I don't want to alarm you, but Thanksgiving is less than two weeks away! (How did THAT happen?!) Since I'm always looking for creative ideas to bring the beauty of nature indoors, I found an abundance of GORGEOUS suggestions for Turkey Day. Even better, they're so easy, even I can do them without feeling like a total turkey (sorry, couldn't resist!). Are you ready for some crafty inspirations featuring Mother Nature? Here you go!
From Passionate Penny Pincher (I avoid all dollar stores like the plague--cheap junk poorly made in China under bad conditions--but I'm totally doing this popcorn idea with candle-holders I already own!): $6 Decorating
Is there anything more visually delish than food photography? (I guess you could rattle off the names of a few movie stars, but that's not what I meant!) When I was scoping out the blogosphere for posts about healthy food for the weekend (to piggyback on my Wednesday post about saying no to palm oil), I discovered some of the most delectable foodie blogs for healthy recipes, with outstanding photography to match!
I think I'd like to make this a regular feature here at Joyfully Green--maybe the first Friday of every month, the "Joyful Reads for the Weekend" will be about healthy food choices--the fringe benefit being that healthier food = a healthier planet. Does that sound like a yummy idea to you? For now, here's a first taste, with all of the following posts focusing on making your own food from simple ingredients instead of buying highly processed, store-bought food with who-knows-what ingredients:
It's official: I'm head-over-heels in love with autumn! Even the rainy days have a certain beauty, as the colors of the leaves really shine. In the spirit of soaking up all of the fun and natural beauty the season has to offer, I rounded up five posts that feature super-easy, not-your-run-of-the-mill, ultra-creative crafts using three of the biggest stars of autumn: leaves, acorns, and pumpkins. Best of all, they're not just for kids (although I'm sure my kids will love them). I can't believe how pretty and elegant some of these designs are--wait 'til you see them!
It was so difficult for me to choose just five pretty decorating and craft ideas for fall that I ended up creating a brand-new Pinterest board dedicated to autumn crafts! You can find MANY more gorgeous ideas there, plus a few more in the Related Articles section below. Have a colorful and crafty weekend!
Oh my goodness, the LEAVES! Even Delilah can't get enough of the fall foliage, as you can see in the photograph above. The colors are so vibrant and gorgeous, it got me to thinking: Why should flowers get all of the prime real estate in the vases? So, here's how I decorated the house this week, in a completely free and effortless way: leaf bouquets!
With leaf bouquets, there's no need to change the water before it gets all gross and goopy (something I really dislike about keeping cut flowers in vases) because there is no water! When the leaves pass their peak indoors (usually, within a day or two), I just let them flutter out the front door. See? Effortless!
Do you remember in that Steve Martin movie, L.A. Story, when Mary Lou Henner's character was telling the other women that before you leave the house, you should glance in the mirror and take off one piece of jewelry? Same idea for arranging leaf bouquets: As soon as it starts looking too "decorated", take something out.
And not all of your autumn bouquets need to be orange, yellow, and red. Evergreens also look quite pretty in the fall, so you can show them some love, too!
But really, the main thing about leaf bouquets is just to have fun with them...
P.S. Don't forget to mull some hot apple cider with sliced oranges, so the whole house smells as good as it looks!
How 'bout you? Do you switch up your decor with the seasons?
Sometimes, when I'm at the store, cringing at the price difference between organic produce and the regular produce that's been sprayed with Raid, I can't help feeling that it certainly costs a lot of green to live greenly. It's enough to make a person want to just throw in the green towel and put up the white flag.
But don't give up yet! You can, in fact, live a greener life without going broke. Here are 5 ways to get started:
1. Turn down the temperature on your water heater. You don't need the hottest setting (and you run the risk of scalding your family...yikes!). Experiment with how the water feels at a slightly lower temperature. And turn it waaaaaaaay down whenever your family is away for more than a couple of days. There's no reason to waste money on heating up your water if you're not even home to use it.
2. Open your windows instead of using scented sprays or turning on the air conditioner. Take advantage of the springtime air scented with freshly cut grass and blooming flowers. (Mmmmm...)
3. Ditch the liquid body soaps. Instead of buying heavily processed liquid soap in plastic containers, go for simple bars of soap wrapped in paper or--even better--no packaging at all.
