Simplifying the Simple Life

One more post about Earth Day

By Katherine

Unless you live under a rock (in which case, you’d be über low-impact already and completely exempt from this observance), you know that today is Earth Day. This year’s slogan is A Billion Acts of Green®. If you’re stumped on which of the possible acts you could do, the Earth Day Network website has great ideas to seize the day.

I love this annual love-the-earth fest. Tomorrow, my brood and I will head to the Charlottesville EcoFair to be at one with our green neighbors. We'll be wearing our best Bobo chic. I’m thinking floral skirt, organic t-shirt and Mephisto sandals for me and sundresses and knit cardigans thrifted from The Lollipop Shop for the girls. Husband doesn't really own much in the crunchy/preppy category unless you count 20-year-old J-Crew khakis, so he'll just carry a Klean Kanteen as an accessory.

I should have something less cynical and more profound to say about this topic, but I just can’t seem to get all bloggy and self-righteous about it today.

One, anything I add to this conversation will be redundant at best.

Two, I failed miserable in my pledge to turn off the TV this week (more on that later), so I’m feeling anything but able to jump on the soapbox about compact fluorescent light bulbs.

Three, I just can’t help thinking to myself, “But every day is Earth Day!” (What can I say? My subconscious is a hack.)

So, instead of posting scary statistics, inspiring photos of my own family’s good greenness, or a pledge to never, ever, ever forget my reusable, canvas grocery bags again, I’ve been coming up with a list of other possible, completely dorky, hackneyed 2011 Earth Day slogans. Here they are in all their corny glory:

10. Earth Day: It's finally not fringy!

9.   Earth Day: The anti-Hallmark holiday

8.   Earth Day: You had me at Deepwater Horizon

7.   Earth Day: Just two words…plastics patch 

6.   Earth Day: Because payback’s a bitch (cue dramatic, eco-horror score from The Happening)

5.   Earth Day: Because we all want our lives back, Tony Hayward 

4.   Earth Day: Because you’re nobody unless you know your carbon footprint

3.   Earth Day: Endangered lions, tigers and polar bears, oh my!

2.   Earth Day: Because anybody who’s anybody is doing it (or at least narrating an eco-documentary about it) 

And finally, my personal favorite...

1.   Earth Day: The cure for the common consumer (with partial credit to Don Draper) 

 

What’s your 2011 Earth Day slogan?

 

Screen-Free Week: Getting through

By Katherine

Next week is annual Screen-Free Week (formerly TV-Turnoff Week). It also marks about the one year anniversary of our family shutting off cable. 

Where do we stand? Overall, are we tuning in less often?  I think so.

Are we watching less crap and better programming? Definitely.

During those interminable, time-has-no-meaning, housebound weeks with a newborn this past fall, I watched nearly every documentary in the Netflix on-demand library. (Nearly every. I finally got up the courage to watch The Cove, but I’m still too frightened for Jesus Camp.)

If it wasn’t for getting rid of cable, I wouldn’t have budgeted for the Netflix subscription, and I probably would have watched a lot more Regis & Kelly and a lot less Ken Burns. (Brain atrophy is a real problem post-partum, but it needn’t be excessive.)

My husband and I now take a few week nights completely off the boob tube and use the extra moments to do much more productive things with our time: like reading blogs about what other people do with their time.

Occasionally we use this extra hour—really, it’s only an hour between (1) bedtime routines and (2) cleaning up the A-bomb explosion in the kitchen from a day’s worth of homemade meals and collapsing into our own beds—to synch our calendars. We hardly ever forget to take out the trash now (miniscule-ish trash that it is now).  

Also, I wisely use this TV-free time to stare at my pile of half-knit objects. One of these nights I just know I’ll be inspired enough to put down the laptop and glass of wine and actually pick up the needles.  

With respect to the four-year-old daughter, however, TV viewing habits aren’t much changed. She still only watches a very limited list of age-appropriate PBS programs and some commercial-free Nick Jr. preschool stuff on Netflix—but she’s not watching any less than before the cable kabbash. Some days she watches none; other days (Friday “movie night” in particular) it’s as much as two-three hours.

