The November/December 2011 issue of the Green American (Green America’s periodical) is about plastics, including disposal of them. One of the sidebars is about TerraCycle, a company that recycles/reuses various hard-to-recycle waste like candy wrappers, cheese packaging, and Solo cups. I had heard about TerraCycle before and thought it sounded like a really great idea, but I hadn’t had a chance to use it until recently. Unfortunately, I still haven’t.

My opportunity was Bear Naked granola bags. A while back I started splurging on Bear Naked granola for my cereal when I got a coupon for it, because it isn’t sweet like most of the other granolas in the store and actually tastes really good. On the back of the bag it tells you not to throw it away because you can either send it back to them or recycle it through TerraCycle, so I kept the bags. All four of them. Unfortunately or fortunately, I transitioned to just putting chopped nuts and fresh blueberries or other fruit and don’t anticipate buying granola in the store for a very long time, if ever. Maybe I’ll experiment with making my own so that I actually like it and don’t find it too sweet or unhealthy. During my winter purge this past year I found the small pile of bags and decided that it was time to get rid of them. According to their website there are two options for “sustainable disposal”: sending them in to Bear Naked and getting swag in return, or recycling them through TerraCycle. For the size bag that I had, I was six bags short of being able to get a reusable grocery bag that I don’t need. So I looked into TerraCycle and ended up horribly confused. I guess you need to sign up with a brigade (or start a new one) and then you can send stuff in for recycling. But I didn’t want to sign up to join something just to get rid of four bags. I guess the minimum amount to send in is actually 5 bags, according to the blurb in the Green American. I would have loved to find out who has a brigade and I would have happily sent them my bags in order to support their organization since they can get money back from turning in items. But I couldn’t find that information without signing up, and again, I had no interest in signing myself up for something for this one-time exchange. So apparently TerraCycle is a great idea…if you are or know of an organization that can collect items to send back, or if you go through enough of the items yourself to justify signing up. Unless of course I’m not understanding the process.

Sadly, my four bags ended up in the garbage. It’s unfortunate since the sustainable packaging program, along with the granola not being really sweet, is why I bought the Bear Naked granola in the first place.

 

Alternative title: When other people insist that something is stressful, but you don’t think so.

This past week we went to the doctor for a fertility consult and are starting to do some testing since we’ve passed 15 months of trying (technically 12 months + 3 months off due to gallstones/gallbladder surgery) to get pregnant. In addition to discussing testing options, the doctor suggested that while it has been very helpful that I’ve been charting so that I know I’m ovulating, I should stop because it is stressing me out. Apparently it happens all the time that people stop charting and then get pregnant because the charting is “stressful”. When we walked out of the office, though, I told Mike that I have no intention of stopping charting. I think it would be WAY more stressful to not chart than it is to chart. In fact, the month that we moved into our current house I didn’t chart and it was incredibly stressful for me because I felt lost in my own body. It was like someone had taken away one of my senses, and I didn’t like that experience. Am I missing something here?

I got introduced to Natural Family Planning/Fertility Awareness Method by my friend, and started charting more than a year before we started trying to get pregnant. I was immediately hooked! The self-knowledge and self-understanding that comes with observing fertility signs is an incredibly wonderful experience to me, and I intend to continue charting through menopause. So observing my fertile signs and charting is just as much a part of my day as brushing my teeth, and occupies about as much of my mental state. Taking my temperature in the morning doesn’t require any more thought than to roll over and stick the thermometer in my mouth when my alarm clock first goes off. (It’s a zen alarm clock, with chimes at increasing frequencies following the golden ratio). Checking cervical fluid is just a matter of observation throughout the day. Sure, there’s a little bit of stress related to timing sex during the fertile phase. However it seems to me like it would be more stressful to do so without  observing fertile signs and having no idea when your body is at its most fertile. And I also question the idea that I experience more stress around the time when I might get my period than someone who’s not charting. It seems like we’d be going through the same emotions regardless since most women have a sense of how long they usually go between periods.

This is probably partially a personality thing, after all I am definitely an engineer and someone who wants to be intimately knowledgeable about/involved with myself and my health and wellness. Maybe there’s also a difference that I didn’t start charting when we started trying to get pregnant for the purpose of trying to get pregnant. This doctor was not the first doctor to suggest that charting may stress me out as my naturopath suggested the same thing about a year ago. Unless I’m in total denial or completely missing something, though, I do not feel that observing my fertile signs and charting is causing stress in my life and interfering with my ability to get pregnant. Is it possible to have other people tell you that something is stressful for you and yet not experience that thing as stressful? I think so, obviously, but I’d love feedback.

