For the most part when I pick up my produce at the CSA, it’s up to me to bring my own bags and boxes for carrying those fruits, vegetables and herbs home. This really creates a zero-waste scenario, because I reuse those bags and anything I need to throw out once I clean the vegetables, I put in my compost. The only disposable I sometimes end up with are red, industrial-strength rubber bands. This past week, for example, there were those rubber bands on bunches of basil and beets.

Similarly, I get two newspapers delivered daily. One paper comes in a plastic sleeve that I reuse to pick up after my dog. The other paper sometimes comes in a plastic sleeve when there’s rain in the forecast (I reuse that sleeve, too, with my dog). Most days, though, it comes rolled and secured with a rubber band.

What this means is that I have a lot of rubber bands lying around my house. Well, actually, most of them are stored in our “junk drawer”–that place where you dump stuff that you’re not sure where it belongs. Lately, the rubber band supply has started to get a bit out of control. Since I don’t want to toss the rubber bands in the trash, I’ve come up with some ways that I can reuse them:

* Keep bags closed
Whether it’s bags of frozen fruit that we keep on hand for smoothies or snacks in the cabinet, we’ll fold the top of the bag down, then put the rubber band on the bag the long way (top to bottom) to keep it closed and its contents fresh. (We also use binder clips from my office to close bags, too.)

* Secure decorations on the porch or a fence
This past 4th of July we wanted to put up a red, white and blue bunting on our fence, and rubber bands were all I had on hand. So I create something like a slipknot through the bunting’s grommet, then secured it to the fence. (Metal twist ties from the produce department work in a pinch as well.)

* Organize a desk drawer
Take a handful of pencils, pens, crayons or whatever, and enclose them with a rubber band. This way you can keep like-minded items together in a semi-organized fashion in a desk drawer.

* Wrap a present
Instead of wasting tape on wrapping a present, use two rubber brands, put on perpendicular to one another, to close the wrapping paper. Or if you like to wrap in fabric like I do, the rubber bands will work equally as well.

* Keep a door open
There are times when you need a door that closes automatically (like a screen door) to stay open. If there isn’t a mechanism on the door to let you lock it in the open position, you can wrap one end of a rubber band around the doorknob and then the other end around another doorknob (if there’s one nearby) or a post or anything else.

* Open a jar
This is a tip you’ll often find in women’s magazines like Woman’s Day: if you have trouble opening a jar, put a rubber band around the lid, then twist off the lid. The rubber band provides extra grip to help you out. (I’ve heard that putting on a pair of rubber cleaning gloves helps in this respect, too.)

Check out this Reader’s Digest article for other uses for rubber bands. Then post a comment to let me know about how you might reuse a rubber band so that you don’t have to throw it out. Oh and as the mother of girls, please don’t ever reuse rubber bands to hold back your hair. It will knot it and tear it out at the roots. Always use coated rubber bands, please!

When I lived in my old house, we had a small vegetable garden along the southern wall of the home, where we grew tomatoes, zucchini and pumpkins. I can still remember how at a certain point in the growing season, ripe-red tomatoes seemed to appear on the vine seemingly overnight. At first I loved this tomato bounty, but after awhile, I got to the point where I was begging my neighbors to please take some tomatoes. I simply couldn’t use them all, and I didn’t want them to go to waste.

These days I don’t have a vegetable garden (though I’m hoping to plant one next year in that newly discovered sunny spot in our yard), but I do have our CSA farm. And Thursdays are the days that we go to pick up our share, and I’ve got to be honest with you–I’m not looking forward to it. Or at least I wasn’t until last night.

You see, we’re at that same point in the growing season where there are just simply too many tomatoes to deal with each week. And I split my CSA share three ways, and I still have more tomatoes that a family of four can eat. I’m also overloaded on peppers–jalapeno, chile and habanero. So the idea of heading out to the farm again to get more tomatoes and peppers today just wasn’t very appetizing.

Luckily I was standing around with the other soccer moms at our daughters’ practice last night, and we started talking about what you do when you get so many tomatoes. One mom talked about freezing them (I still haven’t figured out how you do this without ruining the tomatoes) and another talked of making homemade tomato sauce (I’ll leave that to my husband, the Italian, who learned to make sauce when he was knee-high to his grandfather. Yes, that’s right, the Italian men in his family make the sauce. It’s one of the reason’s I fell in love with him). I happened to mention to a third mom, who is a part of our CSA share, that I was just dying to make salsa–especially since I’ve got some ripe peaches lying around, and I love fruit salsas–and that mom told me how she’d thrown a bunch of her vegetables into the food processor and made a gazpacho-like salsa. This sounded so delicious that I couldn’t wait to get home and give this idea a whirl in my own food processor.

Here is what I ended up with, in case you’re interested in trying this recipe:

Fruit Gazpacho with a Kick

1 medium sized peach, pitted and peeled, cut into quarters
2 large tomatoes, cored and cut into quarters
1/2 large onion
1 cucumber, peeled and seeded
1 jalapeno pepper, seeded and chopped
1 habanero pepper, seeded and chopped
1/2 tablespoon fresh cilantro, chopped
1/2 cup red wine vinegar
pinch salt (to taste)
pinch pepper (to taste)

Dump all the ingredients into a food processor and blend until thick soup texture with small chunks of vegetables are still visible

Serve in bowl with dollop of fat-free plain yogurt (it helps to cut the kick).

