Wonderful Boys

Today it's back to routine. Victor has been on vacation for two weeks along with both boys -- and it's been wonderful. We were thinking about going on an adventure somewhere, like up to Vermont, but ended up staying put and chilling out. It was fabulous. Staying in pajamas way to long, watching movies, sledding -- even skiing (the kids) on a golf course down the street, reading, playing games, sitting by the warm wood stove. It makes you want to homeschool and work from home.

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This is what I came downstairs to yesterday morning. Benjamin folding laundry that was done drying on the racks. Wow. I'm speechless, really. But you know how proud I am. He even sorted socks after he was done folding and put out the wet clothes to dry. No, you can't adopt him. He's mine.

On Saturday afternoon, the boys surprised me with a "Christmas Present". They, on their own, decided that they would go and fetch wood for my fire, as a gift. Amazing, right?

Also on Saturday, I found Benjamin like this . . . yes, working out multiplication on a chalkboard. For his own . . . amusement. You know I'm proud -- but also astonished. Is this kid for real?

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And, yesterday afternoon, I gave him the job of going through all of the seeds I have left over from last summer, and catalog them. He attacked the job with gusto and now -- Voila!

I know what I have, and what I do not. Wonderful.

And here is my precious Ripley doing what he loves best -- sports. Saturday was his first day of basketball. When Benjamin was young, I thought organized sports for little kids was ridiculous. And I still do, to some degree. Children should have time to just go outside and play with their imagination. There is plenty of time for organized everything. Right? However, with Ripley, he just LOVES anything to do with sports. His eyes sparkle, his face lights up and he frequently says things like "Oh! It's so A-W-E-S-O-M-E!" when he talks about sports (he has an older brother, what can I say?). I just can't deny the boy. And sports aren't all bad, right?

Back sore much? This picture cracks me up.

All 6 feet of Victor's frame bent down to Ripley's level.

Here are "the troops". Ripley is the top kid with the yellow shirt on holding a blue ball.

Josie does an amazing job with these 4 year olds. Kudos Josie!

Ways that we have saved

*Constantly being updated*

Over the past year we have tried to pair down our expenses in an effort to live wisely and simply. As it turns out, our timing couldn't have been better. Here are the things we've done:

1. Got rid of the "lawn guy" left over from when I was a single working mother.
2. Got rid of the cleaning lady left over from when I was a single working mother.
3. Got rid of cable.
4. Got rid of long distance phone service. (we use our cell phones for long distance)
5. We brew our morning coffee. It is a rare treat to buy coffee at a store of any kind. Think of all of those wasted cups we save! This is a huge savings. Just think: 2 cups a day at $2 each x 365 = $730 and let's face it, a lot of people buy more than one cup a day -- and $2 won't cover fancy coffee from places like Starbucks.
6. Victor pretty much always brings a lunch to work. Usually it is leftovers from the night before that I pack into a glass container when we do the dishes after dinner. $6 x 5 days a week = $30 x 52 weeks a year = $1560. See how it adds up?
7. Started air drying our clothes -- winter, summer, spring and fall (indoors and outdoors)
8. Turned our thermostats down to 66 degrees (during the months it's cold here) during the day and 55 degrees at night.
9. Put in a large garden in our back yard -- I'm in the midst of making cold frames to grow things in the cold months as well.
10. We are in the midst of chopping wood (we have tons of it in our large yard -- one large one got struck by lightening and we had to cut two down to give my garden more light) to help heat our house this winter -- we have oil heat and I'm petrified!
11. Put in a small orchard
12. Started composting -- free "fertilizer"!
13. Started driving our own trash / recyclables to the dump. With recycling and composting we generate one medium bag of trash every 2 weeks. One bag is $1.50 to bring to the dump. $1.50 x 26 weeks a year = $39 a year. When we had trash service it cost $35 a month x 12 months = $420 a year. Total savings: $381 a year.
14. Committed to using things that aren't disposable that you have to keep buying -- like paper towels (use dish clothes and towels) paper napkins (cloth napkins) swiffers & kitchen wipes (rags and elbow grease) ... you get the idea.
15. Cook from scratch. This is a HUGE savings, AND you will be eating better tasting food that is better for you.
16. Make things instead of buying things. The sky is the limit here. Make your own laundry and dishwasher soap. Knit mittens from left over yarn. Everything you do will have a big impact. The more you do, the better.
17. Use the library. Most have a network so that you can "order" books from cooperating libraries. There are few things you cannot find.
18. Buy used things from thrift stores. Less expensive and better for the environment. Great combo!
19. Eat less meat. Did you know that cows and pigs - their waste - causes more damage to the environment than our cars? It's the methane gas released into the air from the er .... poo. Supposedly if each family ate just one less MEAT MEAL we could dramatically effect our environment for the better. Anyway, that's the added bonus of eating less meat. Not only do you get to help the environment, you also get to save big time at the grocery store. Plus, let's face it, it's healthier to eat less meat. For the past month or two we've been eating a MEAT MEAL about once a week. Plus, if you have your own garden like I do, just eating all of the ripe veggies is enough to keep you busy and well fed!
20. Started to make our own laundry soap, dishwasher soap, glass cleaner and furniture polish. Link info here.
21. Make our own bread.
22. Bought a woodstove -- goodbye $600 oil bill!

