compost

Flashback Friday: 128 Creative Ways to Upcycle Your Trash

Chrissa Hardy — Fri, 03 Mar 2017 10:30:32 +0000

Before you head over to the trash can, take a moment to consider if that empty can or citrus peel in your hand can be put to good use. Believe it or not, you might be able to save tons of cash by upcycling your garbage and turning it into something useful. Here are 128 creative ways to make your trash work for you.

25 Beautiful Things You Can Make With Paint Sample Cards — Once you've chosen the right color paint for your office, you no longer need the paint sample cards you were using, right? Wrong! Those colorful swatches can actually turn into beautiful home decor.

7 Ways to Reuse Clothes That No Longer Fit — Rather than tossing or donating those clothes you know you won't wear, see if you can use them in other ways. You could make that pile of t-shirts into a stellar quilt! Or turn an old sweater into a pair of cozy mittens.

9 Surprising Uses for Empty Beer and Soda Cans — Upon first glance, an empty soda or beer can might only seem like a piece of trash, but look again and you will see a container with a endless potential. Turn it into a mini planter, a Wi-Fi booster, jewelry supplies, and more!

18 Clever Ways to Reuse Your Plastic Shopping Bags — Beyond a backup poop bag for your pup, an empty plastic bag can easily be turned into something amazing. An emergency rain hat is just one option of many.

Egg Pan, Sugar Softener, and 50 Other Uses for Citrus Peels — Hold your peels! That citrus skin has more value than you could possibly imagine. Turn it into essential oil, a household cleaner, or a bird feeder. Oh, and there are 49 other brilliant uses here for you.

17 Ways to Use Old Newspaper — Since many people don't even read newspapers anymore, when you have some lying around, what are you supposed to do with them? Before you toss them out, consider upcycling them into book covers, gift wrap, disposable tablecloths, or something else you need!

This article is from Chrissa Hardy of Wise Bread, an award-winning personal finance and credit card comparison website. Read more great articles from Wise Bread:

50+ Uses for Citrus Peels

Carrie Kirby — Tue, 21 Feb 2017 10:31:30 +0000

After years of drought, it's raining in California, and that means backyard citrus trees are springing to life, delivering green, yellow, and orange packets of deliciousness. But after you make your key lime pie, your lemonade, and your fresh juices, pause before throwing out those peels.

Far from being garbage, citrus rinds or peels may actually be more valuable than the fruit inside. For one thing, the peel is the source of oil that is used as a solvent in many products, such as citrus-based cleaners, and is also a natural pesticide. For another, it's nutritious — an orange peel contains more fiber than the orange itself, plus antioxidants, protein, potassium, riboflavin, vitamin A, and vitamin C.

But eating an orange, lemon, grapefruit, or lime peel doesn't sound appetizing to most of us. Here are 52 more appealing ways to get the value out of those citrus peels. Unwaxed fruit works best for these recipes.

Household Uses

Those leftover citrus peels can become the key to a clean and fresh home.

1. Eco-Friendly Cleaner

This has been my go-to use for the peels from our lemon and lime trees for years. It cuts grease, disinfects, and smells great. Simply submerge the peels (or juiced whole fruits) in vinegar, let them steep two weeks or longer, then mix the resulting liquid 50/50 with water for a great counter spray, bathroom cleaner, and all-purpose cleaner.

I buy a gallon of vinegar, pour some out, and then replace the liquid with peels as I use them. Make sure that the peels are completely submerged in vinegar to prevent mold.

An alternative recipe, called an enzyme cleaner, uses brown sugar and water, but no vinegar, with citrus peels. This one takes a long time to make because it's fermented.

2. Essential Oil

Another way to harness the cleaning power and aroma of citrus is to distill it into an essential oil, which you can then add to homemade cleaners or use for deodorizing everything from your trash can to laundry that's been sitting in the washer too long. You can use vodka and a food processor to draw the oil out of citrus peels and create essential oil in your kitchen.

3. Furniture Polish

Infuse any kind of furniture friendly oil with citrus rinds to make a nontoxic treatment for wood furniture.

4. Garbage Disposal Cleaner

This has to be the laziest way to "use" citrus peels — just throw them in the disposal. But if you want to get fancier about it, you can freeze the peels in ice cube trays with water or vinegar, so you have a cube available any time the disposal starts to stink.

5. Frugal Sponge

If you juiced a lemon or orange while cooking, wipe that sucker all over the place before discarding it: cutting board, counter, sink.

6. Dishwasher Booster

After you've squeezed the juice out of the lemon, just throw the remains right into the dishwasher. It may get the dishes cleaner, and it will freshen the machine at the same time.

7. Mineral Deposit Remover

Decalcify the inside of a tea kettle by boiling peels inside it, then letting it sit for an hour. Or soak cloudy glassware in a sinkful of hot water and citrus rinds.

8. Microwave Cleaner

Zap a bowl of rinds and water for five minutes, and any caked-on gunk inside the microwave should wipe away easily.

9. Metal Polish

For a chrome faucet, a once-over with a squeezed-out lemon wedge should do the trick. For copper, brass, or stainless steel pots, you can dip the wedge in baking soda or salt before rubbing.

10. Indoor Pest Deterrent

Rub a lemon peel along a windowsill where ants have been coming in, or spray insects with a lemon/vinegar infusion to kill them.

11. Natural Air Freshener

Boil citrus rinds along with anything else that smells good to you. I like to throw in cinnamon sticks that have already been used to stir cups of apple cider. Not only does it make your house smell great, but it doubles as a humidifier.

12. Potpourri

Dry out strips of orange peel, and combine them with other dehydrated ingredients such as cinnamon sticks or flower petals to make sweet-smelling sachets to keep in a drawer or around the house.

13. Brown Sugar Softener

Put a piece of any citrus rind into a container of brown sugar to keep the sugar from getting hard.

14. Fridge Deodorant

A super-easy use for squeezed out lemons after a lemonade stand: Stick them in the fridge, as is, and let them soak up odors.

15. Fire Starter

Believe it or not, dried-out citrus peels can be used as fire starters for your grill, fireplace, or campfire. Bonus: If you're using them indoors, the room will smell great. You can use the peels alone, or incorporate them into a fire starter made of rolled newspaper or pine cones.

16. Oil Lamp

You can turn a half-orange peel into an oil lamp with a natural wick if you prepare it carefully. I love this idea, especially as a centerpiece, floating in a bowl of water. Does your yard have both a citrus tree and a swimming pool? A pool full of flaming orange or grapefruit halves would look amazing for an evening patio party.

17. Candle

A hollowed-out citrus half can serve both as mold and fragrant holder for a candle. You can use a drop of the essential oil you made to make the smell even stronger.

18. Egg Pan

On your next camping trip, try cooking an egg over the campfire with an empty orange half.

19. Scouring Powder

This recipe calls for dried-out grapefruit rinds ground into powder, borax, and baking soda, to make a wonderful-smelling cleaner for your kitchen sink or toilet. Seems to me other citrus rinds would work just as well. The same ingredients mixed in different proportions make a carpet freshener.

