Twenty-Three - Box Spring / Mattress Recycle

No matter where you go in Atlanta, just about every other day Guthrie and I would see a discarded mattress on the side of the road. More locally, according to MPR, Minnesotans purchase more than 600,000 mattresses a year. They also mention how you can recycle mattress and box springs through Goodwill Industries in Duluth so that some parts will become carpet underlay, the wood frames become fuel for a local paper mill, and the cotton gets turned into oil filters for locomotives. Though the still have throw away the fiber layer (like we did) and the springs right now have no other major use -- though they are working on it.

Guthrie and I bought a new bed frame that does not require a squeaking box spring... what to do? Next year, Guthrie and I will be expanding our garden. We were so happy to use recycled wood for our first raised bed, but I know the pile from my sister's deck will not be enough to create the size we are looking for. Our new raised bed will be made out of our old box spring -- and it's already in a box shape! How convenient. :) I came across this idea after a Google search for "recycle old box spring."

There are other great ideas, like this box spring book shelf or this cool couch made out of both a box spring and mattress.

Peace!

More on Water Conservation - And, If It's Yellow...

I found this awesome website from National Geographic on water conservation. This is a water footprint calculator. It's simple and the graphics are super cute! You see your water level rise and lower as you answer questions about your water usage. 

I love this excerpt from the website: 

"We live in a watery world, with the average American lifestyle fueled by nearly 2,000 gallons of H2O a day. What may come as a surprise is that very little of that--only five percent--runs through toilets, taps, and garden hoses at home. Nearly 95% of your water footprint is hidden in the food you eat, energy you use, products you buy, and services you rely on."

Did you know the average American showers for 8 minutes? 1,600 gallons are use to produce 1 pound of beef?

One thing the survey asks is: do you flush the toilet when you pee? It's a funny question, but honestly, many people would answer no or sometimes. I finding out there are more people who don't flush when they pee than I thought. Guthrie and I are definitely in the sometimes category (except when company is over or we know the next person isn't around and it will sit there awhile. There is a phrase: if it's yellow, let it mellow. It's like having a dueling flush toilet. :-) If you don't want to let it sit, I usually ask Guthrie after I pee -- do you need to go? Chances are, he does. When he is peeing, I usually think -- man, I need to go, too! and so I shout "don't flush!" Instant water conservation. 

So, after you complete the survey and you want to reduce your water consumption, click here for ways to do it -- though some of it becomes obvious through the survey. 

Peace!

Twenty-Two - Eco Cleaning

As it gets colder, Guthrie and I are spending more time indoors. We have honestly been a little neglectful of our household cleaning chores. With fall coming on, Guthrie and I are not only going to be better about cleaning, we are going to change how we clean, making a greater commitment to green cleaning.

There is one book that has changed my life. Green Clean: The Environmentally Sound Guide to Cleaning Your Home. One of the best parts about it is that it is water and stain resistant -- I can drop it in the toilet as I am cleaning and the book will be fine! (All facts listed below are from the book unless otherwise noted.)

Housekeeping and cleaning products is a $18 billion industry! The average American household uses 40 pounds of cleaning products a year and scientists at the National Toxicology Program found that 5-10 percent of all of the chemicals in many of those products could be carcinogenic in humans. Up until World War II, the main household cleaning products were simple: baking soda, distilled white vinegar, salt, and lemon juice. Chemicals that were developed for warfare needed some re-branding once the war was over and so they were introduced into cleaning, building, pesticide, and cosmetic products. Ick! Not only were these marketed as making your life easier, they were also "disposable" filling our homes with toxic fumes (oven cleaner, anyone?) and polluting our rivers. A five year study in the late 80s by scientists at Harvard found that home air pollution was 2-5 times worse that the air quality outside--and our cleaners have not changed much since the late 80s. Honestly, should we really be cleaning our homes with items that have poison labels on them? And most products aren't even properly labeled!

