Potty Training

I'm in the process of potty training right now. No, I don't have any kids. I do, however, have a cat. For the record, I'm not one of those people who thinks of my pets as a substitute for children, and I don't dress him up in little outfits. Although he is pretty cute.

But yes, we are potty training the cat. Why, you ask? Well, many reasons, but basically, in the long run, if this works out, it will save me time and money, reduce waste, and is healthier for the cat. How? Well, let's take a look at cat litter. It requires that I clean a litter box every day or two. That takes time that I'd rather spend doing...um, anything else, really. Cat litter also costs money. It's not crazy expensive, but money is money, and I like to save it where I can. Of course, when I clean out the box, the used litter has to be disposed of (read: sent to the landfill), so cutting out the litter box will cut out this waste, and the waste of the packaging for the litter. Not to mention that cat litter is really heavy, so I'm cutting out all the energy of transporting it from wherever it is made to my home. Plus, another big consideration is that the method for extracting the clay used to make cat litter is strip mining. Not cool. Finally, there are reasons to think that the fine dust particles in cat litter is harmful to your cat, and possibly even you.

So yep, I'm potty training the cat. Well, I'm trying anyway. I'll save you the long drawn out details of how it all works, but somebody got me this wonderful little system as a gift...it's actually a pretty simple solution, wouldn't you agree?

If nothing else, I figure this is good practice for if we ever have kids.

Edit: One reader was right to point out that there is some concern that cat feces (specifically, the germ named Toxoplasma gondii, the same thing they warn pregnant women about when dealing with cat litter boxes) may be responsible for killing sea otters here in California. She is absolutely right, this is a concern, although at least one source mentions that things like a colony of 40 - 50 feral cats in Monterey and storm drain runoff contaminated by cats who do their business outdoors, are at least of equal concern at this point as household sewage. That's not really a good answer though - as long as we don't really know where the problem is stemming from, we can't just cross our fingers and hope it's not something we're doing. I checked the American Veterinary Medical Association website, and I'm no scientist, but I think this system will be safe for my cat, since he never goes outside, and he eats only packaged food. Here is what the AVMA has to say:

The most common way that cats become infected with T. gondii is from eating infected mice, birds, and other small animals.
For indoor cats, the most likely source is uncooked meat scraps. When a cat eats meat or other tissues from infected animals, it becomes infected with T. gondii and can excrete millions of oocysts in its feces each day. This release of oocysts can continue for more than two weeks. After the initial infection and shedding period, most cats will not pass oocysts in their feces again, even if re-infected.

Basically, I can't be 100% positive that my cat is not still excreting these cysts (this really sounds so gross; there's a good reason I'm not a doctor), but I can be fairly certain that he's "clean". If I had an outdoor cat, or lived in an old house where my cat was constantly killing mice, I would not find the risk acceptable. I think in this case, however, the small risk is outweighed by the benefits of another 8 - 15 years worth of environmental impact that would be caused by keeping him on the litter. What are your thoughts on this issue?

more thoughts about groceries...

Rum & Raisin with a flake...
Originally uploaded by Tom Coates

Aside from the fact that it’s very alarming how much decent food costs these days, it’s one of the few line items on my monthly budget that I have any control over. Our mortgage payment is not going down anytime soon, car insurance costs what it costs, and although I’m cutting my electricity and water usage as much as I can, the monetary savings are a nice side effect – but those changes were primarily motivated by environmental concerns, not by any expectation that they’d fund my retirement account any time soon.

I mentioned yesterday how I bring a list to the store with me, with alternate meals ready in case any of the ingredients needed for my “first choice” meals are ridiculously expensive.

I’ve also taken the idea of mix and match out of the closet and into the kitchen. I don’t waste much food, but I would be lying if I said I never pull out a container of something and find it all covered with fuzzy green mold. So I’ve started doing mix and match meals. All this means is that I try to make sure that I can use ingredients that I’m purchasing (or making) for more than one meal. For example, if I have quesadillas one night, and serve sour cream with them, I’ll make potato torte or potato pancakes later in the week to use up the sour cream before it turns into a penicillin factory.

I’ve also started putting more thought into cooking. I’m not a super instinctive cook, but I do have a tendency to be lazy about it – I follow the recipe exactly rather than thinking about why it’s calling for each ingredient. I’ve been trying to break this habit. For example, a lot of soups call for veggies that are not all mandatory, when I think about it. Ok, for potato leek soup, you don’t want to skip the potatoes, but if you’re making a veggie soup featuring kale and chard, why not throw in the beet greens that you haven’t figured out how to use? Leave the carrots out if you don't have them. If I have all the ingredients on hand except one or two that are non-vital, I can skip a trip to the store…because too often, even with a list in hand, a trip to the store means I grab more than what I really need.

I’ve also been trying to find ways to use the bits I would have previously discarded as “scraps.” Those beet greens I mentioned above? I didn’t even know they were edible until recently. Hey, I paid for them, so why not use them? Heather suggests saving water from steaming veggies to freeze and use as soup stock…where I live, we pay for water, and I paid for the vitamins and minerals that leeched into the water…and more importantly, it saves me from having to buy a soup base next time I need one. When making butter, instead of pouring that milky stuff down the drain, I set it aside. I can use it in bread or pastry crusts.

Speaking of crusts, I made one today for a pot pie…I also threw an extra one in the freezer. It was just as easy to make a second one while I had the stuff out, and it’ll save me time on a busy day in the future. It’ll also save me from caving to the temptation of take out if I know I have an alternative that’s just as easy, and free.

Ironically, my effort to save on my food budget has necessitated a few purchases recently. I got a used canning and regular funnel on ebay. I’ve made the ginger ale a few times more, but I’m embarrassed to admit I was using a funnel I made myself from a yogurt lid and a stapler. That part would be fine, if it worked, but it doesn’t really. I’m not that handy. It kind of just makes a mess. Since I get bored drinking just water, and I think making the ginger ale myself is a good compromise versus buying sodas and juices, I figured a small investment was worthwhile in the long term rather than risking getting fed up with the messes I was making and giving up on the whole project altogether.

Finally, in line with Blue Collar Crunch’s challenge this month, I’ve realized one area that I need to be more present when I’m shopping…I get super irritated when somebody drives while talking on the phone because they’re usually swerving or sitting at a green light until it turns red. I realized today that the same effects happen whatever you’re doing while talking on the phone - including shopping. While on one level I appreciate the fact that my sub-conscious grabbed a pint of Rum Raisin Haagen Das and put it in my grocery cart while I was engrossed in my phone call, that’s not really being mindful.

And now I feel hungry…

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.