20. Cannabis Keeper

Now that weed is legal in some states, users might like to know that a fresh orange peel or two can add moisture to dried-out weed or keep it moist in a sealed container.

21. Soil Enricher

Stir powdered citrus rinds into your garden to add sulfur, magnesium, and calcium to the soil.

22. Natural Pesticide

Soak orange peels in boiling water, strain, add a few drops of soap, and spray on plants to discourage soft-bodied pests such as slugs. This can also kill ants and roaches if you spray it directly on them. Some folks strengthen the spray with garlic, cayenne, and other smelly stuff.

23. Cat Repellent

Want to keep a neighborhood cat out of your garden? Spread around lots of citrus peels; felines hate the smell.

24. Mosquito Repellent

As weird as it sounds, you can rub an unpeeled orange right on your skin to get some mosquito-repelling orange oil on you — which would be a good emergency measure if you forget bug spray on a picnic. You can even use a strip of peel to replace the insert of a plug-in mosquito repelling device.

25. Bird Feeder

This DIY project involves filling an empty half peel with bird seed and hanging it from a tree.

26. Homemade Goo Gone

Citrus oil's solvent properties are useful for dissolving sticky stuff, like tar on the bottom of a shoe or the sticky residue left behind by tape. You can try rubbing a fruit peel right on the goo, or combine citrus essential oil with baking soda and oil to make a homemade version of the commercial product.

Culinary Uses

Wash peels well before using them for edibles, and scrape or cut the bitter white pith off the peels. Some people use only organic peels for edible concoctions.

27. Infused Liquor

You can use your citrus rinds to create bottles of flavored spirits or liqueur that make excellent gifts. I was surprised to learn how easy this is: You only have to infuse the peels in the alcohol for a few days to make flavored liquor. If you want a sweet liqueur such as limoncello or triple sec, just add sugar syrup.

28. Garnish

When it's time to make cocktails with that infused vodka, cut a strip of citrus peel and simply curl it into a spiral with your fingers or wrap it around a pencil. It will stay curled like magic. You could also garnish food with these whimsical curls, if you have any peels left over after getting through all that infused vodka.

29. Citrus Extract

A lot of recipes call for lemon extract, and a few call for other citrus extracts as well. Making it at home is just like making a vodka infusion, but with more rinds, less vodka, and a longer soaking time. This recipe calls for soaking the rinds of six lemons in one cup of vodka for up to six weeks before decanting into a bottle and adding to your spice cupboard.

30. Lemon Oil

This takes longer than creating infused liquor, but you can make lemon-flavored coconut oil or olive oil in a few weeks, and it's pretty easy. If you're in a hurry, you can use a hot process to speed things up to just a few hours. Use it in salad dressings or any way that you'd use the unflavored oil.

31. Infused Vinegar

To make an easy gift that looks very fancy, soak dried citrus peels in good vinegar, then strain and simmer the vinegar, then reunite it with the peels and put it all in a pretty bottle.

32. Lemon Butter

Combine lemon zest, butter, and herbs to make a concoction to flavor your Thanksgiving turkey or spread on bread.

33. Frozen Zest Stash

Many recipes, both baking and cooking, call for a teaspoon or so of lemon zest. What's more, you can throw it into all kinds of dishes, such as pastas and salads, just to brighten them up.

You don't need to go out and buy a lemon every time you want to make one of these recipes. Simply zest the fruit with a microplane before peeling or juicing, and store the grated bits in a freezer bag or in ice cube trays in your freezer. You can keep it for six months and don't need to defrost it before throwing it into a dish.

34. Dried Zest

I recently bought a small jar of dried lemon zest, causing my husband to laugh at me since we have a tree right outside our front door that's producing more lemons than we know what to do with. I didn't realize that making a jar of this stuff, which is useful for baking and marinades, is as simple as zesting the fruit and leaving that zest out to dry overnight. Now that I know, I think a jar of this would make a great holiday gift.

35. Lemon Sugar

Great for frosting the rim of a cocktail or sprinkling on pancakes, lemon sugar is so easy to make that the compliments I get upon serving it make me feel like a fraud. You can throw some rinds in the food processor with sugar and pulse, or even just seal an intact rind in a bag with sugar for a month or so. Boom. Lemon sugar.

36. Candied Peels

In a fancy restaurant on our anniversary last year, my husband and I pressed the waitress for the secret of the bursts of flavor in a dish. "Candied lemon peel," we were told. Revelation!

Turns out this delicacy, also known as citron, is easy to make: Just boil your peels with sugar syrup and store them in the fridge for up to a month. Candied citrus peels can be dipped in chocolate to make the French treat known as orangettes, used to garnish a lemon pie or a cocktail, sprinkled on ice cream, or simply gobbled up by those of us who love candy but want to feel sophisticated while eating it.

37. Recipe Ingredients

Some recipes call for not just a teaspoon of zest but whole chunks of citrus peels. Store whole rinds in your freezer and you'll be ready to make Sichuan tangerine beef, orange chicken, or orange peel chutney at a moment's notice.

38. Citrus Powder

To make a powder that stores well and is handy for adding to recipes (as well as cleaners or cosmetics), dehydrate citrus peels and then reduce them to dust in a food processor. One easy way to use the powder is adding it to club soda to make a refreshing, sugar-free beverage.

39. Lemon Pepper

Delicious on fish and chicken, lemon pepper is a pantry staple that is just slightly more complicated to make than lemon sugar. This recipe calls for dehydrating the zest with crushed peppercorns in the oven, then grinding it together. If you don't have a spice grinder, you can try crushing it with the back of a spoon or in a food processor.

40. Lemon Pickle

Simmer lemon peel with salt, then mix with lemon juice and olive oil to make preserved lemon peel or lemon pickle, which you can then use as a condiment or seasoning.

41. Citrus Salt

Just as with pepper, this is just a matter of mixing zest with salt, baking it dry, and grinding if a smoother texture is desired. A sprinkling of lemon salt is a nice finishing touch on a dish. If you use fancy salt in a pretty jar, this would make a good gift.

42. Orange Vapor

This could be considered a household use, but one recipe I found from super-fancy Chicago chef Grant Achatz, recommends orange vapor as part of a scallops recipe. According to the chef, you are supposed to put an orange rind in a bowl in front of each guest, and pour boiling water on it, creating a vapor that they can inhale while they eat. I told you he was fancy.

43. Juice or Smoothie Additive

I've never heard of juice made of just the citrus peel, and it doesn't sound good. But you can certainly include the peel when putting citrus fruits in a powerful juicer, to increase the nutritional value of the juice. Throw as much peel as you want into a smoothie as well, and let the other fruits balance out any bitterness.

44. Marmalade or Jam

This is a little more challenging than many of the other recipes here, but avid jam makers should be able to handle making jam from lemon rinds and squeezed-out pulp.

45. Tea

Add dried citrus rinds to your cup of tea, or include them in a homemade herbal tea mix.

Cosmetic Uses

Because it's nontoxic and fragrant, the sky is pretty much the limit when it comes to adding powdered, grated, dried, or infused citrus peels to homemade personal care products. A little more care is required if you're using the essential oil derived from citrus peels, because the oil is powerful and could irritate some people's skin.