Even though I had declared the 5-gallon bucket compost experiment to be a failure back in May, I never emptied the bucket into the compost heap. I had no plans for the bucket; what can you do with a hole-y bucket? So it just sat there, and functioned as one of the edges for the compost heap for the last several months. No longer.

I’ve really been wanting to start vermicomposting, aka, composting with worms.  A while back I had managed to talk the man-who-doesn’t-like-anything-that-doesn’t-have-four-legs into letting me vermicompost as long as it was in the garage and not the dining room like I originally wanted. I’ve heard that if properly managed there’s no odor, and the closer to the kitchen the easier to use, but since I can’t convince him that the worms aren’t going to escape it stays in the garage. However, a worm bin, even one made of plastic storage bins, is pretty far down on the house wish list, and I didn’t have any suitable containers to make one for free. Or so I thought!

Then at the Green Festival in November I acquired some worms for free! I went to a vermicomposting workshop where the presenter was giving away a few containers of worm castings. She had collected the worm castings in a hurry so they still had a few baby worms in them. When I got back home I put the bag aside and wasn’t able to get to it for over a week so I thought I’d probably killed the worms. Lo and behold, though, when I peaked in there were a few full sized worms wiggling around in there. I punched a couple holes in the container and threw in an old piece of lettuce. Fast forward a month to around Christmas and I peaked in again to realize that the lettuce was gone and the worms still alive. But they couldn’t stay in a clear plastic snack-food container forever, they needed a home upgrade.

That’s when it occurred to me that the 5-gallon bucket with holes in it could work as a worm bin. I hope. The original holes are quite large so I’m hoping that I don’t lose my few worms through them. The hole-y bucket has holes on the bottom and sides, and I drilled a few more (much smaller) holes on the side to make sure there will be enough ventilation. I grabbed another then-unused 5-gallon bucket to use as the moisture collector. The outer bucket is wider than the hole-y bucket so I didn’t need to drill ventilation holes in it, but if it had been the same dimensions I would have drilled a row of ventilation holes in the sides below where the bottom of the inner bucket would be. Instead I propped the inner bucket on some scrap plastic bits and there’s a narrow annular space between the buckets. I put a really thick layer of dampened hand-shredded newspaper on the bottom since I didn’t want the worms to fall through the drainage holes, added a few rotting lettuce leaves, strawberries, tea leaves, and a well crushed egg shell (or as well as I could crush it), and dumped the castings container and worms on top. I don’t mind sacrificing that worm gold fertilizer if it means I’ll get a head start on creating my own. After topping it off with some more hand-shredded newspaper and another good misting, I created a lid with a peace of plywood we had laying around.

Now I just have to remember to check on them occasionally. At this point they’re not going to create much fertilizer since I’m starting with just a few worms, literally. It’s more of a test run to see if I can keep them alive before I actually order my first pound of worms. I’m really excited at this.

Shalom

Shalom doesn’t just mean “peace”. Look it up, Google it, or Wikipedia it. Shalom means so much more than the English word “peace”. Shalom means wholeness and wellness as well. Shalom encompasses individuals, nations, and the entire universe.

Happy New Year to all.

Shalom

Several years ago in my quest for a way to have beautiful/interesting gift wrap that does not waste resources I stumbled upon the idea to use old calendar pages, and I have to highly recommend this. They don’t work for every gift, but it is part of the “arsenal” of gift wrap. Arsenal may  be an odd choice of words, but I think that it is appropriate since different types of gifts/gift giving situations require different strategies for wrapping. My arsenal contains gift bags, newspaper, butcher paper (from buying things online), tissue paper, calendars, paint, stamps with colored and metallic inks (although I haven’t used them in a couple years so they may be dry), ribbons, and various silk flowers and leaves from my old bookcase decoration. Oh, and this year there is one particularly large box that will be covered in a sheet as a visual shield since nothing else will work.

I gather from reading comments this year on various Facebook posts and blogs that lots of people just can’t stand the idea of not wrapping gifts with a roll of wrapping paper. I’m  not going to say that using wrapping paper is horrible for the environment and no one should do it, because that’s just not true or helpful. One could easily say the same thing about buying wall calendars or sending out Christmas cards, but for me the spiritual satisfaction of those things is enormous. Besides, I totally understand the desire to make gifts look beautiful. I spend quite a bit of time on the quest myself. The idea to use old calendars to wrap gifts came about because I love a good calendar and a pretty gift. At the end of the year I always felt bad tossing a calendar that I thoroughly enjoyed into the recycle bin. It occurred to me that many calendars have images that make for good/fun gift wrap. And there’s something that I like about using my husband’s old pirate or Darth Vader calendars to wrap gifts for him, or wrapping my mom’s gifts in old goddess calendar pages. It’s more personal than a generic roll of gift wrap that is the same for all of the gifts. For those who object to the look of newspaper or plain paper wrapping, a calendar page can also be used on just the top/front of the gift to spice it up a bit.

