Bits and pieces

I don’t know enough about any of this to justify a full posting, but this is all stuff I’ve found while poking around and wanted to share, because I think it’s useful information.

Plastic Loose Fill Council: If somebody sends you a package filled with those nasty Styrofoam peanuts, this website can help you to find a place that will take them and reuse them.

Eat Well Guide: Have you been thinking you’d like to eat more local, sustainable, organic food, but don’t think there’s anything available? This website lists farmer’s markets, stores, restaurants, and more, based on your zipcode. You might be surprised what’s right around the corner!

US Department of Energy: Is renewable power available for purchase in my area? Sadly, no, but maybe it is in yours. Check out this website to find out.

Environmental Protection Agency: If you don’t have a well to obtain your drinking water, this website can help you determine what the quality of your municipal water is like.

A few updates…

I am still on the bottled water wagon. The stuff from the tap hasn’t killed me yet. Even though it often smells funny.

Still in the process of decluttering, but I’d just like to throw something out there for any freecyclers in the crowd: if you say you’re going to go pick something up, make sure it’s because you really want the item, not just because it’s free and you can’t beat the price. I’ve been stood up a few times by people who claimed to want my items. Most were apologetic and contacted me to let me know they couldn’t collect, but a few just never showed up. It made me start thinking that maybe it was too much work to give stuff away. Which seems ridiculous, but I’m taking a break for a while.

I’ve continued making my yogurt. Sometimes it’s more watery than others, but it’s always been edible.

For trash day after two weeks, we still didn’t have a full bag of garbage! I put it out anyway though because it was really starting to smell bad.

Buy Nothing Challenge is going pretty well…all of my “slip ups” I actually think are justifiable: batteries for the smoke detector, and stay tuned for more on my biking adventures and the worms in my garage!

I posted a while ago about the Riot 4 Austerity. I think this is such a cool concept. I also think it’s really overwhelming. But inspired by the small scale of Buy Nothing Month modeled after the Compact, I’m going to give the Riot a trial run. I’m going to pick only one of their seven categories to start with and see if, instead of reducing my consumption TO 10% of the average, I am going to see if I can reduce my current consumption BY 10%.

Anybody care to join me?

For those not familiar, the seven categories are:
Gasoline
Electricity
Heating & Cooking Energy
Garbage
Water
Consumer Goods
Food

I am going to start with water. Based on my last water bill, I am actually at 31% of average US consumption. Therefore, I will attempt to reduce my consumption to 21% by the time I receive my next bill.

Let me know if you pick a category to tackle. I like structure, so I appreciate the idea of having actual numbers to measure my progress, rather than the vague idea of just trying to do better. I’ll let you know how it goes!

Clutter clutter everywhere…

Desk drawer - selective focus
Originally uploaded by kcdsTM

I had stopped seeing a lot of the clutter around my house, mostly because although I had lots of it, I have enough closet, drawer, and cabinet space that I could keep the clutter and keep the place neat looking. Finally though, I’d had enough. It wasn’t anything major that happened, it was just a growing realization that I have way too much stuff. So I decided to tackle it all. I’m certainly not done yet, but I’ve made a big dent.

I’ve freecycled a bunch of things, sold a few items on ebay, and set aside several large bags of stuff to donate to charity. I even found a few items that were still in the packaging that I returned to Home Depot to make over $20 in store credit! I’d always been in the habit of buying stuff I probably didn’t even need, because I knew I could return it if I didn’t use it. Except I never get around to returning a lot of it. I brought three items back, still in packaging, and now I have some “free money” to use on something I’ll actually need in the future.

Deciding what to do with things isn’t really the challenge though. The tough part is deciding what to get rid of, or where to start. Decluttering a whole house is a big project to take on, especially when that house is filled with the combined clutter from two previously single adult lives.

I did a bunch of poking around online to see how other people were handling their clutter. I found a few good ideas that, combined with a healthy dose of common sense, allowed me to really clear out the unnecessary stuff that’s been cramping my style.