46. Body Scrub

Mix the lemon-infused oil described above with sea salt or sugar to make a refreshing body scrub.

47. Skin Lightener

Cover an age spot with a lemon peel and attach it with a bandage for an hour.

48. Soap Additive

You can throw just about anything into homemade soap to add fragrance and texture, so why not little strips of citrus peels? This recipe lays out when in the soap-making process to add the citrus rinds.

49. Body Spray

This recipe for orange-vanilla body spray makes for another easy gift.

50. Simple Soak

If you don't have time to make a preparation with citrus peels, just throw some in a tub of hot water for an instant infusion, and soak.

51. Facial Mask

Dry and powder your citrus peels, then combine with ingredients such as oatmeal, milk, or sandalwood, depending on your goals for your skin.

52. Feet Treat

There are lots of recipes using citrus rinds for foot baths, including this one with lime zest, peppermint, and sugar. Citrus brings a great fragrance as well as helping to exfoliate feet.

Like this article? Pin it!

This article is from Carrie Kirby of Wise Bread, an award-winning personal finance and credit card comparison website. Read more great articles from Wise Bread:

10 Frugal Reasons to Compost

Ashley Marcin — Tue, 10 May 2016 09:00:05 +0000

You've probably heard about composting, or maybe you've even considered giving it a try. This waste-reducing activity is about way more than being kind to the environment and getting some awesome plant food for your garden. Composting can also save you a good amount of cash. So, here are 10 reasons why frugal people should start composting today!

1. It Saves You Trash Tags

Think about how many banana peels, egg shells, and other organic garbage scraps you've tossed into your bin over the last week. All that waste takes up space. Duke University's Center for Sustainability & Commerce shares that the average American produces over four pounds of waste per day. If you have to pay for a service or buy trash tags to haul it away, reducing your garbage load is sure to save you money.

2. It Gives You Free Garden Food

If you maintain a garden, you know that it isn't always cheap. The Bargain Babe explains that compost is one of the nicest gifts you can give your plants. Making your own can spare you from buying compost at your garden center each year. She typically buys two cubic yard bags per season, equaling an investment of $16.98 per year. That may not sound like a lot, but over five years, that amounts to nearly $85 in bags of fertile dirt. And the savings grows the bigger your garden gets!

3. It Improves Your Soil

Why is compost so great for the garden? It's considered a soil conditioner. What this means is that adding compost to your soil improves its texture. It's better able to hold onto nutrients, moisture, and air — all things that plants need to stay robust and healthy. As a result, you'll need to water less (cha-ching!), and your plants will likely yield a better crop. Growing your own food can definitely cut dollars from your weekly grocery bill.

4. It Controls Pests

Another merit of adding compost to your garden is that it provides you with virtually free bug control — without chemicals. Soil treated with compost "tends to produce plants with fewer pest problems," explains the University of Illinois Cooperative Extension. It can also help prevent diseases that regular old dirt cannot ward off on its own. Leaf compost, in particular, may even keep nematodes at bay.

5. It Eliminates the Need for Lawn Services

You can spread this "black gold" on your grass and skip this year's lawn spraying service. You'll get an added health boost by keeping chemical fertilizers and herbicides away from your home, loved ones, and pets. You only need to apply compost to your yard once or twice a year to see the benefits. Simply spread a modest one-half inch layer onto grass (not too deep) using a wheelbarrow and shovel, or a garden spreader. This method even treats those pesky brown spots with ease.

6. It Provides Low-Cost Entertainment

Spending time outdoors and engaging with nature is cheap and fun activity the whole family can enjoy. If you don't know where to start, try square foot gardening. A raised bed is a beginner-friendly holder for your plants. Figure out what you want to grow, pick up some seeds or annuals at your local garden center, draw out your garden plan, and go from there.

7. It Can Earn You Money

That's right! Select cities across the country and beyond may offer grants or other incentives for composting. Take Plymouth, Minnesota, for example. Back in 2012, the city offered its residents a grant of up to $100 to start backyard composting. This money helped people get composting supplies and the things they needed to start their vegetable gardens. Though programs like this one don't exist everywhere, it's worth doing a little investigation to see what incentives your local municipality provides.

8. It Can Forge New Friendships

Composting has even introduced us to people we otherwise may not have met. Check your community calendars for free composting workshops (often run through cooperative extension programs) and you may meet like-minded people to add to your circle of friends. More friends means more connections. More connections means opportunity for sharing of resources like time, tools, knowledge, etc. Plus, it's always fun meeting new people.

9. It Makes You More Food Waste Aware

One of the most notable perks composting has given our family is an awareness of our waste habits. The more we dug spoiled food out of the fridge and put it in our compost bin, the more we realized we weren't planning our meals efficiently. We started writing up our grocery list and detailing breakfasts, lunches, and dinners for the week. These days, we have very little food spoilage.

We even tend to use food scraps before tossing them into the compost pile in stuff like homemade vegetable broth. Simply place carrot peels, onion skins, celery leaves, and other veggie scraps into a bag in your freezer and simmer them with water for 45 minutes. Strain out the scraps to place in your compost and enjoy your broth.

10. It Costs Little to Start

You can build a basic compost bin for less than $5. In some cases, you might even have all the materials you need already on hand. Just find a basic plastic storage tub with a lid, drill holes all over it to allow for airflow and drainage, and place a layer of dirt at the bottom. Then throw your food scraps inside and make sure to rotate or shake it at least once a week. That's all it takes to get started. You should have viable compost in as little as four to six months.

Do you compost? Share your tips with us!

Like this article? Pin it!

This article is from Ashley Marcin of Wise Bread, an award-winning personal finance and credit card comparison website. Read more great articles from Wise Bread:

7 Fresh Veggies You Can Grow From Kitchen Scraps

Sarah Winfrey — Wed, 03 Sep 2014 15:00:04 +0000

A funny thing happened at our house this spring.

We bid on our house in October, closed in December, and moved in January. In Colorado. So, while we knew that the house seemed to be well-landscaped and we could see the general outlines of how things would grow, we had no idea if some of the beds had anything at all planted in them, let alone what might be there. (See also: Urban Composting: It Can Be Done)

So super early this spring, about the time that the tulips and daffodils started blooming, something shot up out of one bed, and then another something, and then another. I waited for them to bloom, but, when they didn't, I went ahead and pulled one up, just to see what it was. As I pulled, I got a whiff of something.

Onion?

Sure enough, someone had planted green onion ends in the garden bed, and they were coming up as the weather warmed.

When I researched it, I found that there are actually a good number of vegetables that you can plant from kitchen scraps, so you can regrow them over and over and over again. Here are some of my favorites.

Lettuce and Celery

I grouped these together because their re-growth process is similar. Cut off all the stalks but leave the whitish part at the bottom intact. Place this in a bowl of water and wait a few days, being sure to spray or flick water onto the top so it stays moist, too. Within a week, you should start seeing baby leaves and roots growing out of the old white part. Plant it with just the new leaves above the soil line, and water. Pretty soon you'll have a whole new vegetable!

