach is an effective mold killer on non-porous surfaces, it is not effective on porous surfaces. In other words, it will kill mold on a tile floor, but unless your grout is sealed that makes part of your floor porous. Drywall is also porous. I don't think bleach is best for anything ever so I wouldn't even consider it for non-porous surfaces. Hubby uses it to clean his home brewing supplies and won't change his ways, but I personally don't ever use it. Here is some more info on bleach & mold and why bleach is not the best choice.

So, with bleach out as an option, what is left? Here are the steps that we took:

Find the cause of the moisture and abate it You will just have to keep repeating the following steps if you don't take care of the problem. Our problems were: ineffective gutters dumping water on the foundation of the house, an against-code plumbing system creating huge amounts of moisture, and previous owners heating the basement via dryer venting, which is moist heat.
Get your gear on Use the EPA's cleaning chart (linked above) to assess the gear that you need. For our level of mold I wore rubber gloves, a mask, and glasses. I also elected to wear long pants and a long-sleeved shirt that would be washed right away.
Give a topical cleaning The vinegar spray I've mentioned in the past is good for light mildew (like in the bathroom). So first we sprayed and wiped the walls with that: Scented Vinegar Spray: 1t borax, 1T shaved dry castile soap, 1/8c vinegar, 2c hot water, 5-10 drops of essential oils (Green Clean p.136). I suggest making half of the oil drops Tea Tree Oil since it has natural antiseptic properties.
Kill the mold and clean topically again I made blend of hot water (1/2 gal), vinegar (1/2 gal), and borax (1 cup)* and wiped that on the wall with a sponge and let it sit for 30 minutes. Don't be afraid to get things really wet (provided it is warm and dry enough in the room for it to dry within several hours.) Then I reapplied and waited for another 30 minutes. Then I wiped one last time with just hot water, really scrubbing this last time. I used a wet/dry shop vacuum to dry up floor. *I made smaller batches that that, but for simplicity's sake I've provided the recipe in a 1 gallon quantity. I used my green cleaning books along with this site to devise that solution and timeline.
Seal the wall and cover the stains Mold can stain. Even if you've removed and killed the mold, you may still have staining. So, it is time to cover that up and seal the wall. We used this primer-sealer.

About primer: zero VOC primers are easy to find, zero VOC primer-sealers are not. Zinsser makes a zero VOC primer-sealer option, but it is not available in my area, so we went with the conventional kind that I linked to. Zinnser's conventional latex primer-sealer actually is low VOC, they just don't label themselves as such. (Most latex paints are low VOC but are not labeled as such. Read this to learn more about what qualifies as low VOC and then check the MSDS sheet for your favorite paint. Beware, however, of oil-based paints labeled as low VOC. A low VOC oil-based paint can have about three times the amount of VOCs as a conventional latex paint. I learned that the hard way. We bought 5 gallons of oil-based, low VOC Kilz primer-sealer. After using it for a weekend and it stinking up the place, we switched to the Zinsser and sold the Kilz on Craiglist. I can't believe I made that mistake and got hoodwinked into using something because of the label instead of reading the MSDS.

The step I didn't mention, because we didn't do it, is removal. Also wearing the proper protective gear, removing pieces of flooring, drywall, etc. is certainly an option—and the best option in some cases. We looked at one house and the basement had black, moldy slime that had grown up from the floors, onto the walls, and up as high as the light switches. That was not the house for us! That house needed every single thing removed from the basement.

We are at about 3 months out and none of the mildew has returned! On to the pictures…

Before--Large Room in Basement
Mildew is primarily from the gutters not working and thus water collecting near the house. Plus we've got general filth and ickiness down there. In these pictures, brownish spots are filth, blackish spots are mold. The room has much more grime that it does mold. But, it still has to be dealt with.

After Mold Remediation
Walls: after steps described above. Floor: cleaned with Murphy's Oil Soap and my mother-in-law's amazing floor electric scrubber. The goal was to get it clean enough for the movers to put down boxes. At some point, all of the flooring in the basement will be replaced. I would like to do it soon, but we have bigger priorities and an area rug can help cover it up.

Before--Other side of the big room in the basement (leads to the second kitchen which is a scary place that we have only done demo work in)

After Mold Remediation
(The stairs are very ugly because of chipped paint. I just brought home floor paint samples to decide on for painting them. Yay!)

Before: Other view of the big room and the craft closet

Before: Close up of the craft closet. This is the worst mold in the house. We'd seen much, much worse in other houses so we weren't daunted by this. But, it is certainly was enough to indicate a water problem and enough to warrant careful abatement. The mold here is from toilet leak in the bathroom on other side of wall that went on for so long and was extreme that the moisture rotted the bathroom subflooring and rusted everything metal nearby. Someday I'll share those scary pictures.

Craft closet after mold remediation (including priming)

Unpacking in the craft closet

Unpacking in the big room. The basement is not heated, so we haven't done much down there but unpack some things and make sure that everything is up on blocks and nothing touches the walls until we make it through a few more months with no moisture problems. So far, so good! In theory, we could play video games down there now (that is what it is set up for) but it is too cold.

Come summer, hopefully it will feel refreshing down there and we'll start some real work.

Eco-Friendly Area Rug Cleaning – For Free!

2010-01-30T13:27:00.001-05:00

If you live in Northern Virginia, today you can get your area rugs naturally "dry-cleaned" for free today thanks to the snow! Any time it dry-snows (meaning the snow is sugar-like in appearance and cannot form into a snowball) and the temperature is below 25° F you can take advantage of nature's special natural cleaning power and use the snow to clean area rugs. Honestly, in NoVa I don't think these conditions converge very often. I have been interested trying snow cleaning for several years and it just has never worked out for one reason or another. But, today is the day!

I learned about snow-cleaning from one of my favorite books, Organic Housekeeping: In Which the Non-Toxic Avenger Shows You How to Improve Your Health and That of Your Family, While You Save Time, Money, and, Perhaps, Your Sanity by Ellen Sandbeck. (What a great title!) Snow-cleaning has long been used for very fine wool and silk rugs, but it should work for any rug. I decided to try it out with my beloved Turkish rug, which hasn't been cleaned, as far as I know, (besides vacuuming) since we bought it in Turkey circa 1987. Yowza!

Here's what to do:

First, you need to cool off the rug so it doesn't melt the snow when you lay it down. Roll up the rug and put it in a cool (preferably unheated) area of your house for a few hours. Once sufficiently cooled, take it outside and lay it pretty side down (this is actually called pile-side) on the snow. I put mine on the snow-covered back porch. Beat the underside of the rug (which is facing up) with a broom. You can also stomp on it, but as a child I was fascinated by the Turkish ladies beating rugs hanging from their balconies, so beating was the obvious choice for me even though this rug was on the ground. Beat, beat, beat or stomp, stomp, stop. Then pick up the rug, put it in the fresh snow of a different spot and repeat. For me, the initial beating spot wasn't black or anything so dramatic, but there were lots of hairs and a sufficient amount dirt, etc. Repeat beating/stomping and moving the rug until the snow underneath remains clean enough to your liking.

Then the tricky part—cleaning the snow off the rug before bringing it in. Ellen makes it sound so easy, "6. Sweep the snow off the rug 7. Roll the carpet up and bring it inside" (252). It was not quite so succinct for me.

I flipped the rug over (pile/pretty-side now up) and swept the snow off the rug. That part was fun and easy, but the snow kept falling on it. If you have a covered area (with clean ground), I recommend moving there. I swept off the snow in one part as best as I could, then rolled up the rug a smidge, then swept the newly exposed part of the back-side, then swept a little more of the pile-side, then rolled a little more, etc. until the whole rug was rolled up. I am not particularly coordinated so this part was rather awkward for me. Having a second person to help with this step might make it as easy as Ellen suggests it is. Alas, hubby is out today—so I de-snowed the rug alone. I got off as much snow as I could and then brought the rug inside for one final sweep-off in the basement. Unfortunately, even in our mostly-unheated basement it was warm enough to melt the small amount of remaining snow. So, my rug ended up ever-so-slightly damp. Since the aim is to keep the rug as dry as possible, really, really try to get off as much snow as possible outside.

Right now I have the rug hanging over the shower curtain rod in the bathroom to let it air out (it isn't dripping or anything). It looks great—the colors really pop again— and I can't wait to put it back in place later today.

Refinishing the Fireplace

2010-01-23T21:03:00.011-05:00

Here's how we took our fireplace from this:

to this:

As I mentioned in a previous entry, I painted the brick facade with trim paint. I used a 6" fuzzy roller (thin, white, with an orange stripe) and a paintbrush and it took four coats. It still could use some touching up. Before we painted, we thoroughly scrubbed the brick with hot water and one of my castille soap-based cleaners. The keys to painting brick are patience and endurance. It is tough to get into all of those crevices and it just takes coat after coat.

Now, onto the doors (and keep in mind that I don't know the technical terms for things)...

Supplies: ratty fireplace door, soap, water, scrub brush, shop vac, towel, masking tape, newspaper, tarp, high heat spray paint, a paint vapor-blocking mask, 50-90F degree weather with less than 85% humidity and low or no wind, something sturdy to prop the doors open with, paint scraper, more newspaper, vinegar

May need: sandpaper or wire brush, lead paint-blocking mask, screw driver, needle-nose pliers

Look into the fireplace and see how the door frame attaches. For us, a simple metal bracket (attached to the top, rear of the door) hooks under the top of the fireplace's opening. We just had to lift the door a little, then angle it so that the clip was free of the brick, then pull it out. Here is our clip (in bad shape).

Our fireplace doors were thoroughly scratched up. If yours are not, you will need to sand the doors with sandpaper or a wire brush. Be sure to wear a lead blocking mask! Read your mask's specifications very carefully--this will probably be a $25+ mask that looks like something a bio-hazard worker would wear and not one of those little white ones.

Now it is time to clean the doors. This is a very dirty job. Since 50-90 degree weather is a must for spray painting, I took the doors outside to enjoy the nice day while I scrubbed and made lots of icky, black water. Using a scrub brush, I scrubbed the front with hot water and castille soap, then used a shop vac to get the water, crud, soot, animal hair, etc. out of the crevices. Rinse and repeat. Absolute cleanliness is not possible. I didn't stress about cleaning the glass too well at this point.

The back is especially gross. We probably could have replaced the insulation. But,I just tried to lightly vacuum it.

I dried the glass with an old, funky towel which was a good choice because even after all of that washing, loads of black came off. Then, I covered the glass on the front side using masking tape and newspaper. It was tough to make sure that every tiny bit was really covered, but imperative.

Folding the paper to be smaller than the glass (layering it when needed) and letting the tape fill to the edges worked better than cutting the paper to just exact size of the glass. When I could actually tuck the tape under the frame, I did.

I decided to only tape off the front of the glass and not the back. This worked out fine for me, but certainly do tape the back if the thought of scraping off errant paint stresses you out.

Once all the glass is protected and the whole thing is dry, it is time to move on to the painting. I chose RustOleum Specialty High Heat Ultra spray paint in black. It was about $6 at Lowe's. Brown and aged copper are also available in the ultra level which has a semi-gloss finish; green, white, silver, black and almond are available in the regular level which has a more matte finish.

I can't pretend that spray-paint is eco-friendly. It isn't. But, I do think it has value in restoring things to keep them out of landfills. RustOleum also sells a brush-on high-heat paint, which has fewer ingredients but ones that are more decidedly dangerous.

Following the directions on the can (and wearing your vapor-blocking mask), it is time to spray, spray, spray. Once the paint has set (after a few minutes), readjust all moving parts and spray more: prop open the doors (harder than it looks, you'll need something sturdy to hold them open--I used an old food tin), move levers, etc. You can recoat within an hour or after 48 hours. The less than one hour thing worked for me. I waited about 15 minutes in between coats.

Walk around the doors and look at all of the details from every angle, touching up as needed. Don't spray from too close or you will get drips that are no fun to fix (wipe off paint, spray a wide area again, hope it blends in). It will not look perfect no matter how many times you spray. Don't expect it to. Once it is in the room, the little flaws won't matter.

After the paint has set, repeat. Our chainmail curtain (I wonder what it is actually called) was rusted, so I decided to paint that, too. Repeat again if needed, but leave a little paint in your can for touch-ups (I still had plenty of paint left at this point).

Once the paint is dry (more quickly than you'd think), remove the newspaper and tape from the glass. Now it is time to focus on the glass. I cleaned the windows to a shine with a blend of 50% water 50% white vinegar. I let the spray sit (I spray it on but you can also wipe it on) for a few minutes, then I used a paint scraper to get off any chunky yuck (errant paint, wax, mystery goo, etc.) After that, I repeated the vinegar wash and this time I dried the glass with newspaper (no colorful pages). Newspaper is abrasive enough to actually scrub off crud, smoke stains, etc., but gentle enough to not scratch up the new paint job. Repeat as needed. Flip the doors over and repeat on the back of the glass.

Now that everything looks nice on the macro level, take a look at the little details. You may see some small places that need touch-ups--you may need to retape a small bit of the glass to do this. If needed, use needle-nose pliers to fix any loose chainmail links. Use a screw driver to tighten any loose screws. Once everything is sufficiently snazzied up and dry, reverse the removal steps and reinstall the door. Lovely!

P.S Guess what arrived? The new rug!

