Recycling, freecycling

This week is Kick It To The Curb week in Daytona Beach, also known as enhanced curbside pickup week.  You can put anything you like out by the curb, and the garbage pickup will take it away for free. Old sofas, mattresses, car parts, whatever. Every other time of the year, you have to make arrangements to haul it out to the landfill yourself, or else just set it outside and see if anyone will come along to get it.

We have quite a few “pickers” in our neighborhood. They drive around in pickup trucks on Sundays, looking for good stuff. Or maybe good enough stuff. When you set something out that is the least bit desirable, it’s gone pretty quick. About three weeks ago, I set out a wicker loveseat that I’d had on my front porch. It wasn’t very sturdy, and it was crooked. The back wasn’t straight across. I set it out and it disappeared pretty quickly. About a week later, as I was walking to the beach, I glanced up at a balcony on an apartment building at the end of the street, and there was my wicker loveseat. I recognized it because of the crooked back. It had gotten freecycled by one of my neighbors. Nice! Good to know that it is being used some more.

Today I cleaned out the garage a bit. I set out an ottoman that I couldn’t use any more, my old rusty bicycle with dry rotted tires, two wheels from my previous car that had been replaced after an accident, and four sets of plantation blinds that wouldn’t fit back into the window frames after I had the old casement windows replaced with double paned ones. I did that all about two hours ago. I glanced outside about a half hour ago, and all of it is already gone except for the ottoman.

That is great because it means that the stuff is going to get used again, not just taken to the dump. I don’t care if the people who took it use it themselves, or if they sell it. Yes, I could have sold it myself, but that means either having people come to the house or having a garage sale, neither of which I care to do. So I’ve donated the stuff to the world at large, and it’s going to get used somehow. Freecycling at its best – the no effort kind.

I hope the ottoman disappears later today. If not, the garbage truck will take it. It’s kind of ugly, and pretty big, and a little stained (the person who gave it to me let her dogs sleep on it). But maybe someone will want it…

What recovery??

I got the form from the county tax office that estimates my property tax for the coming year.  They also give an estimate of the market value of my house.

The market value has dropped another $15,000 in the past year.  It’s now back to what I paid for it in 2000.

Today is the first day of school at our college.  We have another record enrollment this fall.  More students = fewer people working.

Anyone who thinks that our economy is recovering needs to come spend a day in Daytona Beach.  I think it would be an eye-opening experience.

Hoarders

I’ve watched shows on TV where people get organizers to come in and clean up their houses.  Usually they’re successful, and the people love their neat, new home.  I’ve wondered what happens after the organizers leave, though.

Today I saw a show for the first time called Hoarders.  It’s on A&E.  These people are the ones who would have failed a “normal” cleanup.  They’ve lived with stuff and garbage piled high for years.  The reasons vary.  One woman took in stray cats.  She felt a real need to feed them.  When the animal control people came in, they found 37 live cats and more dead ones.  Some were just skeletons.  They didn’t do anything to the rest of the junk.  One couple was going to lose both homes if they couldn’t get one cleaned up to sell.  One girl was losing her boyfriend and her relationship with her parents over her junk.  One kid lived with his alcoholic father, who never threw away any of his wine bottles.

I am a lousy housekeeper, even on my best day.  But I cannot imagine living like those people did/do.  Two of them, the kid with the alcoholic dad, and the girl who was losing her boyfriend, seemed seriously depressed to me.  The girl was sleeping 12 hours a day, had a completely flat affect, and had lost her job as an office manager because of her disorganization.  Depression can certainly affect your ability to get up and clean up.  And I understand wanting to take care of animals, although the lady in the show really couldn’t take care of all the cats she had.

But the couple who were going to lose their houses – that is totally incomprehensible to me.  Would you rather be homeless, or throw away your crap?  And a lot of the stuff she was holding on to was crap.  She was completely neurotic.  I just don’t get it.  I sympathize with the first three, but not with her.  I just wanted to reach into the TV and shake her.

It makes me want to go through everything I own and throw most of it away.  I’d rather live in an empty house than one where you can’t walk through the rooms.

The housing market

According to the mainstream media, there are signs that the housing market has bottomed out.  Maybe, but you’d never know it from around here.  Houses aren’t moving.  One result is that there are more and more rentals in my neighborhood.  Some houses have five and six cars parked around them.

I got my own property tax estimate for the coming year in the mail this week.  The estimated value of my house for tax purposes has dropped $25,000 in the past year!  Fortunately, I’m still not upside-down.  My house would have to lose another $15,000 in value to be worth only what I paid for it.  Even though I refinanced for $20,000 more than I paid for the house (it was worth a LOT more then, in 2005), my mortgage is at the point where the principal amount in each payment is starting to climb pretty quickly, and I don’t think I’ll be upside down anyway.

