An HOA Compliant Compost Bin

You might remember that at our condo, I made a small vermicompost bucket for the balcony. While we didn't have enough space there to take care of all of our compostable waste, those worms definitely made a good dent in our garbage and they gave us a decent amount of great worm castings in return.

In our HOA, compost bins are required to be approved. The idea is that they can be unsightly or smelly, but if you're doing it right they really shouldn't be! But, because so much of our yard is visible from the road or open space (great views of the mountains for us, great views into our yard for everyone else) we decided to play by the book and submit a plan for a compost bin.

The location that seemed the best for us, and our neighbors, unfortunately was also the most visible from the road. My solution: hid the bin with fencing, and then plant some shade perennials in front. Since this area was just mulch and weeds before, I knew that they wouldn't say "no" to something that would actually make the area MORE attractive from the street.

And I was right! The Architectural Committee approved my plans, so then Sean and I just had to wait for a non-rainy weekend to actually get out there and install the bin, fencing and perennials. We did just that this past weekend.

I wanted some taller, flowering perennials as well as some lower green. This area is in shade all day during the winter, and most of the day during the summer, so the plants couldn't require more than a couple hours of direct sunlight. At our local nursery we found one climbing hydrangea, two Camelot foxgloves, and a couple varieties of hosta. I filled in the front with some periwinkle ground cover.

A view that only people on our property will ever see: the actual compost bin. That window well isn't actually big enough to be a proper egress, so we weren't worried about putting the bin a couple feet away from it.

Pretty foxgloves helping to hide the compost!

We're definitely looking forward to being able to use this compost bin to reduce our waste, and in future years we will reduce the amount of money we need to spend on amending the soil. It's a win-win!

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Waste Not Want Not Wednesday

#WasteNot 30 Day Challenge: Day 20

Today is my 20th day of the #WasteNot challenge, sponsored by Travel Well Magazine.

This is a simple one, but an important one nonetheless: reusable water bottles.

This is the water bottle I took with me to pilates today. It always amazes me how many people at the gym have disposable plastic water bottles, whether they brought them or they buy them from the vending machine there. To me, there is no simpler way to reduce plastic consumption than by bringing a reusable bottle with me to the gym, on hikes, on trips (just make sure that there isn't any water in it when you bring it through airport security!).

Do you use reusable water bottles? How else do you reduce your waste?

#WasteNot 30 Day Challenge: Day 19

Today is my 19th day of the #WasteNot challenge, sponsored by Travel Well Magazine.

Here is my low waste coffee and tea set up:

We have an electric kettle to heat water, and a French press for coffee during the week. The French press is great because it makes just one mug's worth of coffee and there is no garbage since the grounds get composted in our garden.

On weekends when Sean and I are both drinking coffee at the same time, we use the old drip machine with a reusable filter. Again, the coffee grounds get dumped into our compost.

#WasteNot 30 Day Challenge: Day 16

Today is my sixteenth day of the #WasteNot challenge, sponsored by Travel Well Magazine. Today I'll share a way I reuse when working on a set.

Painting backdrops requires a lot of custom paint mixing. And because of the size, it's not so simple as mixing on a palette like you would when painting on a canvas. So, for the months leading up to painting a show, I collect any yogurt containers that otherwise would go in the recycling and wash them out very well. Then, I reuse them to hold paint. Yogurt containers are a great size for this, but any container with a lid that seals well will do: coffee cans, glass jars, etc.

How do you reuse containers before they head to the recycling?

#WasteNot 30 Day Challenge: Day 4

Today is my fourth day of the #WasteNot challenge, sponsored by Travel Well Magazine. Here's something that is making a difference in our yard waste:

Fiskars Reel Mower at Amazon

Our new lawn mower!

Because we moved into this house right before the first snow, we've gotten away with very little yard work so far. But now that it's spring and the temperatures are above freezing, the grass is growing again so it was time to go buy a lawn mower. We don't have a ton of lawn, and we preferred not to get a gas powered one, so when this Fiskars reel mower was nearly 50% off at Sears we grabbed it!

How is it waste free? Well, it came with no packaging (it was either a return or discontinued, hence the mark down); it has no emissions and takes only human energy; and after mowing the clippings can either be left in place to add nutrients back into the soil or they can be raked and put in the compost bin.


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#WasteNot 30 Day Challenge: Day 3

For Day 3 of the WasteNot Challenge, I'm sharing my homemade lemon curd.

After all of the Passover baking at the beginning of April, I had a bunch of unused egg yolks. Not wanting them to go to waste, I decided to turn them into lemon curd.

This is actually a picture from the last time I made lemon curd, back in CA, but it's the same recipe and I even put it in the same clip top jar! This is the recipe I use. It's delicious!

I love lemon curd on toast, English muffins and scones. I also mix a spoonful into my plain yogurt, sometimes with some blueberries. There are so many great ways to use lemon curd.

What are your favorite ways to eat lemon curd? How are you reducing food waste? Share in the comments!


