Filed under: How To
Last year, I wrote about using natural dyes for egg dyeing purposes. Today I came across something even cooler – using old silk ties!! It’s actually a Martha Stewart project.
For our family, this was the first year we’ve ever attempted to dye eggs. I have so many dye options available to me – Labcolors, Procion, and the various inks for screenprinting, but wanted to keep the eggs edible, so we ended up just using liquid food color. Filled a small drinking glass about half full with water, a splash of rice vinegar (OK, because we only have rice vinegar right now, no normal vinegar), and enough food coloring to make the water fairly dark. Let the egg soak for a while, remove, voila. I’ve heard that it would have worked better had I used HOT water.
From my reading, the natural dyes, which I really want to try, take even longer than the food color does, and I think my son is a bit sick of craft projects that take longer than a few minutes to complete. He’s not real long on patience.
I’ve been reading back over posts from blogs in my Bloglines that I have saved for one reason or another. I had this one marked, thinking about putting it into practice at our house this spring.
The main obstacle for my house seems to be that my washer is not only a long, long way from anything that might need to be watered, but it’s also underground. I’ll be curious to see if the washer pumps the water out with enough force to propel the water uphill and some distance away.
Filed under: How To
Are you planning to dye eggs this spring? Or do you want to? Or, maybe you never really thought about it, but once you read this awesome post about using natural dyes for eggs, you’ll probably WANT to give it a try!
Link via Whipup, one of my regular blog reads, which is doing a month on crafts for kids.
Mark November 16 on your calendar.
I have to say, ever since seeing Mike Rowe make biofuel on Dirty Jobs, I’ve been rather intrigued.
Filed under: How To
Here at NLDM headquarters (my house), we do not have air conditioning. I started thinking today of all the coping methods we use to beat the summer heat. Most of the methods we employ would also be perfect for those of you with air conditioning, as well, to keep the house cooler and reduce your energy useage. I’ve found that those who do have air conditioning tend to not think about all the little ways they could keep the house cooler, since cooling it down is as easy as pushing a button. But for those of us concerned about reducing our impact on the world around us, reducing the number of times we reach for that button should be a goal!
So, here are some of the ways we keep our house cool…
1) Windows and air circulation throughout the house. Our house was built before air conditioning was invented, so it is built to rely on getting a good breeze through the house with open windows. On milder days, we are able to keep ourselves cool simply by opening all of the windows and letting in the fresh air! This doesn’t do much on warmer days, of course. Those of you without all the windows that we have can also take advantage of milder days, though. Open up the windows you do have, and then turn on a few fans. Aim the fans at the floor to help air move through doorways and throughout the house. If you have an attic or whole-house fan, turn that on, too.
2) Keep the air moving. With or without air conditioning, using ceiling fans to keep air on the move will reduce a room’s temperature by a few degrees. Some people have found that if they turn in their ceiling fans, they are able to turn the air conditioning down a few degrees with no noticeable change in comfort.
3) Don’t do anything to make the house warmer than it already is.
- Don’t use your oven. We have become experts at foods that don’t require the oven. We do use the microwave to cook some things (which is a whole different discussion!), but mostly we just eat raw foods or foods cooked outside on the grill. The oven heats up the kitchen, which then heats up the rest of the house.
- Don’t use your dryer. I dry most of our laundry outside on the line during the summer. Our dryer heats up the basement, which then sends its heat up the stairs to the rest of the house. If you do need (or want) to use the dryer, consider turning it on just before you go to bed, so it runs during the cool of the evening.
4) Close off areas of the house. When it gets really hot, I close off our sunroom completely by hanging blankets (I’m going to make curtains some day) over the doorways. The sunroom has tons of windows – great on breezy days, not great on those hot humid still days of summer. I also close off the basement. The basement is slow to warm up – it remains comfortable well into July – but once it does get hot down there, it’s miserably hot. And because hot air rises, it sends its heat up to the rest of the house. So we close off its main pathway – the stairs. (Note – this strategy also works for winter!)
Those of you with air conditioning might want to take a good look around your house and decide if you really need every room to be cool. Maybe you could shut off an unused bedroom, for example. No sense cooling the air of a room you’re never in.
