Monday, July 23, 2012

The Littlest Lemon, and some water-saving tips

It is summer, and it is HOT. It's hot here in the southland, and it's hot up in Chi-town, and as far as I can tell from the national news and from Facebook posts, it is hotter-than-average everywhere.

The Hot pretty much destroyed my garden. Even the "full sun" green and red peppers, all of the herbs, and the dahlia bulbs that almost eeked out some blossoms before shrivling up and conking out.


I had almost given up hope that my sun-loving lemon tree had sufficiently tarted itself up to be pollinated. Her green leaves are flourishing, and she gets bigger every week, but no sign of any fruit. Until.


Suddenly one day there was a baby lemon hidden in the leaves! It's about the size of a Skittle, and I'm about ready to Freak Out with joy.  

Since it has been so hot, I know my fellow growers have had to invest a lot of cashola into their water bills to try to keep everything lush and green. We have a tiny garden, and obviously my best efforts did not spare my plants who just couldn't handle that much merciless heat every day, but I am happy to say that all of the water I've used to keep my tomato, fig, and lemon tree alive and happy (and the herbs, while they lasted) is water that would have otherwise gone down the drain. No extra water has been used.

Garden Water can be salvaged in simple ways, and once you get into it, they quickly become a routine:

  • Shower Bucket - I collect around 3 gallons of water with every shower while the water runs to get warm, then dump it into a big lidded trash can on the porch.
  • Watering can/Kitchen Bucket - We keep a small watering can on the kitchen counter (thanks, Jackie, for the idea!) Every time I boil too much water for tea, or anyone leaves some drinking water in a glass, it goes into the watering can (don't throw hot water directly onto plants!). AugDog's leftover water from his dish goes in when I give him clean water every day.
  • Pasta/veg steaming water - You can also throw water from cooking pasta or vegetables or potatoes into the Saved Water trash can, though the bits of food can cause your water to attract bugs/grow a bit of mold. Better to let the pasta water cool and then throw it directly onto the plants rather than adding it to the storage bucket, or keep a separate bucket for the food-bits and use it within a day or so.
Lots of people have their greeny "thing". Some are really REALLY into recycling. Others bike everywhere, or champion local food, or write to their Congress person faithfully, or never forget to bring their cloth shopping bags, or only by fair-trade everything. Or a combo of the above. And I guess if I had to claim ONE green issue or habit with which I am proudly most dedicated, it would be saving clean water. I actually feel a sensation of despair and pain when I think about how we flush clean water down the toilet every day when so many around the world don't even have safe water to drink. And I go BONKERS when someone leaves the tap running while brushing teeth, doing dishes, or pumping soap into their hands to wash up. 

I have a long way to go, but here are some ideas and habits I'm working on to help save MORE water:

  • Water-saving shower head - I love ours! Plenty of water and water pressure to take a good shower.
  • NOT shaving my legs in the shower - Shaving while sitting on the edge of the bath with a little water stopped up in the tub saves gallons and gallons of water over shaving in the shower. Better shave, too.
  • Consider not flushing the toilet every single time you use it. Just an idea. Give it a try. Grossed me out at first, but then I got over it. 
  • Switch to water-saving appliances when it's time to buy new.
  • Be efficient in the shower. I'm not a huge fan of long showers, but I've skimmed even more time out off of my shower by being efficient: Shampoo, add conditioner, start washing, rinse hair/body at the same time, done. You could even be a rock-star about it like my hubby, who takes military-style showers and turns the water off in between these steps. 
  • Hand wash your dishes OR use the dishwasher, but don't wash your dishes and then put them in the dishwasher. Dishwashers use less water than hand-washing/rinsing, and if you get one with a separate water spinner for the upper rack, there is really NO reason to wash everything before you put it into the machine. 
Do you have any more ideas? I'd love to hear them! 




Friday, July 20, 2012

Put On a Frowny Face for Starbucks

Ok y'all - time to bust our your trombone to play a big Debbie Downer "Whaaah-Whaaaaaahhhhh".

I know knowledge is power, and we can't make better choices if we don't have accurate information. But don't you sometimes wish you didn't know? Wish for a do-over so you cold proceed in blissful ignorance? I've found out all kinds of routine-shaking, life-altering info on this quest for a healthier, greener, more responsible path. But THIS info goes into the category of "I kinda wish I didn't know."

100 Days of Real Food just posted this article about the nasty side of Starbucks.  And it is nasty, my friends.

I had already heard that the coffee you get from your smiley-faced Barista is NOT organic or fair trade, even though you can buy bags of organic fair trade coffee to make at home. And I know that Starbucks has been touting their "Trans Fat Free" stuff and "All Natural Ingredients" for a while now. I've even gawked in slack-jawed horror at the nutrition info for the stuff I occasionally noshed on while picking up my latte (no organic milk available BTW). But I really wasn't ready for the hard truth: that stuff is SCARY. Scary. Read the article and see for yourself. Spoiler alert: One of their Frappuccino ingredients requires a "substance known to cause cancer" label in California.

