Going Green in Comfort

( Beverly Omalley / FreeRangeStock.com ) From food to housing to the technology at our hands, we get a lot of use out of our planet. That's why I want to spend this holiday by showing my appreciation. For those who'd like to do the same, I offer the following suggestions for a greener Thanksgiving: Shop locally for what you can. Get as many ingredients as possible from farmers markets and stores with locally sourced foods. It might mean making a few nontraditional side dishes, but this could be the start of new traditions among your family and friends. Minimize your packaging. Cleanup will be tougher if you opt to use your own roasters and pie pans instead of aluminum ones you can throw away, but isn't our planet worth a little extra scrubbing? Likewise, forgo paper plates, plastic utensils and paper cups, if at all possible. Also, when you shop, take your own reusable bags. Put leftovers to use . Food rotting in landfills contributes to up to 25 percent of me...

Recycle or upcycle My daughter and her second-grade classmates recently learned a little about recycling and got to do a little upcycling in the process. The assignment: Turn discarded items you find around the home into something useful. My daughter’s idea: A tin-can “robot army” that functions as a desk organizer. Because a person can use only so many pens and pencils, my husband and I recommended that she scale it down to a single pencil holder, but we both agreed that making it look like a robot would be adorable. She created a face on a circle of cardboard and made robot “feet” out of the bays of an egg carton. She drew start and stop buttons onto used paper, and cut slivers of cardboard and glued them on the side to look like arms. In the end, it looked very little like a robot, and, to be honest, if I were to go to the store and buy a pencil holder, I’d choose one that looked a lot more generic than what she created (though, once the one she made comes b...

In 12 years, my daughter will be 19. Another round of midterms will be just weeks away, and for the first time, my daughter and her peers will be old enough to vote. But if we haven't acted by then to limit global warming to a 1.5 degree Celsius temperature increase, there will likely be little those new voters can do to alter what could be a very bleak future, according to the U.N. report on climate change released Oct. 6, 2018. Even at a 1.5-degree increase, we'd have problems — and already do at the current 1-degree increase. The effects can be felt not just in extreme weather, but in crop yields, heat-related deaths, flooding, and more. But those negative impacts increase rapidly as the world heats up, even by a fraction of a degree, the report shows. The Guardian compiled a graphic showing the impacts and threats by degree, based on the U.N. report, that shows coral reefs already are at high to very high risk. (Scroll down on the previous link to "Rising Tem...

The headlines on climate change over the past couple of weeks have been down-right depressing. Have you missed it? Here are just a few links I recommend. From the New Yorker: The dire warnings from the United Nations' latest climate-change report From CNN: What the new report on climate change expects from you Opinion from The Boston Globe: Climate change: A crisis that can't be ignored From Vox: 4 big takeaways from the UN's alarming climate change report You know that old phrase, "Don't sh*t where you eat"? Well, we've been doing it in spades, and we're already seeing the negative impacts. According to the science outlined in the articles above, we are on course to do serious damage to our food supply and our homes. With the U.S. midterms less than a month away, I urge everyone concerned about the course we're on to get out and vote for the candidate most likely to support protecting our environment. It's the greenest action ...

FreeRangeStock.com My iPhone 6s has had a few problems lately. The battery seems to run down a lot faster, and occasionally, the phone locks up and I have to reboot it. For now, those are both problems I can live with. But I have a feeling I might need to start thinking about getting a new one soon. I'm so glad to see that these days, there are tons of places to recycle a smartphone. That wasn't always the case. But now, I can drop a used phone off at Best Buy or other locations, or I can mail it to several websites for a little extra cash. There's even an ATM machine at our local mall that I can drop it in and get a like $15 back. I just love that so many places are making recycling outdated technology simpler!

( Merelize / FreeRangeStock.com ) I need to buy lemons, lot of lemons, for the thorough cleaning my home desperately needs. I've for a long time that people use lemons to clean, but I didn't realize how powerful they can be. According to an article on GreenAmerica.com, lemon juice can cut grease . I had no idea. The same site lists a bunch of other natural cleaners I already knew about — like vinegar, baking soda, club soda, hydrogen peroxide, and borax — but also a few that surprised me, including: Corn meal to soak up spills on a carpet. Olive oil as a furniture polish. Some essential oils may have antibacterial and antifungal properties. " Get Things Clean the Natural Way ," a post on the Better Homes & Gardens website, adds a few more natural cleaners: Salt as an abrasive cleaner.  Microfiber cloths to remove germs. Do you have more tips for green cleaning? Please share in the comments below.