Now in the interest of honesty, I will say that in August, our family gets a little bad about energy usage. I have been known to stick my upper body into the welcoming cool of the refrigerator while “looking for something to eat.”
1. Save your waste printer paper and use the other side! (I save all of my waste paper – whether it’s an extra page I didn’t need, or a paper whose contents are no longer needed – and then print “for my eyes only” type documents on the empty sides.) It’s easy and saves you money too!
2. Take your own reusable cloth bags when you go to the grocery store. This cuts down on plastic waste.
3. Buy local, buy organic. Opinions vary as to whether it’s best to buy local or best to buy organic. Obviously, if you can buy local, organic foods, that’s clearly best, but if you have to choose between the two, follow your conscience or do your own research and decide what’s best for your own family. Our family prefers local over organic if we have to choose.
4. Support local businesses, especially those that sell products which are manufactured locally or made from local materials. Buying locally-produced items means you cut down on the amount of energy that is required to get products to you. Our family makes many of our own personal-care items, but when we buy, we buy locally-produced products from Prairieland Herbs located near Woodward.
5. Use reusable cloth diapers on your children, and reusable cloth pads (or menstural cups) on yourself (if you’re a woman). For more information on these options, please visit these pages.
6. Use cloth napkins instead of paper napkins, handkerchiefs instead of tissues, rags or towels instead of paper towels.
Some of you own your own businesses, work from home, or work for micro-businesses. In those scenarios, you can generally go to whatever lengths you want to make your business more green. Want to use only 100% post-consumer recycled paper products? You only need to find a supplier. Want to clean with only all-natural, locally-produced products? Fine. You are not who this article was written for.
This article is aimed at the cubicle-dwellers, the commuters, the people who work in a big company and who have not only a supervisor, but also a manager, a department head, and a division head. You may feel your options for a more natural work environment are limited. Yet, you are not completely without options and resources. Keep reading for some suggestions!
1) Bring a plant to work. My former employer did not allow employees to bring plants for their desks until a few years before I quit (we were allowed a few photographs to be placed in a Company-provided photo frame). But most employers have no problems with workers decorating their workspaces with a plant or two. A plant not only brightens up your area, providing a lift to your mood, but they also help to purify the air and soak up some of the nasties floating around the office.
2) Take your own drinking water in a SIGG or Klean Kanteen bottle. Stay hydrated at work (key to good health), and drink the same purified water you drink at home, without creating the waste associated with disposable water bottles or paper or plastic cups.
3) Bring reusable products to work, rather than using the disposable items provided by your employer. Towels for the bathroom, rags for cleaning or wiping up spills, reusable cups, and cloth napkins are all easily portable and won’t make you feel like too much of a freak.
4) Consider bringing your own paper products, such as notepads, so that you can use recycled versions.
5) Check with your supervisor or the cleaning crew about being allowed to clean your own work space. Do your own dusting, disinfecting, smudge-removing, and spot-cleaning with homemade or commercially-available green cleaning supplies.
6) If you are in a position to influence the details of big meetings, see if you can’t arrange to meet via phone or even video conference call to cut down on the amount of travel involved. Documents can be emailed back and forth as needed, or even posted in a secure area of the company’s network.
7) Don’t make unnecessary copies or printouts. Before you print something for your own use, consider whether you really need a hard copy. Going to a meting? Take your laptop and look at the agenda and take notes electronically, instead of on paper. Organizing a meeting? See if you can’t book a meeting room with a projector, so that nobody needs to print out the agenda.
Control your lunch time! Bring your lunch from home in reusable containers. Avoid soft plastic lunch bags (many contain lead). Opt instead for metal boxes or cloth bags. For the food itself, if you want to avoid plastic, To Go Ware has some nice metal lunch containers. Pack yourself a nice, healthy lunch made from locally-produced foods, organic if possible. Instead of driving somewhere for lunch, take a walk outside and snack on your goodies. Good for your health, all around, and better for the planet than driving to a restaurant or even eating at the company cafeteria.
9) Encourage your company to implement greener policies company-wide. Many companies are big into employee involvement these days, and your supervisor and/or manager might be quite open to your establishing an employee advisory committee to reduce the environmental impact of doing business. Such a commitee, organized by you, might even help increase your chances of promotions in the future (it shows you are a self-starter, you care about the company, you can organize and lead a group of people, etc.). And the committee, working with the marketing department, could net your company some good publicity. Whether you choose to start a committee or to go it alone, some ideas for company-wide policies or practices include:
- Using recycled products, such as paper (notepads, copier paper, and printer paper), toilet paper, paper towels, etc.