While my intentions were good for salsa, what I ended up with was a gazpacho with a kick (thus the title) that made an awesome appetizer to last night’s dinner. My husband thinks that this gazpacho would also work in an enchilada, so we’re probably going to try that with another dinner this week. And it was all “free” because I had all of the ingredients on hand.

What’s even better is that no vegetables went to waste this past week. In fact, I’m all ready to load up on tomatoes and peppers again today. Now to figure out how I’ll use them this in different recipes this coming week. Ideas?

I’ve written in the past about all of the DIY things I did when my kids were babies, including making their baby food, which I would store in ice-cube trays. Way back then (and we’re only talk 12 or so years) I had neither a Crock-Pot nor an immersible blender wand-thingy (what’s the technical term?). Anyway, brilliant CrockPot Lady Stephanie over at A Year of CrockPotting has posted a great recipe for using your slow cooker and that immersible blender wand-thingy for making your own baby food.

If you’re got babies, you’ll love this.

And even if you don’t have babies but you do have have picky eaters in the house, you’ve got to love Stephanie’s suggestion of how to use this so-called baby food in a deceptively delicious way!

A Year of CrockPotting: How to Make Baby Food in Your CrockPot

A few months ago I wrote a post called “The FYI on CFL Recycling.” This post offered a few basic ideas on where and how to recycle compact fluorescent light bulbs, or CFLs. You want to recycle them because they contain trace amounts of mercury, which is considered to be hazardous waste. And hazardous waste ain’t got no business being in your local landfill.

Recently, I received a follow-up email from a reader asking for recycling information in greater detail:

Q: In making my commitment to live a greener life, I’ve stocked up on compact fluorescent bulbs and have replaced all of the old light bulbs in my lamps with them. Now I’m worried about what I’m going to do when they burn out. I know that I probably don’t have to worry since they’re supposed to last years, but, what can I say, I’m a worrier. Anyway, I don’t live near any IKEA stores and my local hardware store doesn’t take the bulbs for recycling. Where does that leave me?

A: I’m sure that there are many other readers who find themselves in a similar situation–wanting to make sure they properly dispose of CFLs but not wanting to either a) spend money in the process or b) drive all over creation finding a place that will recycle CFLs for free. Well, everyone can worry just a little bit less because, with some extra digging, I’ve come up with other ways that people can recycle their CFLs beyond bringing them to an IKEA.

For starters about two months ago, Home Depot announced that it would take CFLs back for recycling in all of its U.S. stores. Here’s what a Home Depot press release had to say about that:

“At each The Home Depot store, customers can simply bring in any expired, unbroken CFL bulbs, and give them to the store associate behind the returns desk. The bulbs will then be managed responsibly by an environmental management company who will coordinate CFL packaging, transportation and recycling to maximize safety and ensure environmental compliance.”

According to this New York Times article on that CFL recycling initiative announcement, there are 1,973 Home Depot stores in the United States, with most citizens living within 10 miles of a store. This is surely good news and quite a development since I wrote that first post on CFL recycling.

Luckily, Home Depot isn’t your only recycling option. The folks at Miron Construction in Neenah, Wisconsin, were kind enough to write and share some of the CFL recycling resources that they share with their customers. Here are some of their ideas, along with others I’ve pulled together:

* Our Earth Recycling directory let’s you search by state and community to find local places where you can recycle just about anything, including CFLs. I must admit that when I searched my own state for CFL recycling, it wasn’t immediately forthcoming. But who knows: in searching the Our Earth directory, you might come up with other recycling resources about which you didn’t already know.

* The Focus on Energy website, which provides a directory of retailers (in Wisconsin, only!) that recycle not only CFLs but also everything from appliances to water heaters. Gee, now if only every state had such a helpful resource.

* Recycle a Bulb is also a searchable directory of retailers that recycle CFLs. (It is an offshoot of the Veolia Environmental Services RecyclePak program, which allows you to purchase postage-paid boxes for shipping back CFLs for recycling.) Supposedly, this website will guide you to smaller hardware stores that take CFLs, but when I searched using my own zip code, I got hundreds of Home Depot locations and nothing else. I guess that’s a good thing, though.

“If all else fails,” writes Theresa Lehman, Miron Construction’s Director of Sustainable Services, “the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resource’s ‘Responsible Unit’ contact listing identifies specific contacts within each county that should know where items can be recycled.” I’m sure other state’s DNR or environmental protection department could offer similar suggestions.

Now, I realize that there are plenty of places where people can go online to order recycling kits, which they have to pay for, such as Waste Management’s CFL Recycling Kit. And I’m sure there are plenty of dark green folks who don’t mind shelling out $15 a pop to recycle their bulbs. However, I’m thinking that if you want people to be fully compliant with recycling CFLs–and not just tossing them in the trash–then you’ve got to make it convenient and easy for them to do that recycling. And when I say easy, I mean easy for them to accomplish and easy on their wallet.

What say you?

One of the first things that I always do soon after we get back from vacation is to grocery shop. If you can plan things right before you leave, you can buy just enough food to get you through the days before you leave, and you leave enough non perishables at home so that you can eek out a meal or two when you get back. Well, we’ve done all of the eeking we could in the three days since we returned from Maine so I knew that Monday would be do-or-die grocery shopping day.