4. Make your own counter cleaner out of orange peels and vinegar. You can use white vinegar or apple cider vinegar--both are natural disinfectants. The key is to add lots of orange peels to a large, closed container and let the mixture sit long enough so that you smell mostly the oranges when you open it. (It'll take a couple of weeks before you can strain out the peels and transfer the liquid to a spray bottle.)
5. Pack your own lunch in reusable containers. No reason to spend a mint on salads or sandwiches in those awful plastic clamshell containers!
See? That was painless, and you'll have more green in your wallet. Very handy when you're buying those organic strawberries!
Your turn: What's your favorite inexpensive way to be greener? Let's hear it!
Learn how to take better pictures with your camera, no matter what kind of camera it is! Registration is now OPEN for my July e-course, "How to Take Better Photos of Nature and the World Around You."Click here for details!
I finally pulled up the reflector stakes from the sides of the driveway last week--you know, those markers that keep the snow-plough guys from running over our hedges (well, sometimes!). So, even though we don't have any blossoms blooming yet (this picture is from last spring), I'm officially calling it: Spring is finally here--and not a minute too soon! To make sure you're adequately prepared for it, I want to include three of my posts that you might have missed the first time around:
When do you choose convenience over being environmentally responsible? I think we all have certain areas where we could be a deeper shade of green, but it's not always easy, affordable, or even desirable for us to give up some die-hard conveniences. Here are five "trouble zones" in which convenience often battles it out with earth-friendliness--along with some suggestions to tip the balance in favor of the planet:
1. Parties. Can we all just agree right now that the worst part of parties is the clean-up? Is it any wonder that those plastic red cups (which I jokingly refer to as "The Evil Red Cups" due to their propensity to wind up on lawns and in gutters) have become a permanent staple at parties? But when you really think about how long the detritus of your parties hangs around on the planet, it's not that hard to switch to "the green party." Just run an extra load or two through the dishwasher on the day after. And use machine-washable cloth napkins--they're much more festive anyway! (If you can't give up The Evil Red Cups, at least give them a quick rinse and recycle them.)
2. Lunchbox meals. Sure, it's a hassle to pack lunchboxes on mornings when you're begging the kids to get dressed faster so you're not careening to the bus stop. But those squeezable, plastic, one-time-use lunch items and juice boxes will last longer than ten thousand lunchtimes. (That's just a guestimate.) To ease the morning frenzy: On the night before, pack lunches in dishwasher-friendly containers and fill thermoses for the fridge. (The super-cute lunch and snack packs pictured below are from my super-green friend, Jennifer Larsen, and are available in her Etsy shop.)
3. Traveling. Those mini-bottles of shampoo and conditioner have become the norm for air travel due to security restrictions. Is it bothersome to pour your hair products into reusable travel-size containers? Sure! Is it less bothersome than the air and water pollution created by the manufacture of all those little plastic bottles? Why yes, I believe it is! Get a small funnel at the store to simplify the job of pouring liquids from big containers into small ones.
4. Shopping. Many countries (and now, some U.S. cities) have started charging customers for plastic grocery bags or banning them altogether. I used to feel like a "green freak" for carrying my own canvas bags, but last week, the woman in front of me at the check-out actually apologized for using the store's plastic grocery bags. "I've gotta remember my canvas bags next time," she said sheepishly. (I call that "Progress.")
5. Diapers. I briefly thought about cloth diapers when my two children were babies, and by "briefly", I mean "for about an hour each." Babies go through a LOT of yucky diapers. (If I'm remembering correctly, I think it was--at minimum--five per day). I kidded myself that the disposables were just as "good", due to all of the hot water and detergent needed to clean the cloth ones. But let's face it: Disposable diapers are bad news for the planet because of the excruciatingly huge number of them going to landfills--and the fact that they aren't going anywhere. If I had to do it all over again, I wish I could tell you with certainty that I would choose cloth diapers. But if I'm being completely honest, I don't know if I would do it any differently.
We all draw our own lines in the sand for what we will and won't do in the name of green-ness. I'm not proud of it, but I drew the line at diapers.
Where do you draw your green lines? Be honest--let's hear it!