Here is a new view of the living room with the rug, fireplace doors, and some things moved around:

The New House—Part 3—Living Room & Fireplace

2010-01-18T20:33:00.010-05:00

Today I’m going to do more gratuitous showing off of our progress ( I hope you are still enjoying the pictures), but I promise I have something "more green for less green" coming up: a step-by-step on how to refinish fireplace doors--cheap and keeps trash out of the landfill before it really needs to be there.

On to the living room pictures...

Living Room Before: the fireplace is painted maroon (that is not bare brick); filth abounds; the hardwood floors look rough; the scuffed, bronze fireplace doors have got to change. I do like the retro chandelier. We will move this to another room when we install a ceiling fan at some point.

In progress: The walls have been cleaned and primed and there are four coats of trim paint on the fireplace. (Chandelier lighting is causing the grey streaks on the walls.) The living room was tool central during the three working weeks before we moved in. Oh, and that card table was liberated from large trash day in my parents' neighborhood.

Did you notice the white fireplace in the picture above? Here is a close up. It took four coats of trim paint (Olympic zero VOC semi-gloss in ultra white) to fill in all of the nooks and crannies. High heat paint is not required for the facade, but it is required for the doors (which have been removed for cleaning and painting).

The living room has been cleaned, primed, trimmed, fireplace painted, and floors refinished back to their natural color. Now that the floors are lighter, we realize there is a tile patch in front of the fireplace. Who knew? The built-in bookcase and baseboards still need to be painted.

Other view of living room. There was a linoleum "entryway" patch at the front door that we had the floor team remove (no before picture of that, sadly). Luckily, the hardwood floors continued underneath the linoleum and were perfectly preserved. Now on to paint the baseboards--they look so yellow and gross in all of the pictures. We thought they might get scuffed during the floor refinishing so we wanted to wait.

Living room to dining room after (the mirror in the lower shelf of the built-in has since removed)

Now let's time warp!

Living room to dining room before

And time warp again...

Unpacking. We tried out the wine cabinet in the living room, but obviously that didn't last long (see pictures of it in the dining room in previous entry).

We painted the bottom half of the living room Mountain Stream(Olympic zero VOC, eggshell). It was much harder to pick a neutral for the top. We started with about 50 paint chips taped to the wall and these were the final contenders after a week of looking at them in various lights through the day and night. I had to hide the names so I wouldn't pick based on that.

We finally settled on Colonial White(Olympic zero VOC, eggshell)--most boring name ever. I would've never considered it based on name, so I guess it is good I hid the names. I do like the contrast between the trim and the wall now, but honestly, I still think things look really vanilla and boring. But, once we get some pictures on the wall maybe it will seem more fun. I am happy to have a place for my Turkish rug, though. When I was a child, my dad was station in Turkey for two years and we picked this rug out together. I'm not wild about the fringe, but I do love the pattern.

The main part of the room. Round table and mirror are beloved heirlooms from hubby's departed Grandma Sophie. The mirror has two accent pieces that we still need to hang. The pictured rug (purchased off Craigslist in 2004 for a mere $50 which is a steal for a wool rug) will move to our bedroom, office, or basement and we will put in this fun rug that I just bought off eBay:

My first choice for rugs is buying used wool rugs, but I was willing to new-splurge for the perfect wool, cotton, or recycled rug for the living room. I found this one on Pottery Barn's website listed as clearance/discontinued but I couldn't quite stomach the price (the price for wool rugs is much higher than the plastic/synthetic rugs that abound in the more less shocking price range). By the time I was willing to buy it, the rug went totally out of stock--no one at Pottery Barn had any leads. I started to stalk Craigslist for it and I set up an auto-search on eBay. After several weeks of looking, I got an email from eBay that someone was selling an 8x10 of the rug. I snatched that bad boy up and am waiting for it to arrive. I hope the blues in it compliment the wall color. I was supposed to do rugs then paint, but I just couldn't handle the white anymore.

Anyway, back on topic...

Another view (coffee table rescued from the side of the condo dumpster) In this picture the fireplace doors are not on yet.

But, they are on here...

Yay for refinished fireplace doors! This was my MLK day project.
(Some fun notes: I liberated the vase from a dumpster on Friday-- a large item, non-food, not at all gross one at work. The fireplace tools were kindly handed down from my dear friend Jill's parents). My living room is back to its normal state of vague disarray, so I do not have a wider picture of it in situ.

In my next entry, I'll give the blow-by-blow of refinishing the doors.

--------------

Update: Here is the room with the new rug in it. I'll post again when we get some curtains and wall hangings up.

The New House--Part 2-- Dining Room

2010-01-06T18:22:00.010-05:00

Today I'll show you our progress in the dining room.

Dining Room (and pass-through to kitchen) Before: Above the kitchen entryway we found a huge, deep crack in the wall under the paint. We filled it with joint compound (thanks Dad F), sanded it down, and then painted it. It is obvious that the dining room had water damage at some point. Beneath the chair rail, the dining room was painted a high-gloss forest green with white half-heartedly painted over it. We tried to prime this as-is, but the primer just scratched right off. So, we had to sand it all first (thanks Katie, Christina, and Bart) and then prime.

Primed! In a few spots, mysterious pink and blue ink (?) would bleed through and no amount of primer/sealer would stop it. I finally decided to gougue out the spots with a chisel, fill them with spackle, sand, then prime. That did the trick!

After: Painted with color left over from the condo (thanks Suzi). The only drawback is that this is flat paint, which I don't think will hold up long with traffic in the room. We'll see what happens. Check out the professionally refinished floors! I'll talk more about the floors in later entries where the transformation is more visible. The baseboards still need to be painted.

Coming together

Furnished, but not finished. I bought the wool rug off of Craigslist for a mere $10 when I was in college and lived in an apartment with hardwood floors and an 80% rug rule. When I got married, I insisted that we keep my three wool rugs because cheap, attractive, wool rugs are hard to come by! We stored them in huge FedEx bags (the kind for skis or for shipping full-grown men according to a former coworker who got in one) for three years. I bought the curtains for $2 brand new at a yard sale, purchased in summer 08 and set aside. It was fun to finally be able to pull them out!

Still to do: replace the chandelier or spray paint and bedazzle the existing one (my hubby is so against that idea, but I have this vision...), put real paint over the primer above the chair rail, add tie backs for the curtains (though the knotted one kind of works) , finish putting stuff away, figure out what to do about the water stains now visible on the floor since we took them from a dark red to the natural wood color.

2-7-10 Update:
I finished painting Colonial White above the chair rail; re-caulked all of the trim (which took way longer than I thought); and I repainted below the chair rail with the exact same color, but in semi-gloss. The flat paint was already looking beaten up and since we had to take out all of the furniture to access the crown molding and chair rail, it seemed like the best time to do it.

A note on the semi-gloss—this is 3-year-old paint that we had left over from our old place. The lip of the paint and the lid had rusted, and it was nasty. To salvage the paint (because I am that cheap, and I do hate waste that much), I used a stir stick to lift out as many big rust chunks as I could. The paint was separated so it was easy to see the chunks suspended in the clear, oily-looking top layer.

Once big-chunk-free, I poured the remainder of the paint into an old, dried out, empty plastic paint can, being sure to pour the paint out against the least rusted part of the can lip. Luckily, I had one clear spot on the lip for this. If you don’t, you could try delicately covering that part with paint and letting it dry, then pouring over dry paint rather than rust.

Once in the new can, the paint still had some very small flecks of rust but there was no way to get them out. So, I just stirred them in. When painting, I never came across black chunks or anything.

And some gratuitous showing off of our beloved dining room furniture and glass collection…

Green glass, some new (wedding gifts), some vintage
Furniture is Broyhill's Continents collection. This is one of those things in our life that is in no way eco-friendly, but we looked at many possibilities over months and this was the best option (and after spending months picking it out, we had a 10-month wait when the furniture got stuck on a ship). We planned to keep it for a lifetime, so we are very happy it fits so well into the new dining room!

Pink glass glasses, cake dome, and 3-tiered server (wedding gifts) and the origami version of my bridal bouquet that my hubby made as a first anniversary gift (paper is the traditional gift).

The New House--Part 1

2010-01-05T20:58:00.015-05:00

I’ve been absent for a while on the blog, but with good cause. We bought a house in November and have been working hard, hard, hard to make it livable! We started our housing search in January of 2009 with some strict, but not totally unreasonable guidelines: single family home, 3+ bedrooms, 2+ baths, a yard with potential for vegetable gardening; a fireplace and dining room would be nice. We knew we wanted a small house—lower utility usage (and bills), less space to fill, cheaper to make eco-friendly upgrades because things just aren’t as big, etc. We also knew we wanted to live in a very specific area near our offices. Because of the size we wanted, that left us with only about four neighborhoods, albeit rather large neighborhoods of homes that were built from the late 40s to the early 60s. Oh, and it had to fit our tight budget. So, maybe not such an easy thing to find…

Over nine months we looked at over 50 houses and put offers on 11 of those houses which breaks out as 5 foreclosures, 3 short sales that we were outbid on, and 3 short sales that we “won” and entered the long, frustrating process for. We ended up with house number 11—a foreclosure that had been vacant for just 1.5 months. Built in 1954, it was made very solidly with brick and old wood that lasts forever and just isn’t around anymore. It has three legal bedrooms on the main floor, one illegal one in the basement, two bathrooms, a fireplace, dining room, two kitchens, and a great yard. It also had some downsides—some big, some small: writing on the walls, a little mildew in the basement, a raging cockroach infestation (and thus droppings over every surface), a putrid smell, neglect.
We—and a team of generous friends and family plus some professionals—worked for three weeks before we moved in to get the house livable. We came to the work with four major mindsets:

Focus on livability not aesthetics (at this point). We want to live in the house and see how it feels before deciding to make changes. For example, we want to learn the ins and outs of how our water pressure works before doing a grey water system. We want to watch the sun over the seasons before deciding if we want to save up for solar panels. This also allows us more time to find used things that we really love, like a neat lighting fixture for the bathroom.

Preserve as much as possible We don’t believe in updating just for the sake updating. So, the turquoise tub stays, the floorboards with staining don’t get replaced, we spray-paint the brass fireplace façade instead of replacing it.

Make wise purchasing choices We try to buy used things first and borrow things that are borrowable (like tools), and then buy low-impact products when we must buy new. When we do buy conventional, we do it with a well-thought out reason and occasionally we allow ourselves a fun, conventional splurge (the new shower curtain that I adore) but that is the exception, not the rule.

Green clean We hired a green cleaning company to get off the first layer of filth and clean out the dead bugs and then did all remaining cleaning with homemade green cleaners. We did all mildew remediation with vinegar and borax.

We’ve had some great ups (the dishwasher we thought was broken actually wasn’t, friends and family who were AMAZINGLY generous with their time) some downs (small hole in the roof, the heat breaking two days after we moved in) and we’ve got lots of work ahead of us, but it feels good. Here’s a bit of our journey told through pictures with commentary…

Before: Our adorable home. It has tons of potential, but tons of work to do! To start, we've got mushrooms popping up in the front yard from a tree stump decomposing. The paint on the fascia boards is in bad shape. The gutters are cracked and worthless.

In progress: The previous owners removed a satellite dish but didn't plug the holes. This rotted out the soffit, fascia board and a joist. All of the fascia boards needed to be scraped and painted, but most were in great condition (yay 1950s construction old growth wood that is still trucking on).

After: New gutters, painted fascia boards, some roof repairs, stump removal, and a fresh blanket of snow!

The first time we saw the house the electricity wasn’t on and we though the house had a mold problem because of the black everywhere. On our second visit (the inspection) we had electricity and realized it was cockroaches—dead and alive— and their droppings. Yuck!

Check out the corner of the front door. Yes, they are cockroaches and yes, they are alive. Many of their dead friends were also around. We asked for an exterminator in our addendum.

That is dead, smashed bugs. Every place where two surfaces touched was covered in either cockroach bodies or their droppings. The house had only been unoccupied for 1.5 months at that point, so people obviously had been living in this.

We had professional cleaners (an eco-friendly cleaning company) for 5 hours plus many, many additional hours from family & friends & us.

We used all eco-friendly homemade cleaners from the book Green Clean. We spent three weeks living in our old place while we fixed up the new place. Until we had a sufficiently cleaned surfaces to set stuff down at the new place, each night I would take the empty
bottles back to the condo to reload for another day of hardcore cleaning.

The green bottles are for the kitchen and contain a degreasing formula (Castile Cleaner: 1t washing soda, 2t borax, 1/2t castile soap*,
2c hot water, 10 drops of essential oils, Green Clean p.136).

The pink bottles are a mildew-buster formula with vinegar for bathrooms and the basement (Scented Vinegar Spray: 1t borax, 1 T castile soap*, 1/8c vinegar, 2c hot water, 5-10 drops of essential oils, Green Clean p.136).

*Shredded castille bar soap, not liquid. See this entry on how to shred bars easily. I suppose you could use liquid, but it forms creepy, greasy globs when mixed with vinegar so, I stick to the bars.

I’ve lived by these Green Clean recipes for almost two years now, and they pulled through for us on this mega job! If we could green clean THIS, anything can be green cleaned!

I am tempted to finish this blog entry here, but I'm afraid you will think we are totally crazy and disgusting for living in this house if I don't show you some real "after" pictures. Because I am obsessed with my new shower curtain, let me show you the bathroom. (Bonus: if you know me in real life and have already seen the picture album, at the end is a new picture you haven't seen!)

Bathroom Before:Rotting window sill, cracked floor tiles (not visible), general ickiness, then we discovered bad plumbing in the sink and that the vanity was rotting.

