HOW GREEN ARE YOU?

I earned enough points at fun140.com to create my own quiz and chose a green theme - it's really quick, so have a go and see what shade of green you are!

Here's a fun quiz you can take to see what shade of green are you  . . . http://fun140.com/users/35955-sherryef/quizzes/2581-how-green-are-you# 

My Review of To-Go Ware Stainless Steel Lunch Box

Greenfeet - The Planet's Homestore

To-go Ware's take on the tiffin, a food container system derived from an age-old ""to-go"" tradition in India!

""Brown-bagging"" it the new old-fashioned way!We know that packing our own nutritious, ho

To-Go Ware Stainless Steel Lunch Box

Losing some of the plastic in my world

Sherrye the Worm Rancher Houston, Texas 5/28/2009

 

5 5

Pros: Quality Construction, Attractive Design, Easy To Use, Compact, Convenient, Dishwasher Safe

Best Uses: Lunches, Take-out, Pot Luck, Leftovers at Restaurant

Describe Yourself: Casual Cook

I wanted something my husband could take to work and get hot on the engine of his truck. He gets tired of pop-top soup from a can, so now he can take delicious dinner leftovers and let them warm up out in the field.

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My Review of Greenfeet Klean Kanteen Bottle 40oz

Greenfeet - The Planet's Homestore

The Greenfeet Stainless Steel Water BottleThis is a reusable, light weight, risk-free stainless steel container that won't leach toxins into its contents. Made by Klean KanteenThe Gre

Greenfeet Klean Kanteen Bottle 40oz

Can't say enough GOOD STUFF about these

Sherrye the Worm Rancher Houston, Texas 5/28/2009

 

5 5

Pros: Durable, Clean Taste, Large Volume

Best Uses: Road Trips, Upgrade, Family outings, Improving Water Quality, Improving Taste, Pick Nicks, Eliminates Plastic

Describe Yourself: Midrange Shopper

Primary use: Personal

I got two of these to carry as refills for my smaller ones. They'll hold plenty for the family on Pick Nicks, hikes, out of town trips.

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My Review of Greenfeet Klean Kanteen Bottle 27oz

Greenfeet - The Planet's Homestore

The Greenfeet Stainless Steel Water Bottle is a reusable, light weight water bottle that does not leach toxins.Recent studies link toxins such as bisphenol-a (BPA) found in some plastic water bottles

Greenfeet Klean Kanteen Bottle 27oz

Love it times 2

Sherrye the Worm Rancher Houston, Texas 5/28/2009

 

5 5

Pros: Clean Taste, Durable, Good size, Smart Design

Best Uses: Upgrade, Improving Water Quality, Eliminates Plastic Bottle

Describe Yourself: Midrange Shopper

Primary use: Personal

I have been using stainless steel bottles like this for 6 months now and am CRAZY about them! I MEANT to get the smaller size, but THAT'S OK - I now have gifts to give to my loved ones who are STILL USING PLASTIC WATER BOTTLES. I like the easy to clean loose threading on the large mouthed opening that facilitates adding ice and makes drinking more pleasant than the smaller openings I have experienced. It has the mouth feel of drinking out of a champagne flute to me...similar size.

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My Review of Bamboo Reusable Spork

Greenfeet - The Planet's Homestore

Is it a spoon or a fork? Ta-da... it's a spork! As a matter of fact, we'd like to call this bambu's Bamboo Spork 2.0. Perfect for traveling, your lunchbox or the great outdoors, the new and improved,

Bamboo Reusable Spork

These are special

Sherrye the Worm Rancher Houston, Texas 5/28/2009

 

4 5

Pros: Attractive Design, Compact design, Durable

Best Uses: Pick-Nicks, Lunches, Outdoors

Describe Yourself: Midrange Shopper

I Am A: Couple No Kids

I figured these would be good to put in my husband's lunch - he breaks the plastic ones so easily - if he breaks this one it will just be part of the compost! No more plastic for the landfill. I thought they would be a little bit bigger, but that's OK - he'll get used to them. I wanted something that would fit in a tier of the stainless steel lunch box I got for him.

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My Review of To-Go Ware 3 tier Stainless Lunch Box

Greenfeet - The Planet's Homestore

The newest member of the To-Go Ware...

To-Go Ware 3 tier Stainless Lunch Box

This is impressive

Sherrye the Worm Rancher Houston, Texas 5/28/2009

 

5 5

Pros: Quality Construction, Attractive Design, Compact, Easy To Use, Convenient

Describe Yourself: Casual Cook

I use it mostly for leftovers after eating out at restaurants to stop the wasteful use of the Styrofoam boxes. There are 3 in the family so we can each have our own level, and the little cup is super for those delicious sauces we used to forgo bringing home to prevent messes. I attracts attention when we walk in with it all stacked up and shining. . . GOT IT AT GREENFEET.COM! I was worried my elderly Mom might have difficulty with the clasps, but they are not overly tight. They do hold securely, though. I do like that it is arranged so you can use 2 layers if you don't need all 3. It is a bit smaller in diameter than the 2 level one I also got for my husband's lunches.