KNOWN.

To cause cancer.

Well this revelation couldn't have come at a better time for me, since our No Buy July scheme has succeeded  well enough from a "stuff" standpoint, but failed miserably from a budget point of view. We suspect that in our quests to avoid acquiring more stuff, our tendency to want to purchase things just shifted to categorize more things (ie: lattes and "healthy" snacks for me, other food/beverages for Les) into the NEED category. Our stuff purchases have been practically nil so far, but our overall budget hasn't shown much improvement because we've compensated for the magazines and cool new eco kitchen scrubbies (oh, the things we overbuy) by shopping for loads of food. And going out for burritos.

So Starbucks, now would be a good time to part ways. I can't afford you and you are killing me softly. And I never did bring Sock Bottle back to the counter. Whaaaah-Whaaaaaaaaahhhhh.


Sunday, July 8, 2012

3 Crackers-Worth

The Great Harvest of 2012 yielded a grand total of ONE perfect cherry tomato:


Yep, just one. On the entire cherry tomato plant that I was convinced would sprout a bumper crop of precious red orbs. You can see in the corner of this picture that there is, in fact, a brand new little green tomato baby on the scene. She came out of nowhere, around the same time that I realized that Little Red was totally ripe. So perhaps I'll get two tomatoes this summer. But there are no other buds to be found.

I felt a lot of pressure to do something totally awesome with the globe-y little miracle. I had grown this tomato FROM A SEED! My very first gardening success. It got off to such a rocky start. I was sure it was doomed. But I was also determined. I faithfully watered it with water rescued from the shower drain and  inspected its leafy nursery every day for bugs; giving quiet thanks for the delicate spider webs that seemed to be doing a great job of that for me. This tomato grew out of a labor of love, and chugged along even though all of my other garden hopes and dreams fried in the ridiculous heat. This tomato was the lone survivor.

So I thought about what to do with it, and concluded that the only reasonable thing to do would be to transform it into a tomato's highest calling: fresh salsa.



Left over organic cilantro from a recipe last week, the tiniest garlic clove you've ever seen, and a tidy pile of onion bits, left over from the nubbin of onion we didn't use in last night's dinner.



Add some Lime Juice and a dash of salt, and you have the smallest portion of salsa I have ever eaten!



Exactly three perfect crackers-worth.

Wednesday, July 4, 2012

No-Buy July: Some Parameters

We're 4 days in to this year's No-Buy July, and so far so good. That might not sound like much of a feat to you, but I've already kicked down the impulse to buy several things that I would have otherwise tossed in my  actual or virtual cart.

I'm excited to see that a couple of you are up for joining us on this adventure, and we've already had some questions about the boundaries. Where is the line between "need" and "want"? What's the difference between buying something this month versus buying it on August 1? What if something I've wanted for a long time goes on sale? What about yoga/tennis/knitting/basket weaving lessons that I pay for every month?

First let me go on record with a disclaimer: I'm not a financial expert, I've never seen your family budget, and I don't know where the line between need and want will be for you. The line is wobbly, and I for one can rationalize just about anything.

This ability starts young. At my previous job, I helped arrange for volunteers to participate in a program called Junior Achievement. JA teaches grade school kids about money, the economy, and job skills. Adult volunteers to go into classrooms with visual aids and fun activities and help kids think and talk about the hard skills and soft skills of financial responsibility. I've accompanied volunteers on some of these classroom visits, and one 1st grade classroom exercise stands out in my memory as a TERRIFIC example of how early we start to recognize that the line between need and want is a blurry one.

The volunteer holds up a big card with a picture on it, and the kids are supposed to vote "NEED" or "WANT" with their own little cards. Some of the cards are straight forward, like a plate of food. But others can start up some pretty complex cultural debates, even among the Crayola set. For example, the picture of a car may be an obvious need to a suburbanite child, but inevitably in Chicago Public Schools, lots of kids will recognize a car as a WANT. They and their parents are getting along just fine without one. A home is a need, but the standard line drawing of a single family house with a fence and a yard is, in reality, more of a luxury than a need, especially to a city kid. Then you get into some rationalization. The picture of a Dog, for example. An adult can pretty easily talk a kid into recognizing that a dog is a "Want", but every stinkin' time I have seen this exercise, kids will come up with all kinds of reasonable arguments for Dog as Necessity:

  • A guard dog keeps us safe.
  • Some people need seeing-eye dogs to get around.
  • Our dog makes our family happy. We need her.
And of course, now that we have Auggie, I put a pup into the "Need" category. But you see where I'm going with this. I can't really tell you where the line will be for you.