Ickiness Close Up

Bathroom progress: Damaged vanity and sink faucet removed, cleaned (several times), and a lovely new hand-crafted window sill (inside and outside)installed. The sill now has an angle to it so water won't collect plus it now has exterior paint on it. My dad headed up the window sill project. It seemed like tedious, precise work but he did an amazing job. Go dad! (And thanks to my mother-in-law for cleaning and my father-in-law for patching and painting the stained, crumbling ceiling.)

Vinyl lining added to lower part of window for privacy. Ick, plastic! But, this was a place where it seemed the best option. We bought the vanity new and while it looks great, it bugs me that we bought something new out of pressboard. Oh well. You can't win them all. On to happier thoughts: I adore this shower curtain! I wanted something to tie in the green and tan towels we already have but also work with the turquoise tub. You can see it better in the next pictures. (Update: It is from Target.)

Bathroom after: Painted Gold Buff (Olympic zero VOC paint), vintage lighting fixture and lightly used towel rack both purchased from the Habitat for Humanity ReStore installed, used eterge purchased from family member installed (not visible in the picture). The faucet is new, but we splurged for solid brass in hopes that it will last a lifetime.

Still to do: fix the things the picture doesn't show--the cracked floor tiles need to be removed, proper flooring support added, and new flooring put in. The ceiling will need to be replaced. It was in bad shape from a past ceiling leak and our patch job is already falling apart because of the moisture.

See...the grossness can turn into something adorable! I look forward to sharing more with you.

Even More on Homemade Laundry Detergent

2009-10-26T14:52:00.014-04:00

It is almost time for me to make my third batch of homemade laundry detergent, and we are still going strong with it! We are a household of two adults and each batch is lasting us about six months. You can read about my first batch here and my musings going into my second batch here.

Below are some pictures and tips from my second batch in April. See Tip Nut's Recipe 1 for the amounts. Update: I've added the amounts in bold below (scattered throughout). Visit Tip Nut for a cleaner looking view of the the recipe.

INGREDIENTS

**Grated Soap- 2 cups
I use Dr. Bronner's Unscented Baby bars as my soap. Many people like Fels Naptha, but it has artificial scent and color in it and has petroleum-based ingredients, plus is contains tallow so it is a no-go for vegetarians. It is a "better" product, but not a "best" product in terms of being EF.

To shred it, I use the grater attachment in my food processor (bought used from Craigslist). I've tried the standard blade with the whole bar, but it gets violent in the food processor and make me afraid the thing will bust apart. If you want a fine shred (dissolves more quickly), use the grater attachment first to get the soap to shredded-cheese consistency, then use the normal blade to turn it into a cornmeal consistency.

A canning funnel works well for moving the soap into a (recycled) storage container.

**Borax- 2 cups

I store my Borax in a repurposed plastic container to keep out moisture which causes clumping. Some people think Borax is not a good choice for an eco-friendly household because it should not be ingested. But remember that a big part of eco-friendly cleaning is what is produced in an eco-friendly manner and what it does (or rather, does not do) to our water supply after we're done with it. In my opinion, the benchmark should not be if a substance okay to ingest. Borax is eco-friendly in terms of production and being in the water supply, so it gets my seal of approval. After all—you shouldn't eat soap, yet it is a great, safe cleaner. Also, if you have kids, even if you are 100% green clean in your home you should treat cleaning supplies as though they are toxic because your kids will inevitably go somewhere where conventional cleaners are used and they need to have healthy respect for the dangers of those things.

**Washing soda- 2 cups

I store my washing soda in the same way. Be sure to label your containers clearly both on the lids and the containers. They look similar to each other and to baking soda. Not things you would want to mix up!

You'll also need
**4 cups of boiling water in saucepan
**two gallons of tap water
**a spoon
**a whisk (optional)
**a large storage container

MAKING THE DETERGENT

It just takes a saucepan to melt the soap. You don't need a special pot, after all you are making a detergent here—almost the exact same thing you can use to clean your dishes.

**On the stove top, boil 4 cups of water.
**Add the 2 cups of soap, stir until it melts

**Pour in the melted soap mixture from the saucepan into your storage container.

Down with the milk jug storage method I used for my first batch! My dear friend gave me a 40 pound kitty litter bucket to use. Perfect!

**Add in the 2 cups of borax and 2 cups of washing soda and stir (or whisk)

**Add in an additional 2 gallons of water and stir

We use a ladle (from a yard sale) to move the right amount of detergent from the bucket into the washer. It lives permanently in the bucket. So, when it is time to use the detergent, we just

**Stir it up before each use and ladle some out.

**For us, about 1/4 cup per load is the right amount.

“Sun-Dried” Tomatoes

2009-10-26T14:13:00.002-04:00

I love free—not only free stuff but also free food. This summer, friends shared fresh grown herbs, blackberries, and cherry tomatoes with me. The herbs turned into wheat herb bread plus dried herbs to use later on. The berries were shared with our Bible study small group and gobbled up, and the tomatoes were dried and turned into mock "sun-dried" tomatoes—more accurately just called dehydrated tomatoes in my case. We bought the dehydrator for $5 at a church rummage sale several years ago, and have more than gotten our money out of it.

Cutting and placing the tomatoes.
I forgot to take a picture of the end product.

To dry the tomatoes, I removed the stems and washed them, and then I cut them into ¼ inch-ish slices. I decided to leave the skins on. The tomatoes were so small to begin with thta skinning them seemed like it would be a hassle and make my yield even smaller. I sprinkled half of the slices with the dried herbs (from aforementioned friend) and the other half I left plain. Then I turned on the dehydrator and let it run, and run, and run, and run. It took a long time. I didn't want the tomatoes to over-dry, so when we would be out of the house for hours we would turn off the dehydrator until we were home again to babysit them. I pulled the slices off individually as they got to the right texture—no more juiciness, but not crunchy, either. I used this recipe as my inspiration.

I packed half of the tomatoes in olive oil and put them in fridge. The other half I left without oil and popped them in the freezer to use later on. You could leave them at room temperature, but they will go rancid fairly quickly. To me, storing them at room temperature is not worth the risk of bacteria growing. The ones from the freezer (not in oil) are great for plucking out one at a time because they defrost at room temperature within minutes. So far, I have used them in stuffed chicken and as a salad topping and they are so yummy!

This is a great way to preserve tomatoes from the garden that will go bad before you can use them or to make sure you have seasonal, local tomatoes into the off-season. As for price, commercially sundried tomatoes are pricey! Homegrown dried tomatoes are infinitely cheaper than paying for them plus you eliminate the packaging and shipping environmental costs. I am so excited to grow tomatoes at the new house! I am not a raw tomato fan, but I look forward to making sauces and dried tomatoes.

Don't have a dehydrator? Here is info on literally sun-drying tomatoes plus a link to an oven-drying recipe. Obviously I disagree that only plum tomatoes should be used. I say, give it a try with whatever tomatoes you've got!

Used Items

2009-10-26T13:28:00.002-04:00

Exciting news, in 17 days we will close on our first home! It is a small single family home (1054 sf + basement) on just under a ¼ acre. It is a foreclosure and is in need of major love. We've asked the bank to pay for the code & sanitation issues things like a major German cockroach infestation and dealing with all of the basement water going through the sump pump into the yard (this is not a thought-out grey water system, it is bad plumbing). After we take possession, we'll take care of the many cosmetic issues—incredible filth everywhere, writing on the walls, peeling paint, as well as practical things like bad gutters and broken stoves. Yes, stoves! One great thing about this house is a second kitchen in the basement, which we are calling the craft kitchen.

Our goal is to make the house totally "more green for less green". In other words, we want our house to be as sustainable as possible, but we definitely have a budget. So, we are already stalking the used-item circuit for house goodies. This weekend we loaded up on old, heinous sheets to use as drop cloths for painting (that can be composted later) and we are on the hunt for anything else that might be a fit—yard tools, fireplace tools, etc.

When buying for myself, I buy almost exclusively used items. It just is so fun, you can read about my fun finds here. So where do I shop used? Here is a breakdown:

Yard Sales

We particularly love community yard sales so we can walk between the homes and hit up many sales at a time
Anything and everything goes. Expect to find mismatched, broken, and trashed items along with super finds
It is normally impossible to try on clothes, so I put a $2 cap on clothes since I don't know if they will fit
Favorite find: Like-new sandals in my hard-to-find size (5) for $3, box of soap making supplies for $2
Try your negotiating skills to get even lower (works especially well if you are buying multiple items)

Rummage Sales (my favorite!)

We favor church and charity fundraising rummage sales where items have all been donated and the proceeds benefit the organization
Anything and everything goes. Expect to find mismatched, broken, and trashed items along with super finds.
It can be very difficult to get around the throngs of people to look at items. It is not a place for the claustrophobic.
Usually items are organized at the beginning of the day and indentified by signs or in particular rooms, but the flip side is that sometimes volunteers are still sorting when the sale starts
Look for "fill a bag" sales where you pay a flat fee to fill a whole brown paper bag (usually books or clothes)
Clothes are usually just piled into mountains and there is no place to try them on. The good news is that they may be really cheap.
The line to the register may be extremely long. Take a look before you start shopping and decide if it is worth it. Favorite finds: Antique cut green glass bowl for $1 that matches two we had at home. $0.50 like-new black heels in my size

Estate Sales

Great chance to find complete sets of things (dishes, glasses, tools, bedroom sets, etc.)
Good place to find high-end items: wood furniture, antiques, china
It is just plain fun to check out the houses and see what people have collected over the years
You might experience sticker shock—prices can be quite high. Go on the last day for discounts (but dramatically smaller selection)
Favorite find: 8 hand embroidered vintage cloth napkins for $2 (we use these every day)

Thrift Stores

Usually things are somewhat organized
You can try on clothes, though it may be in a communal dressing room
More expensive than yard sales, but still cheaper than new (generally; sometimes I think their prices are nutso)
Ask for a store calendar and shop on sale days. My favorite store does 75% off clothes the first Monday of the month. I see no reason to shop for clothes there any other day!
If you love it and can afford it, buy it. Stock rolls over quickly. It may not be there later that day.
Favorite finds: Ski boots in my size for $3 (I bought used skis later that season), tags-on ball gown for a cruise, $4

Craigslist

Easily searchable website, you can filter by location, price, pictures, etc.
Peruse the free section, you never know what you will find
Post your wants in the wanted section
The downside can be unreliable communication from unreturned emails to no-shows at your meeting time
When setting up a meeting, always ask for their cell phone number and give out your own. Call and confirm before you leave your house.
Try your negotiating skills to get even lower on items that have been up for awhile (but agree on a price before you meet)
Favorite finds: Cuisinart food processor for $40, end table coincidentally finished to match my coffee table $0 (free)

Freecycle

Online groups to get or give only free things. Join the Yahoo group for your area and receive many emails throughout the day or a daily digest.
My dear friend Jill suggests getting all of the emails, but setting up email filters to only allow keywords you want (e.g. tool, baby, boxes) and have the rest of the emails go to your spam folder. Because we are looking for so many things right now, that doesn't work for us, but if you have specific wants—give it a try!
I am new to Freecycle and so far I prefer Craigslist's free section because I don't want 50 emails a day and by the time I get the digest, the item is often taken already. Plus I don't like going through the moderator to get approved, post, edit a post, etc. Currently I live on a borderline for a particular Freecycle region and the convenient group (i.e. the area that I drive through to get to work) rejected me. Do note that not all areas do the whole boundary map/moderator approval thing.
Favorite find: I've only gotten on things so far: moving boxes & packing material. I posted by first thing to give away today.

Large Trash Day

Large trash day is that day when garbage companies or community associations agree to take large items. The night before large trash day is a prime time to find some great stuff for free.
You may want to knock on your neighbor's door and ask if you can have the item, just in case it is actually meant for charity, another person, has some really gross/dangerous feature that isn't obvious
Favorite finds: coffee table in desperate need of refinishing (which my husband took on), several months later the matching end table (in good condition) was put out

Just Be Open

We have so many things simply because others know we are open to reusing items. I'm not saying you have to hoard or take everything offered to you, but just be open at let others in on your appreciation for used items and see what is offered

An extended relative gave us their old washer the same month ours broke. Sadly, theirs broke as we were moving it up the stairs, but it turned out to be in the same model series as our 30 year old washer (we didn't know this beforehand). We were able to get out many useable parts and repair our machine. It is still going strong!
In college, I made over $1,000 selling textbooks a roommate left behind (I confirmed with her first that she didn't want them)
Most of my fabric stash was given to me by crafters paring down

Quick, Easy Chocolate Fix

2009-09-16T10:11:00.004-04:00

When I need a chocolate fix, I make this brownie in a mug snack. It gets the job done, but isn't amazing. It is usually kind of dry and not sweet enough.

Last night I was knocked out with a migraine and having chocolate cravings in my misery. I asked my husband to make a brownie in a mug for me. He delivered it to the couch, I let it sit for 5 minutes to cool (waiting is key to avoiding a burned tongue), then tasted it. It was amazing--moist, just a tad sweeter than normal, fudgey.

I complimented him and he told me that he snuck in pumpkin puree in addition to the other ingredients. As you may know, I love pumpkin puree! How Deceptively Delicious of him.

So, there you have it...an economical craving-buster with built in portion control without all of the packaging that comes with those Betty Crocker Warm Delight packs.

Personally, I halve the recipe, so we end up with this...