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#WasteNot 30 Day Challenge: Day 2

Today is my second day of the #WasteNot challenge, sponsored by Travel Well Magazine. Here's something you've seen on the blog before: our glass milk bottles.

Dairy delivery is a big thing in Colorado, and the dairy we chose was already delivering to many of the homes in our neighborhood. They use all glass bottles, which we rinse out and put outside for the delivery person to take back. The bottles get reused by the dairy until they break. The only "trash" is the lid, but it's actually a recyclable plastic!

We love that by getting all dairy products in these glass bottles, we don't have lots of plastic milk jugs going into the recycling or those Tetrapaks which can't really be recycled at all.

How do you reduce your garbage? Join the challenge, and share in the comments too!

#WasteNot 30 Day Challenge: Day 1

While I was gone for a wedding in NYC this last weekend, my awesome friend Ali started posting pictures of steps she takes towards a zero waste lifestyle on Facebook. She was tagging them with #wastenot, but since I was relying purely on my phone for internet it wasn't until today that I got to actually find out about the 30 day challenge she was doing, sponsored by Travel Well Magazine. That's a challenge I can get on board with! The official rules for the contest require a Facebook, Twitter or Instagram post, but I wanted to share on the blog as well. So, for the next 30 days I'll be sharing different ways I work to reduce my trash and make my footprint on the earth that much smaller.

To start off with, here's an exciting piece of mail we received:

Yep, we have approval to put in a compost bin! 

Our HOA is pretty lenient compared to most, and I did get a little designer-nerdy and draw up very detailed VectorWorks plans of exactly what I plan to do. Since the best location for the compost bin is on the side of the house that faces the street, my proposal includes using lattice fencing to block it and then planting perennial shade-lovers in front. So hopefully in just a few short weekends of work we will have a compost bin and lattice up, and I will be able to toss almost all of our food scraps in there instead of in the garbage. Plus, by next summer (if not sooner) I'll have "free" compost instead of spending money on bags and bags of it at the store in order to amend our very sandy soil.

Do you compost? How else do you reduce waste? Join the 30 Day Challenge and post in the comments!

Eating Locally: Discovering our Co-op

Back in California, eating local, organic and humanely raised food was relatively simple. Sure it took more than a simple trip to the supermarket, but there were so many options for CSAs, a wealth of farmer's markets year-round, and even locally owned grocery stores that stocked great CA-grown products. We belonged to both a fruit/veggie CSA and a meat CSA, bought our eggs directly from a farmer at the farmer's market, and had access to an amazing number of resources for the kind of food we want to buy.

After moving to Colorado, I can see just how spoiled for options California is!

Here, the growing season is much shorter than I was used to (year round crops in CA, roughly May-Oct in CO). The farmer's markets ended before we even moved into our house, and they won't start up again until May. There are fewer CSA options, and most are only available during the summer. When I go to the grocery store, most of the fruit and vegetables are brought in from CA!

So imagine how happy I was when a neighborhood friend invited me to join her at a meet and greet for the High Plains Food Co-op. It is a network of local farmers (again, cue the shock as I realize "local" here includes Kansas and Nebraska, which are both closer to Denver than Los Angeles is to San Francisco) and the co-op facilitates sales directly to the consumer. Transparency is important, and all the farmers welcome visitors. All of the meat is humanely raised, and some farms are certified organic -- not all have gone through certification, but all follow organic principles. There are free range and pastured eggs for less than the cost of store-bought cage free eggs. There is even a farmer who sells heritage wheat flours! The vegetable selections are limited right now, and the fruit selections are only dried or jams, but I'm looking forward to seeing those offerings come spring.

For our first order, we got the following:

• 1 dozen pastured eggs
• 1 package of German bratwurst
• cheddar sampler pack (3 varieties, about 1lb total)
• lamb shanks
• triticale flour
• heritage turkey red flour
• ground beef
• chuck roast
• whole roasting chicken

They even gave us an insulated tote to keep everything cold, which I will reuse for future orders. We haven't tried everything yet, but so far we are happy with this resource for good, humane, locally raised food.

Eating Locally: Our Dairy Delivery

One of our amazing foodie discoveries since moving to Colorado has been dairy delivery. When we were touring homes with our realtor, we noticed that many had a cooler on the front porch with the name of one of two dairies. Our realtor told us that these dairies are both locally owned, and they deliver fresh milk and other products throughout the Metro area.

After the craziness of moving settled down, we did some research and settled on Longmont Dairy for our needs. They own their own cows, practice organic farming (though they're not currently certified) and best of all they deliver all milk products in glass bottles! Each week, the night before our delivery day, we set out the clean empty bottles in the cooler, and in the morning we have a new bottle of fresh milk.

If you're in the Denver area and looking into dairy delivery, here are some of my thoughts on Longmont Dairy:

-they have a three item minimum per delivery. We tend to get milk, orange juice and eggs, and change it up every once in a while (the photo above shows milk, whipping cream and half-and-half, which I got so I could make ice cream)

-they have amazing seasonal eggnog. It's a good thing it's a short season.

