Archive for February, 2010
« Previous EntriesEasy Peasy Tip: Don’t Clean!
Saturday, February 27th, 2010Now, we’re not advocating slovenly behavior, but think about it: even the greenest of cleaning requires resources: water, cleaning agents, reusable rags which will need to be washed, trash bags which will need to be dumped, etc. So when things need to be cleaned, by all means, clean! But if you can let it go [...]
Tiny Choices Survey: Kristina!
Friday, February 26th, 2010Vital statistics (name, age, location)? Kristina, 30. Saint Paul, Minnesota How do you reside (apartment or house, roommates)? I live in a two bedroom 1 bath condo with my husband and our 21mo old daughter. Are your housing decisions dictated by choice or necessity? Please explain. Both. We love living in a walk able part [...]
My New Flame: Continued
Thursday, February 25th, 2010Back in October I crowed about my new lighter, a vintage Zippo which I won on eBay. I was psyched to finally remove disposable plastic lighters & matches from my life, but ended up wondering what lighter fluid was actually composed of, and where it stood on the eco-chart. Enter Beth Terry, aka Fake Plastic [...]
Green-Lympics
Wednesday, February 24th, 2010Hey, y’all, it’s Olympics time! Now, I have to confess that I, ahem, haven’t been watching the Olympics. And that’s kind of a bummer, because 1. I love Canada, and I’m excited they are hosting, and 2. I really love the Olympics. They’re fun, I love the back-stories, I love the athleticism, I love seeing people [...]
Auto-Flush Loos
Tuesday, February 23rd, 2010I’m in Utah this week, and let me tell you, this is one beautiful state. Beautiful! But it’s odd– I’ve noticed an awful lot of auto-flush toilets out here. I’m not sure if there really are more of them here than NYC or if I’m just noticing them, but either way they’re on my mind. [...]
Wacky Wal-Mart
Monday, February 22nd, 2010Lately I’ve been hearing more and more about how Wal-Mart has changed their course and is the new big green kid on the block. For example – over the summer they introduced a “Sustainability Index,” which will calculate the life cycle impact of products and provide it to customers in an easy-to-understand format. Apparently they [...]
Easy Peasy Tip: Make a New Friend!
Saturday, February 20th, 2010We’re sort of-kind of feeling snowed in these days in the north east of the U.S. of A., so this is an easy peasy tip designed to help float you through the cold icy days ahead of us before spring: Make a new friend! You don’t have to find a new BFF or anything extreme, [...]
Tiny Choices Survey: Mike L.!
Friday, February 19th, 2010Vital statistics (name, age, location)? Mike Lieberman, 30, New York City How do you reside (apartment or house, roommates)? Are your housing decisions dictated by choice or necessity? Please explain. I live in an apartment building in the East Village neighborhood of the City with a roommate. When I moved back to NYC a few [...]
Construction Materials Reuse
Thursday, February 18th, 2010As I sit here contemplating the baggy pants on the American half-pipe snowboarding crew, I’m also so excited to write this post and tell you about the coolest construction project I’ve heard about in ages: building a new house while reusing all the materials from the old house. I mean, all the materials: 100% of [...]
Dreaming of Greening
Wednesday, February 17th, 2010In what is turning out to be an annual posting event since we first started writing TinyChoices, I wanted to remind you that it’s CSA sign-up time again! we are sending a check in this week to the people we had our share with last year – Sycamore Farms – our share last year was [...]
My Winter Boot Saga
Tuesday, February 16th, 2010It’s probably an understatement to say that I’m not a big shopper. I get irritable after about 20 minutes in most any store, even if I’m shopping for something I really need… and because of this, I have an supernatural tendency to put off shopping until the very last minute. For example: I haven’t had [...]
Are Hybrids Overly Expensive?
Monday, February 15th, 2010As a hybrid car driver, one of the things that people ask me about a lot is how much more expensive they are. And it’s true – the rule of thumb is always that the markup on a hybrid car ranges from about $3,000 to $5,000 over the same conventional car, so depending on the [...]
Easy Peasy Tip: Buy Smaller Amounts
Saturday, February 13th, 2010When food shopping, if you limit your purchase amounts to only what you’ll need in the near future, there will be less chance of food spoilage and resulting waste. If you only buy the number of tomatoes you’ll need in the next few days, or a small carton of milk, then less of your food [...]
Tiny Choices Survey: Kai!
Friday, February 12th, 2010Vital statistics (name, age, location, link to website/blog)? Kai Rikken, 30, SML, Virginia. I blog at http://thecatinthetree.blogspot.com How do you reside (apartment or house, roommates)? Are your housing decisions dictated by choice or necessity? Please explain. I live with my two young daughters and two dogs in a lake house that my grandparents built. It is a [...]
Truly Impressive Electronics Recycling Program!
Thursday, February 11th, 2010So apparently Best Buy has a fantastic e-waste recycling program– did you know? I didn’t! From their site: “We’ll take just about anything electronic, including TVs, DVD players, computer monitors, cell phones and more. You can bring in up to two items a day, per household, and most things are absolutely free. However, there is [...]
Alternative Fuel Motorcycles
Wednesday, February 10th, 2010It’s been a while since I’ve posted about cars or even motorcycles, but there’s been a lot of cool stuff going on – and as we’re currently frozen indoors and I can’t get out there on my own motorcycle, of course it’s a great time to share some of what I’ve been reading! To start [...]
Minimalism, in Blog Form
Tuesday, February 9th, 2010So glad to have been pointed towards this site, Mnmlist.com. As the fabulous URL hints, it’s all about doing more with less, which, as you dear readers know, is something we’re big advocates of here at Team TC. Mnmlist is another brainchild of the prolific Leo Babauta of Zen Habits fame. As someone who has [...]
DIY Cold house living: hot! rice! sacks!
Monday, February 8th, 2010I’ve mentioned before that our house is really cold. Really! Cold! So I wanted to share a little quality-of-life discovery that has really changed everything: rice bags. Amazing! It’s so simple, really all we did was take a cotton sack that we had around the house (yet another use for those many reusable bags we [...]
Easy Peasy Tip: Keep a towel at work!
Saturday, February 6th, 2010This is a tip so simple that we’re ashamed we didn’t think of it ourselves. Sure, we talk a lot about keeping cloth napkins and hankies on hand so you can avoid disposables. We even have talked about the best way to dry your hands in a public bathroom! so of COURSE we should have thought to suggest that we [...]
Tiny Choices Survey: Julie!
Friday, February 5th, 2010Vital statistics (name, age, location)? Julie G, age 33, Perth, Western Australia. I blog at: www.gogreeneraustralia.com/blog/ How do you reside (apartment or house, roommates)? I live in a unit with my husband, in a just-out-of-the-inner-city suburb. Are your housing decisions dictated by choice or necessity? Please explain. By choice: we took the time to save [...]
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