1. Start small – but start: I began my project by picking a single drawer in my kitchen. It wasn’t even my junk drawer, but it was a drawer that I almost never opened. So I opened it, and I took everything out. This became one of the key factors that really helped me to weed out what I didn’t want. Looking into a drawer or cabinet, it was easy for me to say, yeah, I use all that stuff. But when I had to handle each individual item, I realized there probably wasn’t too much point in saving a dumpling maker that I’ve had for six years and never used once, or a piece of plastic with holes in it to measure out spaghetti portions – also never used. I made a box of all such items and freecycled them. Generally, I tried to use that same rule they tell us to use when cleaning out our closets: “Have I worn this in the past year?” If I haven’t used any item in the past year, I set it in a pile that I go through after I’ve put all the “keep” stuff away, and then I seriously consider whether I can live without it. I usually find I can. The best part is that now I can actually see what is left in the drawers and cabinets!
2. Pack it up – or pretend you’re going to: I read this online somewhere (and apologize for not being able to find the link, but I’m not taking credit for this as an original idea). The idea is that if you were moving across the ocean, you’d have to be very selective with the items you’d be able to bring with you, both for reasons of space and cost. So go through the house, room by room, and decide what you would bring with you if you were actually moving out of the country. Obviously, furniture is kind of exempt, but for me, this was a good way to gain some perspective on which of my possessions I really value (and clear out those that I don’t).
3. Close your eyes and memorize: Again, I found this somewhere and have since lost the link, but it’s a great idea even if it’s not mine: Look around a room in your house for a minute or two. Close your eyes, and try to remember every single item in the room. This can be scaled down to the drawer, cabinet, or closet level as well. This was a good exercise for me, because like the packing exercise, it made me spend some time thinking about the items that I forgot. Why did I forget them? In most cases, it was because they weren’t items that I particularly valued or used frequently. That makes them a good candidate for finding a new home.

In addition to no longer being surrounded by stuff I no longer used, or never used in the first place, all of these things were helpful because they reminded me of things that I did have already and could be using. There was a ton of stuff that I’d just forgotten about. Having a better idea of what I do have already will certainly help me to buy less going forward, leading to my two new favorite things, saving money and buying less / reducing my consumption.

What was really cool about this for me was some of the unexpected areas I was able to clean out. My food cupboards were a big one. I try not to buy stuff that I won’t use, but when I took each and every item out, I was amazed at some of the stuff I found that I know I won’t use. I know there are plenty of food pantries that will appreciate the bag of groceries I cleared out though.

The other thing that amazed me was that we had only moved a year ago. It was a cross country move, so we had done (I thought) a fair amount of cleaning out at the time. What I realize now is that having a packing service handle boxing everything up excused me from really having to evaluate what I needed or wanted to keep. Next time we move, I’ll make myself pack each individual item. I have a feeling I’ll end up deciding there’s a lot that I don’t actually need to hold onto, even after my recent round of de-cluttering.

It's new to me!

Free hugs, anyone?
Originally uploaded by huong-lan

I think most of us are in the habit, when we need something, of jumping in the car, running to the mall, and buying it. When we don’t need something anymore, we either stash it away in a closet, garage, basement, or attic to collect dust, throw it away, or maybe, if we’re really good, donate it to a thrift store.

I’ve been doing some massive de-cluttering lately – more on this in the near future. For now, I have a HUGE pile of stuff that I need to deal with.

I don’t think there’s anything wrong with donating to charity shops, but I do feel like it’s kind of still the "out of sight out of mind" mentality. I did a quick search to find out what happens to stuff that doesn’t sell and am uncomfortable with shipping more stuff we don’t want off to third world countries. I do some volunteer work with the IRC, an organization that helps refugees get resettled in the area when they arrive here. They host an event each Thanksgiving where they set their offices up like a store, with sections for clothing, kitchen items, linens, toys, etc. and their clients come in and “shop” at no charge for items they need. That’s where I’m donating many of my unwanted items this year. I know it will be going to somebody who can really use it.