Like I always do I logged onto ShopRite at Home, and began clicking off the things I had on my list. After I got through my list (which added up to about $122 in my “cart”), I headed over to my “master list,” which is a record of everything I’ve ever bought via ShopRite at Home. I find it useful to go through this master list because I’ll often stumble upon items that I’d forgotten to add to the list or which are on sale but that weren’t highlighted in the circular. When I was done clicking through the “master list”–and clicking on items I wanted to add to my cart–I was shocked to see my “cart” total go from $122 to $223. Was it really possible that I needed to buy $100 more?

I couldn’t help but think about the reader who’d posted a few weeks back about how you have to change how you think about using the food you already own, planning meals and making grocery lists. This reader suggested (I’m paraphrasing) that instead of just going to the grocery store each week and just buying the same old things on your list, that instead you really think through when it is that you need to go shopping and what you really need to buy. The idea here is to stretch shopping trips and figure out how to use up what you already have when planning meals–which should help you save money in the long run.

I’d already done a bit of this “using what you have” that day by making a fresh batch of clean-out-the-cupboard chili, which I cooked up in my CrockPot. Three hours and three cans of beans, two cans of crushed tomatoes, some fresh cilantro and spices later, we had a “free” dinner that we could serve over rice. There was enough leftover for a few lunches as well.

Anyway, back to my “cart” and I decided to go through and see if there weren’t things that I could take out of the “cart” to save money. You see, I often find myself following that advice of stocking up on items when they’re on sale–but to an exaggerated length. For example, for a couple of weeks running, granola bars were on sale, and every time I went food shopping, I stocked up. They were on sale again this week, so I automatically “clicked” them into my “cart.” Only problem was when I got up from my chair to go into the kitchen and see how many boxes we actually had, I discovered six of them unopened in the cabinet. Gee, those six boxes should get me through an entire September of packed lunches. So why would I buy more? Out of the “cart” they came.

Other items that I’d added to my “cart” but then removed included a $13.49 box of Lactaid caplets (for my lactose intolerant daughters), four 12-packs of Diet Coke at $12 total (I know we shouldn’t be drinking so much soda and, well, now is a perfect time to cut back) and two $2.99 boxes of cereal that I was buying because they were on sale. Great, except our cereal cabinet currently has six unopened boxes of breakfast goodness. Why would I need to stock up on more? All told I was able to bring my grocery bill down to about $180, and I was feeling pretty good about myself.

Pretty good until I happened to come across a posting over at the Fresh & Easy Buzz blog about “America’s Cheapest Family,” the Economides, who recently were able to buy a ton of groceries and spend just a hair over $100. It seems that this family, which has written a book, has figured out how to spend about $350 a month to feed a family of six. Crap, and I thought spending between $600 and $800 a month to feed a family of four was good. What was I missing?

For starters the Economides are devout coupon users. You can get a bit of a sense of how they use coupons to their advantage on this “Good Morning America” segment:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwafPIUEXYo&hl=en&fs=1]

However, I’m still left with some questions. For starters, if they’re using manufacturers coupons, how are they getting so many? We get two Sunday papers, and I’m lucky if I can save $8 a week in groceries. Second, it seems like they shop in more than one store. How much are they spending in gas to save on groceries? Third, I noticed in the segment that they bag their groceries in disposable paper bags. Wouldn’t it make sense to use reusable market bags and get anywhere from three cents to 10 cents in credit for each bag used? (Plus that would be very green of them.) I guess I could subscribe to their Home Economiser newsletter, but at $12, I’m a bit too cheap. The one tip from that segment that I found useful was the notion of buying inexpensive, whole cuts of meat and then using a meat grinder to, well, grind the meat so you’re not paying for the more expensive, already ground beef, chicken or turkey.

Obviously, this notion of saving on groceries now that everything costs more has hit a nerve for customers and the stores themselves. No wonder that upscale supermarkets like Whole Foods are offering classes on “shopping on a shoe string.” While it’s nice that a store like Whole Foods wants to help its customers save money, the truth is what they really want is for you to go to its store and spend your money there. It seems other stores are dying to get your business by offering other kinds of get-you-through-the-door promotions, such as free milk or free gas cards.

So far ShopRite hasn’t offered me an money-saving incentives to shop there (except for giving me 10 percent more on my economic stimulus check, when I cashed it at the store months ago). Perhaps it’s time to start looking around at what stores are offering shoppers like me to get me through their doors and to save me money. Also, I think I’ll take a page from the Economides book and start really perusing (instead of just recycling) those grocery circulars when they come in the mail or Sunday paper. Maybe if I start employing some price-matching tactics, I can cut my grocery bill by even more. I’m just not looking forward to driving all over creation to save a buck or two. I guess the trick is not to let the cost of gas eat up any savings I might find at the supermarket.

What about you? What other creative ways have you found to cut your grocery bill without spending more in gas?

One of the best parts of our annual summer trip to New England is getting to go outlet shopping in North Conway, New Hampshire, Kittery, Maine and Freeport, Maine. Each of these shopping meccas is within an hour or so drive of my mother’s Maine home, which is home base for us whenever we go to the Vacationland (that’s Maine, in case you’re not familiar with the Pine Tree State’s license plate).

Over the years we’ve learned many tips and tricks for outlet shopping, which we’ve used not only when shopping in New England but at other outlet stores we may find ourselves perusing. Since many families choose to do their back-to-school clothes shopping at outlet stores, I thought it would be timely to share some advice for making the most of your outlet shopping.