How about you? Are you working on ways to save?

News! News! News!

How is everyone? Did you know that you can respond to the blog right at the end of each day's entry? Let me know what you think!

Here is the PHOTO of my nutty parents dressed as Roman Soldiers and their nutty daughter ... me ... dressed as Freida Khalo for Halloween that I'd promised to show you! What fun! And what a hoot!

GREEN TEA

I guess I'm the last to know .... But, just in case I'm not the LAST one ...

Did you know that when you make Green Tea, you are not supposed to steep it in boiling water? You should let the boiling water cool just a bit (or use before it boils) then pour over the tea. Steeping Green Tea in boiling water makes it very BITTER. I learned this over our vacation from my mother. My sister-in-law Tanya jumped in and explained that she'd heard this directly from someone from Asia (Can't remember the exact connection). Then, of course my darling (and handsome) husband jumps in, "Yeah, come to think of that, I've heard of that too!" Wow! And, when you look on the directions on the box, (who looks at the "how to brew tea" directions?? Not me, obviously) sure enough it says "To avoid bitter taste, steep for 2 to 3 minutes in hot, not boiling water". To give myself a little credit, my Yogi Green Tea comments on the water temperature, my TAZO tea does not.

ELECTRIC BILL

Finally, the results are in ...

We have a full months worth of data. Here is what we changed. We started LINE DRYING our laundry instead of using the dryer. We probably dry 2 loads a week in the dryer. I replaced six of our light bulbs with the newer, more efficient CFL light bulbs (more on that later). We tried to chip away at our ghost electricity, like making sure ALL of our television "stuff" was turned off completely, same with the computer, printer and the monitor. Then, of course, trying to make sure we turn off lights if we are not in the room. We DID do outdoor / indoor Christmas lights this year, however, I did NOT put my typical electric candles (8 of them) in each of my front windows. Last year for the same period we used 1058 KWH. This year we used 786 KWH. Wow! That's a big improvement, eh?? Exciting.

OK, CFL Light Bulbs ...

Has anyone else been asking themselves about the mercury levels in the CFL bulbs? When I heard about the recent energy bill that passed, I was dismayed thinking about what else besides fish we were going to contaminate with mercury when we all switch to CFL bulbs by law. After chats with my sister-in-law Tanya and cousin Dave, I checked it out. Here's the gist ...