(Image from Pixabay) "That's wasteful." I heard my mom say those two words when I was a kid more times than I could count. Now, I find myself saying it to my own daughter. My husband reminds her to turn off the light whenever she leaves a room, and she needs lots of reminders. I have been tackling how much water she uses at bath time. When she first started taking a bath by herself, my daughter was pretty good with the amount of water she used, but at some point, my husband and I noticed that we've been hearing her start and stop the water more than once. Who knows how long she had been doing that before we noticed? Judging by the size of our water bills, I'd say it was probably four months. So I asked her about it. It turns out she was running fresh water for three reasons: To rinse herself off. Apparently, she had been using so much soap that the water was too soapy to rinse herself. To rinse out the tub. Her dad is usually the first o...

I've been rinsing and saving food cans for more than a year. We FINALLY have accrued enough to make taking them in for recycling worth the drive to the recycling center. We buy only a can or two per shopping trip, so they've been really slow to add up. I'm also in the mood for doing a whole lot of house cleaning and getting rid of a lot of stuff we no longer use. Perhaps I'll be able to find more recyclable metal around the house while I'm at it, though I doubt it. I think most of what I'll be getting rid of will be clothing and toys my daughter has outgrown. We do have a bunch of modem/routers, which for some reason, back when we had DSL cable never seemed to work for more than six months or so straight, so this will be my chance to drop those off as well.

Oatmeal for breakfast © Sugar0607 |  Dreamstime Stock Photos  &  Stock Free Images I'm on the hunt for grab-n-go breakfasts that meet the following criteria: Require no cooking to save on electricity. Are healthful. Can be made using all eco-friendly, organic ingredients. Because I bought a big tub of oatmeal a few months back that I've never opened, I figured oatmeal recipes were a good place to start. So I googled ideas on grab-n-go, no-cook oatmeal, and found quite a few out there that say to just let oatmeal soak overnight, then just grab it on your way out the door the next day. So for the past few days, that's been my breakfast: A bowl of oatmeal soaked overnight in water (many recipes call for yogurt or milk, but I'm trying to avoid sugars, so I just opt for water). I toss in a few pecans and chia seeds, and dig in. I was surprised to find I like it. I really didn't expect to. (Though I recommend stirring in some salt.) To vary...

© Mpalis |  Dreamstime Stock Photos  &  Stock Free Images Balancing my checkbook is a chore for me. Once a month or so, I'll print out the list of everything that has gone through my account and reconcile my register with what the bank says I have. Because I put off this task, printing my statement takes several pages. This past weekend, I printed more pages than I ever have: a whopping 12 pages of debits and credits. I was shocked it took that many pages and I felt guilty for — let's just call it what it is — wasting that much paper. But when you wait three, four, five weeks or so to see where your checkbook stands, it helps to have a printout to cross off items you've already noted or circle items you can't remember making. That got me thinking: I need to do my checkbook more often. Oh, it's a thought I've had before, but this was the first time I realized that I don't need to fire up my computer to balance my checkbook. My bank app makes acce...

Earlier this year, I wrote about going shampoo-free to reduce my use of chemicals and to eliminate plastic shampoo bottles in my garbage. My experiment lasted about a month, but I just could not figure out how to stop my hair from looking oily. My plan was to figure out the best way to go water-only, then teach my daughter and husband the same techniques. © Aleksask |  Dreamstime Stock Photos  &  Stock Free Images   But over time, as I struggled to figure out what tips and tricks might get that icky greasy look out of my hair, I’ve added regular old shampoo back into my morning routine. It started off small, just adding a few drops of my daughter’s shampoo onto my head and working it into a lather about once a week. Then it became every other day, and now I’m back to every day. So much for water-only. I might try it again someday, but in the meantime, I have another plan: Organic shampoo bars. I first learned they existed just this past weekend while ...

One day last week as I putting away my groceries, I learned a little something about Aldi . There, on the side of the bag I had purchased was a notice that the bag was made from 100 percent recycled material and is 100 percent recyclable. I’ve been using those bags for several months now, and that was the first time I had paid attention to what was written on it. It’s just one of many reasons I enjoy shopping at Aldi. About eight or nine years ago when the grocery chain opened its first location near me, I visited its website and learned a little about ways the chain tries to minimize its impact on the environment , from the way the stores are built to having LED lights at all locations and using solar energy at some. I don’t know a thing about the environmental policy of other major retailers I patronize, and it occurred to me recently that I probably should. So that’s on my to-do list: Find out which stores actively work to reduce their carbon footprint and make adjustm...

