Blessing Darlings!
As I mentioned in the last blog post - while our income is finally up and stabilized, we still need to be frugal/cheap. One way we're doing this is to keep our clothes wearable as long as possible. This means, amongst other things, that we .... okay, *I* need to do clothes repairs.
Therefore one of the purchases I've already made this year was material to use to patch clothes with. The least expensive way I've found to be sure that I have a variety of colors of material for this is to buy pre-packaged 1/2 yard swatches of material at Walmart. The brand is Waverly. Solid colors are 97 cents before tax. Since most repairs don't take a lot of material, one package per color lasts me at least a year, except for the black one. I use a LOT of that to repair my work clothes.
So for $2 of material, and maybe $1 of thread, and I can save at least $10 that I'd have spent on new work clothes every year. I probably save even more than that - repair one pair of pants and I save $15. The shirts are 'only' $3 each, but if I only have to replace two instead of 5 a year, I save another $9. By repairing 3 shirts the other night at work, I more than paid back the investment I made in material.
Yes, I repaired my work shirts at work. It very was a slow night. It was, arguably, work related. My boss and the supervisor on duty were aware of what I was doing. They may or may not be as hands-off if I repair other clothes at work.
By doing these repairs, I also reduce the amount of garbage I create, and, since most of my clothes are cheap cotton - reducing buying more of them reduces the amount of pesticides used and saves a lot of water use (growing cotton uses a HUGE amount of pesticides and a large amount of water.)
Oh - I don't buy the material in either white or tan. THOSE colors of cotton I have plenty of, from saving salvageable parts of my husbands tan/khaki pants, and use them to repair his NEWER pants that need patches. And those pants are way more $$$ than my cheap pants.
Reduce, repair, re-use, recycle!
Frondly, Fern
Showing posts with label green. Show all posts
Showing posts with label green. Show all posts
Monday, January 7, 2019
Monday, March 4, 2013
Too Windy to be Green
Blessings Darlings!
The wind is killing me today. I'm one of those traditional types who prefers to do laundry on Mondays ... and dry it on the line. But in winter/early spring, I can only get one load dry on the line on a GOOD day. So I end up doing laundry pretty much every available day of the week!
So I hung today's laundry - linens. Big top and bottom sheets, which catch the wind. And boy is there wind today! I had to come in to the house to put gloves on, because the wind chill while handling wet laundry was killing me. In the 2 hours since I hung the laundry I've been out there twice to recapture what has blown off the line (and I put a LOT of clothes pins on each piece) and re-hang them.
And the wind hasn't just been screwing around with me on that. The newspapers and cardboard I used last week to help smother grass in the area I plan to garden in have had their protective heavy mulch blown off - I've been chasing after them in my 3 acre yard (and I think I see some in my neighbor's yard as well).
The weather folks promise that the wind will die tonight ... if I make it that long. And if we get the promised snow storm on Wednesday, that will help settle the garden, but with rain starting on Tuesday and the storm on Wednesday, those are at least two more days I can't hang laundry.
I'm going to get a nice HOT cup of tea now.
Frondly, Fern
The wind is killing me today. I'm one of those traditional types who prefers to do laundry on Mondays ... and dry it on the line. But in winter/early spring, I can only get one load dry on the line on a GOOD day. So I end up doing laundry pretty much every available day of the week!
So I hung today's laundry - linens. Big top and bottom sheets, which catch the wind. And boy is there wind today! I had to come in to the house to put gloves on, because the wind chill while handling wet laundry was killing me. In the 2 hours since I hung the laundry I've been out there twice to recapture what has blown off the line (and I put a LOT of clothes pins on each piece) and re-hang them.
And the wind hasn't just been screwing around with me on that. The newspapers and cardboard I used last week to help smother grass in the area I plan to garden in have had their protective heavy mulch blown off - I've been chasing after them in my 3 acre yard (and I think I see some in my neighbor's yard as well).
The weather folks promise that the wind will die tonight ... if I make it that long. And if we get the promised snow storm on Wednesday, that will help settle the garden, but with rain starting on Tuesday and the storm on Wednesday, those are at least two more days I can't hang laundry.
I'm going to get a nice HOT cup of tea now.
Frondly, Fern
Friday, September 14, 2012
Poofiness
Blessings Darlings!
I've been making my own laundry soap since about the beginning of the year. It's a pretty simple recipe - grate a bar of soap, add a cup each of Washing Soda and Borax, mix well, use 2 tablespoons per load. It's easy to make, with grating the soap taking the longest time.
So today I opened a new package of Ivory Soap to make a new batch. It was ... dampish. I couldn't grate it. How can I dry it? I looked up 'nuking Ivory Soap' online, and found it was a COOL thing to do. The stuff .... blooms. It would have been a GREAT part of a lesson on foams while we homeschooled.
My family and I had a GREAT time playing with the blooming bar of soap. And much to my delight, the expanded foam, once cooled, was a breeze to crush into tiny soap flakes, better than anything I'd grated for laundry soap making. I am exceedingly pleased with the results. Well, the poofy flakes go rather more airborne and made me sneeze, but that's not a big deal.
