Cut Your Grocery Bill in Half!

How? By using everything you buy before it goes bad! Apparently, on average, we waste a shocking 40-50 percent of the food we buy. That means we have to replace that food (and likely, we will only use half of that as well). The energy to grow it, to ship it, to store it... it’s all for nothing, not to mention all that cash you shelled out at the check out. All of the food we throw out contributes significantly to the rise in methane gas as well.

Rather than let this waste continue, consider making an effort to plan meals using what you have, taking inventory of what may not last too much longer and using it up. One blogger set up a challenge to her readers to waste less food for a month. I suspect those who took her up on it ended up with a change of lifestyle that helped them significantly at the grocery store. Another one is writing a book about wasted food, and has a blog dedicated to this subject.


We no longer toss stuff out saying “Well, it will make good compost” and instead, find ourselves muttering “If we put these radishes in water, do you think they'll revive?” If they do, that’s 1.25 right there, buddy.

Garden Start Plant Containers

Containers that were used for other things make great planters. How do I know? Because my obsession with zero waste plus huge garden= alternative planters!

For instance, a group of about 50 people meets twice a week (for four hours!) During the break, everyone is invited to have refreshments, lemonade and tea and coffee are the drinks, served in styrofoam cups! Since I've done my best to eliminate styrofoam from my world, and seeing it piled in the trash like that made me panic... that is just crazy waste!

So the cups became planters. Here is a picture from someone doing the same thing (although I am not sure if these were upcycled or not.) It isn't just cups that make great seedling pots, though. We folded the bottoms of toilet paper rolls, cut open plastic soda bottles, used yogurt containers, made pots from newspaper and sturdy old coffee bags... so many options! Using the plastic salad clamshells to sprout early lettuce and have early salads seems particularly brilliant to me (see details here).

We've been saving eggshells, carefully cracked on one side, just for the novelty of planting using eggshells. I will post a picture when that project is underway.

Human Hair in the Garden

Ewww. I know. But lookie here, this is about hair in your garden. Animals smell your scent in your hair, and they tend to steer clear, handy if you are trying to deter certain creatures from your tender transplants. So after you clean your hairbrush, use it by:
1. Composting. It will compost just fine, although it may not have quite the deterring power if your compost is open and yummy to foraging squirrels.
2. Stuff it in a section of pantyhose and make a garden "sachet". Tie it to your fence or on your tomato cage. (Wow, that tip is so good, I should have kept it for another pantyhose tip. Ah well.)

Window Curtain Insulation

For the longest time, I didn't think about window coverings as functional. Oh, sure, they keep prying eyes from seeing what's going on inside, and they can make a room look more finished, but until recently, I didn't use them for temperature control. When I was cold or hot, I just bumped the thermostat. But no more!

Our south side windows let in a lot of heat (just ask the cat, who will follow the sunbeam from the front room to the back bedroom for his afternoon catnaps). Even on a cold day like today, with the sun shining, these windows are letting in tons of heat. The north side of the house is constantly cold, but by adding thick coverings to the glass, we have cut the cold coming inside significantly. At nights and on cold, overcast days, we close all the window coverings. The heater comes on less often now.  In the summer, it's the reverse... we keep the south blinds down. 

This isn't anything new. I remember an old friend who took down the heavy winter curtains and put up the airy summer curtains every year. Now I finally understand why.

Pantyhose Tip #14 Chigger Free Gardening

I was thinking back to last summer. Our back yard was so nice... except for the chiggers. I thought the little red spiders I saw on the deck were chiggers (apparently, though, they are just mites. I was wrong. There, I said it.)

Anyway, on an unrelated site, I read that hunters sometimes wear pantyhose under their pants to keep chiggers and ticks off. Aside from the really great visual of hunters putting on pantyhose, I think this idea could be just the thing this summer during chigger weather. And I will definitely wear them if I go walking at Wilson's Creek... that place is full of ticks. I still have scars.

Pantyhose Tip#13 Non-stick Rolling Pin

The other day, I was on a cooking website, and I found this tip. In the spirit of full disclosure, I haven't yet used my rolling pin. I mean ever. So this means I have also not yet tested this tip. But here it is:

Take a section of pantyhose leg. Slide your rolling pin inside, and tie off the ends. This will prevent dough from sticking. Apparently.

Looks like I've got some baking to do.

Flush less water down the drain

Older toilets (made before 1998) use a lot of unnecessary water. We have an older toilet, and eventually, we will replace it. Until then, though, we've cut our water usage by putting plastic bottles filled with water in the tank. Some people used bricks in the past, but they will decompose and eventually cause plumbing problems.

The plastic bottles in our tank once held 64 oz. of juice, but now they hold 64 oz. of water. They are rectangular and fit perfectly inside the tank. (Be sure to clear all the moving parts, or the bottle will hinder the flush.) Since we have two in our tank, we are saving a gallon of water with every flush.

Some companies sell bags of water that hang inside your tank, which works the same way as the bottle, only they are mounted to the side. Using old plastic bottles works fine for us, and it's free. If you fill them with bathwater, you aren't even wasting water to do it. Or fill it with tap water and use it as emergency back up.

