For snack the other day we were given graham crackers, marshmallow creme, and chocolate chips. We could have just eaten them separately, or had crunchy bits in a s’more-type sandwich, but I chose to show the children (booming voice) The Power Of The Sun and left the chocolate on the windowsill to melt it. This lesson can also be learned by (booming voice) Leaving A Snickers In A Hot Car.

However, we have reached a detente of sorts. I can get Icees if I have a cup with me. So I always travel prepared. The cups are in the back seat. The straws are under the visor (in case you ever need one). I’m the only person who brings Wal*Mart cups into the Wal*Marts.

The whole reason for this worm pondering is that Lloyd doesn’t want me collecting scraps in a container on the counter until I get around to taking them on the long walk across the yard to the ‘compost pile‘. That’s a problem because I am NOT walking a single banana peel across the yard when it’s dark outside. There are jibblie things out there, like vampires. So, this morning I came up with a multi-tasker solution. I have a gravy separator that gets used once in a never, so now it lives in the trash can, like Oscar, and I can walk the scraps out to the pile at my leisure. In full, safe daylight.

It’s been nagging at me for quite a while how many bottles and tubes of junk I have in my bathroom cupboard.  I think it was the hairspray post that made me think that maybe it was time to do something about it.  For the past few weeks I’ve been trying to whittle away at all those extra things and use them up, and I thought about taking a picture of them all before I started.  I really wish I had, because here is a mid-way picture, and it’s so embarrassing.  Tiny half-empty bottles of shampoo that I can’t bear to leave at hotels because they’ll just throw them away; little samples of lotion and conditioner, ‘miracle’ lotions that I tried a few times and stopped using; many, many kinds of hairspray; and TWO kinds of nail polish remover.  I don’t even paint my nails!  The truly awful part is this isn’t even all of it.  I have a stash of large-bottle shampoos and I didn’t show all the stuff that I use on a daily basis, or the stuff in my travel bag.  Or the teacher-gift lotions/bath stuff in the downstairs bathroom!  (I clean the toilets with the shower gel, though, so at least that gets used up.) Arrrgh!!!

Some eco-freak I turned out to be.  This is ridiculous.

We ran into a snafu with the recycling company.  They forgot to pick up our tub that first Monday, which was understandable. (I was a new account, no problem.)  I called and talked to an extremely nice lady on the phone who said that they’d take care of it.  I got all eco-glowy and smug again, and loaded up our stuff in another box for the next Monday.

Hmmm.  They forgot again.   I called again and spoke to another nice lady who said that they’d get it straightened out and that they’d even credit my account to apologize for the inconvenience.  Smugly glowing, but a little hurt, I went on collecting stuff around the house to have made into new stuff.

Guess what?  They forgot AGAIN.  Now, this past Monday was NOT a day to mess with me because that was the day of our Christmas Program and I was already amped up on stress like nobody’s business.  So when I finally drug my sore feet home at 8:45 p.m.  Monday night and saw those $%#@$ bins by the curb full of junk again, I got mad!!!  “Don’t they know that I’m their biggest fan??  Don’t they know that I’m a crazy eco-freak? Don’t they know that I’ve been telling everybody to sign up for this program?”  “Why are you out there yelling on the lawn?” asked Lloyd.

The next day I called the nice people back and they were most apologetic.  Blah blah blah, long story short – big goof up with the paperwork, it should be better, my account is credited even more, yeah yeah yeah.  We’ll see.  We’ll just see……

The recycling bin came today!  It’s much nicer than I thought it would be – larger than expected, and it comes with a lid!  Hopefully we won’t have to request an extra one (even though getting one more would be free).   I’m going to take it to school tomorrow to advertise it’s coolness to families, and also to perhaps sound out having families sponsor a month of recycling for the center.  This company will take plastics 1 – 7, so our milk cups (of which we use a-plenty) could be recycled!

I read an interesting article about how they sort this stuff.  Apparently we’re not using trained monkeys for this like Lloyd said.

The good people at the Lincoln Journal-Star have a curbside recycling program that now extends to our little town of Seward.  You subscribe ($12 a month) and they’ll give you a tub and tote away your recyclables once a week!  Woo-hoo!!  No sorting (I think), and they’ll take glass and all kinds of plastic!  Totally, totally worth it to me.  I’ll actually get some of my basement floor back since we always wait way too long to go to the local recycling center. I’m actually considering canceling my regular garbage collection, except for all that dumb cat litter we throw in there.  You don’t think they can recycle that, do you?

By the way, current heat check, 67.7 from here on my stool, 62.3 behind the curtain.  I knew you’d want to know.

- the dirt that accumulates is so satisfyingly gross.  Then just flip it over and use the other side.  If I’m doing the whole first floor I just keep rinsing out the same cloth.

There, a disgusting public service announcement from Eco-Freak.

Afterwards I ran some errands in Lincoln.  I was driving the truck, which has been sitting in the driveway for weeks since I have been walking to work, and was surprised at what I saw in the back.  During those weeks, maple seeds have fallen, much rain has descended from the skies, and little trees have sprouted in my truck bed.  Who says I can’t grow anything? Ha.

We have a fenced in area out behind the garden shed where we dump leaves every year. We call it our compost pile, but we know that to make compost you have to turn it over, add a little dirt and let some air get into the works. We don’t do any of those things. Once a year we dump a whole bunch of leaves on top of last years’ leaves.

Well, it turns out that if you are patient you don’t have to do any of that other stuff. If you’re willing to wait about a decade the leaves will turn into dirt all on their own.

When we moved into our house (about a decade ago, go figure) we had a home inspector come and look things over and tell us what needed to be done. The previous owners fixed some things and we’ve done a few since then. One of the things he said we should do is add some dirt to the south side of the house so that water would drain away from the house more effectively.

