Posted in Environment, Green Living, Home, Saving, carbon, energy, money, utilities, waste, tagged bunn, coffee, drip coffee, electricity, energy, espresso, fair trade, french press, kill-a-watt on July 3, 2008 | 1 Comment »
Recently I bought a Kill-a-Watt device to measure electricity usage, and I’ll be posting here periodically about what it’s teaching me.
True confession: We have a fancy Bunn coffee maker that keeps the water heated at all times so we can brew a fresh, excellent pot of coffee (into the dishwasher-safe thermal carafe) within 3 minutes.
We [...]
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Posted in Environment, Home, Saving, energy, recycling, spinning, thrift, utilities, tagged cars, fuel efficiency, bra-powered ipods, ceiling fans, craigslist on June 27, 2008 | 2 Comments »
Get Rich Slowly this week posted a terrific tip to subscribe to a search on Craigslist. Mwah ha ha, when the right Kromski Prelude spinning wheel comes along, I will be all over it!
It is ceiling fan season — and The Simple Dollar posted a simple list of ways to get your ceiling fan to [...]
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Recently I came across this cool tool to rate how walkable your neighborhood is (via The Simple Dollar).
You just type in your address and it calculates your “walk score” based on the proximity to grocery stores, parks, libraries, restaurants, bars, services, schools, churches, etc. It has its flaws — it lists Jamba Juice as a [...]
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Posted in Environment, Green Living, Home, Saving, carbon, energy, utilities, tagged alternative energy, clean energy, electricity, energy, oil, peak oil, power, solar, utilities on June 18, 2008 | 8 Comments »
This week, we received our utility bill. It included a newsletter encouraging us to consider solar power, and to do it now to take advantage of a combination of utility company rebates and federal tax credits.
If you are thinking about going solar, note that the federal tax credit for solar panels and solar water heaters [...]
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Posted in Deals, Eating, Garden, Green Living, Saving, energy, food, money, tagged Deals, dvs, easy jam, Green Living, jam, Saving, strawberries, survivalism on June 13, 2008 | 2 Comments »
This week, Free Money Finance wrote about MSN’s article on five foods it’s cheaper to grow and five foods it’s cheaper to buy. I added a comment that I think berries (strawberries) are cheaper to grow, and onions aren’t worth it (too space-hogging). What “crops” are worth it to you?
One of the biggest queries [...]
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Posted in Children, Environment, Green Living, Home, energy, paper, recycling, waste, tagged air conditioning, art, Children, computer, energy, lights, paper, power, savings on June 6, 2008 | 7 Comments »
I got so many great questions from readers for my one-year anniversary last week - not to mention all the sweet comments. Thank YOU all for reading and making this blog so much fun. Your being here helps motivate me to keep on keepin’ on — even though things feel a little dark at times [...]
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Posted in Deals, Environment, Green Living, Saving, energy, money, tagged book, cold water, free, laundry, natural cleaning, seventh generation, washing machine, world environment day on June 5, 2008 | 2 Comments »
The site for PlanetGreen says that today (June 5) is World Environment Day. Who knew?
If you click on over there, you can take a pledge to wash your clothes in cold water and get a free copy of Naturally Clean: The Seventh Generation Guide to Safe and Healthy, Non-Toxic Cleaning. It sounds like it doesn’t [...]
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Posted in Environment, Green Living, Home, Saving, Shopping, carbon, energy, food, local, money, paper, recycling, thrift, utilities, waste, water, tagged waste, recycling, reuse, gas, 90% reduction, 90 percent reduction, riot for austerity, reduce, electricity, garbage, water, food on May 29, 2008 | 5 Comments »
Organic Needle reminded me to do an update on our performance during the Riot for Austerity, which I started 10 months ago. This is the 90 percent challenge that I’ve mentioned on this blog — with the goal of cutting consumption by 90 percent from U.S. average consumption.
Here’s the update on what I did and [...]
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Posted in Environment, Green Living, Home, Saving, carbon, energy, money, thrift, wool, tagged credit cards, Dawn, detergent, dish soap, Ecover, Federal Reserve, gas, gas prices, solar hot water heat on May 23, 2008 | No Comments »
My hot water heater is only a couple years old AND I don’t know how to do plumbing, but other than that, doesn’t this sound good? And it’s remarkably pretty, too.
Gas prices are climbing, climbing, climbing. Green Daily posted about gas prices and options for using less gas-intensive transportation, and WiseBread had a post on [...]
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Posted in Environment, Fun, Travel, carbon, energy, tagged vacation, Travel, carbon offsets, flying, public transit on April 29, 2008 | 10 Comments »
This year, I’m taking a vacation.
Well, to be honest, I’m taking a few.
I know flying isn’t low impact, by any means, and until last week, I hadn’t been in a plane since May 2004. However, I hadn’t seen my dad in a year and a half, and he lives a 14-hour drive away. Little Cheap [...]
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