I wouldn’t necessarily think this is a huge problem, except that, the other day while I was reading her a book, she told me to “pause it” so she could go potty.

This, I think, is a problem.

With all the Netflix- and TiVo-ing, I guess I’ve allowed my child to believe she can get instant gratification by pushing a few buttons or tapping a screen. 

Also, apparently, she thinks her mom can be “paused.”

So I’m going all in for TV Turnoff week this year. If we survive, maybe we’ll get a few steps closer to tuning out for good. There will be tears I’m sure—from her, without Dinosaur Train; from me, when I can’t get 30 minutes of peace to make dinner while she watches Dinosaur Train.  

Anyone out there planning to scrap the screen this week? Any tips?

 

 

 

 

Building community: Horse & Buggy home delivery

By Katherine

Spring means lots of things to lots of people: the emergence of daffodils; the onslaught of allergies; the dreaded realization that it's only two months until bathing-suit season.

To me it means: CSA shares start in earnest!  I can't wait for my first weekly box of fresh, seasonal, local vegetables and for forcing myself to deal with more beets than one family possibly can consume in one week.

This year I'm going with Horse & Buggy, a local natural foods cooperative that pulls from mostly Mennonite farms in central Virginia. Aside from the amazing variety that H&B offers and the fact that Lisa has been a happy Horse & Buggy-er for years, I'm jazzed that they are offering a community organizer program this year. You can sign up to make home deliveries of Horse & Buggy shares to your own office or neighborhood and, in return, earn some compensation and a free share for yourself. 

I've volunteered to recruit new H & B subscribers from my own little subdivision and entice my fellow suburbanites to support local farms with my willingness to deliver the goods to their doorstep.  I may get my share for free out of the deal, but, I'll be honest: This really is about combating my green guilt over suburban living.  Plus, I think my daughter will dig helping me make deliveries out of the family truckster (and look über cute doing it). 

Check out Horse & Buggy's website for more information on CSA shares and how you too can look cute in your minivan making home deliveries. 

 

My pumpkin shell keeps very well: The art of unproductive composting

By Katherine

I’ve been “composting” for about two years now, but only in the sense that I plunk my food scraps into a large bin in my yard and feel really good about myself for doing it.

I’ve never actually MADE compost for spreading around the garden. I think that would require aerating or watering the pile or upping the “browns” to “greens” ratio, or something like that. 

Some composting advocates argue that there’s no science to composting—that one need not understand the details of decay, per se, to make it happen.

I suppose if you had one of those compost piles open to the elements with no lid—similar to what Rose Brown of The Zero Garbage Challenge has—the wind, rain and other magic nature things would probably make that rich, organic soil just happen. 

But our lidded, plastic bin—which we acquired for free from a friend—must require some human intervention, because so far, nada.

The lid of the thing has a vent, but I’m not sure how and when to use it. Occasionally, I’ll go over and open the vent while I’m in the backyard with my daughter, just to set a good composting example for her. 

And when I’m feeling really ambitious, I’ll poke at the pile with my pitchfork, but so far, the haphazard venting-and-forking technique hasn’t yielded any results.

The pile has degraded for sure, but when I peer in, I’m greeted with the soggy, snaggletooth smile of my jack-o’-lantern circa 2009.

I WANT to make compost, and I WILL make compost. Someday. Just as soon as I relearn organic chemistry.

But here’s the thing: Now that I’ve taken The Zero Garbage Challenge workshop, I have more reasons to grow my unproductive compost pile: 75 more in fact!

That’s because, aside from learning that Rose Brown is my hero—she actually brought to the workshop her miniscule garbage from the last two years in little hand-sewn bags—I learned there are 75 things I could be composting that I’m probably not. Many of them are somewhat suspicious items I wouldn’t actually want to degrade into soil that I’d spread on my vegetable garden. Latex balloons?  Um, latex condoms? 

But did you know you could compost Post-it notes? Me neither! I thought the sticky glue part and neon colors meant no dice. And take-out pizza boxes? Can’t recycle those, because of the food stains, right? But you can compost them—gooey, cheese grease and all.

