Earth Safe Finishes

I haven’t tried any of these yet, but you can bet I will be shortly. :)

Happy New Year, everybody, and I hope Santa was good to you! We’ve been goofing off since First Christmas, which landed on the weekend before Actual Christmas this year. Up to that point, our schedules were a little hectic and, in typical me-fashion, my schedule has fallen behind. If I haven’t yet, I promise I’ll catch up with you.

I spent the last month of 2008 seeking a niche, some place to “belong”, and quite frankly, I still haven’t a clue. Reading Kim’s post from Christmas Eve was truly heart-warming … and inspiring. This is it, I thought afterwards, this is how I feel about my planet. I know I’m WAY too lazy to become fanatical about environmentalism, but through deeper introspection, I realize there’s a need to work today — now — towards a future that inevitably won’t include me. It’s my One True Legacy™. The rest is just clutter someone else will have to sort through once I’m gone.

So again this year, I renew and deepen my commitment to both frugality and the impact I have on my environment. I challenge everyone to do the same. Choose thought over impulse; respect and conservation over indulgence; enlightenment, experience, and wisdom over instant gratification. Share your experience and wisdom. Freely.

My Short List of Expectations for 2009:

• Learn how to compost.
• Limit the amount of magazines (and other media) I purchase to those I know will still be useful to me 2 or 3 years from now.
• Spend more time at the library.
• Spend even more time outside.
• Continue learning how to keep a garden well and living.
• Support my local farmer’s market, farms, and hand-crafting community.
• Beautify my space with a focus on green alternatives and sustainability.
• Indulge in Oreos at least 4 times a year!
• Seek out and replace art & craft supplies with as many eco-friendly alternatives as possible.
• Find more thrift and second-hand stores to haunt (woot — shopping!).
• *sigh* Yeah, okay … spend less money.

I’m open to thoughts, ideas, and other suggestions.

It seems that Kate over at Living the Frugal Life and I read the same article recently, or she found a back door into my head. I’ve been thinking our next step here should be insulating the water pipes in the basement. Most of them are exposed and accessible via the laundry room, which resides in an unfinished state. I wasn’t sure whether or not insulating them would make much of a difference, but it takes a long time and a lot of water to get hot water upstairs to either the kitchen sink or dishwasher, and the shower. The basement, not being insulated, is consistently at least 7 – 10 degrees colder, and the laundry room even more so being northern-facing and a brick wall. I asked the engineer of the house and he seems to think it will help. It certainly can’t hurt, right?

On the subject of CFL bulbs, I was browsing online today because I bought an odd-sized pack of Sylvania CFLs from Lowe’s last month and had to take them back because they wouldn’t screw into the ceiling fans in my studio. I was concerned that the ballast configuration had changed and that none of the 75 – 100 watt equivalents would work (because the 13w/60w do still fit), but it appears I bought Super Mini Twists instead of Mini Twists (noteworthy only if you own ceiling fans, too). In my perusal, however, I stumbled across the Environmental Working Group’s Guide to Green Lighting which offers tips about Energy Star rating, who produces the bulbs with the lowest mercury content, disposal for broken bulbs (mercury is a health hazard), and where one should (or shouldn’t) use CFLs. On the same site, ewg.org also offers a 1-page printout, handy for those of you, like me, who suffer from CRS.

The color temperature of CFLs is determined by the amount of Kelvins. As far as I can tell, it breaks down this way (feel free to correct me): Daylight = 2700k and will give you a warm, yellow light; soft white = 3000k and seems the most incandescence-y to me; bright white = 5000k is stark and rather blue (like office lighting). Packaging isn’t always clear, but the kelvins should be printed on the ballast of the bulb. Just look for the number (in the thousands) followed by a trailing “k”.

Next time on Everwild: Art and the Sustainable: Elephant Poop Paper! Oh yeah.

Happy crafting!

Reduce. Reuse. Recycle.