Just a few short years ago, I was proud of myself if I could grow my own basil without it wilting. Eventually, though, I started to feel embarrassed that it was the only thing I was growing. So, I branched out. Last year, our "crops" included tomatoes, strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, rosemary, oregano, mint, Italian parsley...and the trusty basil. I like to grow the things we eat the most, partly because I can't stand buying produce in those little plastic clamshell containers. (Even if they're recycled, they still create a lot of pollution in the manufacturing and recycling processes.) Plus, I can't always find organic produce, so I'd rather grow our own and know that it hasn't been sprayed to the brink of death with pesticides. Last but not least, it's a great lesson for little ones to learn that food doesn't grow in the supermarket. (Added bonus: They seem more likely to eat it if they grow it!)
Even with the occasional snow flurries lately, I can still feel spring on the way, which makes me excited to start growing our own fruits and veggies again. Naturally, I'm all for growing things seasonally and locally, but sometimes, I like to try growing things that don't usually grow in the northeastern U.S. Citrus trees fall into that category, and last spring, I bought three. Meyer lemon (pictured above), seedless lime, and mandarin orange. By late spring, we should have some of our first Meyer lemons ripening. Not enough to make lemonade every day, but enough to spritz on fish or slice for salads, I think. Since the citrus trees I bought are dwarf varieties, it was (relatively) easy to drag them into the house at the first sign of frost. I can't wait to drag them back out onto the deck once spring is here to stay.
Your turn: What did you grow last year? Successes? Failures? What's on your planting agenda this year?
When my family was relocating a few years ago, we needed to do the prerequisite sprucing-up-and-clearing-out drill before putting our house on the market. At that time, we had a toddler with a lot of toys and baby gear, plus our own snowballing amount of baggage that we'd toted from college to first apartment to next apartment to last apartment to first house. Instead of making the big decisions necessary to clear it out and find new homes for it, we took the quicker route of purchasing eight "junk trunks" of various sizes--big plastic bins that we could stow the stuff in and stack in the basement while the house was on the market.
The junk trunks worked--the house looked remarkably neat and tidy. We had two prospective buyers battling it out, and we sold the house above the asking price after two weeks and a day. (Mind you, this was before the real estate market crashed.) One of the realtors touring the house even took me aside and whispered, "Your closets look like something out of Real Simple magazine--you're the most organized person I've ever seen!"
But in reality, instead of having a clutter-free home, all of that stuff was just tucked away, "out of sight, out of mind." And the junk trunks came with us to our new house, the contents pretty much untouched since. That's the trouble with "deep storage" systems. Once the stuff is in, it rarely comes back out. It becomes a massive undertaking to dig through it all. Also, since you've either forgotten about the stuff or can't easily get to it, you end up buying more of the same stuff to replace it. It's a very slippery slope. So, my advice is to avoid the container stores altogether. Instead of buying more things to contain your stuff (especially big plastic things that take a toll on the environment from cradle to grave), declutter first, and then get off the shopping treadmill.
I read a lot of blog headlines every day, but this recent one from Treehugger has to be my very favorite one ever: "Family Cleans House, Finds Pet Tortoise Missing Since 1982." That's right; for three decades, a family did not deal with their stuff in storage, and one unbelievably resilient tortoise lived to tell about it. We can all collectively shake our heads at the sheer ridiculousness of it, but how many of us also thought (with tiny, nervous voices), "I wonder what's hiding in my closet?"
As I said in My Green Year in Review, this is the year I'm finding new homes for old things. It will be a spring cleaning to end all spring cleanings, with the goal of ending the year with less stuff than I have now. To keep me on track, I'm going back to two of the very best books I've ever read on organizing and decluttering, both by the same author, Cindy Glovinsky (a certified psychotherapist and professional organizer): Making Peace with the Things in Your Life and One Thing at a Time: 100 Simple Ways to Live Clutter-Free Every Day. Although I'm not yet clutterless, Cindy Glovinsky has been a godsend to me, changing the way I view acquiring things and storing them. Probably the most important lesson she taught me was to stop tearing out magazine and newspaper articles, because any of the information I think I'll need someday is available on the internet (just search the publication's online archive). She even cured me of my magazine-buying addiction--I don't subscribe to anything anymore; I get magazines from the library and read newspapers online. This has cut waaaaaay down on papers scattered around the house.