More Green For Less Green Brownie In A Mug
2 T. Sugar
2 T. Flour
1 T. Cocoa
1 T. water
1 T. Pumpkin puree
1 T. Olive Oil (I prefer OO over other vegetable oils)
Dash of salt

Like it fudgier? Add less water (or no water).
Want it leaner? Just do a drizzle of oil--the pumpkin will keep it moist.

Mix all ingredients in a mug and stir thoroughly. Microwave for 45 seconds. It should look wet on the top. Let cool. Eat up!

For the easiest clean up, use a single 1 T. spoon for all measuring and stirring--eating too, if you'd like. I've arranged the ingredients in the list to keep the tablespoon in use without rinsing it until you are done.

Bad News About SIGG Water Bottles

2009-08-25T18:21:00.007-04:00

I am so very disappointed to share with you the news that SIGG was using BPA in their bottle liners produced prior to August 2008. I own three SIGGs myself and it turns out that two of them have the old, BPA-containing liner (copper colored liner is the old style, beige liner is the new style). Before this news, I was a huge SIGG advocate and really believed in the ethics of their production (here is what I've written previously on SIGG and alternatives). And just a few days ago I had a conversation with someone about why SIGG is the best choice despite a higher cost than other bottles.

I am not a BPA alarmist, but I do have healthy concern about it and thus have done my best to considerably reduce its presence in my home (cutting out most canned foods, switching to glass for food storage, never heating in plastic). The thing that just kills me about SIGG's deception is that they took about my ability to make a choice about BPA. On their website they have posted many reports showing their bottles don't leach, but I think that misses the point. I don't want it as an ingredient, period. Whether or not that ingredient is of concern is a decision that each family must make, not a decision that a company should makes for me (and be deceptive about it) so they can ride a cash cow.

Here is an article that will tell you more this SIGG revelation
Here is a letter from SIGG's CEO (look on the side bar for the report links I mentioned)

Below is the email I just sent to them. I will let you know how they respond.

SIGG,

I am SO disappointed to read that your bottle liners have contained BPA until the creation of the new liner. I very carefully weighed which kind of non-disposable water bottle to purchase and ultimately I picked SIGG over other brands because I believed that you had the most ethical production. I have sung your praises to my blog readers, assured naysayers that they shouldn't worry about the liner because of your assurances, and have turned many people on to your product because I have a job that puts me in front of an audience and I always have one of my SIGGs with me when on stage. I feel like I have misled my friends and family.

When I chose my SIGGs I expected I was buying a BPA-free product. Even your own CEO wrote in a letter on April 16, 2008, "SIGG bottles to have no presence of lead, phthalates, Perfluorooctanoic Acid (PFOA), Bysphenol A (BPA), Bysphenol B (BPB)...". Yet, now it is quite obvious that they do have BPA in them. Whether or not the BPA is leaching into the water is another question entirely. As a consumer, I expected I was getting a BPA-free product. I have carefully cut, at personal expense, BPA-containing products from our family's food supply and am shocked that SIGG, a company I trusted so much, is the one that has kept BPA in my home.

I expect that I will at the least receive this consideration of reimbursement/replacements for my two old-style bottles. But honestly, actually giving me the quality product I thought I'd had for over a year is only the beginning of the big job you will have earning back my trust, the trust of my blog readers and the public I interact with, and the trust of consumers at large.

Update: Sigg responded to my email the next day. If I pay for return shipping (with a label they provide for tracking) they will give me a voucher for a new Sigg bottle to replace each one I send it. Email liners@mysigg.com to get your return approval and shipping label. Be sure to keep your tops for future bottles--no need to return those.

Homemade “Convenience Food” Breakfast – Power Balls

2009-08-24T14:40:00.004-04:00

My friend & coworker Amy introduced me to these amazing little things called Power Balls that have revolutionized my breakfast life. I am so picky in the morning that something has to be really enticing (read: containing chocolate) for me to not just skip breakfast, which is my inclination even though I know that isn't a wise choice. Since I gave up commercial breakfast bars I have tried all sorts of healthy muffin recipes, homemade granola, bars, etc. but none were amazing enough for me to stick with for more than a few weeks. Enter Power Balls. They are delicious, quick to make, can be prepared in bulk and stored, and are convenient to eat on-the-go. While there are many Power Ball recipe versions floating around in cyberspace, Amy's has the most flavors that I like. Here it is:

Power Balls Recipe
1 cup peanut butter
1 cup honey (I've mixed in agave nectar, too)
3 cups (non-instant) oats
½ cup flaxseed (I've had them with both ground and whole flax seed)
½ cup chocolate chips or white chocolate chips
½ cup dried fruit (raisins, cranberries, apricots, dates, etc.)
½ cup chopped nuts (walnuts, pecans, etc)

Mix peanut butter and honey until smooth. Gradually add in oats and flaxseed, then fold in the other ingredients. The Kitchen Aid works great for this. Then roll into ping-pong ball sized balls. Store them in the refrigerator or freezer. You can switch up the add-ins, just keep the total amount to 1 ½ cups. If you add more, the balls won't hold together. Also, beware of cutting down the honey. The honey really keeps it all stuck together.

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I make one or two batches at a time and then freeze all that I won't eat in a week. They freeze really well—I use lidded Pyrex. They also travel well if you can keep them in a container with a structure (hard plastic or glass).

The ones Amy made for me had white chocolate chips, craisins, and walnuts and were so amazing! I've been making them with semi-sweet chocolate chips, dried cranberries, whole grain flax seed, and a mix of almonds and walnuts since both have such great, different nutritional benefits. Read about almonds here and omega-3-rich walnuts here.

Yes—these are sweet and contain chocolate chips—but they also have healthful ingredients. Hopefully my new nutritionist will agree! I meet with her next Monday to work on a well-balanced diet with a focus on local foods and to develop ways to up my fruit and veggie consumption. I am so excited!

9 Changes for 2009- #9 Composting

2009-05-23T14:20:00.006-04:00

We have almost made it through a year of composting! Here are some of the ups and downs…

Summer & Fall 08
Read about it here.

Winter 08-09
Virginia winters aren't bitterly cold, but the ground certainly freezes, as does the top of the compost pile. As the cold settled in, digging in the pile became more difficult. It took some real effort to pierce the frozen surface of the pile, then the dirt within would clump together making it tough to amply cover up the food (and thus shield it from the foraging squirrels, deer, foxes, etc. that live in the adjacent woods). To keep my fingers warm I added gardening gloves to my composting kit.

Happily, the pile never completely froze, which meant we were doing something right. I was tickled one day to dig into the pile and see steam rise out! But, the pile could have been hotter. There were many days where I would come across old food. I try not to reuse dig holes so that the greens in the pile are well distributed among the browns and thus the decomposition will continue, so when I'd find food it meant I needed to cover it back up and then dig another hole in another place on the mound. Extra work and extra time in the cold—yuck!

I don't care for extreme temperatures—hot or cold—so the cold winter days and the increased difficulty with digging in the food tempted me to give up for the winter, but on days where I would see steam…that made it worth it. As a compromise, I started bringing my food scraps in less often. Instead of twice a week, I moved to once a week and sometimes even less often. That resulted in some slime in the compost crock and needing to use some supplemental plastic containers to hold the overflow scraps, but the smell was always pretty well contained.

Spring 09
As winter transitioned into spring, the pile defrosted and my work paid off. On several occasions I actually thought fleetingly to myself, "Where did my food go? Are animals taking it?" and "Who keeps putting dirt in the pile?" Silly me. This is the world of composting SUCCESS! Gross food scraps and bags of yard waste become rich, brown, crumbly, beautiful, amazing dirt. Yes, I just said that dirt was beautiful.

And that beautiful dirt came just in time. In February I sprained my ankle while…wait for the sordid, exotic, dramatic story…walking over grass. Yes, walking over grass. I only mention it because it took extra super-duper motivation to walk to pile with the pain of the sprained ankle, plush stretching it to squat down to dig, etc. And, I developed a small phobia of walking over grass since that is where the injury happened and uneven ground made the ankle hurt. But, watching the composting process actually work was great motivation to keep at it and get over my fear and pain.

With the frozen days distinctly behind me and completed compost taking over the pile, it was easy to see what was not breaking down along with everything else. Banana and apple stickers started popping out at me, which was kind of funny. Other than the stickers and the occasional banana peel, the biggest things I noticed were eggshells. While I knew that eggshells wouldn't break down quite like the other foods, I expected them to somehow crumble up and still be an enriching natural fertilizer that would blend in. But, nothing was happening. The eggshells looked like they were stuck in time, oblivious to the amazing changes happening to all of the other food waste around them. So, I decided to try a new eggshell approach. After making an egg-heavy lemon bar recipe (9 eggs!), I rinsed the shells and then pulverized them in the food processor. That left me with the question of how to store and then transport a lot of tiny, wet, eggshell shards. I decided that I would make a sachet out of newspaper, which I knew would decompose quickly, put the shells in that, and then plant the whole thing in the pile so that as the newspaper biodegraded the small bits of eggshell would scatter and blend in. The sachet method seems to be a success. Here is the sachet at one month next to an older eggshell.

With the nice warm weather and spring planting season upon us, I started to wonder what we would do with the pile since I was still adding food, yet much of the pile was clearly ready for use. I mentioned this to my composting partner, a coworker on the building/grounds team, but he didn't seem concerned. But, that is another story for another day. I'll have more on that to come, with pictures, in another entry.

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And this finally brings me to the end of the 9 Changes for 2009 series! Coming up I've got tips for shopping used, price comparison on eco-friendly toilet paper (one of my splurges), my verdict of Siggs and Kleen Kanteens after a year of use, and, of course, the dramatic conclusion to my year of composting. What will happen to the pile? How will it be used? Will it reach a noble end? Will I continue to compost?

9 Changes for 2009- #8 Reusable Bags

2009-05-19T22:33:00.005-04:00

American Beauty made the plastic bag seem ethereally beautiful, but the truth is that plastic bags are anything but beautiful.

As you probably know, reusable grocery bags are hot, hot, hot and a great alternative to disposable plastic bags. Reusable bags are everywhere! At my house, our favorite bags for the grocery store are large plasticy ones from Trader Joe's that my brother-in-law gave me for the Christmas before last (pictured). We also have a good-sized stash of those $1 ones that every grocery store has. We have gotten all of those for free at fundraisers or as gifts. In fact, we've spent a grand total of $1 out-of-pocket for our entire reusable grocery bag stash and that was on the red, white, and blue one in the picture that was Old Navy clearance that was too cute to pass up for that price (pictured).

So, barring generous family members and fundraiser freebies, how can you build your bag stash for cheap? Start with your own home. See what you have around. Our reusable bag collection started off as collection of logoed canvas totes that I'd gotten for free at various events. Haven't been to any conferences, on any sport teams, etc.? Good news, other people have. Logoed canvas bags are a dime a dozen at yard sales and thrift stores. Okay, actually they are usually a quarter to a buck a piece, but you get my point…used is cheap! True, a canvas tote or messenger bag may not be the trendy, new, typically seen reusable bag, but it is a great, cheap, uber green option. You can spend a bundle on cute, matching bags from some great sources or you can buy used, locally for almost free. Plus, buying used means you can totally avoid debates on production cost & eco-friendliness of the materials used in reusable grocery bags. Used is always the greenest option!

Though we've spent almost nothing for grocery bags, we have ponied up for reusable produce bags. I am seriously obsessed with these from AMK Designs.

We not only use them ourselves, but I have bought many sets to give as gifts. No volume discount, no "in" with the vendor, I just love the product THAT much. The carrying case for the mesh bags is brilliant. It keeps like feather-light bags together when not in use and clips to my grocery bag, so I take the produce bags with me by default. And the fabric choices are just so fun!

Yes, the reusable produce bags are smaller than the voluminous plastic ones at the store, but really—does a head of lettuce really need a bag? We use our produce bags for things that really need to be gathered like green beans, apples, and potatoes. But celery, tied herbs, bunched carrots, broccoli, an eggplant, etc. are already self-contained so there is no need to package them just for check out. It takes a little bit of a mental shift to buck overuse of the produce bag, but it can be easily done. And, you've got to wash the produce at home anyway, so it's not like a shopping cart touching the lettuce for five minutes really matters, right?

Oh, and a final warm fuzzy: reusable bags save money. I love that some grocery stores give a bag credit of $0.05 per bag when I bring my own. It is a small amount, but if I figure five bags a week for a year, that is $13 I wouldn't have otherwise had. Free money is always good in my book! Plus, at the farmer's market the vendors are often so tickled by my reusable produce bags that they cut me a discount.

A few reusable bag tips:

Take your bags out to your car the next time you go out. They don't do you any good at home! Go and hang them on the front door handle right now.
Always forget your bags in the car? Keep one bag on the front passenger seat so you see it, or if you usually drive with a passenger in the front with you, keep one in the storage area in the driver's side front door.
Make yourself go back to the car and get a bag if you realize you've forgotten it, even if it means leaving your full cart for two minutes. This broke me of my forgetting habit very quickly!
Don't just limit your reusable bag use to the grocery store. They work at the library, Target, clothes & retail shopping, yard sales, etc. My favorite for retail shopping is one that folds up into purse-size (white bag on left in top picture).