* Choose outlet stores in tax-free states
While Kittery and Freeport (home to the original L.L. Bean store) have reputations for being great places to outlet shop, Maine is a state that taxes clothing. So should you find a great deal at one of Maine’s many outlets, keep in mind that you’ll have to add five percent, the sales-tax rate, to your purchase. On the other hand New Hampshire does not tax clothing so, in essence, shopping at the outlets in North Conway, for example, will save you five percent over similar shopping in nearby Maine. Similarly, neither New Jersey nor Pennsylvania tax clothing, meaning that when you buy clothes at the outlets at Liberty Village in Flemington or down near Atlantic City, in New Jersey, or near Peddler’s Village or Lancaster in Pennsylvania, you’ll avoid paying each state’s sales tax, which are seven percent and six percent, respectively.

* Buy when you find a bargain, not just because you’re at an outlet
I think that too often you can fall into this mentality that because you’re shopping at an outlet, you are automatically getting a great bargain. This is not always true. While outlets may have at one time been the place that retailers sent their overstocks from the clearance rack, these days many retailers make original clothes that are destined for outlet racks only. Of course, there are still stores where their outlets are, in fact, their outlets. Nordstrom Rack, for example, may not have outlet in its name but having shopped there a number of times, I can tell you that you can find clothing that didn’t sell at regular Nordstrom stores (looking at the various markdowns on the price tag is the biggest clue) and now is significantly discounted at Nordstrom Rack. Basically, this means that when you find yourself shopping at an outlet store, make sure that you’re making a purchase based on an item you like, believe would add to your wardrobe (or home, depending on what you’re considering purchasing) and is truly a good deal.

* Shop with a plan in mind
Just like the advice above–to hold off buying unless you are really, truly getting a bargain–you should approach an outlet-shopping trip with a purpose in mind. For example, when we hit the L.L. Bean outlet store in North Conway, I knew that I wanted to make a beeline for the winter coats. As you’ll recall I’d returned my busted Bean winter coat earlier this year, and had received a gift card for its value in return. While it was nice to get the money back, the bottom line was this: come cold weather, I had no winter coat. So once at the store, that was my mission–to find a coat. And I did, for $99, which is about $100 cheaper than the coat I’d originally purchased.

* Be thoughtful with your return options
Last year I received a Gap gift card for Christmas and couldn’t wait to break it in buying myself some new clothes after the holidays. One day I decided to visit Franklin Mills, an outlet-like mall on the outskirts of Philadelphia, which has a huge Gap outlet, among other major retailers. I found a couple of items, used my gift card to make the purchase, and went on my merry way. A few days later I tried everything on again, doing a mix-and-match with clothing I already owned, and I decided that I didn’t like one pair of pants I’d purchased. So I decided to return them. However, I made the mistake of assuming that I could visit my local Gap in the mall–the regular Gap, that is–and return the pants. No such luck. I found out that since I’d purchased the pants at an outlet, I had to return them to the outlet. That annoyed me to no end, since the gift card I used was good at Gap stores, Gap.com and the outlets. And had I used that gift card to make a purchase online, I could have brought it back to a regular store. I don’t think it’s fair that I couldn’t make an outlet return at the regular store. Anyway, this was a lesson learned and mistake I wouldn’t make again. In fact, when we were outlet shopping this past weekend, my daughter picked up a birthday present for a friend at Aeropostale. I made sure to ask if there would be any problem returning these items (with a gift receipt) at a regular store, and the sales person told me that, unlike other retailers, Aeropostale stores in outlets are the same as the stores in the malls. Which, again, is why you might not find mind-blowing bargains at a store like that.

* Bring your own bags, and park and walk
I wouldn’t be staying true to this blog’s mission if I didn’t remind you to add a little green to your outlet shopping. That said, make sure that you bring your own bags to carry your purchases, and try to find an outlet center where you can park once and walk to all of the stores. In Kittery, that was a bit of a challenge, because stores were located on either side of U.S. Route 1, and let’s just say that the traffic and the traffic lights weren’t very pedestrian friendly. However, at Settler’s Green in North Conway, New Hampshire, the outdoors outlet mall was very walkable–and dog friendly, too. Similarly, when we lived in Michigan and would visit the outlets at Birch Run, we were able to walk to all the areas of the outlet. That’s not to say that this didn’t involve a lot of walking. I mean, in our day in North Conway last week, I wore a pedometer and logged nearly 10,000 steps from shopping alone.

Have you discovered additional secrets for smart outlet shopping? If so, post a comment to let us know.

Wondering how you can make an office break room or teacher’s lounge a little less wasteful? Check out this week’s post over at Green Boot Camp for some ideas.

Green Boot Camp: Week 31–Green Your Break Room

P.S. Thanks, Mom, for suggesting I cover this topic!

Though the holiday shopping season doesn’t officially start until the day after Thanksgiving (that would be November 28th of this year), readers of The Lean Green Family seem to be keenly interested in how they can begin stocking their gift closet now. That’s probably because when I wrote a post on that topic back in 2007, I talked about taking advantage of back-to-school sales for stocking up on kid-friendly gifts to keep on hand in your gift closet.

So to give you a refresher course on creating a gift closet and keeping it stocked, here is a rerun of that post.