But back to the junk trunks. Glovinsky recommends purging deep storage areas first. Yes, it will be tedious and time-consuming--she even coined the term "Thing Nausea" to describe that feeling you get when you're thoroughly disgusted with all of your stuff--but I will deal with the junk trunks head-on, Thing Nausea and all, and I will conquer them. Because I'm not buying more stuff unless it's essential, and the junk trunks are just a hindrance to being truly clutter-free. I want to have lots of free space...and no hidden tortoises.
What's your Achilles' Heel when it comes to shopping? Shoes? Books? Toys? Can you tame the beast and stop the endless buying cycle? What's your biggest roadblock to getting your house decluttered and organized?
If the kitchen is indeed "the heart of the home," then our home was in dire need of a heart transplant. Thanks to the previous homeowners, our kitchen made us shudder the very first time we walked through it with the realtor, and the chill never went away. It was like a bad 1980's concept of what "The Future" was supposed to look like, complete with high-gloss laminated cabinets, formica countertops, and rounded corners everywhere. This was a custom-designed kitchen that (most likely) cost the previous homeowners a pretty penny, but it just never fit the way we live or our own personal style. It didn't even fit the style of the house, as we live in a transitional Colonial. So, while we liked pretty much everything else about the house when we bought it, the kitchen left a bad taste in our mouths. Sooner or later, we knew we would need to deal with it. It turned out to be later--six years after we bought the house--when the appliances began to break down one after another, like some sort of culinary conspiracy, driving us toward a renovation.
It might seem that the most earth-friendly thing you can do is not to renovate at all. Just keep all of the old stuff if it's still semi-functional, right? However, in May 2011, as chair of our school's Green Team, I participated in a webinar run by Greenfaith and the Jewish National Fund, entitled "Energy Conservation Strategies for Synagogues & Schools." I was surprised to learn that keeping old appliances--or even passing them onto others who are less fortunate--doesn't make good green sense because the energy standards of older appliances are much lower and they eat up a disproportionate amount of non-renewable resources to run them. According to Greenfaith, if the appliance is older than 2001, give it to the delivery service from the appliance store, if they responsibly recycle old appliances. (Most major chains, such as Best Buy and P.C. Richards, provide this service.) This is how we handled our old appliances for our renovation.
As for the cabinets and countertops, our plan was to find a new home for them. They were still in very good condition. Two separate kitchen design companies took a look at our old kitchen and told us it wouldn't be a problem. After all, even though the old kitchen didn't match us, it might be the perfect match for somebody else. Or not...
At the advice of both design companies, we contacted Green Demolitions and emailed them four photos of the kitchen. They got back to us within one day, telling us that they appreciated the offer, but they couldn't accept contemporary-style kitchens because the overwhelming majority of their customers want a more traditional look (just like we did). I appreciated the speed and courtesy of their response.
Then I contacted the local Habitat for Humanity ReStore, via phone and the web, where I sent them the same four photographs of the old kitchen, one of which is below:
Even though we had heard from several sources that Habitat ReStore is notoriously picky about donations, we personally had a good track record with them. A couple of years earlier, they had gratefully accepted from us an entire truckload of unused carpet rolls, shelving, hardware, and light fixtures that were left over from the previous owners--all items that had been just sitting in our basement taking up space.They even filmed a video for YouTube in our driveway as they hauled away all of the stuff (although I never found the finished piece online).
This time, we weren't as fortunate. It took about two weeks to finally get some communication with an actual person at Habitat, but after those two weeks, we were told that YES, they would indeed accept the kitchen. Success! Or not...
Habitat for Humanity does not remove the kitchen for you except in extreme situations (e.g., the house is in foreclosure, being demolished, etc.). So, we needed to pay a kitchen cabinet installer to "de-install" our cabinets. Extra time and money right there. Then, when the truck for Habitat showed up as scheduled, the volunteers took one look at all of the cabinets and countertops, which by then were in our driveway, and told us right away that they could not sell laminated cabinets in their ReStore locations. They ended up taking one small cabinet (throwing us a bone, I think) and the double wall oven. I was fuming at the wasted time and expense for us, not to mention that we had counted on the tax deduction for the sizable donation of several cabinets and countertops. I told them that while I could appreciate the fact that they didn't want the old kitchen stuff (after all, neither did we!), they sorely need better communication between the people in their office who accept the items and the people who actually pick them up. The driver said they're all volunteers, so they can only do so much. Again, I understand their plight as a charitable organization, but communication gaps between their office and their pick-up staff just waste their own resources (gas, time, staff).