Incandescent light bulbs are only 5% efficient. Not good. "Replacing incandescent bulbs with compact fluorescents saves energy as you are replacing a 100-watt bulb with one that is only 23-watts, while still producing the same amount of light. In addition, the CFL bulbs produce 70 percent less heat, lowering the need for air conditioning. A CFL bulb will typically last ten times as long as a traditional incandescent bulb, saving you $30 or more over the life of each bulb." But, what about the mercury? A CFL contains 2.4mg of mercury. A power plant releases 10mg of mercury to create the electricity to run an incandescent bulb. So, a CFL will ultimately release less mercury than the incandescent bulb. The important part about the CFL, is to dispose of it properly. To be perfectly honest, it scares me to think of trusting the general American public to do a responsible job with this. But, anyway, Tanya had reported to me that a friend of theirs had a CFL spontaneously explode in their house. On a web site I read a response by Helen Suh MacIntosh, a professor in environmental health at Harvard University, regarding the danger level of a broken / exploded CFL in your home.

Here is what she said:

"These toxic effects are why any mercury spill should be handled carefully, including one that results from a CFL breaking. Having said this, careful handling does not mean that expensive or complicated clean-up of the spill is needed or that you should be worried about you or your family's health, if a CFL were to break in your home. This is because CFLs contain relatively small amounts of mercury -- EPA estimates this amount to be 4-5 milligrams (mg) in a typical CFL. A spill of this amount of mercury is not likely to present any excess risk to you or your family. A quick back-of-the-envelope calculation shows why. [Note: This example is meant only as a quick and dirty example. It is not intended to represent every case nor every situation.] For example, we could imagine the following scenario:
A CFL containing 5 mg of mercury breaks in your child’s bedroom that has a volume of about 25 m3 (which corresponds to a medium sized bedroom). The entire 5 mg of mercury vaporizes immediately (an unlikely occurrence), resulting in an airborne mercury concentration in this room of 0.2 mg/m3. This concentration will decrease with time, as air in the room leaves and is replaced by air from outside or from a different room. As a result, concentrations of mercury in the room will likely approach zero after about an hour or so.
Under these relatively conservative assumptions, this level and duration of mercury exposure is not likely to be dangerous, as it is lower than the US Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) standard of 0.05 mg/m3 of metallic mercury vapor averaged over eight hours. [To equate these values, we could estimate the average indoor airborne mercury concentration for 8 hours, beginning post-spill at an estimated starting value of 0.2 mg/m3 and decreasing from there. If one assumes the the air exchanges completely in one hour (a fairly standard assumption), then the 8-hour average concentration would be 0.025 mg/m3.] "

Ms. MacIntosh goes on to explain how to handle a broken CFL ....

"Even though mercury from the broken CFL is not likely to be dangerous, it would be wise to take extra precautions to minimize mercury exposures. The US EPA publishes guidelines about the specific steps that you should take to clean up mercury in the event that a CFL breaks in your home. Briefly, EPA recommends that (1) you immediately open windows to reduce mercury concentrations inside your home; (2) you do not touch the spilled mercury; (3) you clean up the broken CFL glass carefully and immediately (but not with your hands or a vacuum cleaner), and (4) you wipe the affected area with a paper towel to remove all glass fragments and mercury. EPA further recommends that you place the paper towel and glass fragments in a sealed plastic bag and bring the sealed bag to your local Household Hazardous Waste (HHW)Collection Site."

This link is helpful: http://www.treehugger.com/

LOW MERCURY BULBS: Philip's ALTO bulbs offer mercury content only 13 to 25 percent of typical fluorescent bulbs without sacrificing longevity or performance. Several other manufacturers are now offering low mercury bulbs as well.

Hope this hasn't been incredibly boring, but it's been something weighing on my mind and I thought I'd pass it along.

Enjoy! Stay tuned ... I've got some great family recipes to pass along after our Christmas Vacation. (WHO KNEW my mother used to make chocolate eclairs regularly! I still have to get that one Mom!)