Of course, if you find something that has some significant value that you don’t need, there’s e-bay or craigslist. I currently have a few items listed there. Getting the stuff mailed out though can be a pain, and there has to be a certain minimum value to the item to bother selling it in the first place, so I’ve chosen to limit my use of these types of site.

Then there’s freecycle. Made up of small groups all over the country, members post items they are willing to give away, and people who are interested reply that they are willing to give the item a new home. There’s no monetary incentive, but you are ensuring that the item goes to somebody who actually wants it, and you’re preventing the production of a brand new item that person now does not need to purchase. I put together four boxes of like items yesterday (clothes, garage, office, and kitchen) listed them last night, and they’re all gone already! I got tons of responses from people who really wanted the things I don’t have any use for. Since there's no money exchanged, you don't have to hassle with coordinating schedules. I just replied to the takers that I'd leave the items outside, and they came and took them while I was out.

There are other websites that do more or less the same thing. I haven't tried them, but they include the ones that are linked to here, here, and here. Let me know if you have tried them, or do so in the future.

In the last few weeks, I’ve also come across some really creative, innovative sites that offer simple new ways for you and others to buy less. One that I’ve already mentioned is paperbackswap. Two others I’ve come across recently that are really neat are Neighborrow and Nuvorent.

Neighborrow is a site that allows you to list items that you’d be willing to loan to your neighbors – books, movies, cds, or anything else. Maybe you’re just not ready to freecycle it and say goodbye forever, but you don’t use the item all that often. You list your item, and others browse for things they’d like to borrow that they don’t necessarily think they’d use often enough to justify purchasing. I’ve listed about ten books and dvds so far, and hope my neighbors start borrowing soon! I think this site could be especially cool for those of us who live in relatively dense areas where we may not personally know many of our neighbors.

Nuvorent is similar, but with a cool added opportunity to make a little cash. You list items you would like to rent to people in your area. In my case, I’m listing items here that are more expensive, such as tools and camping gear. Again, I don’t want to get rid of this stuff, because I do use it occasionally. These things will need to be replaced after a certain amount of use, so I may not necessarily want to just loan them out to strangers, but I can rent them, earn a few dollars, and save somebody else the expense of buying their own (or renting from a rental store, which is almost guaranteed to be more expensive). I’ve listed my cordless drill, a pet taxi, an air mattress, an internal frame backpack, and a few other items.

What I like about these two sites (as well as freecycle) is that in addition to helping us all consume less, which saves us money and conserves resources, it offers a great opportunity to interact more with my community. That’s something that is always positive.

One final option to consider is a tool lending library. I read about this on the fake plastic fish blog. I don’t have one in my community, but there is a list of places that do on wikipedia.

Reducing our consumption is like everything challenging in life: there are no easy answers. In trying to consume less, borrowing or renting from a neighbor is a great option for an item I might want to use once or twice a year. Realistically though, I can’t just say I’ll borrow everything. There are some things people won’t want to lend. Sometimes I’ll want an item to keep. Freecycle is a great option for these sorts of things, as are ebay and craiglist if I’m not able to wait.

What is clear is that with a little effort, homework, and thought, I can easily find ways to reduce how much I buy. None of these alternatives is more expensive than my current habits, and most will save, or even make, money. Best of all is knowing that all will reduce my impact on the planet.

Snail Mail

Mailboxes
Originally uploaded by Jim Epler

There are a few basic types of mail that we all receive. The first is the mail we want, like letters and cards from family and friends, and of course, although much too infrequently, the envelope that actually contains a check. I don’t want to do anything to stop that type of mail, and sadly, there’s not all that much of it anyway.