Frondly, Fern
I've been making my own laundry soap since about the beginning of the year. It's a pretty simple recipe - grate a bar of soap, add a cup each of Washing Soda and Borax, mix well, use 2 tablespoons per load. It's easy to make, with grating the soap taking the longest time.
So today I opened a new package of Ivory Soap to make a new batch. It was ... dampish. I couldn't grate it. How can I dry it? I looked up 'nuking Ivory Soap' online, and found it was a COOL thing to do. The stuff .... blooms. It would have been a GREAT part of a lesson on foams while we homeschooled.
My family and I had a GREAT time playing with the blooming bar of soap. And much to my delight, the expanded foam, once cooled, was a breeze to crush into tiny soap flakes, better than anything I'd grated for laundry soap making. I am exceedingly pleased with the results. Well, the poofy flakes go rather more airborne and made me sneeze, but that's not a big deal.
Frondly, Fern
Friday, April 20, 2012
Self Evaluation: Plastics Use
Blessings Darlings!
I use Earth Day as a time of evaluation and vow taking. Two years ago my vow was about reducing my use of plastics. Evaluation (a few days before Earth Day, I admit) makes it clear I'm failing at this.
I've had some success at reducing styrofoam and #5 plastics that are brought into the house - because we can't afford Chinese take out any more (comes in #5 black plastic bowls with a translucent plastic lid) nor can we afford to eat out (leftover brought home in styrofoam plastic boxes). OTOH many of our groceries still come into the house in plastic bags, because we fail to use the cloth bags. Even at Aldi's, where we use bags from home, the bags we re-use are the plastic bags from other stores.
Implementing a system other than Gladware for refrigerator food storage has also been a failure. I can't buy Pyrex replacements (which still have plastic lids) and I am afraid that if I DID use them I'd break them. I drop things. A lot. And we have regular 'landslides' in our freezer and refrigerator.
I'm going to keep looking for metal bowls of all sizes at garage sales, in the hopes that they will be useful for fridge storage. I would be able to use aluminum foil to cover them with ... not that the mining and refining of THAT is not destructive to the environment, just that aluminum foil can be recycled more readily than plastic wrap can be. Like - it can be recycled at all.
I use Earth Day as a time of evaluation and vow taking. Two years ago my vow was about reducing my use of plastics. Evaluation (a few days before Earth Day, I admit) makes it clear I'm failing at this.
I've had some success at reducing styrofoam and #5 plastics that are brought into the house - because we can't afford Chinese take out any more (comes in #5 black plastic bowls with a translucent plastic lid) nor can we afford to eat out (leftover brought home in styrofoam plastic boxes). OTOH many of our groceries still come into the house in plastic bags, because we fail to use the cloth bags. Even at Aldi's, where we use bags from home, the bags we re-use are the plastic bags from other stores.
Implementing a system other than Gladware for refrigerator food storage has also been a failure. I can't buy Pyrex replacements (which still have plastic lids) and I am afraid that if I DID use them I'd break them. I drop things. A lot. And we have regular 'landslides' in our freezer and refrigerator.
I'm going to keep looking for metal bowls of all sizes at garage sales, in the hopes that they will be useful for fridge storage. I would be able to use aluminum foil to cover them with ... not that the mining and refining of THAT is not destructive to the environment, just that aluminum foil can be recycled more readily than plastic wrap can be. Like - it can be recycled at all.
Thursday, April 5, 2012
Who's Green?
Blessings Darlings!
Earth hour was March 31. I KNOW I wrote about it a few years back, but I can't find where. It might have been somewhere other than my blog. Oh well. I find it rather a feel-good gimmick, similar to clicking 'like' on a picture on Facebook thinking that's going to change something.
But it got me to thinking about how environmentally 'green' most neopagans are, by looking at me.
By most of those 'measure your environmental footprint' things .... our family uses less resources than 'average' in America. Which of course means NOTHING, since the 'average' American uses a disproportionately high amount of resources. And those measurement tools don't count how many resources your job uses. We're lucky that way - since we work at home at least it DOES take that into account for us.
But .... if we used our fireplace for heat, using the 100% non-fossil fuel of wood, it would be GREAT for helping stretch out the end of oil .... but it would be TERRIBLE for air quality, pumping incredible amounts of particulates and carbon dioxide into the air.
I'm online a HECK of a lot, as a part of my work. That means that I share responsibility for the raping of the groundwater in Silicon Valley, the work conditions in factories in Asia, environmental damage from mining and refining rare earth elements used in the batteries and such.
It's not like my coven is in the town I live in, either. It's 65 miles away. The denomination covenstead is 190.
I can, and pretty much do, recycle every scrap of paper, every bit of plastic, every bottle, etc. than comes into the house. That does not negate the energy that went into making them, the pollution they generated, the mining/drilling/etc. Heck, recycling some of them take more water than creating them from scratch. Recycling doesn't mean not consuming.