Turns out, garbage-reduction gurus know to have two compost piles at their pads:

- One gets fed with food scraps, garden waste and paper and cardboard products without weird glues, inks and grease stains for actually making rich humus for vegetable garden fertilizer, and

- Another gets fed with biodegradable stuff that might not make the most effective organic fertilizer but is hugely effective in decreasing your household’s contribution to the landfill. And the yield from this second, corrupted (for lack of a better term) compost pile can be used to fertilize nonedibles in your garden or yard.

So now at our house, instead of filling up a tiny countertop composter with food scraps and a giant kitchen garbage bag with everything else not recyclable, we’ve moved to filling up a large mixing bowl with all the stuff that we consume day-to-day that isn’t plastic. Every day or two, when I start to fear the fruit flies, I dump it into the outdoor compost bin.

And then I open and close the vent for good measure.

 

Good things come to those who wait (for sales): introducing my Sodastream

-By Lisa

A quick announcement before I am off on vacation!

After much researching, longing, hinting and waiting - I am finally the owner of a Sodastream!!

In case you have missed my obsession with this thing – allow me to explain. By filling the provided bottle with regular cold tap water, and attaching it to the Sodastream and pushing a button a couple times, voila, you now have fizzy water with an investment of less than 30 seconds. You can then add flavorings to create your favorite soda pop. Cool, yes? I first saw this contraption in South Africa, where it’s a pretty common thing.  

I admit that I broke down and bought it at a big chain store. Buying the Sodastream at the new Kohls in town meant that I saved $30 compared to everywhere else I had seen it; it was on sale and I had a coupon. Though I am a huge proponent of buying local, this was one of those compromise things, for the good of the budget. However, when my carbonation canister runs out (about 60 fizzy litres from now) I love that I can exchange them or buy back ups at Seasonal Cook or Happy Cook and make my independent/ local contribution that way.

Sodastream and I are very happy together. It is super easy to use with no clean up and I have ridded myself of my fizzy water packaging for good. The bottles are the perfect size, big enough to last me a while, but not so big they go flat before I can drink it.

I've not tried the Sodastream flavor offerings; I'm not a soda drinker, I just like bubbly water with a little lemon or lime. But I’m excited to have some on hand for guests. They have over 30 flavors, none of which contain high-fructose corn syrup, and diet flavors are sweetened with Splenda, not aspartame. The also have a line of natural sodas with no artificial flavors, colors or artificial sweeteners or preservatives.

Sodastream might just be rivaling my affection for Favorite Kitchen Gadget....better step it up, Eight Dollar Bread Machine.

I'm traveling for a couple weeks but Katherine will be here, holding down the fort!

For more from Lisa, check out www.justherejustnow.com 

 

 

I'm ready to take the Zero Garbage Challenge

By Katherine

My mother-in-law claims to own Ziploc bags older than me.

I don’t doubt it. I’ve been watching her meticulously washing the same ones out for reuse since I met her son 17 years ago. 

I used to find this behavior strange and suspicious—one of those neurotic habits of the sort who grew up during the Great Depression and will be damned to spend precious dimes during the next economic downturn on something as silly as a new sandwich baggie.

Now, what I find stranger is that those baggies are no worse for their decades of wear. They just keep going and going and going. It makes we wonder what all those baggies I used and discarded during the youthful indiscretions of my brown bag lunch days are up to currently.

Maybe they’re hanging out in a landfill with a few plastic grocery bag cousins, shooting the breeze for all eternity about their brief moments in the sun--those few hours when they held precious contents before being thrown away in yet another plastic bag. 

Or maybe they blew off a garbage truck and spent a few fun years flying around with the birds before landing in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch where they were broken up into little pieces of plastic plankton and later ingested by unsuspecting sea life.

This keeps me up at night.

I curbed my indulgent plastic baggie practices long ago, and I’m proud to say I own a few Ziplocs purchased before the birth of my four-year-old.  

Also I compost and try to only purchase items with packaging that can be recycled. I make most of my own cleaners; avoid purchasing processed, over-packaged foods and all that jazz. Still, my family and I somehow fill up a trash bag at least once a week.