I have found that some heads, especially of lettuce, just don't seem to sprout. I'm not sure why this is, but I usually just buy another vegetable and try again. I've read that this whole process works with cabbage and bok choy, too, but I haven't tried either of those.

Avocado

The process here is more involved than for almost everything else.

To re-grow an avocado, wash the seed and poke toothpicks into its sides until you can use them to suspend it, wide part down, over a glass of water. Fill the glass until the water comes to ¾"-1" above the bottom of the seed. Keep it warm and remember to add water if the levels drop. After about six weeks, you should see a stem. When that gets to 6", trim it back to approximately 3". Once you see leaves (usually about the same time as the trim), plant the whole thing in your garden, with the top half of the seed peeking out of the ground.

We love that these are re-growable, because we used to live in California, where they're much cheaper than they are here. The process feels very slow, but having fresh avocados is so worth it!

Ginger

The full name for "ginger" is "ginger root," and the part you buy in a store is exactly that. You can simply plant it, either in a pot or directly into your garden. Everything I've read says to plant it with the most recent buds facing up, but I can never tell which those are, and mine has regrown fine. Simply plant it and water it like any other plant.

The only problem with ginger is that it is awkward to harvest. You have to get down to the roots, either by digging or pulling the whole thing up, and then replant it again. Still, if you use ginger a lot, it's probably worth the time and energy that takes.

Pineapple

To get started re-growing a pineapple, you need to separate the top from the fruit. Consensus seems to say that the best way to do this is to cut it about ¼" down and dig out the fruit. Then let the top dry for a few days, before you plant it directly into moist soil, potting or otherwise. Be sure to keep it warm and damp, since the pineapple grows best in tropical areas. It can take up to two years for the plant to produce fruit but, hey, we have all the time in the world.

I honestly haven't tried this one, because no one here likes pineapple, but I included it because it sounds like so much fun. Let me know how it goes if you try it!

Potatoes (and Sweet Potatoes, Too!)

Chop a regular potato into sections that each have at least two eyes. Plant these in a pot and water them well until you see shoots and leaves appearing. Sweet potatoes are similar, except that most of the eyes tend to cluster around one end. You can plant the whole thing, or just cut off this "top" of the potato and plant that. Once you see the shoots and leaves, you can take cuttings, and start new plants and/or transplant them into your garden.

Later this summer, after we found green onions growing all over the place, we discovered that some of our larger "weeds" were actually potato plants! We haven't harvested them yet (except for the few that we accidentally dug up when we thought they were pests), but they look promising.

Mushrooms

These tend to be a particular challenge to re-grow, but it's fun to try. Separate the top part from the bottom part. Then plant the bottom part in soil that's as nutrient-dense as you can get it, with just the very tip showing. If you keep it cool at night and in filtered light (think light that a mushroom might get while under a tree) during the day, you just might top your pizza with your own mushrooms next time!

I haven't had much success with this, but it hasn't stopped me from trying. It seems hard to get these just the right amount of water at the right time. Mine keep looking like they are doing well, and then dying all-of-a-sudden.

Onions

In addition to the green onions I found growing in my yard, you can re-grow full-size onions, too. Usually, an onion has an end that seems to have small roots attached. Cut this off, with just ¼" or so of the flesh of the onion still attached. Plant this, roots down, in a pot or directly in your garden.

My onions have been ready in two-three months, when the stalk starts to get yellow, though it can take up to four months, depending on where you live and where you plant them. Remember to note where you plant which types of onions, so you can be sure to harvest the type you need!

Have you re-grown any vegetables from kitchen scraps? Did it work for you?

This article is from Sarah Winfrey of Wise Bread, an award-winning personal finance and credit card comparison website. Read more great articles from Wise Bread:

The Only 5 Words You Need to Declutter Your Life

Max Wong — Tue, 02 Sep 2014 17:00:04 +0000

In 2008 I downsized my personal belongings by 85% when I moved into Dinky Manor with Mr. Foxypants, my now husband.

Initially, Mr. Foxypants and I agreed that we would both downsize our belongings by 50% in order to fit the acquisition of our two adult lives into a 1000 square foot house with terrible closet space.

Downsizing by 50% was easy. I managed that in just a few weeks by creating a game called "Do I like this object more than my boyfriend?" Since I have OCD, I really wanted to avoid negatively impacting our relationship with my personal clutter issues. I never wanted to be in a position where we would argue about my stuff. Conflict avoidance is a huge motivator for me. (See also: This Is How You Declutter and Keep Your Stuff, Too)

However, I soon realized that 50% wasn't going to cut it. The 1937 layout of Dinky Manor wasn't designed for 21st Century life. Our house predates both television and refrigeration, so just arranging our major appliances in our tiny, period kitchen was challenging.

Because I love a good challenge, I decided that I would downsize by 90%. After speedily ditching half my belongings, I thought, "How hard could this be?"

Not that hard, but still hard enough that I actually didn't make my goal of downsizing by 90% because I couldn't bear to purge my enormous crafty crap stash of fabric and yarn. But I made it to 85% with the help of the 5 R's.

1. REFUSE (To Bring In More Stuff)

Curbing consumption is actually the first step in downsizing. I think of it as a diet for my home. To this end I try and get rid of 10 things a day. I will not keep my house free of clutter and shrink my carbon footprint with a one-in-one-out policy. In order to cut my clutter I also:

Refused to acquire new-to-me clothes, furniture, or house wares until I found a place for everything I already owned.
Refused to restock the pantry until I'd eaten through my current food stash. (This took two months).
Refused to bring single use items into my home. And by single use I mean items that generally are used only once like wrapping paper, plastic shopping bags, drinking straws, and little hotel shampoo bottles. In addition to being environmentally unsustainable, single use items were using up precious storage with their additional packaging. Most importantly, by using "convenience" items I was making mindless consumption a habit. Doing a periodic trash audit helps me discover where I am over-consuming in my home.

Decluttering Is the Mother of Invention

The direct result of refusing to bring new things into my home was innovation. I was forced to find reusable replacements for all my convenience goods. This is actually easier than it sounds because single use items only rose to prominence in the last 30 years and I am old enough to remember when everyone drank from the drinking fountains or thermoses rather than disposable water bottles.

If I couldn't think of a suitable reusable replacement, I called my mom and dad and asked what they used when they were growing up instead of Saran Wrap (a plastic shower cap) or a to-go coffee mug (a jar with a tight fitting lid). Every single use item has its reusable counter part. Often it took just a few moments of looking around the house to find a suitable reusable replacement — a practice that is actually way more convenient than driving to the store to buy consumables.

2. REDUCE (What You Already Own)

The ease that I was able to part with half my stuff taught me a very important lesson: If it's easy to part with, then it's not something I really need in my life. Clearly, I was massively over-consuming, a fact that was really difficult for me to admit to myself, as I have always prided myself as being a very careful, and efficient shopper. I rarely go shopping and when I do buy something, I try to buy used to conserve resources. Alas, all my anti-consumerist smugness had gone to waste; I might be a minimalist compared to my fellow Americans, but I was still collecting too much stuff.