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Non Toxic Mosquito Repellant

<----This is the only good mosquito.

I just wanted to mention that the past couple of nights before I walked my dog I have tried spritzing myself with vinegar - exposed skin on neck, arms and legs to keep mosquitoes away. . . and it seems to work! Prior to that I was being accosted by those little arthropod vectors unmercifully. . . especially at night between 9 & 11 PM. 

I have NO idea how long the effects last, but for the time I was outside - 20-30 minutes the mosquitoes occasionally touched me, but departed immediately without biting. I had to shoo them away from my face once, but I didn't spray my face - maybe I will tonight. 

Yesterday there were about 100 of the little creeps swarming in the shade of my front porch, so I tried the Listerine trick - I had some knock-off citrus mouthwash that I sprayed all over the door jamb and the walls and floor out there. I'm telling you - the mosquitoes were SWARMING like crazy.  A little while alter I checked and there might have been a dozen left, no more than that. 80-90% reduction is substantial for not using those toxic bug sprays. I will check again later today to see if the swarm is back, but I just wanted to post my immediate findings before I got too busy today.

ENERGY

This may not have anything to do with being green, but does have to do with ENERGY - saving it and renewing it. I'm talking about NAPS.

Constant struggles can wear a person down. It can make you stronger in some ways by revealing abilities that have not been employed or were thought to be long forgotten...but constant physical stress is weakening. Even body builders must STOP what they do and rest between sessions. 

I remember . . . back in my commuting days when I got up before 4 AM to get ready and go 30 miles to work by 6 AM it was so hard to get to bed early enough to get sufficient sleep and it wore me down. I was on the verge of tears at one point and told my husband that I just needed to go to sleep and sleep until I woke up by myself - no alarm, no dog, no phones, nothing. So I announced my intentions to him and my mom, got a glass of water to have by the bedside in case I woke up and felt like having a drink. That way I wouldn't have to get up and wake up even more by walking to fill my glass. I closed all the blinds to block out light and went to bed. My husband did not awaken me for anything, Mom tended the dog & kept him downstairs. The phones upstairs were unplugged and the ones downstairs were on low or the ringers turned off. I actually slept for almost 9 hours and when I awakened I felt like a different person. I wish I could tell you I had revelatory dreams or something fantastic like that, but I was just able to shut my brain off and reboot it. I didn't sleep for 2 days straight like one might think, just a little over 8 hours and that was all I needed. The fact that I was able to do it in my own bed was great. I don't know if it would have been so good in a hotel because it usually takes me a few nights to get used to a different bed. I went for months and months with 5 or fewer hours of sleep in a row and it almost ruined me.

I read back in the 70s about a guy who trained himself to sleep for 30 minutes or less at a stretch, but he did it every couple of hours through-out the day. He ended up having more awake hours because his total sleep time was about 4-6, so he was more productive. For him it worked, but he had to train himself to do it. I just wonder what his cholesterol levels and other things that they measure now a days would be. He said his heart rate and blood pressure were fine. I know that a "Power Nap" (15-20 minutes) is refreshing to me, but I could not live off them like he basically was doing.

Are you able to take "Power Naps"? My dear friend was complaining to me that she was not getting enough sleep due to her bruxism and her husband's nighttime noises and early risings. I told her that she is at home most hours of the day and if she is tired she should go to her room, kick out the cats, close the door and take a nap. I told her not sleep for more than 30-45 minutes because when you get up to the 1 hour range it is harder to awake, or you might feel drugged upon awakening, but shoot for 20 minutes only and see how you feel. I have known her for 25 years and she ALWAYS said she could NOT take naps. Well, she discovered that SHE CAN! Maybe it is being over 50 now. Maybe it is being DOG tired. Whatever the case is, it worked for her. I think she was EMBARRASSED to be caught sleeping in the middle of the day. . .I was like that when I was younger, but NO MORE - I would rather lie down for a little while with my eyes closed and maybe dream for a few minutes than chew off my husband's head because I am tired. Now I just grab my little doggy - sometimes she leads me to the bedroom when she knows I am ready for a nap. She would let me sleep all day, but I don't need that much, just a little while with my eyes closed and in prone and motionless position helps me. It's not the same dozing off in front of the TV or laptop. . . not for me anyway - my husband does that all the time - he has done that as long as I've known him. I used to have a pretty little couch in my downstairs office that I would employ for power naps more than anything else. It was right there behind my computer chair and if I started feeling a little droopy, I would stretch out, close my eyes, and snooze. There was one time when I was on hold with tech support and their recording said to expect long waits, so I put the phone to my ear and laid down. When the music stopped and a voice awakened me it had been 2 HOURS!!! I felt like it was a new day. 

