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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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 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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On Saturday night - March 29 - from 8:00 to 9:00 p.m., it’s Earth Hour.
Dozens - or hundreds - of cities and millions of people around the world are participating. You’re invited to turn off your lights (and any other energy-using device) for one hour.
The event was created by the World Wildlife Fund last year, [...]
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Spring is coming, which means most of us will have more uses for extraneous water. Here are some ideas of how to make the most of your water:
Save the pasta water. Many Italian recipes have you blanch veggies in boiling water, then cook the pasta in the same water. Then, this same water can go [...]
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Posted in Eating, Environment, Financial planning, Garden, Green Living, Home, Saving, food, utilities, waste, water on February 22, 2008 | 2 Comments »
First, for those of you outraged at us Coloradans’ not being allowed to harvest our roof water, the Colorado Senate is working on it:
The Senate Agriculture, Natural Resources & Energy Committee approved a plan to allow homeowners to collect water that drains off of roofs up to 3,000 square feet so ranchers and farmers could [...]
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Often, I find myself diving into a big project in my spare time, and all too often, my spare time happens at 8:00 on a Saturday night. While the footloose and fancy free are out tripping the light fantastic, I’m up to my elbows in some dusty project at home.
Thus, I spent one recent, scintillating [...]
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If any of you lie down each night for a restful sleep and doze off to the guilt-inducing sound of a leaking toilet, take my word for it: FIX IT! And fix it now.
Instructions always say you can tell a toilet is leaking by putting food coloring in the tank, waiting 15 minutes and seeing [...]
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Grocery costs have had the highest year-over-year increase since 1990 - here’s an article that looks a little bit at why. I know I’ve noticed this trend (especially on cheese, which used to go on sale for $2.50 to $3 per pound, and now seldom drops below $3.50) — have you?
What will you do with [...]
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