Speaking of too much stuff, my grandmother, an accomplished hoarder, referred to herself as a founding member of the SABLE club. SABLE stands for Stash Accumulation Beyond Life Expectancy, of course. How many books can I realistically read before I die? And, do I need to store them all in my house? Can I store my stash of future reads at the public library instead, or in my Audible queue? Is packing my books Tetris-like into the bookcase a good use of my short life?

Reduce Redundancies

One of the speediest ways I reduced my belongings was by seeking out and eliminating repetition. Between my boyfriend and I, we owned two lawnmowers, two toasters, four coffee makers, seven flashlights, and 29 pairs of scissors. I went room by room and distilled our belongings down to the best of each item, and we sold the runner-ups at a garage sale.

Increase Sharing

Another easy way to reduce clutter is by sharing. My brother-in-law Jonathan and I share a china pattern. He has place settings for 12 and I have place settings for eight (which is the maximum number of plates and cups that will fit into my kitchen cabinet). When I have a dinner party for more than eight people, I borrow Jonathan's dishes. When he needs spare pieces for an event, he borrows mine. I share a weed whacker and garden tools with my friend Laura and kitchen appliances with my neighbor Alexandra. What is the point of buying and storing items like ladders, luggage, or camping gear that get used only a few times a year, when I can save money and space by sharing these things with friends and neighbors? I'm not a doomsday prepper. There's no need for me to own my own everything.

Reduce Exposure to Advertising

Another thing I hate to admit about myself: I am super sensitive to advertising. While I am grateful to Pinterest, Etsy, and eBay for making my life easier and my wallet fatter, those sites are also incredibly triggering. Window-shopping on those sites fills me with desire for things I never knew existed and certainly don't need. Fashion magazines and blogs are equally crazy-making. While in hardcore, downsizing, purge mode it is often necessary to take a sabbatical from media, social networks, and even people that encourage consumption.

Less Stuff = Less Stress

Reducing my belongings had an unforeseen benefit: It dramatically reduced my stress level. In addition to having 85% fewer things I had to curate, clean, and care for, it allowed me to stop looking at my everyday schedule as one, long To Do List. Every book in my house is something that needs to be read. The yarn needs to be knit into sweaters. The video games need to be played.

3. REUSE (Through Repair and Repurposing)

My great-grandfather was really good with money. He raised six kids on his earnings as a card shark. One of his favorite sayings was, "Nothing is cheaper than the thing you already own." From an environmental standpoint, nothing is greener, either.

As I write this I am wearing my new shorts. Last night they were my old jeans with holes in both knees. My new shorts will help me get through the disgusting heat of September in Los Angeles. I won't have to buy new shorts, nor will I have to buy new oven mitts for my kitchen, as the leftover denim from my old jeans will be sewn into hot pads. Also, I will save on electricity costs by wearing shorts to stay cool instead of turning on the air conditioning.

Shopping in your own closet is one of the easiest ways of stretching your wardrobe budget. According to Ginny Snook Scott, the chief design officer of California Closets, the custom storage design firm, most women only wear 20% of their wardrobes. Before bringing anything new into the house I now ask myself, "Do I already own something that I can use instead of this?"

4. RECYCLE

Check with your local recycling plant to find out what is actually recyclable in your community. For example, mirrors and crystal are both made from glass. However, they are a different composition of glass than food jars and bottles, and cannot be recycled curbside in my city. Although single use plastic water bottles are recyclable in my area, the caps from the water bottles are not. Greasy cardboard food wrappers are not recyclable anywhere (although they can be composted).

That said, a little research into your local recycling might result in some pleasant surprises. Many communities now have e-waste facilities that accept old appliances and computers. My e-waste depot also accepts old paint, pesticides, and other types of household chemicals. Nike collects old sports shoes of any brand that they turn into Grind Cover, a court surface for playgrounds. Most dry cleaners are happy to take returns of wire hangers. The Lions Club recycles old eyeglasses, with or without lenses.

Earth911 has a search application that helps users find recycling centers in their area for items like cell phones, batteries, CFLs, BBQ grills, and bicycles, too.

5. ROT (Compost Like a Champion)

While most people don't think about the trash they generate, garbage is the clutter that is forced onto other people. Composting is a great way to downsize your garbage clutter. Although there are tons of people who get all judge-y and micromanage-y about composting, composting is actually really easy. In fact, Mother Nature does all the heavy lifting. Banana peels, coffee grounds, cotton rags that have seen their last mess, cat hair, and paper and cardboard packaging that is too dirty to be recycled all gets broken down by microbes and worms in my backyard into nutrient-rich plant food, instead of languishing in the landfill. Even apartment dwellers without yards can compost their waste using an under-the-kitchen-sink worm bin. Let me just say from personal experience, that homemade worm poo compost is a great gift for all the gardeners in your life.

People who do not have access to recycling in their community, can use composting as a way to keep paper waste out of the landfill. Before I had a yard with trees, the brown component of my compost consisted of pizza boxes, old phone books, and paper deli-wrap.

By keeping paper food wrappers and food waste out of the kitchen garbage can, I can go over a month without having to empty the 13-gallon garbage can in my kitchen. (I can go on vacation without coming back to a house that smells like rotting food— bonus). Alas, even with my tiny garbage output, my garbage bill is the same as my neighbors that throw away everything. Even so, composting does help me save hundreds of dollars on my food and water costs.

Organic compost costs $12 per bag at my local nursery, and fertilizer costs even more. My homemade compost works as an all-in-one soil amendment to make my clay soil more friable, as an organic fertilizer to feed both my crops and my decorative plants, and as water-saving mulch all over my yard. Just about every new home gardener has experienced the $20 home grown tomato — the start up costs of their garden exceed their actual grocery bill. Composting allows me to grow my homegrown produce, for much less than what I'd spend at the store for the same items.

Finally, my garden hack of using citrus peels as biodegradable seed starter pots has been pinned over 165K times and been featured on design blogs and magazines ranging from Ready Made to Apartment Therapy to Buzzfeed. Food-based garbage is my friend.

Have you recently downsized your house? How did you do it?

Like this article? Pin it!

This article is from Max Wong of Wise Bread, an award-winning personal finance and credit card comparison website. Read more great articles from Wise Bread:

How to Make Your Own Mulch: A Beginner's Guide for the Lazy Composter

Little House — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 13:00:02 +0000

One thing I enjoy about my small garden is the fragrant smell of my lavender plants and the movement of the feather grass in the wind. I have become an avid small-garden and container gardener. In the process, I've also gotten very eco-conscious about what I put on my plants and in my garden. I began to research other gardening websites, specifically ones that discussed eco-friendly alternatives to fertilizers. The nitrogen in fertilizers isn't healthy on the environment. In excess, it is harmful to your soil and aquatic animals when the nitrogen-filled water is washed out to sea.

The more I researched, the more I realized that I could make my own "fertilizer," or mulch, using my kitchen waste! Not only do I reduce my kitchen garbage, I reuse it to benefit my plants. I also save money by not having to purchase additional nutrients or replace dead plants very often. It's a three-for-one deal.