It doesn’t really matter for me.  I’ll have the house paid off in 11+ years, and I plan to live in it for at least a few years more after that.  Even if the value drops to zero, I’ll still have a roof over my head.

I’m so fortunate to be able to say that.

Saving money on laundry

Ever since I’ve been doing my own laundry, I’ve used Bounce fabric softener in the dryer.  I don’t know exactly why; I guess maybe my mom used it sometimes (although she hung her laundry outside to dry when I was growing up).  I don’t remember ever running out and/or trying to go without it.

Well, last week, I ran out.  I didn’t do grocery shopping at all last week, so I tried drying my clothes without the Bounce.

Guess what?  They’re still soft.  The only difference is that my towels are now more absorbent than they were.

Hehe.  No more Bounce expense!

Washing dishes

Ready, aim, wash

I’ve been using Seventh Generation dish detergent for a while now.  Mostly, I like it.  It suds up nicely.  I only have one qualification: when I wash a greasy dish, the suds disappear.  One greasy dish gets cleaned just fine, but the next one doesn’t.

 

Before I switched to Seventh Generation, I’d used Dawn for years and years.  It was great at cutting grease.  That’s what Dawn was known for.  After the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska, the Dawn people even did an ad showing the waterfowl rescuers washing the birds in Dawn to get the oil off of their feathers. 

 

But the grease-cutting power comes at a price; the chemicals that make that possible are the ones that are bad for the environment.

According to this from Consumer Reports, people in Washington State are having the same problem.  The article is about dishwasher detergent, but it’s the same problem.  Here’s the gist of the story:

“After the ban on the sale of dishwasher detergents with more than 0.5 percent phosphate (some detergents have up to 9 percent) went into effect in the Spokane area last summer, many consumers in the city became unhappy with how well some eco-friendly phosphate-free products cleaned their dishes. So they’ve been making the quick trip east on Interstate 90 into Idaho, where they can stock up on the dishwasher detergents of their choice.” 

So people are driving to the next state to get around a ban on using dish detergent that will get their dishes clean.

IMHO, people are not going to switch en masse to environmentally friendly cleaners of any kind until they do the job just as well as the non-friendly ones do.  In some cases, the “good” cleaners that work as well as the “bad” ones already exist.  But in the case of dish detergent, either for automatic dishwashers or for washing by hand, apparently they don’t.

The new freezer

On Christmas Eve, Santa came to my house in the form of two Sears delivery men, who brought my new chest freezer.  It’s a 7.2 cu. ft., which is plenty big.  I can just reach the bottom when I lean over the edge.  I put it in the corner of the family room; there wasn’t room for it in the garage, and it’s usually too hot out there anyway.

I immediately filled it up about halfway with ice.  I unloaded the kitchen freezer of its ice and put it in the chest, then made more ice by filling up Gladware-type food containers with water.  I also moved over the bags of ice that I made in quart freezer bags, and I’m going to make more of those.  The freezer also contains two pizzas, two packages of bacon, two loaves of bread, and the cornbread that I made in the solar oven on Sunday.

Its main function, though, will be to hold ice.  When the hurricane comes, and everyone else is battling it out for ice at the store, I’ll have my ice already.  If the power is out and the ice melts, it’s a good source of clean drinking water.  Until the power goes out, the chest freezer is a good cooler – I can put everything else from the fridge in there.

Gotta go now – I’m going to make more ice. 

The 16 days of Christmas

Another semester has come and gone – this is our last day of school for two weeks.  (Actually, the students don’t start coming back until 1/12, which is three weeks, but we have to be back to work a week before that.)  There are a lot of good reasons to be in the education field, but one of them is definitely this two week break at the holidays.

 

There are actually 16 days between now and January 5, when we come back.  The weather is usually at its best this time of year, so I’d like to get as much done outdoors as I can.  Therefore, I have assigned myself 16 tasks to accomplish over the break, one for each day.  That should leave time each day as well for walking, reading, baking, and other fun pursuits.  The tasks are:

 

1. Finish the trim area around my back patio, including installing the solar lights I already have
2. Finish edging the back yard path
3. Finish edging the front sidewalk
4. Trim all the shrubs
5. Mulch around the tree in the front yard
6. Mulch around the oleander in the front yard
   

   Gotta have the right tools

7. Finish edging the city sidewalk
8. Edge the area where the junipers are planted
9. Finish digging out the juniper area and plant another juniper
10. Bleach and paint the area of the exterior wall that is wooden and mildewed
11. Plant some carrots
12. Begin digging out the weeds around the north side of the house
13. Begin spreading stone in that area
14. Clean and sort the garage workbench
15. Deep clean main bathroom
16. Dig weeds out of the northeast corner of the front yard and plant some beach sunflower there

 

Now, I’m a great one for making lists.  Except for a grocery list, I don’t remember that I’ve ever completely crossed all the items off a list.  I get off to a good start then I run out of steam.  This time, I’m going to do my best to finish this list in the time allotted.  Weather may be a factor; I’ve got a few indoor things on there, but if we have a long spell of rain and/or cold, I may be indoors more than planned.