This time of year, our electricity usage goes up, thanks to two items we use now that we hardly ever use past October 1 — the air conditioner and the ice maker. (Photo by Chance Agrella / FreeRangeStock.com ) I’ve decided that this year I’m going to implement as many changes as possible to offset my household’s summer electricity usage. Maybe I watch less TV or make more meals that require less cooking. So far, those are the only two ideas I’ve had, so hopefully, more will come to me. Do you have any tricks to off-set the cost of cooling your home in the summer? Please feel free to share.

(Photo by Chotthanin Udomwariyawat / FreeRangeStock.com ) Thanks to the generosity of friends and family, having a baby six years ago didn't bring financial disaster to my husband and me. We got many necessities (and a few non-essentials) at the baby shower, and we have received tons of hand-me-downs my oldest niece had outgrown and a very generous collection of garage-sale finds from one of my best friends. Within months of my daughter's birth, we, too, we're amassing a pile of out-grown clothes and things our daughter had outgrown. I had no idea what to do with them all. At first, we put them back, thinking maybe, just maybe, another baby might come along. When that didn't happen within the first couple of years, I started thinking about what to do. Thankfully, my younger sister soon had a daughter of her own, and everything I had that was still usable found a new home. I know passing along clothing, especially among people with growing children, is a commo...

(Photo by MJ / FreeRangestock.com ) My kitchen faucet has had a slow drip for months, but because my husband and I were worried about the cost of getting it fixed, we kept putting off calling a plumber. You know how it goes: You think to yourself, "I'll take care of it as soon as I can But one day last week, our backyard faucet started dripping, too, and we felt we couldn't ignore the problem anymore. My husband made an appointment to get both faucets fixed, and now, for the first time in about half a year, we can sit in our living room without listening to the drip, drip, drip coming from the kitchen. The repair was recent enough that we have no idea if it will make a difference in the amount of water we use every month, but I've heard that even a slow drip can really add up . I found a calculator on the U.S. Geological Survey website that can tell you how much water is wasted by a dripping faucet. All you have to do is plug in how often the faucet drips...

(Photo by Jack Moreh / FreeRangeStock.com ) One day last week, my daughter said to me, "Plastic is bad for the environment." I was surprised she knew this. Even though I've been trying to reduce our plastic use, I've never really said a whole lot to her about why. So I told her she was right, but added, "How did you know that?" "Octonauts," she said. For those who might not be familiar with "Octonauts," here's a quick explainer: It's an animated series featuring a troop of anthropomorphized cats and vegetables who travel the ocean saving sea creatures. Episodes include facts about the animals being rescued, such as feeding habits or how they breathe, etc. One episode my daughter had watched earlier that day featured the main characters saving sea creatures from a "garbage patch" in the ocean and mentioned how animals can inadvertently ingest plastic and get sick. The next time my daughter had a ...

Could you do without your refrigerator? (Photo by Chance Agrella / FreeRangeStock.com ) Let me just say right up front: I’m not ready to try this. Not even a little bit. But I have been mulling it over. What would it take to get rid of my fridge? The idea came to me when I was googling whether unplugging electronics when not in use saves a lot of electricity or if the savings are only minuscule. (Note: I never found a definitive answer, so I figured I’d give it a shot and see for myself.) Several of the sites I stumbled upon contained discussions on whether a refrigerator could be unplugged overnight. That is not an option in my neck of the woods. It can get way too hot, even at night, to trust that the food within would stay safe to eat if the fridge were unplugged for eight hours or so. But it did get me thinking: The fridge is probably in the top 3 electricity users in my home, if not the biggest. Could I get by without it? Technically, yes, I could. I know this beca...

(Photo by Chance Agrella / Freerangestock.com ) Do you ever have a much larger than normal electric bill but have no idea why? That's happened to us a time or two, but it's been a long while. Until last month, that is. My electricity usage for February was a little more than 300 kilowatts higher what it was in February 2017. That's a nearly 50 percent increase from what my household typically uses this time of year, and I have no clue what caused the surge. We had a cold spell, but that's typical. I worked from home a couple of days when my daughter was  sick, but I doubt the 16 hours I spent on my computer used 300 kilowatts. The last time we had an unexpectedly high usage month, the element that heats the water in our water heater had malfunctioned, and the water heater was running constantly in a futile attempt to get the water to the desired temperature. Perhaps something like that is occurring again, but I don’t know what it could be. Hopefully, our Ma...