Picking your composter

I researched a variety of composters, from worm bins to plain old plastic tubs. I knew that as a beginner, I wanted to start with something easy, and something that wouldn't make me squeamish. There are a variety of composters that I had to choose from:

Worm Bins — This composter is filled with live worms and you can turn it with a handle. The worms will break down most kitchen food waste. You can place this composter inside a home or outside, but not in direct sunlight.
Earth Machine Composter — A black plastic composter with vents, a lid, and a small door for easy access to your mulch. You can put in some paper products, yard waste, and food waste, minus the meat and oils. This composter is an outdoor composter, it doesn't have a bottom.
Backyard Composter — Another outdoor composter, it is made up of stacks of plastic squares. You can take the top off the composter and make it the bottom, and vice versa. (This helps turn the compost.) It also composts yard clippings and food waste, minus the meats and oils.

Since my goal was to make composting easy on myself, I contacted my Department of Water and Power (LADWP) and found out they offered all three types of composters. One weekend a month, they offer a short seminar and sell their composters at various locations. Sometimes, they even give away free trees!

While browsing the composter selections, and examining them up close, I made some decisions; I didn't want to remove, restack, and re-shovel my compost, so I decided the backyard composter was just too much work for me. The worm bin made me a little squeamish, and I knew I wasn't ready for this composter yet. I finally decided that the Earth Machine Composter was the best choice for me. The removable lid makes it easy to add materials from the top.

What you can compost and how to care for your mulch

Having chosen the Earth Machine Composter, I was not only able to add food scraps to my compost, but also grass clippings and shredded paper. Most composters compost best when they have an even amount of "green" and "brown" waste added to them.

Green waste includes vegetable and fruit scraps from your kitchen, grass clippings, leaves and garden trimmings, and coffee and tea leftovers (including used filters and tea bags). Brown waste includes bread, wood chips, shredded paper, nut shells, and dry straw and pine needles. Having even amounts of each makes for a nutrient-rich mulch. These materials will also compost, or breakdown, better if they are in equal amounts. For instance, if there is too much shredded paper, or brown material, in your composter, it might take a long time for it to break down and may become dry.

I placed my Earth Machine right outside my back door: One tip of many, which is listed in a handy booklet that comes with the composter. Placing it close to an outside door is ideal. If you place it too far from your kitchen or house, you may not use it as often as you like. This makes it easy on you.

Another idea that I gleaned from various websites is that you want to keep a small trash can, preferably with a lid, to hold your kitchen scraps. This way throughout the week you can collect carrot tops, pepper cores, peeled potato skins, and any fruit or veggie left over in a sealed container, and only have to dump it into your composter once or twice a week. Having a lid on your container helps minimize gnats or any fermenting smell.

Once you start emptying your kitchen scraps and yard clippings into your composter, it's best to stir or turn it twice a week. Honestly, I'm a lazy composter, and I only turn it every two weeks or so. However, the more you turn your compost, the quicker you end up with mulch. If you're lazy, like me, it just takes longer for that end result.

Your compost should retain a consistency of a damp sponge, moist but not too wet. Moisture, or lack there of, is easily remedied by either adding water if your compost is too dry, or adding brown materials if it is too moist. I live in an arid region, so my problem is usually that my compost is too dry. When I water my plants, I try to add some water to my compost pile. Also, when I empty my small kitchen scrap container, I like to rinse it out with water. I use that water to dampen my compost.

Quick Tips

Some quick and handy tips for composting in the Earth Machine:

If you select an outdoor composter, keep it close to your house for easy access.
Turn or stir your compost weekly for best results.
Add water if your compost is too dry, add brown materials, like shredded paper, if your compost is too wet.

Your Garden will love you

What comes out of your composter is a nutrient-rich mulch that your plants will love. Mulch is usually ph balanced, so most plants will benefit from adding it to their soil — even plants in containers. Your kitchen garbage will be reduced, which means you won't be lugging trash bags to the curb as frequently. You'll save money because you won't need to purchase fertilizer as often for your garden and your plants will prosper. Finally, you can rest assured that any mulch that is washed into the storm drains won't harm aquatic animals.

Happy composting!

Guest Post Blurb:

This is a guest post by Little House.

This article is from Little House of Wise Bread, an award-winning personal finance and credit card comparison website. Read more great articles from Wise Bread:

Urban Composting - It CAN be done!

Andrea Karim — Sun, 14 Oct 2007 22:05:52 +0000

I always thought of composting as something that could only be accomplished by people who have vast back yards, or farms. My mother used to compost our yard and food waste, and it seemed like SUCH a chore. We owned this large, plastic polyhedron where we put all of the waste, and you had to rotate it every few days. It produced some great composting soil, but I figured that in order to achieve such a task, one would need somewhere to stash a big pile of grass clippings, raked leaves, and kitchen waste.

Turns out that I was wrong. Almost anyone can compost their food waste. It's easy, it's cheap, and it's SO much better for the environment than just throwing all your organic waste into a landfill.

A couple of months ago, I purchased a small ceramic canister for my kitchen counter. I throw all of my food scraps in there - coffee grounds and filters, egg shells, vegetarian meals that have gone bad, apple cores, and soiled paper towels. Once every few days, I throw the contents of the canister into my neighbor's yard waste container (we have an agreement). If I order pizza, the soiled boxes go in there, too, as do the leaves that I sweep off of my parking spot and front stairs. The City of Seattle hauls yard waste to a local company for mass composting.

That's about it. It takes no more than 5 minutes of every week to do this, costs me $5 a month (since I pay my neighbor for the use of his yard waste bin), and yet I've reduced the amount of normal garbage that I throw away by nearly 1/3. I can live happier knowing that my impact on the planet has been lessened a bit. But for some reason, I can't convince most of my friends to do the same.

It seems that the urban or semi-urban lifestyle leads a lot of people to believe that "messy" things like composting just aren't possible. But it's not only possible, it's really easy! Oh, I'm sure that there are some cities in which the city doesn't pick up yard waste for composting, and that's too bad. And some apartment and condo complexes don't have yard waste bins - but they should! If you're considering composting, but you live in a building with no yard waste or compost bins, consider checking around the neighborhood and seeing if you can split the cost of yard waste pick-up with a neighbor, like I do. Or, pressure your building management to start providing yard waste receptacles.

You don't even need a ceramic container at all - some people just use a milk jug with the top cut off (I like the ceramic container because the top contains a carbon filter to absorb odors - plus, it keeps the fruit flies inside). Some people even do their composting indoors, using worm bins or other methods. If you have a balcony, porch, or garage (hell, even the back corner of an parking spot will do), you can compost your food scraps in a small wooden or plastic bin with a little dirt and some earthworms. There are many online resources that can help you learn how to do this.

This article is from Andrea Karim of Wise Bread, an award-winning personal finance and credit card comparison website. Read more great articles from Wise Bread:

A year without toilet paper - The Interview

Andrea Karim — Thu, 16 Aug 2007 23:16:09 +0000

You wouldn't necessarily know it from watching him on his appearance on The Colbert Report. He comes across as a soft-spoken, good-natured guy, for sure. But he must have a very impenetrable hide to still be blogging after being on the receiving end of the recent Gawker snarkfest about his family's infamous experiment, a year of extremely low-impact living in Manhattan.