-prices seem to be comparable to purchasing the same quantity of organic milk at the grocery store, but you don't have to run to the store for "just one thing" and come out with extra

Overall, we love the ease and convenience. Plus, for once the convenient thing is also the one that produces less waste -- the lids go in the recycling bin but the bottles are returned and reused. Our neighbors were already getting this same delivery service, so the truck would already be stopping on our street -- no extra gas used.

And, the milk is really delicious and tastes fresh!

Do you have dairy delivery in your area? What do you think about it? Share in the comments!

Conservation Monday #8: Guilt Free Showers & Other Tales

Our move from the San Francisco Bay Area to Denver has meant many changes and adjustments, but today as I add to my Conservation Monday series I want to focus on what this move has meant for my conservation habits.

Guilt free showers. There is no drought here! I am keeping in place my shorter shower practices, but I don't feel bad if I need that extra minute of hot water to help me wake up. While we are in temporary housing we also don't have a balcony full of vegetables to water, so I don't have to stop up the tub while I shower in order to water the plants. Oh, and flushing the toilet without feeling guilty about all that water flowing down is priceless.

Recycling. I threw a recyclable drink cup in the garbage the other night because there was no recycling bin anywhere in the shopping center. After the 3 bin system instituted by SFSU (recycling, compost & garbage) this forced garbage feels unnatural. We do have recycling at our apartment, though it's so far out of the way that while Sean was here ahead of me he thought there was no recycling at all! I was determined to find it though, and I did. No more yogurt cups going in the garbage for us!

On the topic of recycling, Colorado also doesn't do a deposit on bottles. So, while in California we always saved bottles and cans to collect the CRV, those items just go into the single stream recycling here.

Packaging. This is more for us personally, rather than the area as a whole. Because of our temporary housing situation, and our sparsely populated kitchen cabinets, we are buying more packaged food and less from bulk bins. We just don't have the space for a lot of the cooking and baking we normally do from scratch. I'm looking forward to getting into a permanent house where we can unpack all of our kitchen supplies, and get back to baking bread, using the slow cooker, and all the things that are not possible right now. But for now, we'll get the precooked chicken fajita strips and deal with the fact that we're tossing plastic wrap in the garbage, and a plastic tray and cardboard wrap in the recycling. It makes me sad, but I know it's only temporary.

Plastic bags. Our county in California had outlawed plastic bags a while back, so it was always a bit of a shock on our summer road trip when a store would give us a "free" plastic bag. And here in the Denver area, stores will give us so many plastic bags. It's reminding me how wasteful free bags can be -- a bag for my toilet brush and nothing else? On the other hand, it's been nice to have all those bags on hand for cleaning the litter box, since I gave my old stash of bags awaiting reuse to my mom before we moved.

Apricots Again

This past weekend we were back out in the orchards with Village Harvest. I wrote about the apricot harvest we did with them last year here. This year Sean and I went to a different apricot orchard than the one we went to last year; this one was actually inside an old cemetery! It was beautiful, and the trees were really bountiful. I didn't catch the exact amount of apricots that we sent to the local food bank, but I think we were well over 1000!

And, as usual, Sean and I came home with about 30 pounds of apricots ourselves. Unlike most harvests, where we come home with imperfect fruit that is either bird-pecked, over ripe or under ripe, this time we came home with a lot of absolutely perfect fruit. The trees had dropped a lot over the last week, and due to various levels of liability, "ground fruit" cannot be donated. But as long as you give it a good washing, there is absolutely nothing wrong with it.

I didn't take as many pictures of what we did with our apricots this year, because a picture of apricot jam is a picture of apricot jam. But here's a list of what we made this year:

• apricot turnovers
• apricot jam (12 half-pint jars)
• apricots in spiced syrup (6 pint-and-a-half jars & 4 pint jars)
• dried apricots

these were some of our apricot creations last year

We still have a mixing bowl of apricots in the fridge too, waiting for me to come up with a use for them. I could run them through the dehydrator after the current batch of dried apricots is finished, I could make more jam, I could freeze them, add them to smoothies...

What are your favorite ways to use apricots? Share them in the comments!

Conservation Monday #7: Living Green for any Design Aesthetic

Although "green living" or sustainability are not design choices themselves, it seems that they have become identifiable with certain decor styles. Sustainable decor conjurers up ideas of hippie or bohemian style, while the idea of living waste free seems like it would only apply to minimalist, modern design.

I love reading Bea Johnson's blog Zero Waste Home, and she has inspired many of my own efforts to consume less. But while I admire her minimalist, white home, it is not my chosen style. I love color, and prefer a cozier feel. I like extra blankets on the couch to curl up with the cat (as Fleck tries to add her own thoughts to this blog by crawling onto the laptop keyboard). And I will admit to still having some inexplicable emotional attachments to otherwise useless things. But that's ok! Today I want to discuss how living an eco-friendly lifestyle is adaptable to any decor style you wish for your home!