There is one type of person who should probably not try this strategy, though, and that’s the person who needs to get every edge and corner perfectly folded and match the patterns at the seam. Calendar pages are heavier than typical wrapping paper, so it can get difficult folding corners sometimes. They do have the hole at the top of the page and the torn edge at the bottom, and depending on the situation these may end up visible. Sometimes the best part of the image is in a corner of the page, requiring some creative wrapping to frame the image on the gift as desired. To me it is worth it and the act of wrapping the gift has become part of the gift itself.

For all that I recommend old calendars as gift wrap, I also have to recommend being more open-minded about gift wrap. Simplicity is ok. A few years ago I went to a few gift exchanges with gifts wrapped in plain paper with a nice ribbon, and I noticed that my gifts were the last to be chosen. It was almost like people expected plain paper to house lame gifts. I am rather offended by that notion, especially since I put effort into every gift and I find plain wrapping to be simply beautiful. Simplicity can be very beautiful.

The run up to the start of a new year is, in my opinion, a great time to declutter and start the new year without a little of the “dead weight” that we accumulate over time. Some of this decluttering is easy, at least if done regularly. Sorting through clothes, getting rid of more cookware with non-stick finishes, passing on unused decorative items, or sending old books out to find new readers are all relatively easy steps. In my annual purge I’ve so far managed to get through the entire house except for the side yard and the office, and the clock is ticking down with one day remaining before winter solstice.

But in addition to the physical purging, some mental purging may help usher in a better new year as well. Anyone like me have a crazy backlog of “projects” waiting to be done? They do weigh me down, I have to confess. So in the last day of the purge as I tackle the office, where the physical manifestations of many of these projects reside, I’ll try to let go of some of those projects. This is especially important this year since we’re at 15 months of trying unsuccessfully to get pregnant. A child is a life change, and what if  the piles of little “projects” in my office are making my life too full and not leaving “space” for a child? I’ve been saying that it’s not a problem, but that could be denial. Isn’t there some kind of saying about keeping open space in your life so that there’s room for new things?

I love a good Christmas tree. I love everything about it. In our old house there wasn’t enough room for a full tree so this is our first Christmas tree and we’re loving it! I have to be very grateful to my husband for being willing to enjoy it slowly, though.

For the first week we left the tree completely nude, except for a cowboy-hat “topper”. The tree is in a corner where it does get a little bit of sun since the best sun-protected corner currently houses the loveseat, but that means that in the morning I got to enjoy the beauty of morning rays of sun filtering through a few evergreen branches. Simple beauty. As much I love decorated Christmas trees, I loved the opportunity to really enjoy the nude tree, too, without rushing to obscure its inherent beauty. I think that I’d like to make it a tradition that we leave our tree bare and enjoy a “Yule tree” until the week before Christmas/week of solstice, although I’m not sure Mike will be willing to do it every year.

Tonight we added the lights. Doing this slowly makes it feel like we’re dressing the tree up for a grand occasion. There’s the anticipation of putting on the ornaments, but for now we’ll enjoy just the lights. To me the lights are the most important of the decorations anyway. We’ll probably add the ornaments on the 23rd, just in time for Christmas. This slow process fits very well with my spiritual sense. A Yule tree until shortly before Yule, a lit tree around Yule when I light a candle in every room for blessing, and a decorated tree right before and throughout the Christmas holiday.

I suppose I should probably mention that we do have a natural tree, as artificial is not even an option for me. Something about soul. There’s just something so special about the transience of the natural cut tree that only can last for a short time, as opposed to an artificial tree that is unchanging and almost everlasting. It’s not an equal substitution in my mind. I do have fake branches, though, and a fake garland. I used to decorate with real branches, but they just dry out so fast that I switched to artificial since there was no benefit at all to the real ones except from the resource use standpoint. The real branches were the the bottom trimmings from a Christmas tree lot, so it wasn’t using a “new” resource. The artificial ones are plastic, so made from a non-renewable resource and possibly some toxic chemicals.

If the only prayer you say in your life is “Thank You” that would be enough.

Meister Eckhart

THANK YOU!

This came up at Thanksgiving as an interesting conversation during the final meal preparations. Someone asked where we keep the paper towels, but we don’t have any. Oddly enough we had more “need” for paper towels during the 8 hours around the Thanksgiving dinner than we have for years. I’d say there was universal surprise that we don’t have paper towels.