9 Changes for 2009- #7 Green Toiletries

2009-04-14T23:03:00.008-04:00

Stick to green toiletries

Green toiletries have an impact on the earth and on our bodies. Remember, all of this stuff goes into the water supply and the truth is that so many products we use without a second thought do have an impact. But, I've talked about that in several previous entries. I'd like to talk about the health impact today. An incredible, eye-opening resource is the Skin Deep Cosmetic Safety Database from the Environmental Working Group. I encourage you to look up your favorite products and make sure you are okay with the ingredients in them. Do be aware of the large data gap in most products. Simply not enough research has been done yet to assess the safety level of all ingredients. Because of the data gap, I think the site is best used to look at ratings levels of the individual ingredient and not the overall "score" of the product. Let's look at one…

My summer standby for daily facial wear Neutrogena Ultra Sheer Dry-Touch Sunblock, SPF 55 receives a Hazard Score of 7, which is not good (lower is better), but there is a data gap of 82%, so not much is known about all the products ingredients. It could be worse or more harmless that they currently think. But, going on what we DO know, if I take a look at the ingredients list I can see the main culprits in this sunscreen are methylparaben, fragrance, and oxybenzone. Methylparaben: I try to avoid parabens, but I am willing to compromise for this products. Fragrance: I am not a fan of artificial fragrance, but plenty of people would not care or see this as a big drawback, this is why you must judge for yourself and not just go by product score. Oxybenzone: No clue what this is so I click on the hyperlink to learn that they can cause photoallergenic effects, something, again, I have never heard of. So, I do some searching and learn that if I had lupus (as my mom does) I would want to avoid this product. Since I don't I am okay with the ingredient until I notice adverse effects. I am now educated on this product and decide I can live with the 7 rating in this particular product, even though most of my products are rated 0-2.

I feel (mostly) okay sticking with a few "baddies" because I have switched so many other products. Here are some reviews:

More Expensive Than Mainstream Products

Aubrey B5 Design Gel- Much softer than normal gels and not as frizz-controlling, but there is definitely a difference when I use it versus using nothing.

Burt's Bees Color Keeper Shampoo- Very liquidy, but works with the same amount as a conventional shampoo. I do think my hair looks dirtier sooner than with other shampoos (I try to wash my hair only twice a week. This pushes it closer to 3 times per week.)

Tom’s of Maine Unscented Deodorant- Actually has a light, pleasant scent. This worked pretty well for me, even on my most intensely active work days. That said, I didn’t adore it and when the tube ran out, I started trying some other brands (more to come in a future entry).

Cheaper Than Mainstream Products

Dr. Bronner's Baby Unscented Liquid Soap (in the foaming dispenser) - I mix 1 part Dr. B's to 9 parts water plus a 20ish drops of essential oil and put in a old foaming soap pump. We use this as hand soap in our guest bathroom. This useage us is cheap because you use very little soap in each batch. Straight up Dr. B's is not particularly cheap (but still worth it).

Sweet Almond Oil- I use this as my overnight moisturizer. I apply a few drops to a cotton ball (cotton balls are not green, but I do tear them in half to use less) and rub it around my face. It does a great job of removing grime and makeup (though I wear almost none, so take it for what it is worth). BY the time morning has come it has absorbed or rubbed off, leaving my skin soft. You also can use straight olive oil in the same manner.

Homemade Lip Balm (tin standing up)- I've made two varieties a liquid for overnight (lemon juice, honey, castor oil) and a semi-solid for anytime (chocolate, coconut oil, vitamin E) from Natural Beauty at Home: More Than 250 Easy to Use Recipes for Body,Bath, and Hair.

Hand-Milled Milk and Honey Soap Bar- I made this soap bar with vegan, fair trade soap (Dr. Bronner's Unscented Baby Bar) as its base along with milk and honey and essential oils. It is great for bathing or washing hands. This recipe comes from the book Beautiful Handmade Natural Soaps: Practical Ways to Make Hand-Milled Soap and Bath Essentials. This one is probably normal price, not cheaper.

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I think mixing pricier products along with dirt cheap or homemade ones makes switching more doable. Green beauty products don't have to break the bank by any means! Eventually I'd like to make all of my toiletries, but finding the right recipe is tough. Failures from 2008 include a hand milled shampoo bar (left my hair looking greasy, but worked great as a shave bar) and using straight up baking soda as deodorant (worked well for awhile, then my skin started to peel as though I had a chemical burn. Yowza!).

One thing you might notice missing is hair conditioner. I gave it up just to see what would happen and so far I don't miss it one bit. That is another way to go green...consume less! Which products can you use half as often? Which products can you go without? We get into the habit of using and consuming without thinking, but giving your product usage a second thought can make a difference.

9 Changes for 2009- #6 Laundry Detergent

2009-03-16T15:58:00.003-04:00

Cut out commercial breakfast bars
Cut out canned beans
Ditch premade hummus (and all those containers)
Use only environmentally friendly dish detergent
Shop Used First
Use only environmentally friendly laundry detergent
(my preference is homemade)

I've already blogged about homemade eco-friendly laundry detergent here (with additional pictures here). But now, four months into using it, I can report back that it works, it really works! We haven't had any problems and that first batch I made has lasted us until now. As I get ready to whip up some more I am weighing reusing the milk jugs and hosing to siphon it in versus using a five-gallon lidded bucket from Home Depot. I've been on the search for a used bucket, but old ones seems to all have had paint or food in them previously, which I am not keen on. The thought of pickle-scented laundry soap makes me just ill.

For newcomers, here is a quick summary of why to consider eco-friendly laundry detergent:

Pretty much all conventional laundry detergents also contain phosphates and bleach, like dishwasher detergent does. (Read the issues with them here if you missed that post.) Most conventional laundry detergents also contain non bio-degradable, petroleum-based ingredients. I bet you picked up on the first problem right away: non bio-degradable. That means it doesn't disappear when it goes down your drain. Realizing that water facilities simply cannot clean out every single thing from the water, and the fact that the stuff they do clean out has to be disposed of somehow was huge wake up call to me. Previously, it had really been out of sight—down the drain—and out of mind for me. But, that simply is not reality.

Then there is the big issue that petroleum is a non-renewable resource. I think we all know what that means since petroleum is hugely politically charged. Reducing American dependence on foreign oil is something we can hear on the news every single day, as are finding new places to drill and the ethics of if we should drill in those places.

Traditional detergents in the US also tend to contain ingredients that have already been banned overseas because of their impact to the environment or personal health, bleach, and artificial fragrances which may exacerbate allergies. (Remember that you can always look up the safety sheet for your favorite detergent here.)

In addition to checking out my previous entries, fellow blogger Kath has some interesting things to say about her experience with making laundry detergent. Check it out here.

9 Changes for 2009- #5 Shop Used First

2009-02-14T22:41:00.006-05:00

This entry is part of a series on changes I made in 2008 that I want to stick with in 2009… Our "New" Delayed Gratification Coffee Table

Hands down, buying used is the most eco-friendly way to purchase items—there is no additional production or shipping energy expenditure, no packaging waste, and reuse keeps those items from amassing in landfills until they are truly unusable. It also is very economical.

Buying used was a hallmark of 2008 for us. My husband and I spent many spring and summer Saturday mornings perusing yard sales together, and it was a blast. We made a list of things we wanted to find over the course of the summer: a vegetable steamer, small set of patio furniture, coffee table, flannel sheets, four cup liquid measuring cup, soap making supplies, and a sun hat for me. These are all things that we could easily have bought new without a second thought, as most them are very cheap, basic things, but we decided to hold off and see what we could get used.

Maybe I am weird, but I enjoy the feeling of "just making do". This is a reality of how most of the world lives; I admit that I have substantially more than 80% of the world does even with student loan debt, not being a home owner, driving a used car, etc. All that I do have (in comparison to focusing on what I don't have) is something that I want to remember every day of my life, and I want to really treasure and appreciate how good I have it. It might sound goofy, but the things I get used for dirt cheap after a long search are more valuable to me more than if I'd just gone to Target and bought some Made in China item the very day I decided I wanted it.

Anyway, philosophical thoughts aside, here is how we made out on that wish list…

Vegetable steamer- $1, found at one of the first yard sales of the season

Patio furniture- we decided we didn't need it in our current place, instead mid-summer we got a padded folding chair for $1. When we want to sit on the patio, we bring that out along with a captain's chair.

Coffee table- mid-summer a neighbor put one out with their trash and my husband refinished it ($5 for primer)

Flannel sheets- we found some near the end of the summer, but my husband decided he only wanted new ones. Then we decided the set we already have is enough.

Four cup liquid measuring cup- Found one for $0.50 at one of the last yard sales of the year.

Soap making supplies- I stalked Craigslist for weeks with no luck, then at a yard sale I ended up finding a box of supplies for $5. Someone else grabbed it before I could, but she ended up only wanting the glycerin soap from it. So, I got the molds and a book for $2.

Sun hat- At an estate sale I paid $0.50 plus I got an adorable retro juice glass for free along with it. This was a SUPER deal for an estate sale.

Needless to say, I am giddy thinking about the weather warming up and yard sale season beginning, especially since we have an offer in* on a tiny 1950s house with a screened in porch that could sure handle some used patio furniture.

*It is a short sale, so who knows when we will know anything.

9 Changes for 2009- #4 Dish Detergent

2009-01-12T20:25:00.006-05:00

This entry is part of a series on changes I made in 2008 that I want to stick with in 2009…

Cut out commercial breakfast bars
Cut out canned beans
Ditch premade hummus (and all those containers)
Use only environmentally friendly dish detergent
(homemade to boot)

Why…

So question one is why an environmentally friendly detergent even matters, right? Most conventional dishwasher detergents contain phosphates and chlorine. Phosphates seriously impact our water supply by encouraging excessive algae growth which kills fish and plant life. Chlorine bleach is an environmental pollutant and it may cause immune and reproductive system problems. Now, I am not alarmist about many things, so the possible concern about bleach doesn't faze me too much. But, the dangerous chemical reaction caused by bleach mixing with ammonia that we've all been warned about since we were kids is undoubtedly of concern. Ammonia is a more eco-friendly choice, so I'd just as soon stick with that one and keep out the bleach.

Here's what we did…

We made our own. We started off by using a recipe from Green Clean of 1 part borax to 1 part washing soda. We put 1 heaping teaspoon of the mix in the release cup and vinegar in the rinse aid. We started off using 2 tablespoons of the dry mix, but that made the dishes cloudy, so we cut down until we got the right amount for our water. But, we were having issues with cloudiness and chunks of food remaining. So onto blend two…

Our second attempt was 3 parts baking soda to 1 part borax along with the vinegar in the rinse aid compartment. With this mix you use just as much as you would with a conventional powdered detergent. I read the instructions for the dishwasher to refresh my memory, and it turns out that we've long been putting in too much: the lowest line on the cup is ample for normal loads. We also add 2 drops of essential oil per load on top of the dry mix. Generally I use tea tree oil, which has natural anti-bacterial properties, but if I'll be in the kitchen I'll put in a smell I really love, like bergamot or sweet orange, since the scent will be released in the steam that comes out of the machine.

We've stuck with this second blend for many months now. I use an old 32 oz yogurt container to mix the powder (measure and dump in, put lid on, then shake to mix). I only need to make up a new batch every other month or so.

I will be perfectly honest and say that we are still dealing with cloudiness. We've taken to wiping the dishes with a slightly damp cloth as we put them in the cabinet to fix this problem, but I know that cloudiness simply is unacceptable to some people. Some days it bothers me and I consider trying out Ecover or another similar green product, but most days I love that it is so much cheaper than anything else. My price per year is about the cost of a single box of brand name commercial dishwasher detergent. Even if we go to a commercial product, I am committed to staying away from dish detergents with phosphates or chlorine bleach.

UPDATE: See my improved (dare I say, perfected) recipe here.

9 Changes for 2009- #3 Hummus

2009-01-11T21:30:00.003-05:00

This entry is part of a series on changes I made in 2008 that I want to stick with in 2009…

Cut out commercial breakfast bars
Cut out canned beans
Ditch premade hummus (and all those containers)
by making it at home.
Okay, this one totally piggybacks on the bean post. Let me confess right now that a love of hummus is where the whole bean soaking in mass quantities idea stemmed from.

There are many reasons to love hummus: it tastes great, is nutritious, and jazzes up veggies or pita to make light but filling snack or meal. But, all of those little plastic containers they come in add up. My county only recycles plastic containers with necks, so we either could keep amassing them (but there is so much space, right?) or throw them away (eek, never!). So, we decided to start making our own.

We tried some actual recipes (there are tons online) and devised many of our own: basic, lemon, chipotle, roasted pine nut, roasted garlic, roasted eggplant, mixed hot pepper, and roasted sweet red pepper. I also just learned about pumpkin hummus—we'll have to try that, since we are still wading in pumpkin.

As you may guess from the bean post, since dried beans are so cheap, homemade hummus is considerably cheaper than packaged hummus. Another score for reducing packaging, saving money, and increasing yumminess!

9 Changes for 2009 - #2 Beans

2009-01-11T20:51:00.006-05:00

This entry is part of a series on changes I made in 2008 that I want to stick with in 2009…

Cut out commercial breakfast bars
Cut out canned beans
and replaced them with dry beans

Canned beans (and tomatoes, for the record) are especially susceptible to BPA leeching, so I thought it might be worth finding an alternative. We started buying dried beans and soaking and cooking them. Yes, soaking and cooking takes time, but we do it in bulk to get maximum impact for our time and freeze the extras for later. We started cooking one pound at a time, but we're now up to doing two pounds at a time (mondo stock pot required). Another plus is that one pound of dried beans is about the same price as a single can, yet the one pound of dried beans yields 3-4 times the amount of beans in a can. Plus, bonus points for less shipping and packaging energy expenditures.