Solar Powered Clothes Dryer

There’s an apocryphal story about a guy who made it rich in the seventies by advertising “solar-powered clothes dryers” which were, of course, nothing more than outdoor clothes lines.

Clothes lines have been around a long time. They can be as simple as a line between two trees, or as complicated as a permanent structure dedicated to line drying. I just saw a beautiful, modern design line, with a minimal tree shape cut out as the two ends. It’s pricey, but if I didn't have one already, I’d be tempted to make this one.

Clothes that are line dried last longer as well (drying clothes in a dryer is really kind of rough on the fabric, all that heat and tumbling) And of course, the energy to dry them is free.

According to California Energy Commission, “A dryer is typically the second-biggest electricity-using appliance after the refrigerator, costing about $85 to operate annually.”

In the winter, drying clothes inside can help put moisture back into the air. Collapsible clothes lines can be set up in the bathtub. If the clothes are not dripping, you can drape them over moisture resistant surfaces (I like to imagine that my ficus tree loves being decorated with damp socks and underwear).

Our outdoor line is on our back deck, and I intend to give it a cover so it will double as a patio umbrella.

Pantyhose tip #12 Potty-train Plants

Before potting a plant, use a section of pantyhose to cover the small holes in the bottom of the pot to keep the soil from leaking out when you water or move your plants. The water will still flow out, but the soil will stay in the pot.

(I've almost used up all of my old pantyhose these past few weeks!)

Pantyhose tip #11 Bath Tea Bag

Once, I got a very fancy bath gift. It was a gallon of dried herbs and rose hips and orange peels. It came with a special bath tea ball, that looked just like a regular tea ball only MUCH bigger. It smelled sooo good, only I could never get the tea ball to seal completely. That meant little bits of herbs would float into the bath and stick to me when I got out. Yuck.

To get around that, I replaced the tea ball with a section of pantyhose. Make your own tea bag by using ingredients like oatmeal (soften skin) lavender (calming) peppermint (invigorating) or any number of other herbs for their scent or effect. Use old herbal teas (past their 'drink by' date) like chamomile and mint. Use it to corral your epsom salts, so you don't have to feel that grainyness as you bathe.

Put your tea bag in your bath as it fills, or just let it float around and steep. If you've attached a tie to the bag, you can attach it to the faucet and let the water filter through it, then let it float around with you in your bath.

Bottle Your Own Water

Why bottle it? It's convenient, good for you, and you will then be less likely to shell out $1.50 for water if you've got your own bottle.

Why glass? It is better than plastic and it's easy to find a super-cool bottle to reuse. We use glass bottles with stoppers built in (see picture) but you could use any glass bottle with a resealable top, screw top, etc. I wouldn't use cork, because I think I'd knock it off in my bag.

Bottled water is such a scam. Oh, it’s handy, but it is often nothing more than tap water, sometimes much worse than tap water. They may add minerals. Big deal, they're draining the local aquifir. Bottled water generates so much waste, both in the shipping from someplace else, and the disposal of the plastics (80% end up in landfills). Every ton of PET produced equals 3 tons of carbon dioxide.

And don’t even get me started on the plastics! Did you know the plastics they’ve been using can leach into the water? Even those outdoorsy bottles can be not so nice. Plastic is non-renewable, made from oil, etc.

That plastic bottle gets shipped here from someplace else. Huge amounts of water are pulled out of that local community and shipped here, using resources, dropping their water table, getting us used to paying for water... it makes no sense.

Bottling your own water reduces the waste and contaminants. If you like, filter it first. We do. In some countries, this might be a necessary step, but in ours, it really isn't (unless you are on a well, in which case, you will want to filter that stuff). We're just persnickety like that.

Make Pet Toys

Topher, our cat, prefers the home made toys. At first, we felt bad not spending money on him. He is, after all, our little baby. I mean, just look at that face!

But as it turns out, his favorite toys are made from other things. Here is the list, as well as how they were made:

• Tin Foil Ball- Tin foil, made into a ping-pong sized ball. Compress it with a spoon for a shiny finish.
  
• Milk Ring Danger Mouth- The ring off a container of milk. It has plastic teeth, making MRDM a challenging opponent.
  
• Cat Fishin‘ Game- a cluster of strips for the “lure” (I made ours from a plastic bag, but I am going to change it to paper, since he sometimes catches it and I don't want him to eat plastic) fastened to a guitar string for the “line”, fastened to a stick for the “pole”. It's crazy good times.
  
• Catnip Dim Sum*- the toe of an old athletic sock, stuffed with homegrown, organic catnip and stitched up to look like a delicious dumpling.

Topher also really likes the glue stick, but I need that, so we don't count it as one of his toys. Make something for your pet, just be sure it's sturdy enough to take their rough play without falling apart, and that it has no small parts that might accidentally be swallowed. And don't use anything dangerous, of course. Click here are some ideas for homemade dog toys.

*to my dismay, Topher actually prefers a ratty, well-loved, store bought toy to Dim Sum. It's an eggplant filled with catnip that cannot possibly be as good as the catnip I grew, yet, he loves it so much it is often soggy with love spit.