How do we live without paper towels? Easily. When I sat down to write this post, I tried to remember when we stopped using paper towels and I can’t. So it could have been 2 years ago, or a little more or a little less. I do remember how it happened: We finished a roll of paper towels and just never replaced it. The paper towel holder got donated, and that’s history. So what do we use instead? Mostly rags.

For your typical cleanup situations we have lots of rags. A bin of old socks, t-shirts, etc. supplies rags for general cleanups around the house. When we first went without paper towels we decided that it was ok if we occasionally felt the need to throw away a rag that we felt had gotten too dirty to go in the laundry and back in the rag bin. Somewhat surprisingly, that hasn’t happened. I do have to confess that we have a small box of paper napkins from our unfortunate take-out food habit. I can’t think of an instance off the top of my head, but we have probably used a paper napkin a time or two for particularly gross/oily/sticky cleanups.

In the kitchen we have a drawer with random old washcloths that are used in place of paper towels for kitchen-specific tasks. These are segregated from the regular rags because it just seems like a good idea.

Between the rags and the washcloths (and the stash of paper napkins), almost all paper towel uses are covered. The only thing missing is gauze. I’ve been meaning for years to order some organic cotton gauzy fabric to be the final piece in the paper towel replacement scheme. I’d like the gauze for tasks like wrapping parsley or other herbs in the fridge, or layering cooked foods like platanos that need to drain/de-oil. This is certainly the least crucial of the paper towel replacements, as we get by fine without, but it is still something I’d eventually like to have.

Why go without paper towels? For me it’s an issue of getting out of the throw-away mentality. Even if you compost the used paper towels, they still have a larger footprint than the alternatives. If you don’t compost them, they most likely go into a landfill where they will last just about forever. But thinking beyond the roll itself there’s the trim from the edge of the rolls, the bleach, the plastic wrapping, lots of water used during manufacture, lots of energy use during manufacture and transport, and the impact of the tree harvesting. As opposed to the rags, which were all old clothing resurrected for many more useful years. Or even new washcloths that will be used for years? decades? before being trashed.

Way back in June I posted about buying a new sofa, and while that process was easy (though expensive), it has been much more difficult to deal with the existing sofa. I admit to being lazy and not starting to find a new home for the old sofa during the summer between when we ordered the new sofa, and when we received it. The new sofa actually showed up a couple weeks early, too, so I was caught off guard. But over the last few months I’ve been having no luck getting rid of the sofa.

I tried calling every charity with a thrift store in the Sacramento area, but no luck. The problem is the fact that the existing sofa has tears in the fabric of the seat, and needs to be reupholstered. The foam and liner in the seat also need to be replaced due to 17 years of active usage, so a slipcover doesn’t take care of the problem. But the sofa is still sound. A peek underneath does look like hardwood, so it does still have life left in it. The springs are “no sag” springs, which apparently don’t live up to their name but are really easy to support if that is the case. Unfortunately for the sofa, the local charities only take gently used furniture since they have no way to make the repairs.

We’ve tried listing the sofa twice on Freecycle and once on Craigslist, with no bites. Not even a nibble. I’m a little frustrated with Freecycle because I think it takes the concept of local a little too far. Our local Freecycle is Rancho Cordova. So if I post something, it only goes to people in Rancho Cordova, not other people in the Sacramento metro area. By my count there are three Freecycle groups for “Sacramento”, as well as Orangevale, Rancho Cordova, Citrus Heights, Fair Oaks, Folsom, Carmichael, Elk Grove, and Roseville (all of which are cities/communities in the Sacramento metro area). I’m not keen on joining all of them.

I’ve left a message with a man who teaches upholstery at a local adult education school, and this week I’ll try calling homeless shelters. Why all this work? Two things. Emotionally, I confess to having an attachment to the sofa since my parents bought it when I was a teenager and passed it down to me over a decade ago. Second, I really really hate the idea of throwing something sound into the landfill. The cost estimate that I’ve gotten from upholsterers is $300-$500, but I can’t afford to spend that kind of money for something I’m giving away. I was hoping that someone who needs a couch would be willing to take one that needs a few hundred dollars of work rather than spending the same or more on a new piece. Guess not.

We can’t keep this extra sofa around for much longer as it is really in the way. I am seriously conflicted, though, because I just can’t stand throwing away something that still has use left in it. I wonder if I should start listing it on Craiglist and Freecycle as a set with the loveseat, which is in fine condition. I’m not ready to get rid of the loveseat, which was going to go in the nursery, but giving away both together might be a better option than throwing away the sofa.

What is the take home lesson here? If you’ve kept a sofa long enough for the seat to get  worn out reupholster it instead of replacing it.