Right now my dishwasher is running. In part because it uses less water than washing that many dishes by hand, and in part because it sanitizes the dishes better than I can do by hand. Saves water, saves electricity used for heating and pumping water, but uses electricity to run.
The fact that I cook from scratch actually causes me to use MORE energy than if I didn't. It woul be FAR more energy efficient to have a central bakery do all the baking, a central kitchen do all the cooking. Cafeteria food is efficient. It is not what I'd like to eat. It is not HOW I'd like to eat, giving up deciding what to feed my family personally. But environmentally - not having every house have a kitchen thus saving on all the appliances, cooking in big batches not individual family servings - is better for the environment.
All this before even looking at the coffee and chocolate issues. Or citrus issues (that's sure not a locally grown item, either). Or my beloved avocados.
Yeah, I only spend 12 minutes a week showering - I time it. In, wet down, turn off water, soap, rinse, do the same for the hair. Rain water, mostly, for the garden - tho' right now we're kind of droughty already so who knows what this summer will be like. Clothes line for laundry, but I can't afford to get the washer fixed and the cold water line is blocked .... so it's washing with warm to hot water, not cold.
Everything has trade offs. We have cats, how much less can I vacuum without cat hair being everywhere? How many holes in my husbands underwear before we have to toss it? Bleaching the tighty whities isn't happening, the better to make them last longer. They are now tighty off-whities.
The freezer that saves me HUGE amounts of money on food ... uses electricity to run, and wasn't great for the environment to manufacture. Two cycle engines, like on tillers for the garden, are TERRIBLE for polluting the air. Deer netting is made from plastic - other mesh is from metals that involve mining and refining, too.
The 'measure your footprint' things say I'm green. I look at my life and know I'm not. At all. "Relative to other Americans' is a foolish comparison.
Frondly, Fern
Earth hour was March 31. I KNOW I wrote about it a few years back, but I can't find where. It might have been somewhere other than my blog. Oh well. I find it rather a feel-good gimmick, similar to clicking 'like' on a picture on Facebook thinking that's going to change something.
But it got me to thinking about how environmentally 'green' most neopagans are, by looking at me.
By most of those 'measure your environmental footprint' things .... our family uses less resources than 'average' in America. Which of course means NOTHING, since the 'average' American uses a disproportionately high amount of resources. And those measurement tools don't count how many resources your job uses. We're lucky that way - since we work at home at least it DOES take that into account for us.
But .... if we used our fireplace for heat, using the 100% non-fossil fuel of wood, it would be GREAT for helping stretch out the end of oil .... but it would be TERRIBLE for air quality, pumping incredible amounts of particulates and carbon dioxide into the air.
I'm online a HECK of a lot, as a part of my work. That means that I share responsibility for the raping of the groundwater in Silicon Valley, the work conditions in factories in Asia, environmental damage from mining and refining rare earth elements used in the batteries and such.
It's not like my coven is in the town I live in, either. It's 65 miles away. The denomination covenstead is 190.
I can, and pretty much do, recycle every scrap of paper, every bit of plastic, every bottle, etc. than comes into the house. That does not negate the energy that went into making them, the pollution they generated, the mining/drilling/etc. Heck, recycling some of them take more water than creating them from scratch. Recycling doesn't mean not consuming.
Right now my dishwasher is running. In part because it uses less water than washing that many dishes by hand, and in part because it sanitizes the dishes better than I can do by hand. Saves water, saves electricity used for heating and pumping water, but uses electricity to run.
The fact that I cook from scratch actually causes me to use MORE energy than if I didn't. It woul be FAR more energy efficient to have a central bakery do all the baking, a central kitchen do all the cooking. Cafeteria food is efficient. It is not what I'd like to eat. It is not HOW I'd like to eat, giving up deciding what to feed my family personally. But environmentally - not having every house have a kitchen thus saving on all the appliances, cooking in big batches not individual family servings - is better for the environment.
All this before even looking at the coffee and chocolate issues. Or citrus issues (that's sure not a locally grown item, either). Or my beloved avocados.
Yeah, I only spend 12 minutes a week showering - I time it. In, wet down, turn off water, soap, rinse, do the same for the hair. Rain water, mostly, for the garden - tho' right now we're kind of droughty already so who knows what this summer will be like. Clothes line for laundry, but I can't afford to get the washer fixed and the cold water line is blocked .... so it's washing with warm to hot water, not cold.
Everything has trade offs. We have cats, how much less can I vacuum without cat hair being everywhere? How many holes in my husbands underwear before we have to toss it? Bleaching the tighty whities isn't happening, the better to make them last longer. They are now tighty off-whities.
The freezer that saves me HUGE amounts of money on food ... uses electricity to run, and wasn't great for the environment to manufacture. Two cycle engines, like on tillers for the garden, are TERRIBLE for polluting the air. Deer netting is made from plastic - other mesh is from metals that involve mining and refining, too.
The 'measure your footprint' things say I'm green. I look at my life and know I'm not. At all. "Relative to other Americans' is a foolish comparison.
Frondly, Fern
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