I used to work with a man that had a cot set up in the basement of the big building he worked in where he would lie down for the last half of his lunch hour. Sometimes he dozed, sometimes he just daydreamed. His feet were elevated and his eyes were closed or focused at a different distance than usual and all that put together gave his mind a chance to unwind, and his body a chance to relax. He destressed. I think the Mexicans & Germans have the right idea - give your employees extra long lunch breaks so they can take a little siesta or a Schläfchen before returning to work. That makes happier, more productive employees. 

If you're dozing off at the computer and have a place to do it - take a nap. Find a place with little or no light that is cool, but not COLD, & quiet, and put your feet up - level with your heart is best, but if you can just recline with your feet propped up, that works, too. Set an alarm - like on your cell phone to awaken you in 25 minutes or so, or get a friend to do it for you. See what happens. I'll bet you will be so recharged you could get all that work done that was putting you to sleep before!

Electric Water Heater

It seems like no dishwasher I have ever owned has really left all my dishes clean. I even tried cranking up the Water Heater's temperature to High - 140-ish degrees F. I'm here to tell you that it didn't make a bit of difference. So OF COURSE I turned it back down to 120-ish. I guess I will just have to be satisfied with clean particles left behind on my glasses. I have a trick that might help a few people out there - if you are going away for a few days or weeks on vacation, turn off the water heater. Mine is in the attic, so since I HATE crawling around up there, I just flick it off at the easily accessible circuit breaker box where the electric water heater has its own dedicated switch. I figure I will save some money on that month's bill and it will help off-set the cost of my trip. PLUS I leave a slightly smaller carbon footprint thatn I would have otherwise. Quick, economical, eco-friendly, easy & green - doesn't get much better than that, I tell you what!

Green Organizations

I got Twitterpated and started Tweeting. There are lot of Green organizatons and forums there that give updates, so I will follow them as I find them. Already following Tree Hugger, Ed Begley, Bill Nye, Swap A DVD, Paper Back Swap, and some celebrities . My first famous person was Weird Al Yankovick - LOL! He was following Brent Spiner (Data) & from him I found a bunch of other Star Trek Stars. . . even Leonard Nimoy - my logical hero and Director of my favorite ST movie - #4 The Voyage Home. I can see why Twitter is such a phenomenon - it's fun and informational and people are using it to promote themselves and businesses and causes.

Print the GREEN way

Have you heard? There is a font you can use that will enable you to print using 20% less ink! Even with fonts normal to medium/large size you can't see the little holes in the letters.

I must admit that I store most of my data electronically, but I print out some stuff for mailing samples. I am planning to use it when I print out labels and mailing wrappers to save ink. You can download it free from this website . . . 

http://www.ecofont.eu/downloads_en.html .

There are a few more ways to save - one of which I have used for YEARS. That is reduce the size of the margins to get more data on a sheet of paper and (if you can get away with it) print on both sides of the paper to save even more. I use my printer in "Fast Draft" mode most of the time and it uses WAY less ink - probably 50% less at least and it prints out so fast it literally spits the pages out with enough momentum to eject them out onto the floor if I don't catch them! 

Save ink - save paper - who's going to complain about that other than the manufacturers of the ink and paper? Frugal is green - Green is frugal! And it is very easy, too.

2/12/09 - Easy Green tips for the Bathroom

This one is so easy, I am embarassed that it had to be suggested to me by Ideal Byte - http://www.idealbite.com/ - catch water in a bucket. When they posted the suggestion they even prefaced it by saying, they didn't think THEY were even going to do it, but I thought - WHY NOT? I got a bucket for each bathroom, and when we are warming up the water for a shower, we catch the initial flow of cool water and use it later to flush the toilet - saving an entire tank of toilet flushing water. How easy is that?

Two of the commodes in my house are pre-1996, thus rather large, so I am happy to re-use that water and save 5 or 6 gallons. The bucket holds 10 quarts, and that is the equivalent of some of the newer tanks that only hold 2 or 3 gallons of water for flushing. It only takes a couple of gallons to flush normally, so the bit left over can be used to add back into the bowl, which might be left without much in the reservoir after a bucket flush. When I first read about the idea they suggested using the water you catch in the shower for watering plants, but it is much closer to just go over to the john & dump it in.

Bill Nye (the science guy) finished up his segment on Stuff Happens (in the bathroom) by saying the best thing in the bathroom you can do for the environment is use less water. Another thing he suggested was to use paper made from recycled paper that has been oxygen bleached rather than chlorine or dioxin bleached. He said that if every household in America used just one roll of the "Green TP" in stead of a roll of the other stuff it would save 40,000 trees! I bought a package of 12 rolls. Does that mean I saved 480,000 Trees? I know, I know - EVERYONE has to do it, but I also kept a little bit of harmful chemicals out of the enviroment and circumvented all the initial energy expended to process the trees from scratch.