Then there’s the mail that we need – namely, our bills. I’ve signed up for e-bills from those companies that offer it, and now get my bills online. I save time that I would spend opening and filing, and I save resources by avoiding having the company use the paper to print the bill, send me an envelope to mail my payment in, and then put that all into another envelope for mailing to me. If I pay the bills online, which I’ve been doing for some time now, I’m saving the time of writing out a check, the paper that the check is written on, the expense of buying the check itself, and the money for postage. I would propose that the companies who bill us should calculate what it costs to paper bill their customers and give us a discount each billing cycle for opting to take e-bills. I won’t hold my breath however, and will settle for the warm fuzzy feeling it gives me instead.

The final type of mail (you knew this was coming!) is junk mail. I’ve always been annoyed by junk mail. If nothing else, it takes time to sort through it and determine what is junk and what needs actual attention. Of course there’s also a lot of waste generated by junk mailings. Very occasionally, I will receive a coupon in a mailing that I will save. Even more occasionally, I will actually redeem one of those coupons rather than saving it until I finally look at it again and realize that it expired two years ago. There are so many resources on the web these days that make it much easier to find coupons, offers, and sales when I am ready to buy something.

There are a few places on the web that I found that can help to reduce the amount of junk mail I receive. Actually, there are a lot of places willing to do this for a fee. I found a few that don't charge anything. One is OptOutPrescreen.com, a site that allows you to opt out of receiving offers from credit card and insurance companies. A second is the Direct Marketing Association’s opt out, which allows you to opt out of mail generated by DMA lists. It does take a while for the request to make it to those who actually use these lists, so I’ve been calling those who send me mail in the meantime (if I have a free moment) and ask that they remove my name from their mailing list.

The final opt out service is Catalog Choice. This one is perhaps the most user friendly of all three, because it allows you to pick and choose which catalogs you receive and let's you stop delivery of those that you don’t need a hard copy of. One of the coolest parts of this site is that it actually tells you if your request has been received and acknowledged by the merchant, or whether they refuse to participate in this program. Some companies whose catalog I opt out of I may still purchase from in store or online, but not if they refuse to honor my request to not receive their catalog. The site also keeps track of all your past opt-outs and allows you to change them at any time.

I think stopping the flow of catalogs into my home is one definite way to reduce the amount of stuff that I buy. Just the other day, a kitchen catalog arrived. There was so much cool stuff! Like these intricate plastic containers for bringing salads to work, with a separate compartment for your dressing so that it wouldn't make the lettuce soggy by lunchtime. The little container nests right inside the lid of the bigger container, where the salad goes. I definitely had to have that. Until I thought long and hard about whether I really did need it. Well, I'm not actually working outside the home right now, so I don't even actually pack a lunch these days. But that might change at some point. Or it might not.

More importantly though, I have tons of little containers already that I could use to transport something as simple as salad dressing. It's not radioactive, it's oil and vinegar. There's nothing about that particular container that makes it more or less suitable for holding salad dressing than anything else I already have - except for the fact that somebody marketed it to me, through this catalog, and said look, this will hold your salad dressing in a nice pretty package. There's always another more subliminal message too, like your life will be happier/more organized/more fulfilling/more hip if you buy this (for more on this, see The Story of Stuff when you have twenty free minutes).

My life will not be better if I buy more stuff. If I buy more stuff, I will have less money, and more stuff to store, clean, organize, maintain, and trip over. By not exposing myself to the marketing in the first place, it's that much easier to avoid the impulse to buy things I definitely don't need. Ultimately, that is what will make an impact.

Buying in Bulk

The Wall
Originally uploaded by bcmom

This is one of those double edged swords for me. Buying in bulk can be a great thing as it can substantially cut down on packaging and often offers substantial discounts over buying smaller quantities. On the other hand, a lot of these bulk items are cleverly over-packaged in order to get us to buy more than what we really need.

I am giving up my warehouse club membership. That’s not the kind of bulk buying I want to do anymore. Everything seems over-packaged. For example, why do two bottles of margarita mix need a piece of plastic holding them together? Why not just post a sign saying, “margarita mix: $7 – buy one get one free”? Nobody would forget the second bottle just because they weren’t attached to each other.