9 Changes for 2009- #1 Commercial Breakfast Bars

2009-01-11T20:01:00.010-05:00

This entry is part of a series on changes I made in 2008 that I want to stick with in 2009…

Commercial Breakfast Bars
Replaced with homemade granola bars and whole grain muffins

Commercial breakfast bars were one thing on our grocery tab that we had a hard time keeping cheap. Sure, we'd shop sales and coupons, but I am SUPER picky about breakfast (i.e. I don't like to eat breakfast, so I need something easy and yummy to convince me so I don't skip it an then become a hungry, moody lunatic by lunch) so if we were out of bars and no deals were to be had, we'd buy them at full price anyway. I'm super thrifty, so paying full price irritated me, being a slave to store visits when we ran out irritated me, and all of that packaging—individually wrapping and a box—irritated me. Plus, in terms of nutrition, I felt like the bars just didn't have much bank for their buck. So, I needed to come up with something comparable in terms of convenience and portability.

I decided to try my hand at making my own bars and muffins. I made a recipe in bulk every few weeks and put whatever I wouldn't eat that week in the freezer for later weeks. So, I added two hours of work every three-ish weeks for cooking and clean up, but I ended up with a more delicious, nutritious alternative that yields much less packaging waste. I also started making yogurt & fruit smoothies in the blender to up the nutrition. Here is one muffin recipe that packs a big nutritional punch: Oat Bran Muffins. Here's a picture of some hearty granola bars I made, but can't find the recipe for again.
(Update...basic recipe is here, yummy variations are here.)

Green Secret Santa

2008-12-15T09:12:00.000-05:00

The Secret Santa exchange at work was green-themed and I had loads of fun with my gifts. We gave reusable produce bags from Etsy (AMK Designs http://www.etsy.com/shop.php?user_id=5692686) and then a homemade green cleaning kit than I made. I made everything in it, so I hoped the person who got it would appreciate it-- and they did. Yay! My husband got a tiny pine tree that we can grow indoors until we have yard to plant it in and I got a coupon for my artsy coworker to do a sketch of any 4x6 picture I give her- awesome! Here is what I put in the kit:

Unpaper Towels
Use these handmade extra-thick cloths for cleaning or as napkins. The small size is to encourage you to do one-use-and-wash, just like you'd use a paper towel one-use-and-toss.

Kitchen Cleaner
This castile cleaner is great for dealing with greasy stains (normally found in the kitchen) but it can be used anywhere in the house. I've added some tea tree oil which has antiseptic properties. The hot water melts the shaved castile soap in the dry mix, but you only need to add it once. Give the bottle a good shake before each use to remix everything. This mix will last indefinitely. The recipe on your bottle comes from the book Green Clean. Your bottle holds 1½ batches.

Bathroom Cleaner
Because of the vinegar content this blend is great for dealing with mildew normally found in the bathroom but it can be used anywhere in the house. I've added some tea tree oil which has antiseptic properties. The hot water initially added melts the shaved castile soap in the dry mix, but you only need to add it once. Give the bottle a good shake before each use to remix everything. This mix will last indefinitely. The recipe on your bottle comes from the book Green Clean. Your bottle holds 1½ batches.

Liquid Laundry/Dishwasher Detergent
Give the container a good shake before each use to remix everything. Use 1/4 cup per load in a traditional washing machine, 1/8 cup in a high efficiency. If you are especially brave, use 1/8 cup per load in the dishwasher. Put white vinegar in the rinse aid compartment. You can add two drops of essential oil to the soap cup along with the mix, and when it opens during washing it will fill your kitchen with the smell of the essential oil.

Hand-Milled Mint Lather Soap Ball
This soap ball uses unscented, vegan, fair trade soap as its base along with super moisturizing natural oils. It can be used to cleanse over-dry skin, or instead of shaving cream during shaving, or as a shampoo. This recipe comes from the book Beautiful Handmade Natural Soaps: Practical Ways to Make Hand-Milled Soap and Bath Essentials.

Hand-Milled Milk and Honey Soap Bar
This soap ball uses vegan, fair trade soap as its base along with milk and honey and essential oils. It is great for bathing or washing hands. This recipe comes from the book Beautiful Handmade Natural Soaps: Practical Ways to Make Hand-Milled Soap and Bath Essentials.

Bath Bombs
Drop one of these into your bath and watch it fizz! The fizzing ingredients clean you (and do good things for your hair cuticles if you're laying back in the water) while releasing a light scent. Yellow is sweet orange; green is eucalyptus, tea tree, citron; blue is bergamot. This recipe comes from the book Beautiful Handmade Natural Soaps: Practical Ways to Make Hand-Milled Soap and Bath Essentials.

Reusable Shopping Bag
Okay, okay I didn't make this one. Keep a stash of reusable bags in the car with you so they are always on hand. Use them for groceries as well as retail shopping. If possible, keep them in the front seat of your car so you can always see them. It takes some time to get in the habit, but is worth it! As a fun added bonus, several grocery stores give a 5 cent credit per bag you bring.

Laundry Soap Close Up

2008-11-09T19:25:00.000-05:00

Close up picture of the soap separation. This will begin even as you move it from the pan to storage. A good stir (or shake, in my case) will remix it.

Homemade Laundry Soap

2008-11-09T18:53:00.000-05:00

Left Image: Left jug is recently shaken and mixed.
Right jug is unshaken and has settled into soapy layer and watery layer

Right Image: When mixed right before use, the laundry soap is creamy and slightly bubbly

After trying several batches of dry laundry soap, my husband asked me to make a liquid one. The liquid/gel I made is #1 from this great website, Tip Nut. We are very happy with the way the soap works. We now use it for all of our laundry and have successfully used it at all wash temperatures. The three dry recipes we tried were Tip Nut #4, Tip Nut #9, and a mix of half borax and half washing soda. While the dry ones all seemed to work equally well, my husband prefers liquids laundry soap/detergent. Since he does the laundry, I am happy to whip up whatever works best for him!

In my pictures you can see that I have the laundry soap in milk jugs. I do not recommend this unless you have hosing available to siphon the cooked soap from the pot through the slim necks of the jugs. Since my husband homebrews, we did have a suitable plastic tube, but this ended up being messy, frustrating, and time consuming as the liquid congealed into a gel. Stick with a bucket! The soap will separate and requires stirring or shaking before use to remix the water (which will settle) and the soap gel (which will float). In the picture on the left, the left jug is recently shaken and mixed, the right jug shows the settling and separation.

n.b., Homebrewing husbands may not be thrilled with such use of said tubing since soap makes beer go flat. Eeek!

-------
Why in the world I would make my only laundry soap? For us, there are four answers to this:

Environment – Environmentally, making my own laundry soap is a good choice because it doesn’t require an endless cycle of new packaging production, shipping, and disposal/recycling. Also, most commercial liquid detergents have petrochemicals in them. Not only are petrochemicals bad for the water supply, but they use petroleum which is a non-renewable resource and is so very politically charged right now. Here is a link on Dr. Bronner’s Soap (eco-friendly, organic, and fair trade) which is the soap I use in my cleansers and laundry soap: here.
This site lists many names for petrochemicals that you might see in the ingredients list of your soap/detergent (should the manufacturer actually disclose what is in their product).

Health – My husband has contact dermatitis so artificial fragrances are bad for his skin. The artificial colors, scents, and additives in most commercial detergents are of concerns to many people. Personally, this is an area that I approach with caution, but am not alarmist over. Look up your favorite detergent here so you can make a decision about what is best for your home.

Cost – Making laundry soap is dirt cheap. Though I personally have not calculated the cost, others who use similar recipes cite $0.03 per load. For me, the low cost is just an added bonus to the more important reasons above.

Fun – For me, stuff like this is an enjoyable hobby that yields a usable result just like cooking, homebrewing beer, etc. I find it fun and I like the whole “science in action” aspect.

Homemade Pumpkin Puree & Toasted Seeds

2008-10-27T10:29:00.000-04:00

I imagine this sounds like a wacky undertaking to some. There is no doubt that canned pumpkin is easier and probably more consistent in quality, but hubby and I are working to cut down using canned products. One concern is BPA, but moreover, cans are heavy and require more energy in shipping, plus the production of the can and then recycling of it also use energy. In contrast, our local pumpkin had a quick ride from farm to farmer's market to our home and everything that we won't eat (pumpkin skin, stem, and guts) was composted.

Also, we love to do things on the cheap. And this was cheap, for sure. Our $5 pumpkin gave us the 13 cups of puree, plus lots of pumpkin seeds that I toasted for snacks.

Here are the instructions that I used for roasting the pumpkin:
http://www.ehow.com/how_8305_make-pumpkin-puree.html

Modifications: I did not use a pie pumpkin; I used a large jack-o-lantern one. Some people swear by not using those because they are less sweet and more stringy, but that is what they had at the farmers' market and several friends told me they had had success with them. Happily, my pumpkin wasn't stringy at all.

I cut the pumpkin in half with an electric knife. To scrape the inside, we have this little, cheapy pumpkin scraper from an old carving kit that works wonderfully. That part was less trouble than I anticpated. The longest part was getting the cooked pumpkin into the food processor. It wasn't hard as much as time-consuming. I felt like I was wasting too much by spooning it, so I used a filet knife to take off the skin.

While the pumpkin was roasting on the lower rack, I baked the pumpkin seeds on the top rack according to this recipe (which calls for the same temperature as the roasting pumpkin):
http://www.ehow.com/how_2091075_bake-pumpkin-seeds.html

But, if you'd like a little more variety with your seeds, I like all of the alternatives in this recipe:
http://www.ehow.com/how_2247741_season-pumpkin-seeds.html

If you haven't had pumpkin seeds before, they taste similar to a sunflower seed but have a very light pumpkin flavor to them. You can shell them and just eat the flat seed inside or eat them with the shell. Personally, I prefer to eat them in the shell because it is easier.

So what to do with 13 cups of pumpkin puree? I've been taking suggestions and here's what I've got: pancakes from the Deceptively Delicious cookbook, pumpkin chocolate chip cookies, my stepmom's family recipe pumpkin bread, pumpkin cupcakes with cream cheese frosting, pumpkin soufflé, Rachel Ray's gingerbread waffles, slow cooker pumpkin custard, pumpkin soup, and of course, pumpkin pie

Cost: $5 for the pumpkin
Time spent: 3 hours: 90 minutes of roasting, 90 minutes of labor: gutting the pumpkin, removing seeds for toasting, then shelling the cooked pumpkin, pureeing, and portioning*

*I portioned the pumpkin into a variety of sizes: ½ cup, 1 cup, 2 cups, and 3 cups and popped it into the freezer.

Composting (From a Condo!)

2008-09-27T12:31:00.001-04:00

The compost pile (hmmm...doesn't look like much!)

Our compost crock

Since we live in a third floor condo, my husband wasn’t keen on composting at home. Then I found out they were starting a compost pile at work. Our building has a strip of forest on three sides of it, so we’ve got plenty of leaves and grass. Since the grounds team only has “browns” (leaves, grass clippings, etc.), I offered to add my food waste from home. We are going on our second month with this, and it is going great! To get started I needed a few things:
-Info on what to do
-Compost Crock
-Hand shovel (trowel)

I went to the library and check out several books on composting. My favorite was Composting by Liz Ball. My compost pile will be somewhere in between a simple pile (stack up yard waste and let it be) and a managed pile (yard waste, food waste, turned regularly).

The one thing we needed to buy was some type of container to hold the waste in the kitchen. We figured I would visit the compost pile only twice a week so the container needed to be smell-proof for the kitchen, but also leak-proof as I transport it by car.

As always, I looked for something around the house or from yard sales to repurpose first. With no luck there, I decided to check out the household section at Ross. Ross, Home Goods, TJ Maxx, etc. usually have a great selection of random containers. I ended up with a canister with a very tight fitting lid. (Bonus points for it being citron green which I am obsessed with.) A cookie jar would work to. Of course, you can always go commercial and buy a real compost crock with a smell-containing charcoal filter in the lid (Google compost crock for a variety of options), but I am too cheap for that!

So, armed with my $6.99 crock, the adventure started! Our rules are no dairy (save for egg shells) and no meat. These smell in a way that attracts animals we don’t want. We do have to think about the ingredients in leftovers. For example, buttered carrots can’t go in.

My job is bringing in the food, and my coworker’s job on the maintenance team is keeping me stocked with browns. He had the idea to cover the whole pile with pine branches. I have no idea if that is technically right, but to me I think that the prickliness of the branches and the pine smell both are beneficial for protecting the pile for animals looking for a snack. (Update- this actually is a HUGE hassle because now the pile has built up higher than the branches and when I dig down to dump the food waste I hit them and can’t get in very deep.)

Twice a week, I load my filled crock and trowel into the car and go to work (literally and figuratively). I like to rotate around the pile with my digging. I use the trowel to dig a hole in the pile, dump the food in, smash the food down a bit with the shovel, then load the dirt I scooped away on top again. Because I rotate around the pile, as of yet I have never found food added from a previous day. My biggest animal protection tip is to completely bury the food in the pile. Also bury flowers. If the flowers sit on top, it will attract bees.

This process takes all of five minutes twice a week and really doesn’t involve getting messy or even unpleasant smells. Two-ish months in and the verdict is that composting is really easy, we have much less household trash, and we have tons of warm fuzzies for being even more eco-friendly. I actually get giddy when I see worms in the pile and feel the warmth when I dig (both are signs of a healthy pile). Warm fuzzies, indeed!