Line Drying my Laundry - INDOORS

Here is my .... clean laundry ... for everyone to see! Some of you may know that my sister-in-law started drying her clothes indoors (during the cold months) in an effort to live GREEN. Inspired by a series she heard God is Green by Mars Hill. See www.marshill.org By not using her electric dryer four loads out of five she reduced her electric bill by 40%. (Two months in a row) Wow. When she told me, I jumped in. (I've never been so excited to see my electric bill ... it's due and it just doesn't seem to come!) A few of you have inquired about the logistics of doing such a thing -- especially if space is limited. Here are a few things I've learned: If you keep up with your laundry and simply do one load a day, almost everything fits onto two racks. My other sister-in-law who is giving this a try here and there and has limited space says that if you put your laundry out in the evening, it's pretty much dry by morning. So, you don't have to look at it all day. I'll let you know how my electric bill looks when it comes . . .

Concerns

Over the past two weeks, after hearing an On Point segment on WBUR - regarding the safety of plastics and our food called Our Toxic Environment, I started researching the subject and chatting with friends regarding our health and our environment. Another segment on On Point that is interesting is The-Body-Chemistry-of-America. Here are some of the things I've discovered:

Do not use plastic with a #7 in the recycling triangle. This type of plastic seeps chemicals (Bisphenol A or BPA and phthalates) into the liquid or food it contains. About Bisphenol A, Parenting Magazine (sept. 2007) commented "A chemical in some plastics called bisphenol A (BPA) — which has been linked with cancer, impaired immune function, hyperactivity, and other problems — can leach into a bottle's contents."There's no need to be frightened, but you should try to reduce your baby's exposure to this chemical," says pediatrician Harvey Karp, M.D., a board member of Healthy Child Healthy World, a non-profit group that raises awareness about environmental toxins." In rats phthalates have caused hormonal problems, non-cancerous tumors, genetal diformities. In humans, asthma, allergies, low sperm counts in men have been "statistically linked" to phthalates. An article in USA Today by Elizabeth Weise and Liz Szabo said "Europe took it (phthalates) out of toys years ago," Borrone says. "Why are we so behind?" Her home state is catching up with her. This month, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed into law the country's first ban on the use of phthalates in toys and other children's products. Under the law, any product made for young children that contains more than one-tenth of 1% of phthalates cannot be sold or distributed in California beginning in 2009."

You may use plastic with a #5 in the recycling triangle, but do not wash it in the dishwasher or heat it in the microwave -- as the heat allows the plastic to release the chemicals into your food / liquid. And as the plastic gets older or scratched it must be recycled b/c the wear and scratches allow for the chemicals to seep.

I've decided to reduce my use of plastic and get rid of my tupperware and plastic sippy cups / water bottles.
Here are some good resources if you're interested.
For lunches: Wrap your sandwiches in good ole' fashioned wax paper like your mom used to (my mom did anyway).
For sippy cups / water bottles: Kleancanteen has great metal options. The plastic that is on the cup is non seeping.

For sippy cup with handles: Thermos has a metal sippy cup with handles for younger ones.

For tupperware alternatives: Williams-Sonoma has great glass food storage containers, although they are a little pricey -- but they are airtight with a metal top and can go in the freezer. Very cool! Also, Crate-and-Barrel also offers cute glass storage containers with glass tops.

Other environmental accomplishments:

I'm committed to drinking filtered water in a water bottle (not plastic of course). After doing some reading, my sister-in-law reported to me that recycling plastics is the most toxic form of recycling. Better to recycle, but better still not to create the piles of plastic that needs to be recycled. I'm just trying to do my part.

I'm trying not to use plastic wrap or ziplock baggies. I'm using my new glass storage containers instead. We'll see how it goes.

My sister-in-law saved 40% on her electric bill for the past two months. Want to know how? Air drying her clothes (indoors) rather than in her electric dryer. Wow! As an experiment, for the past week I've air dried my clothes. It was not that difficult, and I felt so good about accomplishment that it made laundry a lot more fun.

Well, that's a lot of information for you to munch on. Enjoy.