Let's start with furniture. The most sustainable furniture choice is one that already exists. Yep, this means used! But used doesn't need to mean grimy thrift store finds that scream 80's.

For instance, my dining table was my grandparents' table. It is a simple, elegant and fairly timeless style. They chose a high quality wood which still looks great. And it has multiple removable leaves so that it can accommodate more people should we ever host a seated dinner party. (The physical constraints of our dining room don't allow for much expansion, but it's a flexible option for later down the line.)

(Please forgive the odd light balance of this picture - it's from sometime last year as I was beginning this blog. Time to take an updated picture of the dining room!)

While we're looking at this picture of the dining room, let's talk about the rest of the furniture there. The chairs were an amazing hand-me-down: my college roommate and awesome friend was given these chairs for free by a neighbor when we first moved into off-campus housing. When we graduated, she was moving back home so gave me the chairs. I'm currently in the process of refinishing them (thesis before painting! thesis before painting!) since they do show their age, but they're still strong and in good condition.

That bookcase holding my cookbooks and serving pieces was Sean's when he was a kid. It actually was bought to match his bed set when we was in high school, but by chance it's a fairly close match to the dining table and it works quite well in here.

And what is on the bookshelf? Mostly hand-me-down cookbooks! We've been given a lot of cookbooks as gifts, some new and some old. It can be fun to go through the old ones, especially the 1970's era "Cooking for Two" books that were passed to us from both sets of parents!

Oh, and the art in the dining room used to belong to my aunt! I actually hadn't realized before typing all of this just how many pieces in this room came to us from other people. Wow! And you can see that my decor is not minimalist at all -- I have many cookbooks that I enjoy going through, and I have beautiful serving pieces that are decor most of the time but handy when I need to use them.

Of course, there are some areas of the home where newer choices are more eco-friendly. One item that I've been reading about lately is the mattress. Many typical mattresses use unsustainable materials as fill, and then use cheap chemical flame retardants. These chemicals offgas as we sleep -- with our faces only a thin layer of fabric away. Organic mattresses may use natural latex or wool, and no chemical flame retardants. Unfortunately, they are considerably more expensive and often require a bed with slats to prevent moisture build up and mold. Since our bed is a platform, but we need the storage it provides and aren't ready to buy a new bed frame and organic mattress, this is something that is just on my wish-list for now!

At the risk of writing a huge essay, I'll end this post now. Hopefully I've given you some ideas on how to translate sustainability and waste-free living into your own design aesthetic. Since there are so many more aspects to talk about (not to mention looking at other decor styles besides my own) I think my Conservation Monday posts for the next few weeks may focus on eco-friendly design. Stay tuned!

And of course, if you have any ideas for green design, please share them in the comments! Have pictures that showcase green living joined with your own design style? Direct me to a blog post of yours and I'd love to feature it!

Conservation Monday #6: Why I Meal Plan

In the hectic existence that is a master's thesis, I missed my Conservation Monday post last week. Oops! I hope today's post makes up for it!

I want to break from my regular list format today and discuss in depth one of the ways I have practically eliminated food waste. I have accomplished this through the use of a fairly simple tool: the meal plan.

Some people have incredibly elaborate, detailed meal plans. Some plan an entire month's meals at once! This is not for me, because we prefer to eat with the seasons and are members of a fruit/veggie CSA as well as a meat CSA. I absolutely love my CSA memberships, as they encourage us to try new foods, eat all of our fruit and vegetable servings, eat locally and eat organically. The occasional downside is that we don't know the contents of the veggie box until the weekend before it arrives, and we don't know the contents of the meat box until I open it!

This element of surprise has led me to the following method:

When I get a box, I write down in the notes section of my planner ALL of the contents. I have a column for fruit, a column for vegetables, and a column for meat. (Since the meat arrives once a month and vegetables currently come every other week, I end up with more fruit and vegetable lists than meat lists)

The list looked like this in February after I opened our first meat box:

• ground beef
• ground pork
• ground lamb
• leg of lamb
• pork chops
• pork butt
• carrots
• artichokes
• romanesco
• lettuce
• kale
• shallots
• apples
• oranges
• lemons

Then, I work to plan meals within the basic schedule I have in which Mondays are leftovers, Tuesdays are typically pasta, Wednesdays are often soup, Thursdays are leftovers and Friday, Saturday and Sunday can be anything. I'm flexible about moving pasta and soup nights around, but establishing those gave me a decent framework to make sure meals never get too repetitive. (After all, I studied in Italy for a year and I would be happy eating pasta every night, but that wouldn't be OK with Sean!) As I figure out a recipe for each ingredient, I cross it off the list. For instance:

• ground beef
• ground pork - baked eggs & kale
• ground lamb
• leg of lamb - lamb tagine
• pork chops
• pork butt
• carrots
• artichokes
• romanesco
• lettuce
• kale - baked eggs & kale
• shallots
• apples
• oranges
• lemons 

I continue matching ingredients to recipes and recipes to days until I have figured out what to do with all the produce. I try to use delicate produce, like the leafy greens, first since they wilt, whereas the heartier stuff can wait closer to the next box. The meat needs to last all month, and it's in the freezer, so I don't worry as much about figuring out a recipe for each piece right away. I typically get about a week and a half of meal planning done at a time.

