Paul & Jenn's Adventures

I just finished writing an article on OEIC (our energy independence community) on sustainability of cotton versus man-made materials and it got me thinking about how much water we use daily. Ok, you're saying, I use it for cooking, showering, and watering the lawn... Right, but did you know that it takes over 700 gallons of water to produce 1 T-shirt? Or how about nearly 1800 gallons of water for one pound of beef? Clean water is a disappearing resource. We are all responsible as stewards of our planet to educate ourselves on the true cost of our choices. Check out this interactive way to learn about water use courtesy of National Geographic!

Winter is upon us and some nights are dipping below freezing. One task on my mind is to improve the insulation of our house for better energy efficiency and comfort. Currently, I am focused on the garage. Although the garage is usually considered an unheated space and not insulated, this is not completely true in our case. We have a raised ranch house with the bottom floor being the 2 car garage, laundry room, and family room. The 3 bedrooms we have are above the garage, and the rest of the upper floor is the living room, bathroom, and kitchen. The floor of our master bedroom is often cold, and I suspect that the insulation between the floor and the garage below is not very good. Heat also leaks from the family room and laundry room into the garage through a thin wall. To make matter worse, the north side of the garage exterior wall is currently not insulated. It is just 2x4 wood studs with exterior sheathing and wood siding, on top of 9" concrete block foundation. The insulation ...

We are all for using cloth diapers, economically and sustainability wise, it just works out. But there are times when disposables come in real handy. For long trips and overnight, we use disposable because it's easy and absorbent. I know some folks use cloth exclusively, but I just didn't feel like lugging around dirty cloth diapers! Cloth works really well for us at home, but when we are out for 3-4 hours at a time, it can be hard to find a place to change the baby. Since disposables are more absorbent, baby is ok not being changed for a bit longer than if he had cloth. Now we've tried lots of brands of disposable diapers including Pampers, Huggies, Seventh Generation, the best one we found and settled on is Nature Babycare by Naty. Micah has never had diaper rash in these diapers and rarely has blow-outs. Since Micah reached 4 months old, we started not changing him in the middle of the night. He now lasts from 11pm to 7am in one diaper without any problems. Yay for sl...

Marcelle and Lauren, fellow crafters, at the Artique checkout When I first walked in, I was immediately taken aback by the delightful range of visuals. On my left, was a beautiful antique hand-carved wood screen door, and on my right was friendly staff at the counter ready to help me find what I needed. There were gorgeous handmade, unique items everywhere offered by over a hundred independent vendors. The merchandise range from jewelry to stationary, hand made soaps to antique bowls, re-purposed, antique items, and much much more, all displayed thoughtfully and beautifully in vendor "booths". But "booth" is really not the right word because it looks nothing like the long windy aisles of home shows or craft fairs. However diverse the merchandise and vendor personality, the store really looks cohesive as a whole and feels much more homey and interesting than any craft fair could ever be.

One of the little things that gets me excited everyday is checking the mail. There's something about the unpredictability of it that never fails to intrigue me. Would this be the day that I would get a handwritten note from a long lost friend? Or a card or pictures from a family member? However on most days, I'm instead not entirely surprised to get a pile of junk mail to sort through. It's actually become a chore to decide what to recycle, what to file away, and what to keep on our coffee table indefinitely then throw out later. More clutter, that's exactly what I need, not. Did you know that 44% of junk mail is thrown away unopened? And that Americans pay $370 million annually to dispose of un-recycled junk mail? The best way to deal with the flow of junk mail is to stop it at the source. There's a few classes of junk mail that I get and how I deal with them:

When I was a baby, my parents used cloth diapers for me because that was all we had at the time in China. It was laborious to hand wash, hang dry, and fold. Nowadays, it's the norm to use disposables here in the US as well as cities in China. With the convenience, also comes a significant strain on the environment. We throw away about 18 billion diapers per year, and it's the single most common consumer item found in landfills. The environmental proposition for cloth diapering is a strong one, but I will save that topic for a future post. Today I will compare for you cloth diapering to disposable diapers from a purely economic perspective for the average family. Does it really save money to use cloth? Let's look at a few case studies. Disposables diapers: Cost $1387.00 for 2 years Newborn Pampers 30% off from Amazon Mom + Subscribe and Save: $0.19 per diaper Assume 10 diapers per day $0.19 per diaper X 10 diapers per day = $1.90 per day $1.90 per day X 365 per year =...