That said, Les and I have talked a bit about what we will and won't buy this month. For one thing, we're teetering on brokesville, so there are practical limitations. But this month is also supposed to be challenging, and reign in our impulse control. Here's the simplest way I can illustrate the parameters we are going to try to keep this month:

Things we need to pay for/spend money on this month:
  • Fixed expenses: rent, car insurance, student loans, cell phone bill, internet, donations, etc.
  • Food: a pared-down, realistic, well-thought-out menu of food we will cook at home, with a few limited but inevitable restaurant meals. No more than one "out" meal per week.
  • Personal care necessities: we'll replace tooth paste, shampoo, dental floss, etc if we run out.
  • Limited personal habit cash: I have my $15 Starbucks card, Les has a limited budget for wine and beer. Because we really weren't prepared to go cold-turkey on these liquids.
Things we will forgo:
  • Stuff: new clothes, books, magazine, iTunes, notebooks, kitchen gadgets, craft supplies, garden stuff, pretty much anything one would buy at Target.
  • Tennis Lessons: we had planned to sign up for the next round of classes, but we straight up can't afford it, AND I'm a bit wary of committing to twice/week classes for the next 6 weeks of inferno heat. If we budget for it, we'll sign up for the fall session.
  • Food that we just "want" but is not on the meal list. No ice cream, random snacks, etc.
  • Eating out more than once per week.
That's just where we are right now. If I were, say, taking zumba classes every month, I probably wouldn't skip a month if I felt that the classes were essential to my well-being and physical/mental health. But even if tennis classes were cheaper, I could probably still talk myself into a break from formal teaching and just try to commit to playing with Les twice a week. Still good exercise, and keeping up our newly-learned skills for free. But you'll have to look at your own lists and make the necessary tweaks.

If I learned one thing from trying this last year, it's that I buy WAY MORE CRAP than I ever realized. It honestly did not occur to me how often I let myself just buy things until I feel like my checking account has dwindled past the comfort zone. That's not a great way to live, and certainly not simple, green, or really even within my values.

So, there you have it. The beginning of some boundaries. Let me know what you think, how you're doing, and if you have any advice. Only something like 4 weeks to go :)

Sunday, July 1, 2012

Mid-Year Do-Over Declared!

I hereby declare July 1 the start of our family's new fiscal year.


Like my money clip art? I'm not totally clear on the legal rules for  using google images on your blog, so I figured I should stick to the generic clippy art!

We have, ahem, been spending like mad this year. When I go manically through our online bank statements to figure out exactly HOW we have gotten where we are, I see only a couple of big, unplanned-for purchases: new tires on my car (Ouch. But crucial when tires are precariously worn.) and a vet visit for AugDog for some annual blood work that we should have budgeted for but did not.

We haven't been out buying lots of stuff (some stuff, admittedly, but not loads). The tale of woe that you can glean from our bank statements is that we spend $10 here and there (lunch, bottle of wine, fig tree, Starbucks, blah blah) and a whole WHOLE lot of money on food. Food we cook and food we grab on the go. Like, a staggering amount.

In reality, our spending troubles boil down to two main personal glitches: failure to plan and poor impulse control.


We have all these great ideas for healthy food to cook and we go to Whole Foods, the Farmer's Market, and Trader Joe's with Good Intentions Goggles on or something. We THINK we will totally make all 6 recipes for which we just gathered ingredients. We are SURE we will go through an entire bag of organic spinach. No matter how many times we toss out a slimy bag of half-eaten greens or scoop underwhelming leftovers into the trash, we still think we can and should shop to our ideals rather than our reality.

That, and we buy a lot of wine and beer. Summer nights on the back porch have ratcheted up our alcohol consumption.

Anyway, this accidental spending spree lifestyle is not gonna work. "No Buy July" was a great exercise last year, I'm going to do it again this year and rope Les into it as well. We've gotta get it together, people. We're regrouping. We're looking at our family budget as the moral document that it is: I spend money on things that I value. If I value generosity, simplicity, and debt-free lightness, then I gotta put my money where my mouth is. Oh, and "where your treasure is, there will your heart be also". I don't want my treasure or my heart to be in my closet or my fridge.

No Buy July will be a good entry point for reworking our finances and enacting some of the other principles from 7. We're not going to bring home any non-essentials this month. No magazines, no books, no clothes, no random cosmetics or hair junk or cool pens or house-prettying stuff. AND we're going to force our brains to figure out the actual amount of food we can cook and eat per week and not buy any more than that. Period.*

If you've never tried a month-long life experiment, I encourage you to give it a shot. I know it is kind of lame, but going for one whole month without ANY pop was kind of empowering, and it encouraged me through tiny impulse control successes that I really can make better choices. All those little decisions ramp me up for Bigger and Better choices. It's a start, anyway.

* Coffee is considered an essential in our house. However, Les bought me a $15 Starbucks gift card last week which we decided is a reasonable monthly latte budget. But other than that card, I gotta make home-made coffee work.