I write the week's plan in my planner and on a fridge calendar. I love that with the meal plan right there on the fridge, there's never a question of what to make for dinner!

Of course, then there are weeks like tech, when I'm not even home in the evenings to make dinner, and Sean gets cute with the "meal plan":

Won't have tech again for a while, as I finish this thesis. But at least I know he can handle the "meal planning" without me!

My meal planning system isn't perfect yet, and part of that has to do with spontaneity. Sometimes I plan something, but then we end up having a last minute dinner with friends. The meal plan gets shifted to accommodate, which is why if you read all of my meal plan posts you'll see certain meals carrying over into the next week.

We have also had a few times when I was supposed to make the new soup for "soup night" but I looked into the fridge and there was still leftover soup. I'm not making a whole new pot when there are still jars of leftovers sitting in the fridge, so it becomes an impromptu "leftovers" night.

Despite the couple kinks I'm still working out in our plan, we have cut food waste down to almost nothing. The worms get any kitchen scraps that aren't meat, dairy or citrus. It can take a long time now to ever fill up the kitchen garbage can, and it's a fairly small one to begin with! I'm very happy with the progress we've made, and I plan to keep working to reduce our waste even further as well as take all the stress out of dinner time!

Do you meal plan? What's your system? Share in the comments!

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 One Project At A Time

Conservation Monday #5: Reducing Waste in Other Rooms

It's Monday, which means it's once again time to share some conservation/waste reduction tips!

The last two weeks, we've looked at some ways to reduce waste in the kitchen and the bathroom. For us, these two rooms are the biggest waste generators. But today let's look at some other areas of the house where you may be able to cut down your waste and conserve resources.

Bedroom

1. Get Rid of Old Clothes. While you may not think of old clothes sitting in the closet as "waste," they are certainly wasting your space if you are not wearing them! If items are in good enough condition, and you have the time, you may be able to sell them online, to a place like Plato's Closet, or through another consignment store. Otherwise, donate! Free up that closet or drawer space for the clothes that you actually do wear.

2. Minimize Clutter. Again, not exactly a waste stream issue, but by reducing clutter you will save time cleaning and organizing.

3. Use Blankets instead of a Heater. If you live in a mild enough climate (this may not necessarily work for you if you have inches of snow on the ground!) pile up the blankets and leave the heater off. You'll save energy, which in turn reduces your electric or gas bill.

Home Office

1. Junk Mail. It's so easy to let papers just come into the house, and then what do you do with them? Hopefully you're able to toss them in the recycling, though there are those pesky ads that have some plastic coating on them preventing recycling. But wouldn't it be better to stop the junk from ever coming into the house? The Federal Trade Commission website shows you some ways to opt out of unwanted mailings (and phone calls!). DMA Choice also allows you to opt out of certain unwanted mailings.

2. Print Judiciously. It's very easy to get into the habit of printing out everything. But if you only print out the files that you truly need a hard copy of, you will reduce paper usage and reduce your need for storage.

3. Sell Old Books. If you have old books you aren't going to read again, sell them to your favorite used book store. One of my favorite used book stores will even pay you more if you take store credit rather than cash. Since I always find great art/architecture/theater reference books there, I'll happily trade old fiction for more long-term resources!

that top shelf has a nice hole in the sea of books - the former residents are in a box waiting to be sold, and read by someone new

Living Room

1. Reduce clutter. Once again, clutter reduction saves time and effort when it comes to cleaning.

2. Rent/Borrow vs Buy. This applies to movies, books, even video games. By renting movies and TV shows (from either a physical rental place, or Netflix) you have access to lots of media without having to purchase it. This can save you money, save space, and reduce the amount of packaging that enters the waste stream from producing all those DVDs. Borrowing from friends is also a great resource, and free!
Your local library is also an amazing resource. I haven't bought many new books in the last couple years (when I have, it's primarily been for school) as our public library is so extensive. Some people also borrow movies from the library; personally I haven't had the best of luck with this as DVDs are often scratched. However I have had excellent luck borrowing music and books on tape from the library.

3. Use those Blankets! Just like the bedroom, blankets can be used to keep warm instead of a heater. I enjoy curling up on the couch with a cozy throw blanket while reading or watching TV. If your heater can get noisy like ours, you want to avoid using it while watching TV anyway!

 you can see my pile of blankets on the stool above

Of course, if you have any other suggestions for reducing waste in any of these areas, please share in the comments!

Conservation Monday #4: Reducing Waste in the Bathroom

Once again, welcome to my weekly Conservation Monday series!

In keeping with last week's focus on the kitchen, I decided to focus on conservation in the bathroom this week.