After a few more unsuccessful inquiries to personal contacts who might accept the kitchen, we spent an additional $1,800 for the unwanted kitchen to be taken to the dump in two truckloads. (Insert heavy sigh here.) This was exactly what I didn't want to happen, as one of my hottest green buttons is the landfill crisis in this country. It was especially painful to see our old kitchen island chainsawed in half to fit on the truck. So much for our 100% green renovation. Photo below: There goes the backsplash...
Well, since this blog is called "Joyfully Green" and not "Depressingly Earth-Unfriendly," I'll move onto the successful parts of our green renovation. Here's what we did accomplish:
We switched out old, energy-hogging appliances for Energy Star rated appliances.
We used paint that contained zero volatile organic compounds (VOCs). Nearly every major paint company today will sell you eco-friendly versions of the colors you want, without the toxic fumes and chemicals that you and your family would otherwise breathe in for years.Sherwin-Williams (which we used this time) and Benjamin Moore (which we've used other times) both offer these options, the former with their Emerald and Harmony lines, and the latter with their Natura line. The added bonus with these eco-friendly paints is that you can eat or sleep in the same room on the same night you had painting completed, because there is very little--if any--paint odor.
We installed under-cabinet LED lights (light-emitting diodes) for the perimeter counter space. This was an expensive initial outlay, but it quickly pays off because LEDs are long-lasting bulbs that don't require much maintenance, are more energy-efficient than any other bulb, and they don't pose the mercury problem that CFL (compact fluorescent light) bulbs do. As our CFL lights die out in our recessed ceiling fixtures, we're going to switch in LED bulbs there as well. (You can safely dispose of your CFL bulbs at big box stores like Home Depot and Lowe's. Don't just throw them out in the trash, due to the mercury hazard.)
We kept the flooring. While we might have preferred wood flooring, the existing tiles were in excellent shape, a classic style, and still compatible with our new color scheme.
We didn't change the footprint of the kitchen, so no new construction was necessary.
We kept the dining table, chairs, counter stools, window treatments, and pendant light for the table, as we had changed to all of these options when we first moved in six years ago, and had given the previous owners' pendant light and window treatments to our painters.
For the cabinets, we chose wood that was certified as responsibly forested.
We chose quartz countertops over granite. Mark, the owner at Stone Surfaces in East Rutherford, NJ, reinforced for us the many environmental advantages of quartz countertops that we had already read about: (1) Quartz rates higher on the hardness scale, so it's more durable. (2) Unlike granite, quartz does not require any regular maintenance or sealing. (3) It's non-porous, so it resists staining as well as pathogens. (4) It has no invisible cracks just waiting to split open. (5) Unlike granite, quartz is not quarried directly from the ground. Quarrying is, generally, not an environmentally friendly operation. (6) Quartz was less expensive than granite and looked very attractive. (Unfortunately, we could not say the same about the recycled glass countertop samples that we saw--it was just as expensive as granite and didn't fit our aesthetic.) Concrete is another earth-friendly option, and amazing things can be done with it now. (For example, some concrete countertops were designed to look exactly like wood--they fooled us, as well as our kitchen designer.) However, depending on what you choose, the cost can run high. Quartz won out for price, looks, and eco-friendliness.
So, in the end, we weren't able to do a 100% green kitchen renovation. But we tried our best, given our budget constraints and the resources available to us, and we're thrilled with the results. The heart of our home is now healthy and happy.
Our kitchen renovation was handled by Sage Design Studio (www.sageds.com) in Chester, NJ, and their whole crew was exceedingly professional and pleasant, from the designer (Tom Kehoe), to the contractor (Pete Aiello), to the electrician (Anthony Pantiliano of Jade Electric). Best of all: the entire project was completed in just a little over two weeks. Now that's cooking!