- Using green cleaning products rather than the industrial chemicals used by most large busineses.
- Setting up or promoting the use of an existing recycling program. Remember, employees will generally only recycle if it is convenient. My former employer made one green recycling bin available per floor, so employees who wished to recycle had to get up from their desks and walk to a central location to use it. As you can guess, 99% of employees chose instead to use the garbage can located conveniently under their desks.
Do you have other tips for making the work day a little greener?
Filed under: How To
Planning a wedding? Treehugger offers a fantastic guide to greening up your wedding, including tips on everything from local sources of food to reducing the size of the event.
Filed under: How To
The first Simple Steps article focused on the things you probably already knew about. This article focuses on changes that are just beyond the obvious, but that still won’t upset your daily life that much. Things that will help you reduce your impact on the environment while still feeling very mainstream and not like you need to start buying granola in bulk.
1) Use cloth towels instead of paper towels, at least some of the time. Spill something? Grab a rag or a kitchen towel instead of a paper towel. Having BBQ? Grab a rag or kitchen towel for those messy fingers. Kids have dirty faces or hands? Use a washcloth instead of a paper towel. Or are you one of those people who use paper towels as substitutes for plates? Use a plate.
2) Use fewer disposable plastic grocery bags. I’m not going to suggest here that you switch to cloth bags – that’s for later. For an intermediate step, just use fewer of the plastic ones. Consider whether you really NEED a sack. If you’re just buying one or two things and heading right back to your car – just carry the things in your hands. If you’re on foot and making several stops, ask the employees at your second stop to just put your purchases into the bag you got from your first stop.
3) Use fewer disposable plastic food bags. Get yourself some quality food storage containers. Consider avoiding plastic if you can, but if you’re not ready for glass boxes in your fridge, go ahead and get Tupperware or a Tupperware knock-off. Use these containers instead of baggies whenever possible. (And really, it’s always possible.) Food containers can be washed over and over. Food bags, if you even bother to wash and reuse, are only good for a few uses before they develop holes.
4) Use fewer disposable plastic bottles. Are you a bottled water drinker? Get yourself a reusable bottle and just refill it. (consider a Klean Kanteen or SIGG bottle) If you’re a pop drinker, consider cutting back on the pop you drink – not only will it reduce the bottle/can waste, but it’s better for you anyway. At the very least, recycle those containers instead of throwing them out. Even the water bottles, even though there’s no deposit.
5) Start a compost pile. It doesn’t need to be fancy. Find a spot in your yard that’s suitable, and dump your food scraps and yard waste there. Or whatever you’re comfortable with. When I was growing up, we only composted grass clippings and hedge trimmings, and it still produced really nice dirt after a few years. Composting can be complicated if you want it to be, if you want the process to work a bit faster. But just tossing stuff into a pile and forgetting about it will work just as well, if a bit more slowly. Don’t put meat into your pile, ever.
6) Take your unwanted items to Goodwill or the Salvation Army, or Freecycle them instead of just throwing them away.
7) Take fewer or at least shorter showers. Americans are funny – we are nearly the only people who almost universally shower daily. Most of us don’t need a daily shower. If you work out daily, yes, you probably need to shower daily. But if you don’t…consider whether you really need a shower, or if you can get by with skipping a day. When you do shower, get down to business and get the water turned back off as quickly as you can.
Don’t wash your stuff as often. Before you put a towel or article of clothing into the hamper, stop and consider whether it’s actually dirty. If you work in an office, chances are good that your clothes are not really dirty after you get home from work. Try instead hanging them back on their hangers, and letting them air out (outside of the closet) for a day. Then put them away and make a mental note to wash them the next time they are worn. Same with towels. When you get out of the shower, you are clean. So the towel you use to dry yourself will also be relatively clean after you have used it. So use it more than once before washing it.
You will notice that most of these suggestions are not only good for the environment, but they are frugal, as well. See? Being environmental can save you money!
The next installment will have suggestions for simple steps you can take at work.