I have gotten my Mom & husband on this band wagon . . . yes they both think I'm nuts. Hey - it really is easy being green.

More Green Ideas

Words in green are little things to do to be greener.
I discovered a paper recycling collection box at a school not too far from here. I have no school kids, so don't hang around those places much, but while I walking my little doggy in the farther reaches of the neighborhood, I saw it. They have a list of things on it that they accept and among the newspaper & magazines was listed, office waste, boxes and - wait for it....wait for it....JUNK MAIL! Last year I took my name off a bunch of lists to decrease the volume of junk mail I receive and it has diminished, but not disappeared. Now I have a place to put it besides the land fill. I am so happy. If my husband takes a slightly different route to work he can drop it off once a week or so, thus only adding a couple hundred feet to his drive and not wasting gas by making an extra trip. BTW - he goes to work REAL early so won't get involved with the school zone, buses, or minor pedestrian traffic. It has been only 5 days since I started saving the paper waste and already have a 16"X16"X14" box FULL. I will probably need a bigger box when I finally get around to purging my files from last year to make room for 2009's stuff - I know!!!! It is almost February and I have not made a dent in it yet.

I also joined FreeCycle. It is a group online where you can list things you want to get rid of, but don't want to just throw away thus adding to the growing landfills (we call the one closest to us "Stink Mountain"). I have gotten rid of a lot of perfectly good stuff that I was tired of storing and figured I'd never use again (or fit into), and someone else wanted. I reccommend it highly, especially since Spring Cleaning time is rushing at us like Dino the dinosaur on The Flintsones. People list the stuff they don't want to move, the boxes after they are finshed moving, lots and lots of baby stuff. Let's face it - those babies tend to grow out of stuff so quickly it hasn't had a chance to wear out yet. Many people even post things that they NEED that might be in someone's drawer or closet and they hadn't thought of getting rid of it - for instance - that old cell phone charger for the phone you replaced a few years ago and it doesn't fit anything in your house, or the old cell phone itself. Computer cables, monitors, TVs, appliances, small & large, working or not. There are a lot of handy people out there who would love to fix the old washer, or drier, or desk top PC, or refrigerator that you replaced. They might use it or sell it for a few bucks. . . either way they will come take it out of your way and it is no skin off your nose. The main rule is you have to give it away - not try to sell it - that is why it is called FREE Cycle. Many people get stuff on Freecycle to supplement their own stuff for yard sales. I would rather give it away than bother with yard sale, but HEY - I'm lazy, and a little generous, I guess.

I had a box of stuff that I was getting ready to list on Freecycle, but Purple Heart called and said they were going to be on my street and wondered if I had anything I could donate - so I saved it for them. Recycle, repurpose, reuse, reduce - DONATE! Now I get a tax receipt for the stuff I was getting rid of anyway. It's all good.

2009 is 6% gone!

Here is my new low-profile, multi-level worm ranch. I had enough worms for more than 2 habitats, but I just put some in here, and re-did my old one for y sister-in-law. She is getting a fully functioning worm farm that's already densely populated with red wigglers. I have been getting more fertilizer than I knew what to do with from the previous set-up, so I hope Sue gets as much as I did. She has a big lot with lots of plants and vegetable garden plot on which to spread it all around this summer. A few weeks ago I gave away over 4 gallons of worm tea to a couple of Free-Cyclers and I still had too much. I have given a good friend a gallon, and several gallons went to my bother and sister-in-law when they visited the last couple of times. I ended up dowsing all my plants, my hedges, and my front yard today. It may be the middle of winter, but it felt like summer today - it got up into the mid-eighties! I even got a little sun-burned while I was out there fiddling around. You know what? I spread several GALLONS of that stuff all over my front yard and you couldn't even smell it. I was worried it might smell like poop afterward, but not at all...you can't say that about SOME organic fertilizers!

When I made my first worm farm from recycled materials, I wasn't sure if I could make a go of it, so didn't want to invest any money in it. The most expensive part was the worms themselves...the original habitat cost me less than $8 for parts, and the starter bedding (cocoanut coir & peat moss) was about $5. I have gotten at LEAST $150 worth of worm tea fertilizer (Retails for $7.95/Gallon), not counting the composted soil that I have spread around to all my plants. The worms themselves have doubled their population at least 4 times. I used 20 percent less water the last few months - I guess that is from not running the garbage disposal so much - the worms get most of the stuff that used to go down the drain in addition to the rain barrels. I am going to say those little wigglers have paid for themselves several times over since August. My plants sure like what they make - My palm tree is growing a new leaf - in January - and I have a ton of Kolanchoe flowers starting on my patio, and my Impatiens have been blooming, too.