Before I began devoting my life to being green and frugal, I focused a lot of my writing and speaking on gifts and etiquette. One trick/tip that I shared over and over again in interviews was the notion of having a gift closet. This doesn’t have to be an actual “closet” but rather a place where you stock all-occasion gifts you can grab when you need a hostess gift or a thank-you present. It just dawned on me that sharing my advice on gift closets was relevant for my frugal readers. You guys want to find great deals no matter what, right?

Well, now is a great time to start stocking your gift closet. That’s because soon enough the holidays will be here, and that’s when you’ll receive the lion’s share of party invitations, all of which you should show up at with some kind of gift for the host.

Visit any retailer near you, and chances are, though it’s only mid-September, the shops are fully stocked for Halloween. Soon enough they’re going to have to make room on the shelves for Thanksgiving and the December holidays, and the best way to “make room” is to start putting items on sale.

At the same time you can probably still find some super clearance items from summer or back-to-school, which could also work for a gift closet. For example, recently I needed to return some of the back-to-school supplies I’d purchased for my oldest daughter. While in the store, I checked out the clearance rack. (I always do this.) There I found lovely boxes of notecards, some with toile designs on them, others with festival florals. Turns out they were 50 cents for a box of 10. I snapped up all four boxes, and with only $2 spent, now I’m set if I want to give a hostess gift of notecards, or if I want to use this stash for writing my own thank-you notes in the future.

Some of my other favorite items to keep in a gift closet include bags of whole-bean coffee, savory bottles of olive oil, picture frames, bottles of wine, and serving or decorative bowls. I make sure that I pay close to nothing for everything in my gift closet. In fact, it’s been a couple of weeks since I checked out the end caps (the shelves at the end of aisles, where stores stock sale items) of my favorite big-box stores. Think I’ll add that to my weekend’s to-do list.

What about you guys? Do you keep a gift closet? If so, how does it mimic or differ from mine?

Recently, I’ve written two posts related to the dishwasher. One was on making the greener choice between washing dishes by hand versus putting them in the dishwasher. The other was on paper plates save more energy over using regular plates that you wash in the dishwasher. In both instances, the dishwasher one the eco-friendly contest hands down.

So in today’s “Best Blog Week Ever” posting, I bring you a combination of both of those popular dishwasher-related posts.

Q: I have three little ones (1, 3 and 4 years) and you can imagine the number of sippy cups and plates we go through. Do you know if it’s better to use paper, which I’m inclined to do for breakfast and lunch, or to run the dishwasher as many as two times a day? I feel as if both aren’t the right choice, for one fills landfills or fills the air with smoke from burning, and the other is so wasteful. Same goes for paper napkins vs. cloth and oh so much more! What have you found that you’d be willing to share?

A: There are a couple of ways of answering this question, especially if budget isn’t a concern. For example, there are companies making “disposable” dishes these days that are made of biodegradable materials, such as corn. Mark Caserta of 3RLiving says that you can find dishes made of bamboo and also sugar cane, both of which are biodegradable. A company called VeneerWare makes the bamboo dishes, and Greenwave makes the sugar cane plates. For other biodegradable plates and dishes, check out what’s listed on the Biodegradable Products Institute website.

In addition to green disposable plates, you can buy plastic utensils that are made from recycled plastic and which are recyclable. Hmm, that makes me wonder: are all plastic utensils recyclable then? Something else to look into. Anyway, if you’re not ready to give up your disposable ways yet, these are options to consider.

As far as saving the environment goes, reusable dishes washed in the dishwasher is definitely the way to go. According to Maria Vargas, a spokesperson with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), “there is an embedded energy in paper plates,” meaning that you have to think about the amount of energy used in creating the paper plates. Adds Caserta of 3RLiving, “With paper plates, you are cutting down a tree, trucking it to a paper mill and maybe several factories. The process uses diesel fuel, [and] lots of electricity and water.” The same goes for paper napkins, which is why reusable cloth napkins that you toss in the washing machine make the most sense for anyone trying to live green.

With regards to the dishwasher use, Vargas recommends not washing dishes before loading them (I let my dog do the pre-wash, sort of like this dog is doing) and, with a plug for the EPA’s Energy Star program, suggests that you use Energy Star-compliant appliances so that you know you’re saving the most energy and water possible. Caserta suggests making sure that you run full loads of dishes only and, if you can find it, choose an eco-friendly dishwasher detergent.

Again, the same applies for the washing machine you would use for cleaning your cloth napkins, along with the rest of your clothes. Make sure the machine is Energy Star compliant, always run full loads only and choose detergents that are good for the earth.

Q: Is it more green to use a dishwasher or to wash by hand? I don’t own a dishwasher, and I wash “Asian” style with a small bowl of hot soapy water to dip the washcloth in, scrub the item, then a quick hot rinse from the tap, then onto the drying rack. My husband has always argued that a dishwasher would be more efficient with the water, but I don’t see how it could be. What do you think?

A: The next time that you wash dishes by hand, here’s an experiment I’d like you to try. Stop up the sink over which you hot rinse the dishes, and then at the end of the wash cycle, measure how much water is in there. I’ll bet it’s more than you thought you were using, because when it runs down the drain, you don’t see it. How many gallons did you end up with?