In my posts about conserving water, I've already discussed the idea of reusing the shower water for plants. Today, let's look at a few other changes you can make to conserve resources in the bathroom (listed in no particular order)

1. Toilet paper. 
There are a few different ways you can reduce waste with regards to toilet paper. Some people have adopted the idea of "family cloth" which is a washable wipe rather than disposable toilet paper. (The linked website has a good explanation of family cloth.) This is not something I'm personally willing to do at this point, due to laundry situations in our building, and the fact that with grad school thesis I really don't need yet another cleaning chore around the house!
However, I do look for brands that use minimal packaging. I don't need each roll individually wrapped! In some areas you can also find toilet paper with a certain percentage of post-consumer recycled material, which can be a great choice. My rule for buying toilet paper from eco-friendly brands is that it must be just as soft and efficient as my preferred "standard" brand. If I have to use extra sheets of the eco-friendly brand because it's not doing as good of a job, it's not really saving resources.

2. Brushing teeth.
If you are one of the people who still run water the entire time you're brushing your teeth, take this moment to finally stop the water waste! Personally, growing up in California where we have always been taught to be water conscious, I've never met someone who runs water the whole time. I just wet the toothbrush at the beginning, then use water to rinse at the end. So I'm not sure if it's something that is still done, but if you do this is seriously one of the easiest ways to conserve water!

3. If it's yellow, let it mellow.
This may be more of a drought-specific tip for the bathroom, but it can save some serious water! Please excuse the details (but hey, you've made it this far in a post about the bathroom) but on days when I'm feeling fully hydrated I can pee multiple times, and it's fairly clear. Gallons of water just to flush down some nearly clear pee? No thank you! I'll be saving that water.
Now, when I have guests over, I do make sure to flush before they arrive! Since we're not on water restrictions yet I figure politeness can trump a single flush.

4. Shorter showers.
If you're in an area with limited water, learn to take "Navy showers" where you turn the water on to get wet, then turn it off while you soap up. Turn it back on just to rinse off, then hop out.
Droughts are no time for luxurious long showers or baths. I miss a relaxing bath as much as the next lady, but unless you're bailing all that water out into a garden afterwards it is wasteful in these conditions.
Even if you're not suffering from California's current drought, shorter showers can still save you water and money. Shave just one minute off your shower, and you can save about 2 gallons per day! That's 14 gallons in a week that isn't running down the drain.

5. Ditch the disposable cleaners.
Disposable wipes have become ubiquitous. Their ads claim that they are more sanitary than reusable rags, but what so many commercials fail to take into account is that you're supposed to toss used rags into the laundry rather than use a soiled cloth to wipe down your baby's high chair!
Honestly, since simplifying my cleaners and swapping out for primarily organic options, we have been sick even less. I use rags for every cleaning job, hang them up in the shower to dry out then toss them in the laundry basket. Rags get washed together (with paint clothes) roughly once a week in hot water. It's simple, keeps worn out clothes from heading to the landfill, and prevents all those disposable wipes from ever entering our house.

What other tips do you have for reducing waste of any kind in the bathroom? Please share in the comments!

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Conservation Monday #3: Reducing Waste in the Kitchen

Welcome back to Conservation Monday at Living Design!

While this series was inspired by the drought situation here in California, I want to take a break from the water tips and focus on another way to drastically reduce waste: the kitchen.

When Sean and I first started living together, I was fresh out of college and he had been living at his parents' house for a year since his own graduation. I was used to sharing a fridge and pantry with two roommates; he was used to not thinking about the kitchen at all! The first few months together, I found we were constantly going to the grocery store because I knew nothing about grocery shopping to feed two people. Looking back, I know we generated more waste than necessary due to our inexperience with cooking for two, and with meal planning.

I know we have a long way to go still, and these days some of my frustration comes from the lack of green waste pick-up at our condo building. (We have a worm bucket, but when we do large fruit harvests we have to throw most of the compostable discards in the garbage because it's too much for our worms to handle.) I love reading Zero Waste Home to get even more ideas on how to reduce our waste.

Today, though, I want to share with you 8 ways we've changed our habits to reduce waste in the kitchen.

1. Stop buying individually packaged servings. 
For instance, both Sean and I eat quite a bit of yogurt. At first, I bought individually packaged cartons of yogurt. Easy to grab, right? Well, after a while we noticed that if I bought the fat-free variety with aspartame Sean would get headaches. Then I started learning about cutting out artificial ingredients...one thing led to another and now we only buy the large containers of organic, plain yogurt. Whereas we used to recycle 6 to 8 little plastic cartons per week, now we reuse or recycle one large carton per week.

2. Buy dried goods from bulk bins.
If you can buy dried goods like beans and rice from bulk bins, this is a great way to eliminate packaging. Instead of buying canned beans, which take up a lot of room when stored and may have BPA in the cans, or buying dried beans in boxes or plastic bags, I use the bulk bins at our local grocery store. I'm not at the point where I bring my own bags to put them in yet, but at least the bags provided by the bulk bins get reused to clean the litter box.