So now what? That sounds disgusting, but we've been cleaning like that for years. I'm no scientist; what can I do? What I like best about Green Clean is its philosophy when tackling these questions. Going green does not have to be done blitzkrieg-style. "Going" is a present-progessive verb (sorry! I'm in a grammar class right now!), which describe what is happening now and in the future. Just like how Guthrie and I are making one change each week, each task we take on can be broken up into smaller steps depending on your comfort level. What is important is that you are making changes in your life and addressing the fact that your current lifestyles are not sustainable -- no matter how big or small the changes are. To quote the book, "The first step of green cleaning is commitment." Small changes are, well, more sustainable. If you look at your cleaning supplies and see the windex, scrubbing bubbles, Mr. Clean, Tide, Pledge, etc, you might want to start with simply buying greener products. I see tons at my co-op, but they are also at Cub, Target, Walmart, etc. Look for Seventh Generation, Mrs. Myers (local!), Ecos, Method, Dr. Bonners, Restore (local!), etc.

For good cleaning, you also need good (reusable!) tools. Cloth tools (we use all of Guthrie's old t-shirts), rags, bucket, mop, broom, scrub brushes, etc. Rid yourself of those paper towels, swifter sheets, dryer sheets, disposable (wasteful) items. You're cleaning, right? You shouldn't have to leave a whole mess in the garbage. Think you can't live without sponges, dryer sheets, paper towels, and windex? Read this. Don't want to give up your swiffer? (I confess: I really want one of those) Here are great ideas for a reusable swiffer. If you don't knit, I know you can buy them off of Esty.

Part of green cleaning, as the book suggests, if the act of maintaining a clean house so that you don't have to use super harsh chemicals to clean up messes that have been left for too long, or you need a bomb to remove all of the mildew from your bathroom. Guthrie and I have taken the advice from the book and have created cleaning schedules. We have our daily cleaning list, a weekly list, and monthly tasks. We have divided the monthly tasks up to rotate so that we always do 1/4 of those tasks each week to keep the load even spread out. Finally, we have a seasonal cleaning list for those things you only need to do a few times a year. Everyone's is going to look a little different, especially renters v. home owners. This helps to ensure that we don't miss a spot and that we stay consistent. Plus, with each week it gets a little easier.

If you are a bit more ambitious, and already have some of those products, consider taking it a step further. By making my own cleaners, I am buying the products in bulk; saving on waste and eliminating more unnecessary ingredients. Here are my staples:

-Baking soda
-Distilled White Vinegar*
-Washing soda (found at my local hardware store)
-Castille soap (Dr. Bonner's is great)
-Borax (20 Mule Team)
-Lemon Juice
-Salt
-Essential oils

*Please don't let the vinegar smell deter you. If you can't get past it, just start with more eco-friendly cleaning products that are already made (many have vinegar in it and you would never know!). Making a commitment to sustainability is about making changes. Guthrie and I did not grow up using tennis balls in the dryer, buying used clothes, and composting -- these were lifestyle changes we made. In order to make these changes, we need to change our perspective. As far as cleaning goes, just because I learned to associate the intense smell of the lemony-scented chemical cleaners as being clean doesn't mean that's the only way. It took some time, but now the soft smell of vinegar and lemon (real lemon) and orange and tea tree oil smells like clean to me. Not only is it clean, but it is also safe for you, your family, and Mother Nature.

Okay, off my box. Now on to recipes! I have made almost all of these. Just waiting for the laundry detergent and the liquid dish soap to run out before I make those. If you make a batch, just make sure you label them properly and put the date on them. Most will keep indefinitely, but it's nice to use them within a year of making.

All Purpose Cleaner
1/4 cup vinegar
2 teaspoons borax
32 oz hot water
1/4 cup liquid dish soap
20 drops lemon oil (or other essential oil)

Dissolve borax in hot water. Add with vinegar into a spray bottle. Add the liquid soap next, then the essential oil. Shake to mix.

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Window Cleaner

1/4 cup white vinegar in one quart warm water 

Mix in a spray bottle

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Wood Floor Cleaner

1/2 cup vinegar / gallon of water

Use a mop or rag and wipe dry.

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Wood Furniture Polish

1/2 teaspoon olive oil

1/4 cup vinegar

Mix in a glass jar and dab on a soft rag

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Fabric Softener
Until Guthrie and I run out of our powdered detergent and make the recipe listed below, this is what we will do in the mean time:
Add 1/2 cup of vinegar and a 1/2 cup of baking soda to the wash with 1/2 of our regular detergent. This cleans well, softens, and reduces cling.