Now I happen to be an expert on water (I’m over 70% water by volume) and I knew that our water was draining fine. But twice a year Lauren brings up the fact that we haven’t added any dirt to the south side of the house. Eventually it’s enough to get to a guy, so, as I needed an excuse not to have showered I put my new dirt on the south side of the house.

Oh, only the bottom of the pile was actually dirty, so I had to tunnel under.

Don’t feel you have to make a good comment.  It’s not a good post.

Well, Wal-Mart eventually came through for me. I picked this one up for the very reasonable price of about 20-25 dollars. And the 8-pack of AA batteries rang it at about 12 bucks. Tonight I bought a couple 2-packs of D’s for…. 12 bucks each!!! Good grief!!! Being environmentally friendly is going to break the bank! They’d better last forever.

Happy Valentine’s Day, Earth. I really do love you.

Oh, you too, Lloyd.

Why Lincoln for recycling? The recycling place in Seward is only open a few hours, three times a week. Our place also doesn’t take glass, so I think I prefer going to Lincoln. (I don’t have to sort out the plastics, either.) The thing I don’t understand is that there’s a sign on the bin that says, “Do not break glass”, but you have to drop the bottles in those holes from head-height, and they fall to the bottom, smashing. What’s up with that?

To reward myself for being so environmentally responsible and saving the earth, I went and bought a bread knife. Wrapped in plastic.

I’ll admit that I’ve become a little obsessed about reusable grocery bags, but I heard the story about the place in the Pacific Ocean twice the size of Texas that has all that plastic floating around and it creeped me out. (One million pieces of trash per square mile.) I already told you about the Envirosax, which I love, but I went ahead and bought some Chico bags to compare the two styles. Hopefully someone out there in intraweb-land may find this useful.

Envirosax have a lot going for them – they’re cute, have awesome patterns, they hold quite a lot of stuff, and best of all, the handles will fit over your shoulder. Lloyd and I do a once-a-week grocery trip, and can fit all our purchases in 3 or 4 bags. The down side – it takes me a little bit of time to re-roll them, but I might just be clumsy. I also had something punch a hole in one bag. (I patched it. No need to throw it out.) Here are some diagrams of how it rolls/unrolls.

You unsnap the straps, and it pops open.

The sides are folded in thirds around the handle.

Unfold the handle, unfold the bag- viola’!

To re-roll, fold the bag in half, fold the handle down, fold the sides in thirds, roll like a little sleeping bag, snap shut. It takes longer to type the directions than it takes to roll it, but you can see how it’s a bit fussy. It’s windbreaker-like material, so it’s a little slippery. However, it’s a very sleek, compact package, and I always keep two in my tiny purse. (I ‘pimped it out’ with some elastic straps so they’d stay put.)

I haven’t taken the Chicobags shopping yet, but they are just the same size as a regular plastic t-shirt bag. The straps can’t fit over your shoulder, but I think the plus for these is the ease of putting it back in the bag. (It goes wicked fast.) To use the bag, just undo -the cinch cord, grab the bag and pull it out.

It comes out inside-out, so shake it right-side out and the pouch becomes a little pocket inside to hold your keys or whatever. Here are the two together for size comparison:

And just for kicks, a plastic bag.

So, overall, I like them both. The Envirosax will always live in my purse, but when I don’t have a purse, the Chico bag has a handy little clip that could attach to anything. They both pack up equally small. The fabric seems similar. The Envirosax holds more, but the Chicobag is so much easier to put away. They both get an A+ for gadgety-ness in my book!

(I also realize that now I have an over-abundance of reusable bags. Maybe I can give some away for Christmas?)

UPDATE: I recently ordered a Chicobag Vita, and was wondering if they made it out of a different fabric because it was so crinkly.  Looking back on this post, I see that mine used to be crinkly, too.  They soften up after a couple of uses.

So this is why we didn’t have groceries – I was waiting for my pretty bags to arrive!

A couple of weeks ago I was watching ‘Living with Ed’ (Ed Bagley Jr.) on HGTV.  He’s a tree-huggin’, energy-savin’, stuff-recyclin’ guy, and it makes his wife nuts.  I love the show.  This episode they were visiting celebrity homes and showing them little things they could do to make a difference.  They were at Cheryl Tiegs’ house and she had reusable grocery bag, but they didn’t show them in detail.  I looked for the on the internet, and found these instead.  In a fit of spending, I bought the whole pack.  You really need to go to envirosax.com to see all the collections.

They combine re-using with gadgety-ness!  On occasion I’ve walked to our local grocery store with a canvas bag, but these are much, much cooler.  They’re five cloth bags that each roll up to the size of a little egg roll, and they each hold as much as two plastic grocery bags.  I can keep one or two in my little purse at all times!  I’m so excited to get some food!  (I’ll run into a problem, though.  I actually do re-use the plastic bags by putting cat litter in them.  I’ll have to sneak some from the giant stash at school.)  I love you, Envirosax!!!

It’s a toothbrush made of recycled yogurt cups!  The package has air holes so you can use it as a travel case, and when it gets too old, you can send it back to the company (postage paid!) and they’ll recycle it again!  It’s fun to brush with because it has such a weird angle to the handle, and I highly recommend it.

I began to experiment with Simlpe Green vs. water to remove the border adhesive.  Here you see a completely organized beginning to an earth-shattering scientific experiment.  What you don’t see is how I kept forgetting to go back and re-wet them since I was looking up useless things on the internet.  So, I wound up slopping Simple Green solution over the whole wall.  It was successful for several reasons: 1) I didn’t cover it with plastic wrap and leave it to sit for a whole hour, 2) I used a plastic scraper instead of a metal one.  Hooray!  The goal is to take it off a foot at a time.  At this rate, I’ll be done by Easter!