I aspire to do better, which is while I’ll be attending the Zero Garbage Workshop on Friday, March 18 to learn some tips on eliminating trash.

Rose Brown of the Zero Garbage Challenge will lead the discussion and teach us all how she threw away her last bag of garbage in December 2008! 

Anyone out there want to join me in trying for zero-ish household waste this year?

 

 

 

 

Dim watts: installing a dimmer

 

-By Lisa

Installing a dimmer is a one person job.

Let me be more specific; installing a dimmer is not a two person job.

It is especially not a two person job if that second person is someone with whom you share a living space and a desire for a future relationship.

This little DIY project is not hard nor complicated. The gist is that you shut down the breaker, remove the face plate, loosen the screws to take the wires out of the regular switch, jam them in the new dimmer and screw back into the wall.

That’s it.

The problem is, it is too simple and having more than one person working on it equals too many electricians in the kitchen and it gets way more complicated that it needs to be.

But let me back up. When considering this green project, I had a moment of skepticism in which I thought I had heard that dimmers didn’t actually save any energy. A little research led me down an annoying rabbit hole of varying opinions about silicon controlled rectifiers and AC waveforms.

But the conclusion that I’ve come to is that old-school dimmers just wasted the extra electivity at the switch as heat, but the new ones actually save the expenditure of the energy in the first place.

A dimmer will also extend the life of your bulb, so frugal score there.

Just to ensure we were getting an energy savings, I picked the Lutron eco-dim dimmer, because marketing is effective --  it had some nice green claims right on the front. It makes bulbs last at least three times longer and saves at least 15% energy. They also have a fun little interactive calculator on their website so you can see how much energy you will be saving - depending on your dimming.

So, we installed the dimmers in three rooms of our home and now the lighting is all nice and romantic.

Which is great, because we need a little romance after all that muttering and eye rolling.

For more from Lisa, check out www.justherejustnow.com

 

Simple baby bliss: My new favorite things

By Katherine

Who wrestles a newborn baby into pink tights?  Apparently, someone does, as I ran across several unopened pairs of them while sorting through my first daughter’s old baby clothes in preparation for Baby Two’s arrival. I also found a bunch of newborn dresses and sets of matching hats and booties that still had tags.

These forgotten gifts were adorable to look at, but, sadly, unused.

Other parents must find reasons for newborns to wear tights and dresses, but rarely have I found myself going anywhere with a newborn that requires brushing my own teeth or dressing the little one in anything resembling an “outfit.” 

In my case, my first daughter spent her first few months being swaddled to within an inch of her life lest she disturb herself into a frenzy, and Baby Two proved equally as uninterested in flailing her limbs about in the wide world or having any sense of fashion.  

Aside from a few new pieces, Baby Two has spent her first five months in softly worn hand-me-down pajamas from Big Sister (she spits up on them regularly to mark her own territory).

And until about a week ago, her only accessories were: (1) the warm blankets that bound her arms and legs burrito-style pretty much since the day she arrived, (2) a knit hat, and (3) me, the zombie mom she required to be attached to her at all times for easy feeding and rocking.

Now she occasionally wears pants.

There was one dress-up episode for Baby—an unsuccessful attempt at a family photo in a truly adorable pink- and black-striped flapper dress that a fashionable (and good humored) relative sent and, incredulously, pink tights, but Baby barfed all over that ensemble before the flash went off, so there you go.

The truth is, babies don’t need many things and second children need even less.

And this time, I really wanted to keep things as simple and green as possible.  I’m pretty sure there already are enough copies of Good Night Moon out there to wrap around the planet a couple times, so why buy new?

Before Baby Two arrived, I gave the “we really don’t need anything” speech to any family who asked and shopped used for anything I didn’t already have. (I happen to have three copies of Good Night Moon, incidentally).

Not that I didn’t indulge in a few new items or relish some wonderful and useful new baby gifts. Among them: a beautiful handmade quilt from our very own Lisa; a set of handmade bibs from another talented friend; cute (and unstained!) new onesies and baby wear with morale-boosting sayings like “My mom is hotter than your mom,” lovely organic cotton and muslin swaddle blankets from Swaddle Designs and aden + anais, respectively, a Mally washable, leather bib with a food-catch pocket from Petit Bebe, bamboo baby bowls and spoons from Blue Ridge Eco Shop and a professional photo shoot and baby book from my good friend Kerry at Earthdarling Portraits. (That's an Earthdarling Portrait of Baby Two above). 