I’m suggesting this experiment because, unbelievably, newer, efficient dishwashers use as little as five gallons of water for the entire dishwasher load. On the other hand, says the American Water Works Association, when you wash dishes by hand, the average person uses 20 gallons of water. Now maybe this figure comes from those that leave the tap on as they’re washing and aren’t conservative with water the way you are. But I’ll bet that it would be a challenge for you to hand wash an entire day’s worth of dishes using five gallons only–for the dipping, washing and rinsing.

Considering that you don’t own a dishwasher, you don’t have one as your back-up option, and I would suggest you continue to wash your dishes in the water-saving manner you’ve been using. But in the future, you may have to question whether getting a dishwasher does make sense as a water- and time-saver.

My notion of gardening as cheaply as possible touched a real nerve with The Lean Green Family’s readers–with this June 2nd posting “My Green Thumb on a Budget” eliciting some of the most comments of any post this year. (I get the sense that the idea of getting something for (almost) nothing makes the hearts of my frugal-minded friends flutter just a bit, don’t you think?) Anyway, here again are highlights of the post on how I used Freecycle to get free stuff for my garden:

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.

Even though the dog days of summer are waning, this post from back in June, on window versus central air conditioning, continues to be the most popular post on this blog. For those still stumped as to whether or not a/c makes sense for their home, in the form of window units or a new central air condition system, here’s the Q&A portion of that popular post:

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.

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.

I’m going to be taking a little vacation from the online world this week, but I didn’t want to disappoint anyone who regularly reads The Lean Green Family (formerly Suddenly Frugal) by completely disappearing from your daily life. That’s why I’ve set things up so that we can have “The Best Blog Week Ever” this week–a take on VH1′s “Best Week Ever” but really a “best of” this blog.

So how did I come to determine what would constitute a “best of” week? I culled the blog statistics that I collect via Sitemeter and Google Analytics, both of which let me know a lot of things about the people who read my blog, including the posts you guys like the most. These two services also tell me:

* how many times you visit (not “you” individually but each visitor; it’s not that Big Brother!)
* where visitors live
* what sites referred them to The Lean Green Family
* what search words they may have used to land on The Lean Green Family
* which pages within the blog get the most readership

It is this last stat that I’m using to run this week’s “best of.”

So for the next five days, prepare to take a trip down memory lane as I rerun the five most popular pages from the past year.

Also, if in re-reading this posts you are inspired to ask me to cover other topics in the future, post a comment. Many of the best and most popular topics I’ve written about this year were in response to reader questions (i.e. the Q&A posts that pop up from time to time).

Enjoy!

You’ve heard me wax poetic about how fulfilling it is to get rid of home furnishings and other belongings via Craigslist and Freecycle. Well in today’s Philadelphia Inquirer, I’m quoted in an article about giving new life for old furniture–i.e. shopping via consignment shops, yards sales and the like to furnish a home. I think writer (and friend) Jen Miller did a terrific job with the piece.

FYI, currently we have a number of pieces of furniture in our house that are old but which we’ve given new life to:

* a denim covered armchair (where I’m sitting right now) that started life as my father-in-law’s favorite chair when my husband was young. Originally, it was covered in scratchy green-plaid wool, and went off to college with my husband, then to his series of post-college apartments, where it often sat in the apartment, full of memories but too scratchy to actually sit on. A few years into our marriage I surprised him by having the chair and its foot rest recovered in denim. Now I have to fight him to sit in the chair.

* a wood, floor lamp, with a tripod-like footing, that originally sat in my grandparents living room in their Maine home. After my grandparents died, my mother assumed ownership of the lamp, then gave it to me.

* a wooden bench/storage seat that used to hold board games, also at my grandparents’ house in Maine. Now I have it in my dining room, tucked into a bow window, and it holds all of our table linens. When we have extra guests for dinner, we pull the bench up to the table as seating.

* two camel-colored leather couches that my father-in-law had in the living room of his East End, Long Island home. We he moved to Florida, he didn’t want to pay to move the couches, so my husband and I took them. Now those couches, worn almost threadbare-thin, sit at right angles to one another in my kids’ playroom. They’re perfect for each girl to stretch out on when they want to chill out and watch TV.

* five dressers and two nightstands in our bedrooms upstairs. All of these are used or hand-me downs, including a painted-green maple dresser that was my childhood dresser but which my teenager daughter now uses.

You really can give new life to old furniture. What do you have hanging around your house, as far as furnishing go, that used to live somewhere else?

The first time I’d ever heard about Locks of Love was when I was chaperoning my (then) kindergarten daughter’s field trip and noticed a classmate had cut her hair short. This girl had long, gorgeous blond hair, and I know that no little girl chooses to have her hair cut–well, at least not for a good reason. So I asked her why she’d cut her hair. She did it in honor of someone she knew who had died of cancer, and she did it so she could donate her hair to Locks of Love, which makes wigs for kids with hair loss.

That “someone” was one of the pediatricians that my daughter went to. The week before, one of the doctor’s in the practice had died. It was a husband-and-wife practice, and the doctor who’d died was the wife. The couple had three children of their own, and hundreds of local kids in their practice. It made perfect sense that a kindergartener would want to cut her hair to honor a doctor she loved. What a great kid.

Fast forward eight years, and my now 13 year old decided that she wanted to donate her hair to Locks of Love–not because anyone she knows has died (thank goodness), but as one of the service projects that she’s required to do for her upcoming confirmation. She’s also applied to volunteer at the local library, and she’ll be helping my mother out at the church-run thrift store my mother oversees that helps to clothe indigent families in her community.