And the potatoes…do they really need to be in a corrugated cardboard box? Actually, all the produce…why can’t they sell it by the pound? It seems like every vegetable and piece of fruit in there is in a bag or a box (or worse yet, a bag in a box!). I realized that this is “necessary” - otherwise, I might only buy how much I need!

Each time I make a purchase of this nature, I’m probably spending money on something that I don’t really need. Even if I need some of the product, I most likely don't need so much fo the product. By not doing this type of bulk shopping, I’m definitely reducing my impact by cutting down on the amount of packaging that I am responsible for, and eliminating the need to store more stuff in my home.

The bulk buying that I do want to continue doing is the kind where you bring a bag and use a scoop to take your kidney beans, dried cranberries, sugar, and sunflower seeds out of a bin. The only packaging involved here is the package that the items are in when they arrive at the store, and the package that you put the product in to transport it home. I am reusing my produce bags for this purpose now. I rinse them out and let them dry, and they’re good as new! Co-ops will often let you bring your own containers of other sorts as well. Reduced packaging is awesome, but the other benefit I don’t want to ignore is that I save money by only buying the amount that I need. I’m not paying for extra product that will sit in my cabinet for years before I finally chuck it, realizing I never had a chance of using so much before the expiration date.

Buying in bulk is exactly what a lot of stores out there are trying to get me to do every time they ask me to sign up for their rewards, loyalty, or points cards. I have them from electronics stores, office supply stores, card shops, book stores, coffee shops, restaurants, grocery stores, and drug stores. I’m throwing them all away.

The first reason is that they’re a pain in the neck – my key chain is for my keys and my wallet is for my money. I don’t need the clutter from all these key tags and cards.

Secondly, why do they need to give you a plastic key tag AND a card? Not necessary, and wasteful.

Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, is that the whole point of these things, from the perspective of the store, is to get me to buy more. They have store information about who I am, including my age and where I live, and what I buy. So they can come up with even more clever ways to sell me more stuff that I don’t need. I don’t need a store to make product recommendations – I need to make recommendations to myself concerning what I should and shouldn’t buy. I need to do more of my own thinking about my purchases.

I have to be honest though, and admit that I don’t want to pay the higher price either. Granted, not all places actually charge more if you don’t have a card. Some offer you a free greeting card after you buy fifteen. I’m not actually ever going to buy fifteen greeting cards anyway. I’ll never get the benefit, but the store will have a record of my spending habits. Some stores, however, actually make you pay more for an item if you don’t have a card than the guy behind you in line who does have a card. I don’t want to play this game. I am consciously deciding, therefore, not to shop at these places anymore. I am lucky to have at least three grocery stores nearby that don’t require you to pay more or get the card.

Oh the irony…I'll end up buying more from those stores who let me buy as little as I like, and those businesses without the loyalty programs have gained my loyalty.

Please DO NOT print this page for your records.

College Math Papers
Originally uploaded by sweetpea.loty30

Maybe nobody actually does this anyway, but it really irritates me how everytime you order something or register with a site online, there is some sort of order confirmation number that comes up on a screen, almost always with a note asking you to "please print this page for your records." I know this is a rather small thing in the big picture, but I do believe that small things add up.

I understand that if you've ordered something, you may need to have a way to refer to yourself at a later time. Most companies you do business with (perhaps unfortunately, but that's the way it is) won't know who you are if you call up and say, "Hi, my name's Melissa and I ordered something last week." I get that. But why on earth do I need to keep a full page written record of the information the company will use to find me if my order gets lost in the mail?

My simple solution to 1. save money (by saving paper, toner, and electricity from not running the printer), 2. be more green (for same reasons just mentioned) and 3. being more organized (by not having another piece of paper to file and later remember to throw out) is that I have one word document on my computer called "confirmations". When somebody asks me to print something for my records, I instead hit 'control a' to highlight the text on the page, 'control c' to copy the text in the page, then I go into my word document and hit 'control v' to paste the text into the page.