3. Don't throw away those veggie scraps.
I keep a gallon sized bag in the freezer into which I toss any edible but undesirable veggie scraps. The leafy parts of celery, the stem end of a carrot. Even an unused leftover onion, since you don't want to store cut onions in the fridge too long. When the bag gets full, I dump it all into the crock pot, fill with water and let it sit on simmer overnight. The next morning, I strain the vegetable broth into glass jars, let them cool, then freeze. No more store-bought vegetable broth in cans or paper cartons! (The veggie mush that's left after straining gets fed to the worms.)

4. Don't throw away those bones.
Along the same vein as the vegetable broth, I never throw away bones! When I cook a full chicken, I dissect the whole thing that night as we're putting away the leftovers. I typically cook the full chicken in the crock pot, so I leave all the leftover juices at the bottom. Any onion or herbs I used for the chicken stay in the crock pot too. Then, as I put away the leftover chicken, I pull the bones off and toss them back into the crock pot, along with any skin that peels away or pieces of cartilage. Fill with water, set to simmer, add a small dash of apple cider vinegar to help leach the calcium out of the bones and into the broth. Just like the vegetable broth, it sits on simmer overnight, then gets strained into glass jars in the morning. (Unlike the remains of the vegetable broth, the remaining bones have to go in the garbage since worms can't break them down and we have no green waste pick up.)
Use the same method for making broth out of any leftover bones!

5. Learn to eat the whole vegetable.
When we first signed up for our CSA box over a year ago, we had no idea what to do with all the extra greens! Carrot tops, radish greens...these are things you rarely see in the grocery store. I was able to find some recipes online, but my favorite resource has been Root to Stalk Cooking, which I received for Chanukah. Every recipe I've tried from the book has been delicious, and I love that she often combines the "normal" part of the vegetable with the "extra", such as the Carrot Top Pesto I recently made, which is served over roasted vegetables including carrots. Don't ever throw out those "extras" again!

6. Plan a leftovers night. Or two.
One of the tricks of cooking for two is that most recipes are designed for four or more. This means there can be a lot of leftovers! Sean is great about taking leftovers to work, but I don't always have the option of leftovers for lunch (depending on where I'm working any given day.) So, I typically plan a "leftovers night" into our meal plan. If you're following along with my weekly meal plans, you'll notice that Mondays and Thursdays are typically leftovers; this is because for this semester, Sean has class Monday nights and I work longer days on Thursdays. So for right now, those two nights make sense to devote to easily reheated leftovers.
Depending on your own family's needs, the number of leftovers nights might vary. But no matter the family size I think it's a great solution to excess food and busy schedules. Wouldn't leftover pasta be more delicious and healthy than the drive-thru?

7. Use cloth napkins.
Growing up, we had always used paper napkins. As soon as I was buying them myself though, I realized how wasteful they were. Sure, the worms can eat them, but why use a fresh paper napkin with each meal when you can use a cloth one? Cloth feels nicer and can even feel luxurious. It's easily tossed into loads of laundry I'm already washing. And if we don't make too much of a mess, a single napkin can be used for a few days before I decide to toss it in the laundry. Eventually, when they wear out, they will be turned into rags. Far more eco friendly than even recycled paper napkins!
To be fair, we do still keep some paper on hand for things like buffalo wings...there are some messes I'm not ready to deal with on cloth. But with the rare instances we do use the paper, the worms make quick work of it!

 cloth napkins look beautiful, and help reduce waste at mealtimes

8. Use rags for clean up.
Once you stop using paper napkins, stop using paper towels as well! This one has taken a bit more getting used to, especially on Sean's part. He was so used to just reaching for paper towels that switching him to rags has been a bit of work. But it helps that I don't freak out about it -- I just remind him that we have rags for that job, next time. And we have drastically reduced our paper towel usage over the last few years. Most people can't believe I haven't purchased paper towels since before Sean and I got married!
I haven't done any of those cutesy things you see on Pinterest, with the cloth wipes sewn to fit onto a paper towel holder. I just have a pile of cut up old T-shirts and worn out socks. But really, they do the job just as well, and since no one else needs to see them, there are plenty of other craft projects I'd rather be doing instead of making my rags "cute".


How do you reduce your kitchen waste? I'd love to hear more tips in the comments!

Conservation Monday #2: Reusing Water

Welcome back to Conservation Monday at Living Design!

Last week I discussed 5 simple changes to make around the house that can passively reduce water consumption. This week, I want to share some ways you can reuse water (grey water). Grey water is water that has been used once for washing, but can be used again for irrigation or toilet flushing. If you have the ability to install a grey water system to do this automatically, wonderful! But if you can't change your plumbing, due to being in an apartment/condo/rental or due to local zoning regulations, these ideas can help you use that grey water no matter where you live.