Turns out that Locks of Love isn’t the only organization that takes hair donations. Pantene, the shampoo people, sponsor something called Beautiful Lengths. It, too, is a hair donation program, but it’s more adult oriented–from the hair donors to the wig recipients. Also, unlike Locks of Love, which requires a minimum of 10 inches of hair, with Beautiful Lengths you can get away with a hair donation of only eight inches.

The more I read about hair donation, the more I realize that doing so really is a green way of getting your hair cut. I mean, currently I compost hair from brushes or the “fuzzies” from when I shave my husband’s head (yes, he’s too cheap to pay for a barber visit, and that’s just fine with me). So you have to wonder how many tons of hair that salons throw in the trash every year when, in fact, they could be doing something else with them.

Most salon owners probably figure that they can’t do anything with hair scraps, right? Wrong! Check out this organization called Matter of Trust that takes hair clippings and turns them into carpets used to soak up oil spills. Or they could follow the lead of this salon owner in the UK I’d read about who really does compost hair. I mean, unlike my backyard compost of food scraps and dried leaves, her compost is comprised of hair clippings and worms.

I guess it should come as no surprise to the readers of this blog that I serve on my town’s recycling committee. It’s a brand new committee, started after my town passed a recycling ordinance. I guess then the town council figured that they ought to have some residents who knew what the heck they were talking about to head up the town’s recycling efforts, and, well, the rest is history. Guess I’ve developed a bit of a rep around town for my greenness, which is how I ended up being asked to be on the committee.

This is just one of those ways that I’m becoming more like mother–and more afraid of that reality. If you have kids, then you know what I’m talking about. It’s that one day when you hear your own mother come out of your mouth–”Because I said so,” “Because I’m the grown up,” “Don’t make me stop this car”–you get the point. Anyway, it’s scary how much we become like our parents, even though we might fight against that.

With my embracing of this green and frugal life, I’ve really come full circle with my own mother. When I was a youngster, she started a recycling program (not just served on a committee) in a neighboring town. I grew up having to compost food, just as my girls have learned last year that they would need to do from now on. My mother reused everything, and slowly I’ve started doing the same. Now that my mother has retired and moved to a new town, she is heavily involved in bringing recycling to that town, including organizing an annual e-waste collection day. Need I say more?

Back to the recycling committee. So, our next order of business is creating a survey that local residents can complete so we can get a better sense of how much recycling they already do and what they hope that our town can do in the future to increase its recycling efforts. Since it was my job to actually draft the survey, I figured I would share with you some of the things we’re going to be polling people about:

* What other kinds of “greening” efforts are you doing for your home or business? (Please check all that apply)

Bringing plastic bags back to the supermarket for recycling (think bins outside Giant or SuperFresh)
Composting food scraps and/or garden waste
Donating clothing to thrift stores or charitable organizations
Swapping or giving away items on Craigslist, Freecycle or similar kinds of groups
Bringing towels, sheets and other used linens to the SPCA or another animal rescue organization
Bringing paper for recycling to Abitibi Paper Retriever dumpsters (green and yellow) on the school campus
Taking reusable shopping bags with you when you shop
Replacing traditional, incandescent lightbulbs with compact fluorescent lightbulbs (CFLs)
Other

* If you have begun using CFLs in your lights (at home or at work), how do you plan to dispose of them when they eventually need to be replaced? (Note: some of the answer options below are not the ecologically correct way to dispose of CFLs)

Toss them in the trash
Place them in with my glass recycling
Invest in mailers to I can send them back to the manufacturer (on my dime) to have them recycled
Drive to a Home Depot or IKEA to have them recycled
Wait until the town debuts a CFL recycling program
Other

* What efforts would you like the recycling committee to focus on or develop in the near future as a way of greening our town?

More recycling bins on the streets of town
A Christmas tree recycling program after the holidays
A community composting program
An e-waste collection program for old electronics, computers, TVs and the like
Other

You’ll notice that a couple of these questions include an “other” answer option. Out of curiosity, how would you answer “other” if none of the selections above described your green behavior? At the same time, what would YOU want a recycling committee in your own town to focus its efforts on? And if your town does have a recycling committee (or something similar), what have they accomplished that’s worth sharing?

I think it would be very eye-opening to find out what residents of other towns would like to see happen on the green front in their towns and to hear what towns are already doing on behalf of the environment. I think we could learn a lot about what works and doesn’t work in other places around the world. I look forward to reading your comments.

Check out some more of my frugal and green advice for back-to-school shopping in a new post over at Green Boot Camp. We’re almost done with our shopping and haven’t spent that much. How about you?

Green Boot Camp: Week 30–Don’t Bust Your Budget for Back to School

I have a number of years before my kids get ready to apply for college, and it doesn’t feel that long ago that I was going through the college application process. (Note to self: it’s been at least 20 years. Get a grip. You’re old.) At that time I had a certain criteria that the colleges I applied to needed to fulfill–urban campus, good journalism program, bountiful housing–and high school students today are no different in having criteria as well. Except in one way: More and more soon-to-be college freshman are ranking their higher education options based on how green a college is.

For parents and teens for whom green is an important consideration, your first stop should probably be the College Sustainability Report Card. Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Sustainable Endowments Institute, a non-profit that, since 2005, has been dedicated to advancing sustainability on college campuses nationwide, among other education-related projects, created this report card.