I am going to make a point to try to contact each business that I interact with if I see the "print this page" message and request them to replace it with a "make a note of this confirmation number" message.

Certainly confirmation numbers aren't the only thing that get wastefully printed. Thanks to one cool brother I now have a GPS for my car so I don't need to print directions anymore. I will admit, however, to printing out directions on more than one occasion, when in retrospect, it really wouldn't have been much more difficult to just write them down (on a much smaller piece of scrap paper) after looking them up. One additional thing I've done to make myself think more carefully about the things that I print is to disconnect the cord that connects the printer to the computer. That way, I have to think about it a little more than just to the point where I hit the "print" button. Kudos to my bank too (whatever their motivation) for now asking you whether you want a printed receipt when you make transactions at the ATM.

This is not to say I never print anything. I do (like tax returns...) but I am trying to make it a conscious choice rather than something I do automatically because a website tells me to. That, really, is the underlying goal of this whole process for me: to start being more conscious of the choices I make.

On Books

Books
Originally uploaded by Faeryan

Suffice it to say that there are way too many books in my house. "But there's no such thing!" some might say - including me. The reality, however, is that I am not going to read most of these again. There are even a few that I wish I hadn't read the first time around. There are so many of them that they won't all fit on the bookcase, or in the overflow trunk that I had set aside for this purpose. It was a hard choice, but I had to decide whether I preferred to remain the owner of all these titles, or have a more organized space to live in. I opted for the latter.

I remembered a few of my book club members talking about a site called paperback swap so I decided to check it out. It really is very cool. You post books you are willing to part with and others do the same. They don't have to be paperbacks; they even have audiobooks. When somebody wants a book of mine, they request it, and I mail it to them. The website even creates a wrapper with the other person's address already on it to be used in mailing the book. I get a credit for each book I mail that I can then use to request a new (to me) book.

There are a lot of things I like about this idea. You're reusing a book that somebody else will probably never read again, and can then pass it on again when you're done with it, and in exchange get another brand new (to you) one. If you don't want to part with it, that's okay too, there is nothing that says you have to re-post the book when you are done. The only thing you pay is postage to send your used books (usually between $2 and $3 US Media Mail).

I'm not thrilled about the wrapper that needs to get printed and the ink that gets used as well, but I guess this is where I remind myself to recycle my toner cartridges. Either way, I can't imagine that the toner, two sheets of paper, and tape that I use is more resources than what it takes to get a book from Amazon to me. Especially since I live less than a mile from the post office, so I usually walk there. Not to mention that by not buying a new book, I don't need somebody to cut down more trees to make more paper to print the thing on. Making paper, incidentally, also requires the use of enormous amounts of water. There is a lot of good information about the environmental and social impact of the publishing industry at the Green Press Intiative site.

Also, it's way cheaper than buying new titles. One of the features of the website is that it tracks your savings (based on average cost of a used book, postage you've spent mailing items to other members, gas prices, distance from post office, etc.) It estimates that I've saved over $80 in the month that I've joined.

There is one drawback to paperback swap, which is that for some newer titles, there is a very long wait. The have a waiting list, and it's first come first serve, but right now I am 795 of 853 in line for Khaled Hosseini's latest book, A Thousand Splendid Suns. Assuming I want to read the book in the next decade, I probably will find another source for this particular title. In fairness though, there are over 2,000,000 very good titles posted at the moment. Another very cool site for used books online is Biblio. They are a marketplace for used books, but they also do a lot of cool things, including building libraries in places that probably wouldn't have them otherwise, and investing in wind power to offset their carbon footprint.

Of course, there is always the library too. I'm not really a library person myself; they never have the title I want. You can do the recall thing, but it feels rude to tell somebody else to hurry up and finish the book just because I want it. Then I feel like I'm on a deadline too to hurry up and finish.

A final thought: since I am not actually buying anything, I can swap as many books as I want without breaking my rule number one! Hooray!