This enviro-aesetic lifefstyle includes giving up toilet paper, consuming only food that has been grown within a 250-mile radius, avoiding all carbon-producing forms of transportation, no air conditioning (in New York! in the summer!), and buying nothing new.

I wrote a rather critical blog post about Beavan's adventure last March, after reading about his family's exploits (can you use that term when talking about someone who DOESN'T exploit stuff?) in the New York Times. If you had asked me then, I would have said that Beavan's experiment was all a publicity stunt, and that the extreme conditions that he and his family were subjecting themselves to were really overkill. In fact, I did say something along those lines, but with more sarcasm. Many other people responded in a similar fashion.

Months later, after having written a few blog posts of my own that caused people to freak out ("How DARE you criticize baby carrots?! Do you want us ALL to be obese?") because their lifestyle choices were being challenged, and nobody likes that. In addition, I've learned about the dangers of plastics, both to our bodily health and to the environment at large. My stance towards Beavan's experiment softened considerably.

For one thing, it's really hard to pick on someone who is just trying something, while sharing the experience with the world. Anyone who talks to Beavan, or reads his blog, No Impact Man, can tell that he's not the type of guy to foist his ideas on anyone. He's just an environmentally-conscious guy who got sick of talking the talk, and decided to walk the walk. Plus, he's got a sense of humor about the whole thing.

I recently asked Beavan, whose blog is also a part of the Life Remix Network, to answer a few questions about how is experiment is progressing, and how he feels about the furor surrounding his attempt to decrease his impact on our planet.

--------------

What has been the overall response been to your experiment? The internet can be a vicious place, and I'm sure you've received a fair share of malicious criticism. But your own site seems to have many supportive readers. Do you find that the reaction is about 50/50?

What you can't see is the emails I get. I've become so used to getting supportive email that it is quite a shock when something critical comes in. People come to the blog, I think, because they sense for themselves that there may be a way to live that is not so frantic and consumption-based that can both be kinder to the planet and make us happier.

How do you deal with some of the attacks leveled at your family? Is it difficult to balance sharing your life and protecting your own emotions?

By concentrating on the huge level of support and on my mission with this project, which is to allow people to examine the lessons I'm learning this year as one method to make more positive choices for themselves. My style is not for everyone, though, and that's okay.

I imagine it's nice to avoid having to buy lead-painted toys from China for a while. Do you find it easier to raise a child in your apartment now than it was before? Are there challenges with the experiment specifically related to child-rearing?

With no TV or electricity or video games, this experiment has meant that Isabella gets so much more of our attention than she might have otherwise. We play, we ride around on our bikes, we go to the park, we splash in the fountain. This is the biggest gift of the project.

Has this endeavour helped you to save money, or is it more costly in the end? Fluorescent light bulbs, for instance, are quite expensive.

CFLs, over their lifetime, work out cheaper, thanks to electricity savings (though of course we don't use electricity right now). Our grocery bill is higher, but our restaurant bill is lower. We don't fly or drive. We're saving money and eating better and getting more exercise and feeling healthier and sleeping more.

When your year is up, do you think that you will continue to practice any parts of this experiment? Are there any aspects of this lifestyle that are more difficult than others?

Which bit shall I give up? Spending time with Isabella or eating better? Just joking, but honestly, much of what we've changed we'll keep. But probably not all. Still, that's all hypothetical. We're not there yet.

Do you feel like this lifestyle is made easier due to your work-at-home status? Could a family with two parents who work outside the home, making a net income of $60K, engage in the same kind of practices?

I'm not hoping to make everyone live like me. I'm just hoping people might feel encouraged about the possibility of finding their own suitable options that might both be better for the planet and make them happier.

Many people have questioned your motives in this experiment, suggesting that you're only doing it to sell books. Also, there's been a bit of snarking in the blogosphere that your book is going to "kill millions of trees". How to you respond to those attacks? Is there any validity in them?

There might be easier ways to sell books! The good news, for me, is that FSG plans to publish my book by the most sustainable method they can find. I'm happy about that. Every time a book like mine gets published in a sustainable way helps smooth the way for the publishing industry to eventually publish all books sustainably.

How do you apply the no-impact lifestyle to your dog? What do you feed her, and how difficult is it to clean up after her without using SOMETHING plastic?

I pick up her poop with found plastic bags.

Overall, are you enjoying your new lifestyle? Are there some aspects to it that you just can't WAIT to finish up?

Although the experiment will be officially over in November, the investigation may never end. It's fascinating and satisfying to take the life you've inherited from your past and your culture, to question the underlying assumptions, and see how you put it back together when you choose deliberately.

This article is from Andrea Karim of Wise Bread, an award-winning personal finance and credit card comparison website. Read more great articles from Wise Bread:

Snail Free Gardening

Andrea Karim — Tue, 03 Apr 2007 20:17:27 +0000

Green gardening should be cheap. Organic gardening was the way of the world before chemical companies found ways to create compounds that could destroy pests quickly and effectively. The thing that makes organic gardening less-favored than, say, using pesticides, is that it's not as efficient. You have to put more effort into organic gardening.

But it's worth it. It's cheap, it's fun, and you can protect your water supply. Remember, whatever we spray on our lawns and gardens ends up in our drinking water.

I haven't had too much luck with critter control where I live. Seattle is a very snail and slug-heavy area, and I have one very serious problem:

I love snails.

I think snails are beautiful. I grew up in an area where there simply aren't any snails, and I was so taken with the little guys when we used to visit my grandmother in Pasadena. I was heartbroken when my father announced the ingredients to the escargot that I had just sampled while dining at my very first French restaurant. When I take my dogs out for their last walk at night here in the Pacific Northwest, I often have to tiptoe through the streets because the snails come out in droves and line the sidewalks - I can't bear to step on one.

Thus, I can't stand the idea of drowning them in beer or setting traps and then throwing them in the garbage (although I don't suppose I would object to some one actually trapping and eating them - I wouldn't do it, but I can see why someone would).

My mom used to drip some weird, sludgey black poison to protect her roses from slugs. I never liked this, and snail bait can be very dangerous to household pets. But I'm happy to report that there are plenty of ways to reduce the damage that slugs and snails do to your garden that don't involve pesticides. Sure, it take a bit more elbow grease than plain ol' poison, but it's worth the effort.

I should stress that there's probably no such thing as a snail-free garden, just a garden that snails don't really like to visit that much.

Here are some tips from discouraging those mollusky visitors, courtesy of The Garden Helper:

Pulling the weeds from your garden is something you need to do anyway. As you pull each weed, you remove a potential slug outpost.
Keep all decaying matter cleaned out of your garden beds. While leaves make a good mulch, once they begin to compost they become food and shelter for slugs and snails.
Prune the branches of any shrubs which are laying on the ground. Keep the old leaves and such cleaned out. By doing this you will have destroyed yet another slug haven!
Cultivate your soil regularly to keep the dirt clods broken up, and unearth any slugs which may have burrowed under the surface.
The shaded areas beneath decks can be a slug arena: keep them weed and litter free.
Keep the lawn edges trimmed. Slugs will congregate under the umbrella of unkept grass.
Cedar bark or gravel chips spread around your plant will irritate and dehydrate slugs.
Rosemary, lemon balm, wormwood, mints, tansy, oak leaves, needles from conifers and seaweed will repel slugs.
Enlist allies... snakes, ducks, geese, toads, and [chickens] would enjoy helping you out as they dine on your slugs.