1. Reuse your shower water for watering plants! Once a week I put a plug in the bottom of the tub while I shower and collect the shower water. (For a larger yard, you probably would need to do this more than once a week.) I make sure to only use eco-friendly products when I do this, since I don't want to accidentally water my plants with chemicals. The water cools down as I get dressed, and then I bail the water into my watering can. So far, no complaints from my plants!

2. The kitchen is another place where water gets used all the time. Try catching rinse water from fruits or vegetables in a bowl, then watering plants with it. Or put a bowl under the colander while you drain pasta to save that water.

3. Pet bowls. This isn't grey water, but another source of water for your garden. I've noticed that my cat will sometimes get hair, food, or other grunge into an otherwise fresh bowl of water. Instead of constantly dumping the water down the drain in order to freshen the bowl, dump it out in the garden!

Between all of these methods, I have been able to keep my balcony garden watered and happy. We reduce our overall water usage by taking short showers and then reusing that water for the plants.

What do you do to save water? If you're in California, what are you doing differently because of the drought?

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Conservation Monday #1: 5 Simple Ways to Save Water

Welcome to my first Conservation Monday post! I plan to post new tips and ideas on conserving resources every Monday. Please feel free to share your conservation ideas in the comments.

I'm starting these posts in light of California's current drought situation. Our governor recently declared a state of emergency, and some cities are already implementing rationing limits. While my city has not yet mandated reduced water use, I think it is a good idea to start implementing some conservation techniques now. It never hurts to save, right?

Let's start with five basic water saving measures that anyone can do, whether you are dealing with a drought or not.

1. Low flow toilets. If you have an older toilet (before 1994 for U.S. homes) it can use roughly 3.5 gallons of water for every flush. All toilets manufactured since 1994 fall under the general category of "low flow," meaning they use 1.6 gallons or less per flush. Newer models use water pressure to achieve better flushing action using even less water. According to the EPA, the average household can save $90 per year by switching to low flow toilets. Less than half the water use and money savings? Sounds like a win to me!

2. Low flow shower heads. Have you ever stopped the drain during a shower to see how much water you're using? If you're using a traditional shower head, it can be quite a lot! Low flow shower heads restrict the flow of water, often using air to make up for the lost pressure. This is a change that can take some time to get used to, but will save water and money in the long run.

3. Be vigilant about leaks! Take care of leaky faucets immediately. It saves money and water, as well as the headache of knowing a home repair is waiting for you.

4. Wash only full loads. This goes for clothes and dishes. Running a full clothes washer or dish washer is more efficient and uses less water per item than doing small loads. Just remember not to over fill the washing machine with clothes -- stuffing so much in that nothing can move around can actually be detrimental.

5. Do less laundry. We have a bit of an obsession with cleanliness. So much so that we spend time and water washing clothes that aren't really dirty. My husband wears undershirts everyday, but he used to put both the undershirt and the button-up or polo into the laundry basket. We were washing shirts that hadn't even touched his skin! Now, he hangs his shirts back up to air out, and gets at least one more day of wear. An added bonus -- washing less often is good for the fabric too!

If you have any other tips, please share them in the comments! Next week I'll be going into more drought-specific tips (like reusing shower water for plants).

We Have Compost! Worm Update

I think it's time for an update on our super cheap DIY worm bin, don't you?

Despite some hiccups as we got the hang of maintaining the correct moisture level in the bins, we have had success! A couple months ago the first bin was getting pretty full, so we decided to rest it (that's when you stop adding new material so you force the worms to finish off everything that is in there and turn it into nice compost). I made a second worm bin (same method as my first) and transferred about two dozen worms in there so that we could keep composting our kitchen scraps while the first bin rested. I continued to turn the compost so that it didn't get too damp or packed down, but otherwise tried to leave the resting bin alone. And this past weekend, it looked done!

To sort out the useable compost and get the worms back into a worm bin to do more composting for us, I dumped the finished bucket into a large empty planter pot. Then, handful by handful, I put good stuff into another pot, things that need more time back into a worm bin, apricot pits that somehow made it in went to another pail (the worms can't eat them so they just take up space) and worms themselves got tossed back into the two worm bins.

Here's a nice fat worm:

And here is some good compost being sorted:

Now we're letting the second bin rest, while we continue to feed worms in the first once again. 

I'm very happy with how this experiment has been working out. I wish we had room for a larger worm bin, since especially on big canning days the worms can't handle all of our scraps. But it's certainly better than nothing, and these little guys divert the majority of our kitchen waste from the garbage, instead turning it into wonderful food for our veggie plants. And on a normal (non-canning) week, we really only need to take the kitchen garbage out if there's packaging from raw meat in there! I think this means that when either our complex gets green waste pickup, or we get a house with large compost capabilities, we will definitely be able to bring kitchen waste close to zero. Yay!

I'd love to hear from anyone who has experience with worm bins -- any great advice or stories? Please share!

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Linked up to:

Frugal Days, Sustainable Ways at Frugally Sustainable
Waste Not Want Not Wednesday at Poor and Gluten Free