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Laundry Detergent from Bonzai Aphrodite (she also gives a great description of each of the ingredients)
1 1/4 cups white vinegar
1 cup baking soda
1 cup washing soda
1 cup borax
1/4 cup liquid castile soap (if you use unscented, as essential oil at the end)

Mix in a large, non-metal bowl. Start with the vinegar and continuously stir as you add each powder. Try to stir out and break up any clumps. Finish with the liquid soap. It will seem wet, like a thin paste, but keep stirring and it will begin to flake and crumble into a moist "powder" detergent. Keep stirring! If you quit too soon, you'll find a hard mass the next time you use it. (Did I mention that green cleaning could also double as a workout?). You'll end up with a sort of soft, clumpy cake-like loaf that will crumble off easily for use.

Store in a lidded container (like a jar) and use about 1/4 cup per load.

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Dish Soap
1 cup liquid Castile soap (Dr. Bonners)
3 tablespoons water
a few drops of essential oils if you are using unscented Castile soap
mix well and put in either reuse a dish soap bottle or pick up something cool looking like a vinegar dispenser.

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Even though we don't have one, here's one for a dishwasher:
Dishwasher Detergent
1 part borax
1 part washing soda
distilled white vinegar

Combine powders in a bowl, mix well, and put in an air tight container (like an old jar).
Use 1 tablespoon per load and add 1/2 cup of vinegar to the rinse cycle (or if you forget to check like me, through it in with the wash).

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Toilet Bowl Cleaner
Dissolve 1/2 cup borax in 1 gallon of water (this could be down with the toilet water)
Scrub toilet, let sit, and flush to rinse!

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Drain Cleaning
1 cup of baking soda
1/4 cup salt
1 cup vinegar
pour each down drain in that order and wait 15 minutes
pour boiling water down the drain to flush

Pour boiling water down the drain every two-four weeks to keep it clear

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Oven Cleaner

1 cup or more of baking soda

Squirt or two of liquid soap

Sprinkle water generously over bottom of oven, the cover the grime with baking soda so it is white. Sprinkle more water on top. Let sit overnight and wipe the next morning (or in a few hours is you can't wait that long--even 20 minutes is better than nothing!). Wash residue with liquid soap on damp rag.

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Rust Remover (for sinks and tubs)

Sprinkle a little bit of salt on rust, squeeze line over the salt until soaked. Let set 2-3 hours. Use lime rind as a scrubber.

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Kitchen/Bathroom Tile Floor Cleaner (for bigger messes)
1/8 cup liquid soap
1/4-1/2 cup white vinegar
20-30 drops peppermint oil (or other essential oil)
Combine in a pail with 3 gallons warm water. Swirl until sudsy. Rinse with 1 cup vinegar in 3 gallons of water.

Deodorize a Stinky Little Box
Mix a few tablespoons with kitty litter to deodorize.

***Need more ideas for Borax? Click here for 20 or so other uses of the 20 Mule Team. Or simply read the box for ideas on how to remove stains.

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Eco Way of Hand-Washing Dishes
To save on water, use the two basin technique like we just started doing after reading Green Clean. Fill the first basin with hot soapy water and the second with very hot clean water. Put 1-3 tablespoons of distilled white vinegar in the rinsing basin to help prevent spots in hard water. 

Peace!

Twenty-One - Line Drying Clothes (And General Tips on Washing and Drying)

Line Drying

Since moving to MN in June, Guthrie and I have made an effort to have even our clothes enjoy the summer breeze. We started line drying as often as we could on the already-in-place clothes line outside. Though, we do this a lot more, it was not a complete life-style change for us. To make this a real change, Guthrie and I have added some lines downstairs to continue the air drying, even as our summer days grow short and chilly. The Green Year says that dryers use up about 6% of all of the energy in the United States! Short on space? Don't have an ugly, unfinished basement to hang up ugly lines like I did today? Invest in a drying rack. They come in all different shapes and sizes, wall mounted to stand along, and take up little space. Here are a couple of choices from Moss Envy near Lake Calhoun (former TC Green in Uptown): Wall Mounted / Flat Top / Heavy Duty

Worried that line dryer will make your clothes crunchy and hard? Here are some great fabric softener ideas (less expensive than anything you buy at the store and just as effective!) from Renest:

1. Baking Soda - Add 1/2 cup to the water and let it dissolve. Add clothes.
2. Borax - Add 1/4 cup to the rinse cycle.
3. Vinegar - Add 3/4 - 1 cup to either the wash or the rinse.