Plus Lisa has a great list of gift ideas for a babies and kids here.  

In addition to that, I’m thrilled to have discovered these new resources for making life with a new baby a little brighter, a little simpler and a little greener this time around.

CareCalendar           
Some friends used an online tool to organize delivering hot meals to our family during those bleary-eyed early months. They also used it to arrange play dates for Big Sister and post-partum blues busting visits for me. Fresh pasta from Mona Lisa delivered with warm hugs and encouraging words from a fellow mom so beats brand new booties.

Relay Foods
I can count on one hand the numbers of times I’ve trekked to the grocery store with both rambunctious preschooler and colicky baby in tow. Actually, I don’t even need hands. I’ve NEVER done this, because I would rather die.

Instead I requested Relay Foods gift certificates in lieu of baby gifts from my family, and now I grocery shop online in the privacy of my own home, no teeth brushing required.

I can get organic meat, local eggs and produce, favorite items from the local health food retailers, and my husband’s beloved Listerine and Cheerios all delivered to our doorstep, in a more efficient fashion than if we schlepped to a bunch of different places ourselves.

Relay Foods maintains a list of my favorite things for reference and placing my order online helps me organize my weekly needs, stick to the list and avoid guzzling a bunch of gas running back to the store several times a week because I’ve forgotten the peanut butter or toothpaste.

Cloth wipes
I really wanted to avoid using disposable wipes this time around, opting instead for the spray bottle and reusable cloth route. I had plenty of cloth rags lying around, but the thought of wiping my perfect new baby in a square of Husband’s old fraternity shirts just felt creepy, so I splurged on these little cotton wipes at Rebecca’s Natural Food. They came in packages of four (I bought four sets) for under $5 a package.

Melissa’s Majick Baby Balm
I also head to Rebecca’s for refills of this natural balm made from organic olive and grapeseed oils, flowers, shea nut butter and beeswax from Sweet Melissa’s Herbals. Nothing has worked better for treating and preventing diaper rash. (Special thanks to The Stork for turning me onto this local gem.)

Sugar Snap Kids Consignment 
Did I mention the plethora of Good Night Moons out there?  Add to that all the swings, bouncy seats, carriers and slings, diaper bags, and high chairs that are used for such a short period of time that no one really needs to buy these items new.

Sugar Snap usually gets its hands on a variety of these items as well as bedding, clothes and other sundries for babies, toddlers, preschoolers and pregnant ladies.

And with all the money saved shopping for recycled stuff and relying on hand-me-downs, I’m planning to indulge instead on some fun experiences with Baby, like maybe a baby-and-me yoga class at Bend!

Bend Yoga
I haven’t actually been yet, and we’ve written about this new yoga studio for kids, teens and pregnant women before, so I won’t say much more other than this: What could be sweeter than “child’s pose” with child?

Anyone else have favorite resources for enjoying life with baby without all the fuss and environmental muss?

 

A trashy series: part two - back to the future (of recycling)

-By Lisa

Way back in spring of 2010 when Simplifying the Simple Life was in its infancy, I was talking trash. 

I promised I'd update everyone with details about the new single stream recycling plant, and I tried. But van der Linde stopped doing tours due to insurance issues, so my whole behind-the-sceens exposé was shot.  

But luckily, something else was shot - a video! This helps a bit in explaining how single stream recycling works and what they are actually doing over there in Troy, VA. 

I know there have been lawsuits and opinions and skepticism about this new fangled recycling machine.

What do you think?? If you have van der Linde single stream recycling, have you adjusted to "throwing everything away" in the same container? Or do you still separate because nothing can be that good? Or have you stayed away from single stream all together, because you love your Saturday morning recycling trips?

And while you are thinking, let's rewind for an STSL flashback.

Remember this article?