Seems like a simple concept, doesn’t it? Scratch below the surface, though, and you’ll discover that it isn’t. Many of us live in households where recycling has become habit, if only to a small degree. Reducing and reusing, however, aren’t as automatic. They task us with more than just tossing cans and bottles into buckets and getting them to the curb once a week. Both need true critical thought and an awareness that stretches far beyond the individual: If I do x, what consequences will the rest of the world suffer because of me? We’re not accustomed to considering the domino effect of our own existence.

In the mid-90s I found myself swept into the technology race and for four years I couldn’t live without the latest and greatest RAM, video card, or processor. At the expense of about $3,000 a year, that coolie-wazoo computer habit had me teetering on the precipice between using my credit cards for emergencies only and drowning myself in debt. By the end of the decade, I was examining more closely the destructiveness of my thinking. No doubt my wallet suffered for the unchecked spending, but the ease with which I’d abandoned any environmental consideration troubled me even deeper. That was all it took to stop trying to keep up with the ever-changing technology game.

After combining households with Jon in 2003, our geeking budget developed into a system which leapfrogs one of us into a new computer roughly every four or five years. A slow-growing resistance to invasive DRM in software, namely PC games, has curbed the need for better and faster processing, at least for me. Add to that a stubborn refusal to upgrade from XP to further support Microsoft’s “More Money for Less Quality” mentality and my need for speed plunges rapidly. (Note, however, that I’ve yet to fully embrace life without Windows or World of Warcraft.)

My desire to live green is innate, and has always been, but transforming thought into action proves again and again that wanting is not synonymous with executing. Ignorance has a hand in it; I get impatient with what I don’t know. However, there’s also insecurity and sheer willfulness. I don’t like making drastic changes to my lifestyle. Circumstance has forced me to rebuild my entire life three times, each time from almost nothing, and so I associate reduction with crisis and instability. I’m reluctant to surrender things that make me feel normal and safe. Like TV. Faster computers. Even the mere thought of being without my little toy truck gives me hives.

The initiative to wean myself off of STUFF remained a sluggish endeavor until mid-2006. Internally, I couldn’t comfortably reconcile the reduce == without paradigm. So I negotiated and compromised instead, not recognizing that combined, the two were actually an effective process. With small steps, “Reduce. Reuse. Recycle.” evolved from a mantra I repeated often into a pattern of living that begins to make sense. Recycling is no doubt crucial, but reduction is by far the most essential step. Which is probably why whomever created this little motto put it first. And so the sardonic voice inside my skull says,”gosh, ya think?!”

Here’s a list of the changes we’ve made:

1. Replaced incandescent bulbs with fluorescent.
2. Replaced plastic shopping bags with reusable cloth bags. (Caution: it’s easy to get lazy and forget!)
3. Replaced paper napkins with cloth.
4. Switched to paper towels with recycled content, and then reduced our use of them. (At the end of 2007, we’d consumed less than a single roll.)
5. Replaced paper cupcake wrappers with silicone ones. (Be patient; it’s not impossible to adapt to them.)
6. Replaced coffee filters with a wire mesh basket.
7. Burn ass, not gas. (Jon rides his bike and I walk when it’s feasible. It reduces the butt, limits the consumption of petroleum, and is healthier for all.)
8. Wash full loads, whether dishes or laundry.
9. Line dry more clothing.
10. Replaced cleaning equipment which requires disposable products. (Nothing wrong with good, old-fashioned mops, toilet brushes, etc. Yes, disposable dust and sweeper cloths are lovely inventions, but were designed to keep us spending!)
11. And last, we gradually replace our Crap-for-Cheap with quality, well-crafted items. (The man spoils me, yes, but he’s also taught me the value of investing my money in better equipment.)

So, not giant leaps into greener living, but we’re taking steps in the right direction. For the coming year, I’ve set the goal to devote more energy to composting and to transforming both, front and back yards, into edible landscaping. At the moment, I know barely enough to keep a handful of vegetable plants alive, but I learn a little more each time I try. This fall, I started looking to others to learn how to work smarter. It’s inspiring when frugality advocates the return to simplicity and the natural beauty in all living things. Sometimes, in the onslaught of commercial life, it’s good to be reminded that there is earth, and sea, and sky, and — should we continue being so reckless with them — they may not last much longer.