Detergent
Does anyone still use the powdered laundry detergent? We do. We returned to it in Atlanta when we were looking to save money. Some don't like it because it can clump, but most people aren't actually running their washing according to the directions. You are suppose to fill the washer with water first and add the detergent, and THEN put your clothes in. This is important because powdered detergent, according to The Green Year, actually is the more eco-friendly product. Liquid detergent is almost 80% water -- a resource we shouldn't waste. If you have a dish washer, consider powder detergent there as well.

Dryer Lint
Remember to clean the lint screen before every use. Not only does this help protect against fires, it help keeps the machine running with ease. Built up lint prevents air from flowing through the drying, making it work hard and run inefficiently.

Need more reasons to line dry? Click here for a ReNest Top Ten. Want to further green your cleaning? Check it out next week -- Green Cleaning!

Oh, Eliot says, "hi!"

Peace!

Twenty - Food Preservation: Freezing

Renest had a great post about reconnecting with the skills our grandparents possessed, but that sadly, with modernization, these skills were almost lost with the next. I know with the green movement there are many cooking from scratch and growing their own gardens, but what happens when the garden grows well and we are left with too much?

We can eat scalloped tomatoes until we a blue in the face, or give away food to family and friends, but we can also can and freeze so that we can enjoy some of the wonderful local goodness when the snow covers the ground (wow, I don't even want to think about it).

Canning, sadly, seems like a scary endeavor to me. There are many steps and one slip can spoil everything -- literarily. I hope to have a post someday about my adventures with canning, but that may have to wait for next summer when our garden is bigger and our need is greater.

Instead, we will freeze. I feel that I have never learned to utilize my freezer. Now we are freezing milk and stalking up on things like bread when they are on sale, but that's about it. (Of course, there are always Amy's Bowls and a frozen pizza, but that's not quite what I mean.) So today I start. I am making a batch of tomato sauce from scratch and am going to freeze it. Yum!

First I have to skin and seed the tomatoes. There are simple directions here if needed. Then you make the sauce! I am going to make plain sauce so that I can change it up and add to it when I make unfreeze it for meals later. When it's done, I put it into a plastic bag and put in the freezer! Make sure you label it and put a date. It will last about three months. Here are some tips and recipes for a fresh tomato sauce from the Smitten Kitchen. Deb really puts my pictures to shame, but she is really in the business of food porn. :)

Putting the sauce in the freezer is also helping to make our freezer more efficient. From The Green Year by Jodi Helmer again, your freezer and fridge are responsible for up to 1/6 of the energy used in your home. I definitely believe that here in the apartment. Keeping the freezer full actually helps to increase its efficiency because there is less space to trap the warm air that enters each time you open it (though not true of a full fridge--overstocking a fridge is less efficient). Since we are not just going to run out and buy 100 frozen pizzas (though Guthrie would not object to that), we are going to add a couple of jugs of distilled water we have left over from a botched detox attempt (you can see a jug in the picture below).

Also, remember the milk carton ice block idea? Guthrie and I walked to a friends for dinner last night (thanks, Aaron!) and used the ice block to keep the cheese and wine chilled on the steamy trek across the park.

Peace!

100 Days Without Oil

I discovered this wonderful blog by a graduate student, Molly Eagen, at the University of Minnesota earning her Masters of Science in Sustainable Design. Sounds like she lives very near to where I used to live on Franklin and Lyndale. Though it's not 100 days without any oil at all, very hard to do, she reduces her carbon footprint a lot and really examines a life without oil. She has interesting ideas, some that are already inspiring us to move towards these changes as well. It's a more specific way of looking at being sustainable and a very challenging task. Read and enjoy as I do each day.

100 Days Without Oil

Peace!