According to a recent New York Times article on the 2008 College Sustainability Report Card, only a handful of American institutions of higher ed received an “A”–and then it was an “A-” only. Those colleges were Harvard, Dartmouth, University of Washington, Middlebury, Carleton, and University of Vermont. (Interesting how four of the six green colleges are in New England, and two are in Vermont–the Green Mountain State which is a notably green state in its own right.)

One area where most colleges–there were 200 in the report–did the best was the “Food & Recycling” category. That seems about right to me, because I’ve heard about a lot of schools that have greened their cafeteria operations by composting food scraps, among other things. One such place is Delaware Valley College, which has an active composting program on its Doylestown, Pennsylvania campus. The college composts food scraps, lawn clippings and animal waste–it’s an agricultural school so there’s livestock living on campus. (DelVal, as it’s known, isn’t in the report card mentioned above.)

So what are you to do if you’ve got an eco-minded high schooler who has ranked a college’s eco-friendly profile right up there with its academics? Well for starters your kid isn’t alone. This Huffington Post article, citing a Princeton Review study, says that 63 percent of undergraduate applicants take into consideration a school’s sustainability initiatives. Here are some ideas to help figure out which college is the right green college for your kid:

* Use third-party rankings
The College Sustainabiliy Report Card website offers an alphabetical list of all 200 colleges that participated in its green survey–from Agnes Scott College, a private liberal arts college for women in Atlanta, to Yeshiva University, a private Jewish university in New York City, with lots of Ivies in between (Brown, Columbia, Harvard, Yale, Cornell, Princeton). Even my alma mater, NYU, is on the list–it got a C+. You can download each school’s green report card.

You might want to check out the newest Kaplan College Guide (for 2009), which this year includes an expanded section on sustainable colleges and universities, as well as green career options. This new book also includes coverage of green organizations for students interested in volunteering or learning more, and a glossary of terms to help students think and speak like sustainability experts. As usual the book includes “regular” profiles of some 700 private and public colleges and universities. (You can click below to buy the book, if you’d like.)

From a different perspective, check out this EPA website that ranks the top 10 colleges and universities with regards to purchasing green power. Most are buying “credits” for wind power, but at least they’re doing something. And on the Worldwatch Institute website, you’ll find profiles of colleges and universities with notable campus greening initiatives.

* Search college websites for sustainability efforts
Unless a college has something to hide, I would imagine that it would be promoting its green initiatives on its website. Perhaps you might not find a link right from the home page but if you plug “sustainability” into the website’s search box, I’ll be that you find a gold mine of green information. If you don’t, that’s probably pretty telling. (Here’s a page I found on Santa Clara University’s Sustainable Living Undergraduate Research Project or SLURP.)

* See the green first hand
Visiting any college you hope to apply to is critical in the decision-making process. For an eco-minded student, it’s even more so. It’s usually during campus tours or interviews with admissions officers that you get to ask questions that you can’t find answers to elsewhere–or you want to ask them to see how the person answers your questions in a face-to-face setting. The Princeton Review website has a good list of suggested questions to ask about sustainability on campus.

Of course, no one wants to be a hypocrite when it comes to green living. So if you’re sending your freshman off to college with a car, make sure it’s an economical and eco-friendly one.

Last year when I started this blog, I mentioned briefly how I used to use the water from our sump pump to water our plants during a drought. I also would use the water that our dehumidifier collected in a similar fashion–and continue to do so now. However, it’s been so rainy and humid lately that two things have occurred:

1. My plants are no longer thirsty because with our frequent down pours, they’ve been getting plenty to drink.

2. With it being so humid out–thank you, dog days of summer–I’ve had to start emptying the dehumidifier about every 12 hours. Because of that my plants are more than quenched.

So that means that twice a day, I’m faced with what to do with about a half-gallon of water from the dehumidifier. Since I can’t water the plants any more or they’ll drown, here’s what I have been doing with the water so far:

* Pouring it into the washing machine as I’m filling a load. I have to do this when the load is filling, otherwise the water goes right down the drain. I figure that if the dehumidifier water helps to fill up the washing machine’s tub, I use less water (which I pay for, now that we’re on a public system) when washing my clothes.

* Using it to flush the toilets. Yes, I admit that we often subscribe to the notion of “If it’s yellow, let it mellow. If it’s brown flush it down.” That is, if you don’t have to flush the toilet every time you use it, don’t do it so you can save water. Of course, if I were having guests over or I was at someone else’s house, I wouldn’t ever do this. I’d flush with each bathroom use. But when it’s just the four of us around, it works for us.

And that’s about it.

What I’m wondering is how “clean” water coming from the dehumidifier is. I mean, could I pour it into the dog’s bowl (which holds 64 ounces) without worrying that I’m going to kill him? Could I pour it into a pot on the stove, and boil up the water to make pasta? I try to clean out the dehumidifier on a regular basis but I have no idea if dehumidifier water is potable.

Do you know? How do you think I should reuse water from the dehumidifier? Would love to hear your ideas.

You’ll recall my recent post about my disappointment that Rubbermaid isn’t looking into recycled plastic as a way of making storage containers–the way that Recycline is. In case you’re not familiar with Recycline, here is a neat interview/Q&A with the Recycline folks that appears on the Brooklyn (NY) Green Team’s blog.