A trashy series: the epic tale of switching to an eco friendly garbage service

-By Lisa 

I want everyone to like me. It’s an ugly character trait and I am working on it, but since forever I have wanted everyone to like me. Historically, this has caused me to date way too many waiters, for way too long.

The latest incarnation of my little problem is my fear about calling Allied Waste Services to cancel my trash service. Because if I cancel, they won’t like me. But, I must call because Husband has refused to do this deed for me, because then I can “blog about it.” 

 (As a sidebar, this has become Husband’s pièce de résistance while encouraging this new experience. While “Babe, you have to call the old company to cancel, it’s part of the whole thing--you can blog about it” might be feasible, “Babe, can you bring me a drink, there’s only a minute left in the 2nd half--you can blog about it” most certainly is not.)

In my neighborhood, the trash pick up is not done by our county, we have to hire an independent garbage company. A couple of companies service this area, so we have some choice in the matter. In preparing to exercise my freedom as a consumer, I practiced my break-up speech, gathered courage and called Allied.

To my great relief, the woman there was sweet as pie and simply asked me why I was changing companies. Now, this, I felt great about. It gave me another chance to explicitly vote with my money and directly tell the company about a service that I valued. Namely, recycling. I heard the clickity clack of her keyboard and she repeated back to me as she typed “wants…recycling…service…” and I could just feel emergency company-wide meetings being called to change policies and consider my eco-friendly wishes. (OK, not quite, but I still felt good about the word “recycling” going in a computer system.) The rest was equally easy and painless. I am part-way through my billing cycle, so I will continue with Allied until that is done, then switch to Time Disposal. 

In the past, of course Husband and I recycled, letting our cans of tomatoes and Odwalla bottles pile up in a sticky mountain in the garage waiting for an idle Saturday morning to be delivered to the McIntire Road Recycling Center. But then we got this flier for Time Disposal which uses a Materials Recovery Facility. What that means, I learned, is that you don’t separate your recyclables from the rest of your trash. 

It is done for you automatically by high tech machinery at the facility which identifies and separates recyclables. 

What??? Holy crap this blows my mind. I watched this little movie which, despite the fact that it’s animated, successfully convinced me that this might not be a giant scam. I am going to do further investigation by contacting the van der Linde Recycling Center so I can learn how this whole thing works, which I will of course tell you about, dear readers, as this seems almost too cool to be true. 

My biggest question now is, how will I ever possibly get used to “throwing away” everything from newspapers to plastic bottles with the rest of the trash??? The thought makes me panic. Maybe I will just separate anyway. Maybe that will make it easier for the machinery and I will be the machinery’s favorite customer and it will like me the very best.

For more from Lisa, check out www.justherejustnow.com

 

A giveaway: CSN stores $35 gift card!

Hey, look, it's the Sodastream I didn't get for the holidays!

 

 ~~~~~

This giveaway is now closed. But don't worry, we'll do another one soon!

~~~~~

-By Lisa

Perhaps this situation is familiar to you.

Maybe you spent December patiently waiting to see if the subtle hints were effective and that Red Ryder BB gun or Sodastream carbonator would finally be yours. But now it's January and the object of your desire didn’t arrive wrapped in a bow.

Don't worry if Santa didn’t get the message this year - we are here to help you with a giveaway!

CSN Stores are offering a $35 gift certificate for any of their online stores. They have a large selection of green products, like organic cotton sheets and eco-friendly modern furniture made of sustainable and recycled materials. They also have a wide selection of cookware and gardening goodies.

The gift certificate does not cover shipping (but many items come with free shipping) and you can order from any one of the CSN Stores.

Here’s how you do this thing:

1. Comment on this post

If you want a second chance to win,

2. Join the STSL network by

-Following us on Twitter (link on the left)

-Friending us on Facebook (link on the left) and/or

-Subscribing to our feed (link on the right) and then leave a second comment that you’ve done so.

Please note: You have to post a second comment that you’ve done one of these things for the second chance to win!

We'll close this giveaway on Friday at 12pm, EST.

Good luck to everyone!

The straight up deal: CSN Stores contacted us about doing this giveaway. We did not receive compensation of any kind for this promotion.