Here are some other ideas that I've gathered over the years:

Create as sunny a garden as possible. Now, this is tough, especially for those of us who live in the Land of Perpetual Rain, but put all of your snail-prone plants in a sunny area. If you have lots of shady areas in your garden, try to keep it free of ground cover like ivy, where the slugs and snails like to sleep during the day. I have a long strip of skinny yard that is VERY shady, and I'm making it into a rock garden with some moss and a couple of tiny Japanese maples. It's low-maintenance and pretty, and snails just aren't interested in it.

Protect prone plants with copper barriers. For some reason, slugs and snails won't cross copper. You can buy copper foil online for pretty cheap. I have a teeny courtyard that I use to grow tomatoes, so I put copper around the base and around the lip of the huge ceramic pots that I use. It looks pretty as an accent if you put it on right. You can also put a loop around the base of a plant.

If you are a great big meanie, traps are easy to construct. Spray some beer on a board and place it, beer-side down, 1/2 inch off of the soil in a shady area of your garden. The snails that collect under there can be eaten, or thrown into your evil coworkers yard. You can go out at night and collect them, as well. They are nocturnal, so day time collection is harder.

Also, take note: another use for vinegar!

"As you wage your war on slugs and snails, you are almost certain to be 'slimed' at least once. YUK! Mix up a little warm water and vinegar, and use this formula to remove the slime from your hands like magic!"

Photo by mozzercork.

This article is from Andrea Karim of Wise Bread, an award-winning personal finance and credit card comparison website. Read more great articles from Wise Bread:

Life Without Toiletpaper - Bum Deal?

Andrea Karim — Thu, 22 Mar 2007 19:53:53 +0000

How far would you go to save the world?

Upon reading the New York Times article about the Beaven-Conlin household in Manhattan, I started to get a little queasy. The article delves a bit into the lives of a couple and their young daughter, yuppies who live affluent lives in New York City. They've taken the idea behind The Compact, and then taken it a LOT farther. They are trying to live for one year with absolute minimal impact on the environment.

Their toddler wears organic cotton diapers. The family eats all organic food, grown within a 250-mile radius of the city. They bake their own bread, take the stairs instead of the elevator, and don't buy much outside of groceries.

That sounds responsible, right? Then it gets better. They don't use toilet paper (the details of how they avoid this are not pretty, and no, they did not have the good sense to invest in a bidet). They compost INSIDE their apartment. They use no spices but have made an exception for salt, which they apparently think of as an indulgence in baking rather than something that humans need in order to survive.

I think that the idea behind what the Beaven-Conlin family is trying is wonderful. And even though we all agree that we should use less, buy less, and pollute less, how many of us really do much of anything to accomplish this?

The dishwasher is off, along with the microwave, the coffee machine and the food processor. Planes, trains, automobiles and that elevator are out, but the family is still doing laundry in the washing machines in the basement of the building. And they have not had the heart to take away the vacuum from their cleaning lady, who comes weekly (this week they took away her paper towels).

I consider myself an environmentalist, but I just ate a sandwich out of a styrofoam container and then threw it away, because you can't recycle styrofoam in Seattle and I got tired of hauling bags of it to my parents' place across the mountains for recycling.

I drive 20 miles to work, because my job is located quite far from the job that I had when I bought my home (telecommuting is not an option with this firm, and taking the bus would take me close to 2.5 hours each way). If there is anyone who eats food grown farther from where they live, I don't know who it could be. I have a ridiculous appetite for tropical fruit and exotic spices.

In the NY Times article, Colin Beaven states that the experiment that his family is trying is "also very urban. It’s a critical twist in the old wilderness adage: Leave only footprints, take only photographs. But how do you translate that into Manhattan?"

Well, I'd argue that that's easier in Manhattan than a lot of other places. Because Manhattan is rife with foodies, you can find farmers markets open year-round. You can buy organic milk in reusable glass bottles. There aren't many places in the five boroughs that you can't walk or bike to. I used to live in Brooklyn and work in Chelsea, and I would walk from dinner with friends in Midtown back home. It took a while (and wasn't always voluntary; sometimes I'd run out of money and not be able to get subway fair), but it was very doable. Come to think of it, I never went to Staten Island, so maybe you can't get there by bike or on foot.

People who live outside of large metropolitan areas with stellar public transportation (you know, normal people who can't afford huge apartments, or even studios, in swanky downtown areas) don't have the luxury of riding their Razor scooters to work. Not only would that be impossible, but they'd probably get their butts kicked by their work buddies. Hell, my neighbors are very swishy, and I think they'd probably call me a sissy if I broke out a Razor scooter and started scooting around Seattle.

Now, the No Impact Family is not saying that everyone else has to live like this, and they are obviously trying it as an experiment. I think these kinds of revolutionary try-it-and-see experiments are brilliant, and I certainly applaud their efforts, even if I think the lifestyle might be too extreme for many of us (I am NOT making my own vinegar, thank you).

Also, I think some of the moves are a little odd. For instance, Ms. Conlin takes her lunch to work every day in a mason jar.

A mason jar.

What's wrong with Tupperware? Yes, it's plastic, but it's not like you throw it out. A mason jar is heavy and awkward and breakable. I love using mason jars for preserves and pickles, but it's not up there on my list of potential lunchboxes. Why stop at a mason jar? Why not just put your lunch in a soapstone box that you carved yourself and tie it up in leather than you tanned out of from Central Park squirrel hides? Think of the shoulder muscles you'd develop!

Also, she gave up coffee. Well, that's just plain sick. I mean, if you don't want to go to Starbucks or even an independent coffeshop every day, that's fine. But there's nothing wrong with a French press. It's French! The French love suffering (or is that Russians?), so it totally fits in with the lifestyle.

There was a telling little bit of the story that got me thinking, though:

Ms. Conlin... did describe, in loving detail, a serious shopping binge that predated No Impact and made the whole thing doable, she said. “It was my last hurrah,” she explained. It included two pairs of calf-high Chloe boots (one of which was paid for, she said, with her mother’s bingo winnings) and added up to two weeks’ salary, after taxes and her 401(k) contribution.

What? You know, maybe these people really need to try this. I don't know how much Conlin makes at Business Week, because she could be an intern, but I'm guessing from her apartment location and her good taste in boots that that was pretty much a $3000 shopping spree. That's a guess, yes, but still. Two weeks salary? Doesn't something like that sort of defeat the purpose of no impact living?

Perhaps I'm being too touchy on the subject because I realize that if I used one-tenth of the discipline that this family is showing, I could make a major impact on my life, but by golly, I hate the stairs.

And bidets are really, really pricey.

This article is from Andrea Karim of Wise Bread, an award-winning personal finance and credit card comparison website. Read more great articles from Wise Bread: