You may not know it, but today, June 30th, 2008, is Please Take My Children to Work Day. While it’s a bit late in the day to pawn your children off on your husband or someone else, I thought you would enjoy learning about this holiday. My friend Jen Singer, founder of MommaSaid, created the holiday to give stay-at-home moms the day off. (Full disclosure: I currently contribute a version of The Lean Green Family to Jen’s website here.)

If you’re interested, Jen was on The CBS Early Show this morning (this is a link to the segment) talking about her holiday, and the segment included video of Jen cleaning her house. Considering that stay-at-home moms spend about 100 hours a week working (see this Salary.com survey article for more on that stat), it made sense to show Jen doing what most of us moms spend a good deal of our day doing–cleaning up.

From my green perspective, I was so pleased to see Jen wiping down the bathroom sink with Clorox Green Works spray cleaner. So that makes Jen clever, funny, talented and green. Way to go, Jen!

For the longest time people have aligned the saying “sex sells” with advertising. That is, advertisers believe that if they put something remotely sexy in their ads, their target audience would be more likely to pick up on the message and, more importantly, pick up the product. Some examples include:

* Brooke Shields infamous Calvin Klein jeans ad in the 1980s that said “Nothing comes between me and my Calvins.” (Hey, when I was a high schooler in the 1980s, Calvins were the “it” jean to have so something must have worked there.)

* Have you heard about or seen David Beckham in his knickers for Emporio Armani? I wonder if those briefs have been flying off the shelves since those billboards went up?

While I’m confident that sex will continue to sell products until the end of time, now it seems that green is the new “sex” when it comes to selling something. According to this article called “Need Press? Repeat ‘Green,’ ‘Sex,’ ‘Cancer,’ ‘Secret,’ ‘Fat’” in today’s New York Times, marketers that put the words “green” or “the environment” in their press releases or product launches are getting better pick up.

As someone who is on the receiving end of many press releases and press kits, I can totally relate to this notion. For starters someone who is pitching me a green topic and can spin it to be relevant to this blog or the articles I write for magazines is someone I’ll pay attention to. On the other hand if I get a generic green-related press release or email, I might look at it but I’ll probably delete it without even responding.

With consumers I think it’s important to make sure that you’re getting the most bang for your greenback, especially if you’re trending towards purchasing eco-friendly products. For example, my recent post about the Perf Go Green trash bags got picked up on another blog. This blog writer did a cost comparison to regular trash bags and found out that while the Perf Go Green bags might ease her guilty green conscience, regular trash bags were easier on her wallet.

Are there some eco-friendly products that you’ve wanted to buy, saw advertisements for that looked enticing, but when it came down to it, you just couldn’t justify the cost? I’d love to hear your examples.

Ever wonder what to do with those broken crayons you’ve got hanging around the house? Maybe you just cleaned out your kids’ school bag and found a bunch of orphaned crayons. Well, check out this link on “A Year of CrockPotting,” one of my new favorite blogs. While this blog usually focuses on cooking in the CrockPot 24/7, yesterday Stephanie, the blog’s creator, tackled making CrockPot Crayons. What a great way to recycle crayons! Enjoy!

A Year of CrockPotting: How to Make CrockPot Crayons

Thursday is trash day. Despite the cliche, taking out the trash is neither my husband nor my children’s job–it’s mine. Since I’m going out of town before trash day, I’m doing my usually night-before-trash-day run around the house, whereby I empty all of the trash cans and replace the bags with clean, empty ones. In places like the bathroom and bedrooms, I recycle (or rather reuse) leftover plastic grocery bags as garbage bags, but in the kitchen, I need the heavy-duty, real-thing–your basic black garbage bag.

I must admit that every time I pull out a full trash bag from the kitchen trash can, I get a sinking feeling in my stomach–knowing that this bag and its contents are going to end up in a landfill where they’re going to just sit there. At least when I dump stuff in the compost pile, I know that it’s breaking down into soil. And the cans and bottles I put in recycling, well I know that they’ll most likely be turned into something else. But trash? Yeah, it will probably outlive the cockroaches after a nuclear war.

Doomsday scenarios aside this is why I was so glad that I’d just had a box of the new Perf Go Green biodegradable garbage bags sent to me, which I can use to reline my kitchen trash can. Not only are these bags made from recycled plastic, but they are also coated with a secret formula that turns this recycled plastic into biodegradable plastic. As the press materials for these bags explain, “When discarded in soil and exposed to the presence of microorganisms, moisture and oxygen, Perf Go Green products biodegrade, decomposing into simple materials found in nature.” Most plastic bags take about 100 years to break down; these bags are supposed to break down in 24 months in landfills.

I’m not so greenwashed by a free box of garbage bags to believe that they are the solution to the world’s garbage problems. I mean, these bags need optimal landfill conditions to break down, and who is to say that those conditions will exist? However, they are a good start.

In the meantime if we all followed the 3 Rs of reduce, reuse and recycle a little more closely, we would all have a lot less trash to put out on garbage day. But since everyone’s going to have some garbage to put out at some point, I know that in the future I’ll have less of a sinking feeling in my stomach when I put the garbage out in one of these new bags. At least there’s a chance that these bags will biodegrade in my lifetime, unlike traditional trash bags.

I know that from time to time, my family and I enjoy watching the FOX game show “Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?” However, I’m convinced that the show’s writers find the most esoteric information in small sidebars in elementary-level textbooks, and that’s what they use for their questions. I mean, even my 5th grader this year (who is in the gifted program) couldn’t always get the answers right.

Since chances are you are chilling on Sunday morning with the newspaper and maybe an extra cup of coffee, I thought you might enjoy playing “Are You Greener Than a 5th Grader?” which I found on the Chicago Tribune’s website. It’s a quiz set up like the TV show but all about green questions.

FYI, I got three answers wrong on the green test so even I have something to learn about going green. (Actually, seems I have a little more to learn about ecosystems and such.)

Here’s a link to another 5th grader quiz (regular topics), courtesy of the Orlando Sentinel.

Enjoy!

A few years ago Morgan Spurlock’s documentary “Super Size Me” offered an unappetizing view of America’s oversized appetite for fast food–and the dirty underbelly of what happens when one person lives on fast food alone. I couldn’t help but think of “Super Size Me” on opposite day (as SpongeBob loves to celebrate; click here for an “Opposite Day” episode on JibJab) when I read in the newspaper this past week about shrinking package sizes.

It seems that the Kellogg Company began rolling out reduced-sized cereal boxes at the beginning of June–boxes that are 2.4 ounces smaller than their predecessors but more expensive. Supposedly, despite the smaller box size, Kellogg’s has raised cereal prices twice in the past six months. I can’t tell from this Associated Press story which boxes have shrunk–meaning is my 17 ounce box of Frosted Flakes now less than 15 ounces? Or did they shrink the smallest boxes out there? However, I do know that this shrinkage (“Seinfeld” anyone?) will affect kid favorites like Cocoa Krispies and Corn Pops.

Turns out that Kellogg’s isn’t alone in shrinking packaging. General Mills did this about a year ago with its cereals, and I’ve noticed that a lot of the ice cream makers are doing this, too. Recently, when ordering my groceries online, I went to select a half gallon of ice cream from either Breyer’s or Turkey Hill, but noticed that a half gallon of ice cream–or 64 ounces–was nearly impossible to come by these days. In fact, a half gallon of ice cream has simply become a misnomer.

Now, ice cream comes in 56-ounce packages or 1.75 quarts. I noticed this change about a year ago. Well, now ice cream packages are getting even smaller–the Turkey Hill Extreme Cookies and Cream I just purchased came in a 48-ounce container or 1.5 quarts. Of course, has the price dropped on ice cream? Hardly. If anything it’s gone up.

Normally, I would laud companies for finding smaller ways to package their products, such as how Tide has concentrated its liquid detergent so that it can be sold in smaller containers that, not surprisingly, use less plastic. I mean smaller packaging means less waste, and isn’t that the green way to think about things?

But when it comes to food, I hate this notion of giving me less for more money. Then again, with gas over the $4-a-gallon mark nationally, I guess we should all get used to getting less for more money.

Today I happened to clean out under my bathroom sink, the place where I store all of our medicine. I’d decided that, with school out, it was high time to freshen up everything that was expired–from notebooks my kids no longer need to the medicine with an expiration date from two or three years ago.

You can tell that it’s been quite awhile since I’d done this medicine cleaning-out task, because I found bottle after bottle of “children’s” liquid medicine. With my girls being able to swallow pills now and because they are each as tall as an adult (despite their young ages), we’ve long since moved on from “children’s” medicine to the adult kind.

When I discovered these long-expired bottles of medicine, my initial inclination was to dump the unused medicine in the toilet so I could wash out the bottles and recycle them. Then I remembered reading something about how people are unknowingly polluting waterways by tossing their expired medication in the toilet or washing it down the drain.

I know that trace amounts of various pharmaceutical drugs are showing up in water systems, but I’m not sure if the “no dumping” rule applies to over the counter medicine as well. I mean, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has suggested that expired prescription meds should be brought to a hazardous waste collection site for proper disposal or back to a pharmacy. The White House’s Drug Policy also addresses the issue of how to dispose of prescription drugs. But do the same rules hold true for OTC drugs like Motrin or Benadryl? Since I’m not sure, I’m going to keep those expired OTC medicines tightly sealed in their bottle and in the trash. I don’t want to pollute water just to recycle three bottles.

While we’re on the topic of water: a friend sent this link to an MSNBC story about how the don’t-drink-bottled-water message seems to have finally sunk in here in America. This story talks about how, even though bottled water consumption is still on the rise, the increase is the slowest it’s been in years.

Perhaps it’s the environmental message getting to people, who are choosing to use refillable bottles and are turning towards tap water to quench their thirst. (I’m still waiting to find the perfect replacement for my polycarbonate Nalgene bottles.) Then again, it could be the economy (stupid), because, let’s face it–buying bottled water is expensive. (Check out this hilarious Boing Boing posting on the most expensive bottled water in the world.) And in these tough economic times, with prices on the rise, why would you pay for something that you can get out of the tap for free?

Read how finding and fixing any water leaks in your home can save money, save water and help you live a greener life.

Green Boot Camp: Week 22–Fix Any Water Leaks

A friend of mine, a New Yorker, used to tell me how he was too busy to recycle. In his old apartment building, there was a garbage compactor chute on every floor, and if he dumped canned goods, newspapers or plastic bags down there, no one was the wiser. Then he moved on up to the East Side, into a building where he was responsible for putting out his own trash and recyclables (ha!) each week. Suddenly, he wasn’t too busy to separate out his recyclables, but not because his conscience got the best of him. No, a fine from New York City for not recycling got to him. (For a first offense, you get a warning and a $25 ticket. Next time it’s $50, then $100, then it’s $500.)

It’s one thing to know you ought to recycle–and then figure out on your own that you’d better snap to it or you’ll be paying for your laziness. But what about when you see people who aren’t complying or who should know better? How should you handle a situation like that?

Given that I’m a certified etiquette and protocol consultant, and have written a book on etiquette (it’s called The Everything Etiquette Book, in case you’re interested), I figured I’d talk a little bit about the etiquette of being green.

I face this etiquette quandary every time we go to my mother in law’s house for supper. She always drinks Diet Coke with her meal and then promptly tosses the can or the bottle in the trash when she’s cleaning up. If we say, “Hey, let me put that in the recycling bin for you,” she’ll usually respond, “Well, that can/bottle doesn’t have a number on it so I figured I couldn’t recycle it.” Sounds logical, right? Well, when you’re in your 70s and recycling isn’t second nature, I guess that is logical. So we gently remind her that, yes, you can recycle a clear plastic soda bottle or an aluminum can, then we fish it out of the trash and put it in the recycling bin. (Thankfully, she’s got the recycling the newspaper part down pat.)

This is an instance where a gentle reminder doesn’t bruise anyone’s ego. However, had she already bagged up the trash, tied the bag closed and taken it out to the can, I wouldn’t have gone the extra step of making my point by ripping the bag open and retrieving the cans and bottles. That would have been borderline rude, not to mention dirty and disgusting.

There have been occasions where I’ve noticed my neighbors not recycling. In the interest of not being seen as the recycling psycho–and to maintain good relationships–I will bite my tongue about confronting them. However, when no one is looking, I will retrieve a recyclable from the trash and put it in the proper recycling bin. Heck, last January, when my street was deserted, I wrestled my neighbor’s discarded Christmas tree out of his trash pile, and dragged it down to my property where I composted it with the rest of our yard waste. If someone saw me, they may have shook their head and said, “There goes that crazy green Leah again.” But that’s OK. I doubt I offended anyone.

Now if I saw someone not recycling in my own home, I wouldn’t hesitate to step in and gently “redirect” my friend’s behavior towards the recycling bin or the compost bin. If I had my druthers, I would have a recycling station right out in the open, in the kitchen, so people would get the message loud and clear. But two things are holding me back from doing that. First, my husband can’t stand the sight of recyclables waiting around for trash day, though he is a faithful recycler. He just doesn’t want to look at it the stuff. And, second, the truth is, even if I broadcast our “we are a recycling home” message loud and clear, people who don’t care about the environment are going to ignore my message no matter what I say or do. And fighting with them just isn’t worth the effort.

Have you ever been in a situation where you’ve had to exercise some green etiquette and you weren’t sure what to do? Or you decided to wing it and were successful? Nonetheless, if you find yourself in a green etiquette quandary in the future, please don’t hesitate to write for advice.

Some might say that doing Mother Nature right by recycling is reward in and of itself. That may be true, but in states with bottle bills–where you get cash back when you recycle your bottles–getting money for doing the right thing doesn’t hurt. And it’s no wonder that these states have some of the highest recycling participation rates in the United States. Who doesn’t like a cash incentive?

So I guess it shouldn’t come as a surprise that a company like RecycleBank has caught on. RecycleBank rewards its customers for recycling by giving them gift certificates to local businesses based on the amount customers recycle each month. Each person’s recycling bin (on wheels, using the single-sort system) comes with an RFID chip on it. On recycling pick-up day, as the cart is lifted and its contents are dumped into the truck, a special RFID reader notes the amount that came out of the cart and then “credits” the customer’s account accordingly. There are a number of trash haulers near me that participate in RecycleBank (just not mine, sniff sniff), and most are giving out gift certificates to local restaurants and mom-and-pop shops.

I just heard about how the town of Cherry Hill, New Jersey (a Philadelphia suburb) has upped the RecycleBank rewards ante by giving customers gift cards to a local ShopRite. So now, not only are customers getting a cash reward for recycling their bottles and cans, but in these times of rising food prices, they could catch a break on their grocery bills. And I thought I got a good deal by cashing my economic stimulus check at ShopRite and getting 10 percent added to the amount. Imagine if ShopRite and RecycleBank customers in Cherry Hill took advantage of both of these incentives? That would make the economic pinch of grocery shopping hurt just a little less these days.

ADDENDUM
The folks at RecycleBank just wrote to me to let me know that ShopRite isn’t the only food-related store that participates in the company’s rewards program. Here’s what Lisa Pomerantz, marketing and communications director, told me:

“Some of our other grocers in addition to ShopRite are:
ACME
Whole Foods
Harris Teeters
Shaw’s
Fresh Grocer
Great Valu

In addition, these companies participate as well:
Kraft
Stoneyfield Farms
HappyBaby
Green Mountain Coffee
Evian
Coca-Cola
Earthbound Farm Organic
Omaha Steaks
Meat and Seafood.com

And then there are dozens of local farmers markets, restaurants, cheese shops, etc…”

Now that’s food for thought!

Having spent much of my formative years living in or visiting apartments in New York City, all I ever knew were window air conditioners. In fact, even in the house where I grew up, we had window air conditioners–well, let me rephrase that. My parent’s bedroom had a window a/c unit as did our living room. The rest of the house? Hot and sweaty.

It wasn’t until 1999, when my husband and I bought our first house, a 2,100-square-foot new construction home, that I became familiar with the concept of whole-house air via a central air conditioning unit. Now, I couldn’t imagine living without it. However, not everyone thinks or lives like I do, and this is clearly true based on this recent reader question about window a/c units versus central air. Her question has to do with the most economical and ecological choice you can make when it comes to air conditioning.

Q: How energy efficient is central air vs. window units? I bought a house that can be easily converted to central air, but have been living with window units for the last two summers. Would I save energy by making the switch? I don’t cool the whole house at the same time — in fact, when it’s really hot out (like last week) I move my home office downstairs and stay in the dining room, which is the only downstairs room with a/c.

A: Turns out the answer isn’t as simple as one might think. There are a number of factors that affect whether or not you should use window units versus central air. According to experts what really matters is the climate where you live (hot and humid Houston versus dry Denver), how your home is insulated, and what your personal preferences are. Let’s start with climate.

If you’re looking to cool your home and lower the humidity, a central air system is your best bet, hands down, as far as efficiency goes. “Well-designed central systems win out in terms of being able to filter the air for allergens and pollutants, and for controlling humidity,” says Mike Rogers, a senior vice president with Green Homes America, a company that provides residential home performance contracting solutions that increase in-home comfort, health and safety, and significantly reduce energy usage and utility bills.

Two reasons that window units are all wet when it comes to reducing humidity are that they tend to sweat (especially if they are overworked) and therefore introduce moisture into the room. And, adds Rogers, “it’s harder to seal window units, and thus you do get some of that hot, humid air sucked in from the outside.”

That said, if humidity isn’t your problem but you’d just like to cool your home, you could get away with one window unit on each floor, if your home is well insulated. (Check out this Energy Star website to figure out the right-sized air conditioner based on a room’s size.) Insulation isn’t just in the walls, by the way. We’re also talking about well-insulated windows and, believe it or not, a well-insulated attic. “In the summer, temperatures in the attic often climb to more than 140 degrees,” says Rogers. “This tremendous heat conducts down into your home. Even when the first floor is comfortable, this constant flow of heat from the attic can bake your bedrooms upstairs. Although most people don’t think of insulation as a way to keep cool, increasing levels in your attic can make a huge difference.”

Keep in mind that while window units are cheaper in the short run, if you’re looking to purchase more than a few of them, you’re probably better off going with a central air system. Says Rogers, a central air unit will use less energy overall and cool more efficiently than a series of window units running in tandem. On the other hand, he says, “if you’re just trying to cool one or two rooms—not the whole house—a window unit or two can use less energy than a central system, and a couple of window units are much cheaper than a central unit. And, if you have a very energy-efficient house, or small house, they may be all you need.”

Finally, it’s all about personal preferences. The reader who sent in this question doesn’t seem to mind moving into a single room when it’s really hot out. And if it doesn’t get hot that often that she needs to disrupt her life regularly like this, then she can probably continue to get away with window units. However, if she’s fighting humidity and she seems to be losing the battle, then maybe it’s time to make the leap to central air.

Keep in mind that just like appliances with Energy Star ratings, air conditioning units come with their own efficiency ratings. This Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy website offers a guide to understanding central air efficiency ratings so you can make the best choice for your budget and the environment.

Air-conditioning talk aside, here is some parting advice for keeping your home cool, whether or not you have a/c.

* If your home faces south or west–or simply sits in the sun all day–and you don’t have any shade trees helping to cool your home, you’re going to have a tougher time keeping your house cool.

* Having lights on throughout the day inside the house or even running the oven or dishwasher will inch up the indoor temperature.

* If you don’t block out the sun, you’re just going to bake inside your house. That’s why window treatments play an important part in keeping a house cool–and your cooling bills lower.

Bottom line: to keep your home cool, with or without air conditioning, plant shade trees, keep curtains, blinds and shutters closed during the hottest part of the day, and limit lights on (especially halogen, that burn bright and hot) and appliances used during the heat of the day.

One of my husband’s favorite “party games” is to say to someone, “Give Leah any address in Manhattan, and she’ll tell you the zip code.” Nine times out of 10, I’m right. You see, I have this weird, almost “Rain Man”-like obsession with numbers. Over the years I’ve memorized phone numbers, zip and area codes, and bank account numbers. In fact, when I recalled our 13-digit checking account number the other day at the bank, the teller actually did call me “Rain Man.”

Perhaps this obsession with numbers is why I always got a 99 on my math Regents exam every year in high school (never 100, don’t know why). And though I’ve been writing since my elementary school years, as a student it was in science and math where I excelled.

Despite memorizing random strings of numbers, I am terrible with dates. The best example of this was after my husband and I got married in 1992. I issued a “press release” to the local paper in the town where we grew up (Bill and I have known each other since 4th grade) so they could write about our recent wedding. When the piece came out the next week, I’d discovered that I’d gotten our wedding date wrong. Nearly 16 years later I still haven’t lived that down.

So I guess it should come as no surprise that I just missed and forgot about the one-year anniversary of this blog, which I began on June 6, 2007. It originated as Suddenly Frugal but quickly became The Lean Green Family (first in spirit, then in actual name) when I realized that going green would help us save green.

If you’d like to take a trip down memory lane, here is a link to my first post. Funny thing is, back then I was complaining about gas being close to $3 a gallon. Oh, for the good old days.

Happy reading!

Today I was reading an article with tips in it about ways to save on your grocery bills, now that everything, including food shopping, is more expensive. As this article explained, you can cancel your vacations and try to drive less, but you can’t stop feeding your family. Therefore the key is figuring out how to feed your family for less.

One of the many frugal suggestions included growing your own vegetables. In my old house we had an awesome sunny spot where we successfully had a vegetable garden of tomatoes, squash and pumpkins. Sometimes the garden resembled the indoor jungle in the movie “Jumanji.” Unfortunately, we do not have a similarly sunny spot in the new house but we do have our CSA for fresh produce.

Of course, finding a “safe” way to get vegetables is top of mind these days, now that the FDA has recalled tomatoes due to a salmonella outbreak. Just how do tomatoes become contaminated with salmonella, a bacteria that lives harmlessly in animal’s intestinal tracts? Well, it can get on the “outside” of the body when people don’t wash their hands after using the bathroom or after cutting raw meat, or if animal feces are near fruits and vegetables. And if salmonella gets on your food and you eat, you can get very, very sick.

According to the FDA, not all tomatoes are affected by the recent salmonella outbreak, and you can check this web page here for locations not affected. In addition, it is recommended that you buy certain kinds of tomatoes that have not seemed to have had salmonella on them, such as cherry tomatoes or tomatoes still on the vine–supposedly these are grown in greenhouses where salmonella isn’t a problem.

Of course, if you pick your own tomatoes in your backyard, you’re probably pretty safe from salmonella, unless your dog or outdoor cat likes to poop near your garden. That said, it’s always wise to wash your tomatoes or other produce in running water, and gently rub the surface of the fruit or vegetable to remove any residue. An expert in this CNN article recommends cutting away any remaining stem as a way of avoiding contamination. At the same time you should remove the outer layer of lettuce just to be on the safe side.

Even though farmer’s markets and CSA farms probably aren’t exempt from salmonella outbreaks, I would feel a little safer buying my produce locally at such places. Why? Because these are probably smaller operations with more control over picking conditions. Hopefully, that means that the produce grown there is less likely to be contaminated. I realize that nothing is 100% safe, but it’s something to keep in mind, especially if you’re trying to eat locally and want to avoid buying tomatoes (or other produce) that was grown thousands of miles away.

With the school year winding down—OK, practically over—we are once again swimming in school photos. Right now I’ve got them all piled up in a basket, and I’d like to put them to good use. I mean, I’ve paid for them but, really, do you ever need 10 or 12 repeat pictures of your kids from their yearbook? Multiply that by six and eight years in school, and you’ve got a lot of photos. Also, my daughters’ schools just started up with “spring” pictures, so now I’ve got two sets of pictures of my girls, and I don’t want them to go to waste.

I’m not a big fan of those big frames with lots of matting holes in them so you can load them up with pictures, so there’s got to be a better way to use all of these school photos I’ve collected of my kids over the years. I’ve heard of cutting the mini photos into strips and using them as bookmarks. Given that I’m raising bookworms, that’s one thing I can do with some of the photos.

But what else can I do with school photos? What do you do with those leftover school photos of your kids? Maybe together we can come up with a green and frugal use for them.

Please post a comment with your ideas.

A few days ago I posted something over in Green Boot Camp about figuring out ways to donate items you no longer want or need. This notion is twofold–to keep items out of the waste and recycling stream for as long as possible, and to bless someone else with free stuff. Based on comments I’ve received so far, I guess I’ve struck a (good) nerve with many of you.

With that in mind, I wanted to build on that notion because giving away your goods is a great way to support charities. I know that I try to schedule a Purple Heart pick up every month or so. They come to my house to take away clothes, household items, books and whatever I put out for them. Purple Heart then sells these items in their thrift store, and the money goes to support veterans. There are many other philanthropic organizations with similar donation-supported thrift shops. I’ve seen them for homeless missions and domestic-abuse shelters.

Recently, I became aware of other charitable organizations that take donations of clothing but for specific purposes–all to support women struggling in one way or another. One is for business women trying to get back on their feet, another is for teenage girls who otherwise couldn’t afford to go to their prom, and the third is for women who have breast cancer. Let me tell you more about each.

The Career Wardrobe
Based in Philadelphia, The Career Wardrobe is a non-profit organization that provides women in transition with free professional clothing and educational opportunities to help them successfully find and retain employment. Since 1995, The Career Wardrobe has assisted more than 50,000 women transition into the workforce. As far as donations go, you can bring clothing to the organization’s Center City, Philadelphia and East Falls’ locations. Naturally, The Career Wardrobe wants donations of business attire (suits, skirts, blouses), but it is also interested in receiving pocketbooks, briefcases, scarves and other accessories. Note: this is NOT the place to donate your used jeans or khakis.

Cinderella Project
This nationwide organization is devoted to accepting donations of gently used prom, formal and bridesmaid dresses so it can provide a young lady, who otherwise couldn’t afford to go to her prom, a pretty dress to wear. There are a number of “Cinderella Project” groups in various states. A few years ago I wrote about the Cinderella Project in New Hampshire for Sky Magazine (though the story got bumped). This web page provides links to other prom dress-related charities in the United States and Canada that also serve indigent teens who would like to have a new-to-them dress for the prom.

Brides Against Breast Cancer
This organization provides low-cost wedding attire to engaged men and women suffering from terminal breast cancer. While it relies heavily on manufacturers, retailers and designers for last season’s overstocks on wedding gowns and whatnot, much of its donations come from regular men and women. These folks have decided to depart with what could have become a family heirloom in order to bring happiness to a bride or groom who may not live to see a first anniversary. (It’s hard to write that without getting a lump in my throat!) For more information on how to donate a wedding gown, click here.

Are you aware of other organizations that take donations of “special” clothing and attire? If so, post a comment here, and let us know. Maybe together we can help to clean out our closets, avoid throwing out clothing we no longer want and provide someone in need with an article of clothing that will bring him or her joy.

Instead of just tossing something in the trash or recycling, this week on Green Boot Camp we’re talking about giving away items to keep them out of the waste stream for as long as possible.

Green Boot Camp: Week Twenty–Give Away What You Would Normally Throw Away

I had the oil changed on my Ford Freestyle last week, though the sticker on my windshield told me I was long overdue. What made me determined to get the oil change done quickly was the fact that near my odometer there is a “computer” screen that let’s me know how much “oil life” I have left, and as long as the oil life is below 10%, your odometer disappears and this message continues to blaze in your face. By the time I’d rolled in to the local gas station to get my oil changed, my oil life was at 1% and my odometer was nowhere to be seen. Whew, made it just in time.

I picked up the car a few hours later, paid my bill and drove off. It wasn’t until I was halfway home that I discovered that my oil life was still reading 1%. Thinking I’d been ripped off and that the guys hadn’t really changed my oil, I called the gas station in a tizzy. Guess what? When you change a car’s oil, the “change oil soon” or “oil life 1%” light doesn’t automatically go off once someone goes under the hood, sort of like your “empty” light from your gas tank goes off when you fill up. With oil changes, the mechanic has to manually reset it.

So I turned around and went back to the station. When I got there, I turned off the engine, popped the hood and hopped out of the car. I walked around to meet the mechanic at the front of the car, but he slid into the driver’s seat.

Turns out the “reset” button on my car isn’t under the hood but under the steering wheel. I’d never noticed before that there is a console of three buttons there: program, info and reset. The mechanic pointed them out and showed me how they worked.

Like the menu on my cell phone, by pressing the program button, I could scroll through lots of options, including resetting the oil life. Yes, we were back to 100%. But I also noticed that I could view “miles to empty,” and mpg or miles per gallon. That is, as I was driving, if I scrolled to mpg, I could see how my speed affected the miles per gallon I was getting.

You know how you always hear that driving the speed limit–the old-fashioned one at 55 mph–allows you to get the best gas mileage? Well, whoever floated this theory around wasn’t lying. Check out this chart on FuelEconomy.gov that shows just how that works.

I did a little experiment the other day, after discovering this mpg option. I scrolled to it, and left it on as I drove to the highway. I spent 15 minutes driving on a stop-and-go road, and my gas mileage varied between 16 and 18 mpg. Once I hit I-95 and set my cruise control on 55 mph, my mpg shot up to 22 mpg. Interestingly, if slowed down to 50 mph, the mpg went up even more, to 24 mpg, but you’ve got to be nuts to drive that slowly on an interstate.

Now that gas is for sure above $4 per gallon, you can bet that when I have to drive on the highway, I will be setting my cruise control at 55 mpg. Being a competitive person, I hate it when other cars pass me, or I notice that a line of cars is forming behind me–I want to get away and get out in front. However, I’ll just head over to the right lane and live with the fact that though driving 55 mph may add 10 minutes or so to my trip, it will also allow me to fill up less often.

Little by little, since moving into this new house a year ago (guess it’s not so new anymore, now that it’s been a year), we’ve been putting our personal stamp on the place as best we can–given time and budget constraints. We’ve managed to get the living room painted, and the mudroom cleaned out (it still bore the remnants of our move). As the weather got nicer, we began fixing up the outside, including taking a weedy patch of God-only-knows-what back by the pool, and reseeding it as a little grassy knoll. We purchased a porch swing, gazebo for the backyard and outdoor furniture. (We had Lowe’s gift cards leftover from Christmas.) And I’ve started to tackle the landscaping, which was sorely neglected by the previous owners. I swear I’ve never seen so much out-of-control ivy outside of a university quad!

One of the joys in my old house was growing a garden from scratch and then, as the eight years went by, splitting and transplanting bushes from here to there. There was the tiny lilac bush that I nurtured from a seedling, and eventually got big enough to split. By the time we sold the house, that little seedling had produced two four-foot lilac bushes. There were the “hardy” mums that never seemed to understand that they were a fall flower, and would burst into color during July. Season after season, they grew bigger and more vibrant. I must have split and transplanted them three or four times. Our butterfly bush grew to gargantuan proportions, the corkscrew willow reached the roof (I was taller than it when we first planted it), and the spirea and burning bushes all added to a robust garden.

Sadly, when we moved, we were not given the chance to take any of our landscaping–we were told the new owners weren’t interested in letting us. So you can imagine my heartbreak when I drove back through the old neighborhood a few weeks after we moved (my daughter had a playdate with a friend living there) and saw that the new owners had ripped everything out. No more mums, spirea, burning bush or butterfly bushes. In it’s place–grass. All grass.

Back at this new house, we finally got some time this spring to begin sprucing up the gardens by cutting back the ivy and trimming the azaleas, which blossoms have come and gone. Last week I decided to transplant four azaleas from the backyard to the front yard–the front had no color, save for one rhododendron–and now, four transplanted azaleas later, my front path will be framed with pink and white azalea bushes come next spring. Because our house sits on a hill and doesn’t have a lawn, we’ve got ground cover instead. Specifically, we’ve got creeping myrtle or vinca, which produces a pretty purple flower in the spring. Unfortunately, the previous owners had planted this ground cover spottily, leaving it looking like a man who’d had a bad hair transplant job. This past weekend I started transplanting myrtle from the back, where it’s growing like a weed, to the front so I could fill in the bare spots.

We still have a long way to go with filling out the landscaping, specifically in the front of the house, where the cement foundation is exposed and ugly. I’d like to get some of the same shrubbery that I used to have in my old house but, in a fit of frugalness, I don’t want to have to pay for it. Well, a friend of mine happened to have told me recently how she put a call out on Freecycle for hosta. She wanted more for her garden and, like me, didn’t want to have to pay for something she might be able to get for free. Her Freecycle “wanted” ad worked, because she ended up with more hosta than she knew what to do with.

I took a page from her frugal book, and put my own “wanted” ad on Freecycle, along with Craigslist, and people have been responding quickly and generously. I’ve already picked up a small lilac bush, some daylilies and two bags of compost soil (didn’t ask for it but she wanted to get rid of it and it was free, so I took it). I’m heading down to someone’s else’s home later this week to look at a few burning bushes, holly bushes and what sounds like Scottish broom. One of these folks is having a fence put in and needs the plants taken away, or the fence guys were just going to throw them out.

The only catch in my getting this shrubbery for free? In some instances I’ve got to go dig the plants out myself. No problem. I’ve got a good work ethic and a strong desire to avoid spending money when I don’t have to. Sure, I’ll spend a little on gas getting to these places, but not nearly as much as I would have paid for mature bushes at a local nursery.

Have you ever thought of getting free shrubbery, plants or bushes from a place like Freecycle or Craigslist? If not landscaping greenery, what other kinds of “I can’t believe you got that for free” items have you secured by putting a “wanted” ad on one of these websites? I’d love to hear how you cleverly saved money and helped avoid something getting tossed in the trash.