(Photo by Chance Agrella / FreeRangeStock.com ) For one of my first posts, I wrote about changing how I washed my hair, ditching the store-bought shampoo for baking soda and apple cider vinegar . Recently, I decided to go one step further. What if all I used was water? The hope was that doing so would be healthier for my scalp and possibly reduce the amount of hair I shed on any given day. (Seriously, it comes out in tuff sometimes when I just run my fingers through it. I am often amazed I have any hair left.) The added benefit for the planet would be less trash going into the landfill. So I rinsed my hair every day, going through all of the motions of washing it. For a few days, it felt fine. After that, it started to feel a little greasy to the touch at the top of my head. Figuring I hadn't been the only person to try going water-only on her hair, I googled for tips. I came across an article, " The Ultimate Water-Only Hair Washing Routine," written by a woma...

(Photo by Jack Moreh / Freerangestock.com ) One day last week, I came across a YouTube video of Native American elder Oren R. Lyons speaking about being responsible to future generations. (You can view the video at the bottom of this post.) “Seventh generation reminds you that you have responsibility to generations that are coming,” he says. After listening to the video a few times, I was struck by the thought of us being responsible seven generations into the future. Since the day my daughter was born, I’ve believed I’m responsible for her and for her children, but I never really thought of beyond that. Since I watched the video, I’ve found myself thinking often about the choices I make. How do they affect future generations? Not just for my daughter. Not just for her children, but even beyond that. And as a result, I’ve made a few choices I might not have otherwise — planning out a trip to run errands ahead of time to minimize drive time and save gas, balancing my checkbo...

( Chance Agrella / FreeRangeStock.com ) Beginning tonight, I am going to turn off the power strip to which my computer and printer are connected. I don't know if it will result in a noticeable energy savings, because some things I see online say the savings would be negligible. Others say unplugging is worth doing. I guess the only way to know for sure is to give it a shot myself. The hardest part, of course, will be remembering to turn it off each night. I'll follow up on this after I've had a chance to see how much, if any, my electricity use reflects the change.

(Image by Stuart Miles / FreeRangeStock.com ) The other day as I was cooking dinner, I came to the end of a roll of aluminum foil. I teasing tapped my daughter on her head with the cardboard tube that remained, then started to throw it in the trash. “Can I have that?” my daughter asked. “I can use it to make something.” “Sure,” I said, and handed it over. My daughter took the tube and headed off to her bedroom. Later, she reappeared, using the tube as a pole that held up one of her drawings like a flag. This is just one of the many reasons I am often in awe of my daughter. She always can often see the possibilities in an item I considered to be trash. She stops me from throwing something away at least once a month. Most of the time, it’s a box or something like those cardboard canisters that oatmeal comes in. She’ll turn it into a home for her dolls, or a fence for her toy horse, and, ocassionally, something as simple as a stick for holding up a drawing. Most days, I tos...

This smoke alarm, installed in my home some 27 years before we bought the house, gave out on the first day of 2018. At 1:50 a.m. Jan. 1, 2018, my smoke alarm decided it had had enough. It sounded off for a few seconds, long enough to wake me up, but not long enough for me to register what that noise was. I just thought it was something I had dreamed. So I rolled over to go back to sleep. And then the alarm went off again, this time for a longer duration. I was fully awake then, and so was my husband. We wandered around the house looking for something on fire — or at least smoking — and found nothing. Then the alarm went back off. Over the next few hours, the alarm, which is hardwired into our house, would go off every 20 minutes or so for several seconds, then go back out. About four hours later, we were both feeling pretty confident there was no fire. My husband turned off the breaker to the smoke alarm and we got an hour or two of sleep. The next day, we bought a...

Photo by Unsplash / FreeRangeStock.com It's cold outside, making me crave soup. So, one day last week, I ran by the store to pick up a couple cans of hearty soup to take for my work lunch. Knowing I'd need spoons — and in spite of the potential dangers associated with plastics that I wrote about two weeks ago — I wandered over to the plasticware and contemplated buying a box of spoons. It just seems more convenient to be able to toss the spoon when I'm done. But as I stood there, I didn't like the ones the store had for sale, and I couldn't shake the nagging feeling that if I bought them, I'd be going against what I felt I should do. After hemming and hawing over the decision, I finally left without buying them, drove across the street to Dollar General and bought a pack of three metal spoons for $1. Not only was the decision more eco-friendly, it was also cheaper. The smallest pack of plastic spoons was about $1.50. In retrospect, I don't know why...