Reusable Water Bottles Part 2- BPA

2008-08-24T23:00:00.000-04:00

We can't really talk about water bottles without talking about BPA. In addition to the huge downside of endless production, transport, and disposal of one-use water bottles, BPA in the plastic bottles is the other big concern. Personally, I think that BPA concern has gone a little alarmist, but Canada’s concern about it really has me thinking. And really, it is so easy to dramatically lessen my exposure to it (by not heating in plastic and reducing amount of food and drink consume from cans and plastic packages) that I see no reason not to.

If you are looking for some good reads about BPA, here are my favorite articles:

http://www.cspinet.org/new/200804021.html
http://www.ewg.org/reports/bisphenola
http://children.webmd.com/news/20080130/hot-liquid-ups-bpa-from-plastic-bottles
http://www.healthobservatory.org/library.cfm?refID=77083 (this is a PDF)

BPA concerns or no, a reusable bottle is better for the environment. Okay, actually a few dissenters say that the manufacture of a reusable bottle is better than a disposable, but I haven’t actually seen anything tangible on that. Plus, when you add in endless transport energy expenditure and endless trash or recycling expenditure of disposables, that is a hug, nasty cycle. So, I’m sticking with consuming less that is disposable; reducing trumps recycling any day!

Reusable Water Bottles Part 1- Bottles

2008-08-24T22:11:00.002-04:00

I see the two main contenders for reusable water bottles as Sigg and Kleen Kanteen (KK).

Sigg bottles are made of aluminum with a resin liner. Some people are concerned with aluminum and a link to Alzheimer’s but this link is very dubious. It is so dubious, that I even dislike mentioning it, but it gets me to my second point which is that Siggs have a liner. So, aluminum really isn’t even a concern to begin with. But, some people are concerned about the liner leeching. Sigg claims is it 100% leech-free in testing. Although there is nothing proven bad about the aluminum or the liner, some people see this as a drawback. If you’d like some additional peace of mind, here is a letter from the CEO of Sigg on the liner issue: http://tinyurl.com/5na9r4 (a PDF) from the TreeHugger.com Blog.

Sigg bottles are made in Switzerland which has good environmental policies. Yay for eco-conscious manufacturing! The bottle is recyclable. Siggs come in a great variety of colors, sizes, and designs. They may be difficult to find, though, since online sales have been almost entirely suspended (only existing stock may be sold). They offer several different lid options.

Kleen Kanteen bottles are made of stainless steel which is not known to leech. The biggest downside to the KK is that it is manufactured in China. The good news is that KK claims that their bottles are manufactured eco-consciously, even in China. It is up to you to decide if you believe their claim or not. KKs come in a variety of sizes that are all the same width but vary in height. They have a wide mouth so that ice-cubes can be inserted. They also come in a few different solid colors. They are available both online and in stores. They offer several different lid options.

Both Sigg and Kleen Kanteen have excellent FAQ sections on their respective websites:

Sigg: http://www.mysigg.com/index.asp?ID=5&PageAction=Custom

Kleen Kanteen: http://www.kleankanteen.com/7faqs/faqs.html

Personally, in my house we have two Siggs and one Kleen Kanteen (see picture). I use the fun, patterned Siggs (one for work and one for the car) and D. uses the solid-colored Kleen Kanteen.

Camelbak (now) and Nalgene (soon) offer BPA-free plastic alternatives, but I see those as lesser options since neither (to my knowledge) make eco-conscious manufacturing claims, nor are their bottles recyclable at the end of their life. I also try to minimize purchasing new plastic products because of petroleum use concerns. So, Camelbak and Nalegne are out for me personally.

You might be wondering what this has to do with being green and cheap since these bottles aren't cheap. Well, normally I could care less about brand name, but this is one area where I have compromised and actually wanted the “real deal” even if it cost extra. Think about it this way: if you use your reusable bottle 5 days a week instead of disposable and a disposable costs $1 a day (out of a machine) your pricey bottle is paid for in one month.

But, be extra thrifty and ask for your bottle(s) as a gift. I got the two Siggs for my birthday and my husband got the KK for his birthday. Or, you could drink out of an emptied and washed glass jar. Really, you could!

Paper Towel Alternative

2008-07-18T22:06:00.000-04:00

Eight months ago we decided to phase out paper towels in our house and switch to one-use-and-wash cloth towels. To maximize the eco-friendliness of this move, we wanted to repurpose something that we already had rather than go and buy a new cloths from the store. Enter my husband's old, holey T-shirts.

I started by cutting down each side seam, then cutting out the sleeves. With the shirt in more manageable chunks I was able to start cutting it into useable pieces. I decided that I wanted each cloth to be the size of 1/2 paper towel. This size is big enough for most clean-up jobs, but small enough that we aren't tempted to reuse them (and thus spread harbored bacteria).

Storing the cloths in discreet way was important to me. I didn't think a big wad of rags, even clean ones with a noble purpose, would encourage my husband to stick with it. So, I decided to use a small canister. While it is easy enough to just lob the cloths in there, I like a more streamlined approach. I stack all of the cloths, then invert the pile and push it in the canister so that just one cloth is visible (like how a box of tissues is packaged). That way I can grab one cloth without taking seven others out.

Once a cloth is used, it goes in an open plastic basket in the laundry room. Note that the holding area must be an open container (and be sure your wet cloth isn't balled up when it goes in) otherwise you will end up with a seriously stagnant stench. Blech!

In our house, white cloths are for kitchen jobs and they can get washed with any towel load. Any cloth made of colored or patterned cloth is for outside or bathroom cleaning. They have their own separate basket in the laundry room and get washed by themselves. (If you use cloth diapers or pads you could add these to that load). Honestly, I don't know if laundry cross-contamination is a legitimate concern or not, but I'd rather not risk it.

Cheap Meals On The Web

2008-06-24T23:56:00.000-04:00

One of the best ways to stretch your grocery dollar is by letting nothing go to waste and really eating through your pantry. Finding a way to get rid of that container of plain yogurt you bought by mistake and all of those garden tomatoes is only a click away…

http://supercook.com/
Enter the ingredients you have on hand and it will list what you can make.

http://recipefinder.nal.usda.gov/
This United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) site not only lets you search by ingredient but also by cost per serving, cost per dish, nutritional content, audience, and cooking equipment.

http://allrecipes.com/Search/Ingredients.aspx
Another site where you can enter the ingredients you have on hand and it will list what you can make.

All Recipes also offers searching a section on budget cooking:
http://allrecipes.com/HowTo/Cooking-on-a-Budget/Detail.aspx

Reusable Produce Bag- Cost $0

2008-06-21T23:26:00.000-04:00

I finished one produce bag tonight (this one is 12x16 inches) and have two others pinned to finish later. The best thing is that I spent no money making them! The fabric was leftover from a 1970s dress that I bought used and shortened; the drawstring is made of hand-me-down ribbon; and I inherited the thread and sewing machine from family members.

The fabric is sheer enough to see what is inside, so I won't have to open it for checkout. This bag weighs 0.65 oz. and a standard plastic produce bag weighs 0.05 oz. So, mine is heavier, but well worth it, in my opinion!

Saving With Green Cleaning and Beauty

2008-06-19T00:01:00.001-04:00

For beauty and cleaning supplies, if you simply replace traditional commercial products with commercial eco-friendly products it really will hit you hard. You have to go into the green with a mentality of consuming and buying less.

One-for-one product replacement misses the point of going green since even the eco-friendly commercial products still come in plastic bottles, require shipping, and generate waste (or need to be recycled which uses energy).

Here are some ideas that might be worth trying: Can you use olive oil instead of lotion? Can you shampoo half as much as you do now? Can you make your own cleaning supplies for cheaper (with the added bonus of less packaging)? Can you buy castile soap in bulk and then use it for many things (from cleaning your home to cleaning your face)? Can you use baking soda instead of deodorant (just rub a generous pinch into each pit)?

Now, let’s move onto green cleaning specifically. I suggest reading the books Green Clean and Organic Housekeeping if you are serious about this kind of cleaning. OH talks about the science of cleaning and how it works (which makes you feel that you really can clean organically, if you are doing the right things) and gives some recipes. GC gives lots of recipes and is more anecdotal in tone.

Here are some common ingredients and where I found them (in Northern Virginia).

Washing Soda
If your grocery store doesn't have washing soda then request it! Barring that, you can get washing soda at Amazon or look for "PH Up" at a pool supply store. Get it for hot tubs and not pools as the pool kind tends to have other things added. Another place to look is an aquarium store since fish tanks need to have their PH changed. You want it to say 100% sodium carbonate on the label. It is also known as soda ash. It will be quite pricey at a pool store, though. I paid $8 for 1 pound at a pool store before I found it at a grocery store where it was $3 for 4 pounds.

Borax
I found borax at Wal-Mart in the laundry aisle. The brand I've seen at several places is called 20 Mule Team. It is also available on Amazon.

Fels Naphtha Soap
I haven't been able to find Fels Naptha Soap locally. Amazon sells it by the bar or in a package of thirty bars.

Instead, I decided to go with Dr. Bronner’s which they sell at Whole Foods. This will make a much milder product than the Fels Naphtha would. I currently am using the unscented/baby variety.

Most dry recipes call for grated soap, so I used our food processor to grate it into a chunky powder which I store in a jar.

Baking Soda
Baking soda in normal quantities can be found at any grocery store. I think I got my 4 lb box of baking soda at Wal-Mart in the laundry aisle. At work they have a twelve pound resalable bag of baking soda (probably from Costco), which I covet.

Vinegar
White vinegar can be found at any grocery store. The longer your jug lasts you, the longer between consuming plastic bottles, so the bigger the better!

Storage Jars & Spray Bottles
All of our dry cleaning mixes are stored reused jars. Containers that cannot be recycled are particularly good for this since otherwise they would just go in the trash. (We have a few #7 plastic ones.) Our spray bottles are from Wal-Mart and Dollar Tree. Some people save the spray bottles from commercial cleaning products to refill with their new homemade cleaners. Personally, I am hesitant to do this.

Organic and Local Eating

2008-06-12T23:36:00.001-04:00

My thoughts on organic food from an environmental standpoint (and not a health standpoint, which may be the bigger concern for you): many chain grocery stores* have responded to demand for organic by transporting organic from the cheapest bidder, likely across the county. The resources to transport the organic food add back in pollution that the organic growing saved. Buying locally is perhaps a better choice and buying locally and organic is the best choice. Here's one article to get you thinking:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13737389/

BUT, if your family has decided that eating organic is important to you, your grocery budget is going to reflect that value and will probably be higher than others' budgets.

Is there anywhere else in your budget that doesn't reflect your values as much, and you could cut back there to sustain your food budget?
Do you eat out a lot? If so, keep in mind that most of that is probably not organic. Cutting out one meal out each week or each month might help you feel better about your grocery budget.
If you shop at farmer's markets, make sure you are actually getting local produce. I went to one FM recently and afterwards I read their regulations online. At this particular one, there are no regulations about where the vendors come from, so things might not truly be local. Also, resale is allowed so these might not actually be farm employees who could tell you about how the food was grown. Heck, people could be buying from the grocery store and reselling it. We are happy to pay more for local produce, but we want to make sure it really is local. From now on we will stick with the other nearby FM that sets a radius for participants.

*I am not including Whole Food in this assumption. I am no big fan of Whole Foods, but in their defense over the past few years they have made a huge effort to buy locally and promote that they buy locally. If you read articles to the contrary, be sure to check out the publishing date. I got stuck on several negative articles that were several years old and thus before their shift.

Food Shopping– Part 2

2008-06-11T23:49:00.000-04:00

Learning to cut down a grocery budget is a gradual thing. Cut your budget by reasonable amount each month (say $20) and get used to your buying power at that amount before lowering it more. You have to grow into eating smaller and/or cheaper for it to stick.
Pick an expensive thing you buy and try to half your consumption for the month. For me it was breakfast bars. I used to eat a Zone Bar every day at $1 a day and that added up. So, I switched to breakfast bars at $3ish per box and stayed with that for several years before I recently rethought that. Sure, $3 a box isn't expensive in the scheme of life, but I knew I could do better. My new tactic is to make a big batch of oatmeal-wheat muffins every few weeks. I freeze all that I won't eat in a week. I can add make them nutritious than a commercial product and they have no preservatives.
We don't have a separate freezer or pantry, but we try to really use the space we have. Remove things from their packaging as much as possible to fit more in. Also, as yard sale season comes up, look for some organizer that you could fit on top of your fridge or in a coat closet. Those two areas have expanded our storing ability.
Eat seasonally. Produce goes on super sale at certain times of the year. Stock up then! We eat tons of asparagus in the spring (best price ever, $1 a pound in spring of 07). We eat lots of cranberry items in the fall. Anyone can freeze their surplus, with the proper equipment you could can or dehydrate your surplus if you are into that. (We dehydrate with a $5 rummage sale dehydrator. I have canning supplies that I received as a gift, but have never gotten around to using those.)
Love your slow-cooker. Tough cuts of meat are cheaper and after a day in the crock pot they are tender and flavorful. That would be one way to get cheaper organic meat (though you may have to call the grocery store and talk to their butcher to get stuff set aside if they don't normally put it out). If you have a Betty Crocker cookbook (the red plaid), or can get one at the library, it will explain the different cuts of meat and how to cook them to the appropriate tenderness.
Milk and cooking: Use powdered milk when cooking instead of liquid milk. It is much cheaper. Unless the dish is milk-heavy (like pudding) the taste won't be impacted. You can also buy powdered buttermilk. If you can't find dry buttermilk, you can use your liquid milk to make buttermilk. Wikipedia gives these recipes: For recipes, a substitute for buttermilk can be made by adding 1 tablespoon of lemon juice or vinegar or 1 3/4 teaspoons cream of tartar to each cup of regular milk. The soured milk should be allowed to sit for ten minutes before being used. A low-fat substitute can be made by mixing equal parts of skim milk and low-fat yogurt or sour cream.
Know what you have. I got sick of buying duplicate spices (man, those little bottles are expensive), so I made a list of what we have. It is so great when I want to make a recipe to just look on the list (hung inside the cabinet) and be able to see instantly if we have the right ingredients.
If we know that we have something (like right now we have tons of flavored orzo from the discontinued product shelf) then we build a meal around that. Anything that calls for normal pasta gets served with orzo instead.