 

We’ll see how it goes.

Ten things I like about cool weather

It’s been in the 40′s for the past two nights.  I haven’t turned on the heat, because it’s going to warm back

Brrrrr

up, starting today.  I use the space heater in the bathroom and sleep under two comforters and a blanket.

In general, I’m a hot-weather fan.  Maybe it’s because I’ve lived most of my life in the South.  Give me a choice between 10 degrees of heat index and 10 degrees of wind chill, and I’ll take the heat index every time.

 

But there are definitely things to like about cool weather.  Here are my top ten.

 

1.  Flannel sheets.  Soooo cozy.

 

2.  Flannel pajamas.  Same reason.

 

3.  Lower electric bills.  Our cold weather never comes and stays; it’ll be cold for a couple of days then warm back up.  The heat doesn’t run as much in the winter as the a/c does in the summer.

 

4.  Turtlenecks, sweaters, and heavy jackets.  My wardrobe is greatly expanded in cool weather.

 

5.  The outdoor temperature matches the indoor temperature in my always-freezing office, so I’m always appropriately dressed.

 

6.  Much less sweating.  I can get dressed and walk out the door without breaking a sweat.

 

7.  Less mowing.  Our grass stays green all winter, but it doesn’t grow as fast.  I can get away with mowing about every 3 to 4 weeks, instead of every 1 to 2 weeks.

 

8.  More other yard work.  Because I’m not at risk of heat stroke from being outside for a couple of hours, I can get a lot more done in the yard because I can work longer on any particular day.

 

9.  Fewer bad hair days.  I belong to the humid-frizzies crowd.  Lower humidity in cool weather means less frizz.

 

10. Hot chocolate! 

Freezing in Florida

Actually, this isn’t about the weather.  We hardly ever freeze in Florida.  This is about a freezer.

I’m thinking of getting a small freezer.  The freezer that comes with my fridge is pretty small.  My fridge is pretty small, because my kitchen is pretty small.  Anyway, my freezer is just about full, and I don’t really have that much in there.  I have two servings of chicken, one loaf of bread, one package of pita bread, one frozen pizza, two boxes of pancake mix, one package of brussels sprouts, and a lot of ice.

I need more of these

I keep ice in Gladware-type containers with lids, and in quart-sized freezer bags.  The ice never shrinks, because it’s not exposed to air, and the bags and containers stack easily.  It’s a good source of ice and of clean drinking water in an emergency.  I’d like to have more, but I don’t have room.  If I had a separate freezer, I could keep quite a bit more ice.  Then, when a storm is on the way, I won’t be at the grocery store fighting with other customers over the last few bags of ice.

I could also have more ice cubes.  I have one tray in there now, but I don’t have room for more.  My fridge doesn’t have an ice maker; my kitchen isn’t plumbed for it.  I don’t use ice cubes very often, but when I need to, I usually don’t have enough.  If I had a separate freezer, I could keep all of my ice cube trays filled and ready to use.

I also don’t have room to stock up on frozen items to any extent.  If I had a separate freezer, I could take more advantage of sales.  Also, if my garden is a raging success, I’ll need more room to freeze all of the extra bounty from it.

I would also like to do some “freezer cooking,” where I would make a big pan or pot of something, for instance chili or lasagna, and freeze it in individual servings.  Then it’s available when I need something quick or just don’t want to cook.  If I had a separate freezer, I could do much more of that.

Those are all the pros in the argument.  I do have room for it.  I wouldn’t keep it in the garage, because it’s too hot in there most of the year, but I have a place in the TV room that is right next to the door to the kitchen, inside the air-conditioned house, that would be just right.

The cons are the initial cost and the electricity needed to run it.  I know it would add a few dollars to my power bill every month.  Lowes only has one Energy Star model, and it’s nearly $400.  It also might be too big for my needs.  There are small ones that start at $199.  I don’t know how one of those would compare to the Energy Star one – since it’s considerably smaller, it should take less power to run than a larger one, so it would probably even out.  I don’t want to get a larger freezer than I need.  I’m not going to be freezing any sides of beef or venison.  The lower cost of the smaller model would also mean that I’d recoup the cost in food savings much more quickly.

These are the things I’m thinking about.  The next time I’m at Lowes, I’ll look at them and see if they have the estimated cost of running them posted on those big yellow tags.  Then I’ll think about it some more.  I have two weeks off over Christmas, so if I do get one, that would be the ideal time to do so, and to get it all filled up.