Non-Food Products Grocery Savings

2008-06-11T10:00:00.001-04:00

Cleaning Supplies

Moving to the dirt cheap organic homemade cleaners is cutting our costs, for sure (see green clean tagged posts). There just are a few basic, cheap ingredients required. Baking soda and vinegar are readily available and cheap. Borax is also readily available once I started looking for it (also cheap). Soda Ash/Washing Soda/Sodium Carbonate (three names for the same thing) was hard to find at first. From a pool supply store I bought Hot Tub PH Up which is the same thing with a fancier name (not to be confused with Pool PH Up which contains other things). It was rather pricey $8 for 1 pound. After awhile, though, I was able to find it in the local grocery store at 3 pounds for $2.49. A much better price!

I suggest the books Green Clean, and Organic Housekeeping: In Which the Nontoxic Avenger... to get started on green cleaning. They will tell you how to do it and why conventional products aren't all they are cracked up to be. (Be extra cheap and check your library for them instead of buying them.)

Laundry & Dish Soaps & Detergents

Take a look at your soaps and detergents. Are they concentrated or say use one third less or similar? If so, the good news is that your product probably uses less packing than traditional ones. Yay! The downside is that in reality it is hard to use one third less. How exactly one can use one-third of a squirt of dish soap is a mystery to me. In this case, just be aware that your soap is super-concentrated and overusing it is literally putting money down the drain. So, stick to just one light squirt or add water into the bottle and shake to thin the soap out.

Soap & Shampoo & Razors

As for soap and shampoo, I always put them on my birthday and Christmas wish lists. Yes, that sounds strange, but hang with me...while my family thinks giving normal soap, etc. is lame, they are just fine with getting me fancy ones from Lush or the like. I am loaded up on fancy soap for probably two years after this past Christmas! Same thing with shampoo. While I am fine with cheap shampoo, my mom thinks it is girly-fun to buy me special shampoos. I go with it ;) I haven't bought razors in years. I either get them as stocking stuffers or I also take advantage of "free after rebate" razor offers in the weekend coupons.

Ladies Only

If menstrual products seem expensive to you, consider a Diva Cup (about $25 for 10 years worth of no tampons is a beautiful thing to some people). Want to go even more hardcore cheap? If you are crafty and have scrap fabric, make cloth pads or liners (you can also buy cloth pads from Etsy). If this stuff is not your style, that is A-OK with me. I'm just the idea lady!

Portion Size- The Stealth Saver

2008-02-17T23:44:00.000-05:00

Portion size matters. Keep your meat portions to the "right" size (3 oz/size of a deck of cards) and fill the rest of your plate with cheaper things like big salads, other veggies, fruit, and starchy things like pasta, rice, potatoes, beans, bread.
Since we cut back on meat, sides are fair game for eating all of. Hey, they're cheap, fill up!
Serve your food on small plates. You'll take less when there isn't all of that empty space to fill.
Protect your leftovers. My husband used to eat into the entrees we'd meant for leftovers, so we now either portion that out right away (before serving) or decide together how much of the main course needs to be left untouched.

Saving on Cleaning, Paper Products, and Disposables

2008-02-17T23:43:00.000-05:00

In the past we've bought our cleaning supplies from the dollar store, but now we are moving to natural cleaners instead (baking soda, washing soda, vinegar, borax, etc.) which will be on par with dollar store prices, if not cheaper.
We rarely use paper towels; instead we use small rags (cut up old t-shirts) as one-use and wash cloths (we keep them in a canister so they're not unsightly). Fewer things to buy over and over, fewer things to throw away!
We also are moving towards cloth napkins instead of paper. It makes every meal feel a little fancier, too.
For parties, we bust out real dishes, glasses, and flatware instead of buying disposables. The only cost is running the dishwasher an extra load and the only waste is dirty water. Plus, it is fun to get use out of wedding presents we rarely use - like special green plates just for desserts or a whole set of glasses just for cordials [what were we thinking :)].

Food Shopping- Part 1

2008-02-16T23:48:00.000-05:00

Our grocery budget is $250 per month*, but we are under enough that we can afford to do Let's Dish 2-3 times per year. Since we live in a high cost of living area (DC 'burbs), it amazes me that we keep things at this price, but I track our spending every month so I know that I'm not deluding myself :)

Here are some of our strategies:

We cut coupons and pair them with sales found in print ads and on couponmom.com.
I shop with a calculator and calculate the cheapest per unit price. Calculating the unit price is the only formula for knowing if generic or brand name on sale plus a coupon is cheaper.
When calculating unit price watch out for packages that look to be the same size but actually contain different amount of product (e.g. the meager but delicious Yoplait Whips v. normal Yoplait)
We mostly drink water, so no soda or coffee costs. (Okay, okay, when soda is on super sale we do stock up for parties.) We do get one thing of juice and milk per week.
We almost never buy prepared foods and try to buy to minimize the packaging in what we buy (environmental concern as well). If the price comes out about even we try to go with the less packaging choice. For example, purchased pudding cups versus making my own is about the same, price wise. But, if I make my own then there is almost no waste. Plus, though pudding isn't the most amazingly fun thing to make, it is free entertainment (at some level right?). :)
We cook in large quantities and freeze the leftovers in lunch and dinner-size portions. Once you get a good stock going variety isn't an issue. Fewer recipes means fewer ingredients bought. It also means fewer dishes to wash – saving water, soap, time etc.
We repurpose food so that nothing goes to waste. Leftover salad becomes sandwich lettuce the next day, an extra chicken breast goes on top of a chef salad for lunch, etc.
We don't buy things if they aren't at the best price. For example, that means we only buy chicken when it is <$2 a pound. When it is that price we stock up. If it is over that, we just don't buy it. We use our freezer and pantry to load up on good deals.
Knowing the best price is worth your time. We kept a price book for six months. I compared the prices for the same, cheapest per unit item at several different grocery stores. That way I would know if a sale was really a deal with stocking up on. We also learned which sales were worthwhile. For example, in our area $0.50 yogurt is a normal sale price, so that is our "best price". We won't buy yogurt for more than that unless we need a yogurt splurge for some crazy reason; $0.33 yogurt is truly a sale; and $0.25 yogurt is worth some serious fridge space.
When stocking up on dairy deals buy low or no fat items. They have a really long shelf life. Fat = spoilage
What can you buy in a large quantity for cheap and then make into you own convenience food? For example, we buy 2lb of blocks cheese and shred it with our food processor or Kitchen Aid with shredder attachment. We then put the shredded cheese straight into the freezer and pull out handfuls as we need it (it defrosts almost instantly). When we buy those huge family packs of chicken breasts, we separate them into our own cooking-size packages before freezing. While the chicken is out for repackaging, we trim them. No expensive pre-trimmed Perdue for us! When I cut off the white stuff, little bits of extra, good, pink chicken tend to come off, too. I put all of those good bits in a separate freezer container for a quick stir-fry or chicken nuggets meal.
What can you grow instead of buy? If space permits, consider gardening for cheap food and a cheap hobby.

*No, we don't eat out a ton to keep our grocery budget low :) Our dinging out budget is $80 per month for eating out together. Any lunches out come from our fun money (a set amount we each get to spend or save each month without being accountable to the other for it), but we each only eat out about once lunch per week.

Federal Student Loan Consolidation

2008-01-28T16:27:00.000-05:00

This entry was last updated 6-25-2008

I grew up thinking that I was bad at math, but really I just hadn't ever gotten to the fun part yet (well, the part that saves or makes me money and that is fun). In college I discovered that I love graphs, spreadsheets, and researching financial things. I spent a lot of time researching federal student loan consolidation after I graduated (in 2006) and am happy to share what I learned.

Things to consider when consolidating federal student loans...

·Federal rates won’t change until July of each year. Rates might go lower. Rates will probably be announced in June, leaving you a few weeks to make a decision. * See important note below

·Your consolidated rate will be a weighted average of all federal loans you chose to consolidate. That means with today's rates you can't get the 2.5% rates that people who consolidated around 2002 did. Rates just aren't that low anymore.

·There is hope for your rate, though. Every lender will offer you two interest rate breaks and comparing these breaks is how shopping around pays off! When comparing lenders look for:

The greatest % drop with auto-payment. This is an immediate benefit.
(My lender offered .5% while most offered .025%)
The shortest amount of time before they drop you 1% for x on time payments.
(My lender dropped my rate 1% after 12 months of on time payments; most do 18-24 months before you get the 1% drop. Some may do something tempting like a 2% drop after 48 months, but if you are on a 5-year payoff plan mathematically that probably is not be the best choice.)

·If you have a smaller loan at a higher rate consider keeping it out of the consolidation so it doesn’t pull up the rate on the rest of the (cheaper rate) loan (for example if you have a Perkins and a Stafford). No one will advertise that you can leave one loan out, so be savvy.

·Have the money to pay all outstanding interest. You don’t want that outstanding interest rolled into you new principal. (Paying interest on interest is bad!)

·With some lenders, but not all, consolidating eliminates your grace period.

·Consolidating a loan with a forgiveness option (like a Perkins) does eliminate the ability to ever get forgiveness for teaching in a low-income district, etc. You can elect to leave that loan out of consolidation if you are considering taking the forgiveness route.

·Do the hard work of the math when comparing the % breaks. They can be trickier than they look. MrsZubterfuge has a great spreadsheet in the middle of her bio that is helpful for doing long-term calculations. Use the mortgage pages from the spreadsheet in the middle of her bio here to play around with your SL repayment options:
http://community.thenest.com/cs/ks/user/page.aspx?username=MrsZubterfuge

*Important note:

Stafford loans taken out before July 1, 2006 have variable rates that, unconsolidated, will adjust as the rate changes each year. Waiting to see what the new rate effective July 1 will be can be very beneficial in your consolidation timing.

Stafford loans disbursed after July 1, 2006 have a fixed rate of 6.8% in repayment, so waiting to see what the new rate effective July 1 won't benefit you.

Here is a great article that talks about how to approach consolidation going into the 2008-2009 loan year:
http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/CollegeAndFamily/CutCollegeCosts/3Point6PercentStudentLoansConsolidateNow.aspx

Sites for comparing student loan consolidators:
http://www.simpletuition.com/consolidation/quick_form
http://www.finaid.org/loans/staffordloandiscounts.phtml

USAA Financial Planning – Part 2

2008-01-08T11:33:00.001-05:00

This entry is only about finance and not environment.
Review is based on services received from January-July 2007.
If you are new to the blog, start with Part 1, below.

Teleconference 2:
I will admit that though we were supposed to have our second meeting a month after the first one, we waited until our six month contract was almost up to have the second meeting. I had decided to change jobs in that time period and I wanted to get my entire new 403b and pension details from the new employer and incorporate that in as well.

In between our first and second meetings our FP suffered from a back injury and had to go on disability. We were assigned a new FP who called and introduced himself, explained the change, and apologized for the inconvenience.

In the second meeting we went over our revised document and the progress we had made on our six action items from our first meeting. We had a little more difficulty with this meeting. D. and I were considering overfunding our retirement funds in order to purchase a house (it was some crazy scheme that worked out on paper) and the FP had conflicting data on if this would work for us. He spent a lot of time looking up tax details. While it was good he looked up the details, it would have been better for him to have confidently known the answers.

We really hit an impasse with FP over life and disability insurance. I actually felt like he was angry at us for not having the amount he saw fit. He got very stern-fatherly in a way that didn't really work with my personality. I think this was exacerbated by the fact that we had had a similar disagreement with the first FP and got him to reduce it on our plan (and his approach was gentler). Finally, I had to tell the new FP to drop it and move on.
This call lasted about one hour.

With this call (and the end of our six-month contract), our service was complete. We were given an option to continue on at an hourly rate, but declined for now.

We look forward to a "tune-up" probably in two years or when we get ready for a major life change (buying a house or having a baby). In the meanwhile, I will use the information we learned through this process to monitor ourselves.

------------------------
The Overall Good:
The best part is that I feel so much better about being on track for retirement and buying a house. I needed that expert opinion to tell me that my novice research and planning was (mostly) on target. Retirement was a bigger concern than the house, because I just could not, on my own, calculate with inflation, interest, etc. and figure out where we needed to be. The next best thing is that I didn't feel like I was being sold anything. I am wary of being sold a fund or product that benefits the FP more than me, and USAA is extremely clear on how their employees are funded.

The Overall Bad:
I thought the worst parts would be the lack of face-to-face interaction or value-incompatibility, but the FP's personality translated through the phone and the document kept us on the same page (literally and figuratively). So, the new worst is the time it took to get an evening appointment. (Also, if I have a question, I have to call the advice line rather than FP himself, but since their service is excellent, this isn't really a big deal.) The personality conflict was the second FP was trying, but I guess this is why we hire professionals: to tell us what is best even when we don't want to hear it.