Show Us Your Trash! Plastic Challenge

I don’t try to avoid plastic like my friend and fellow Green Carnival Mom Fake Plastic Fish, but I do try to limit the amount I use. I try to avoid sending plastic along with everything else that comes into The Condo to the landfill as much as possible. Recently Beth issued a challenge to collect all of my plastic waste for one week. I accepted.

It’s time to put up or shut up. Here are my results.

Personal description: My husband and I live in Central Ohio.

1. List of Recyclable Items:

• 1 milk gallon jug, #2 plastic. My city recycles #1 – #7 plastics.
• 1 medicine bottle, #1 plastic.
• 3 plastic caps. From the milk, medicine, and a glass bottle of organic balsamic vinaigrette. The plastic caps are recycled through Aveda’s cap recycling program.
  

2. List of Non-recyclable Items
I split this category into two sub categories: 2b Reuse, because sometimes I buy things just so I can reuse the container and 2a Toss.

2a. Toss

• 1 zip top bag of 4 flounder filets. (Too stiff for reusing to clean up after the dog. Too bad because it has zip top)
• 2 plastic wrappers that held 1 frozen salmon fillet each.
• 1 Plastic wrapper from a container of organic mushrooms.
• 1 wrapper from ground turkey.
• 3 silver wrappers from my dog’s seasonal allergy medication. He gets half a pill a day.
• 8 silver wrappers from my seasonal allergy medication. Hey, look, the allergy pill wrappers make a happy face! That’s because I didn’t have enough trash to spell out “Hi Beth!”

2b. Reuse

• 1 plastic container from the organic mushrooms. It’s #2 and can be recycled. I’m reusing it in my craft room to store blog business cards that I’m making from reclaimed materials.
• 1 bag of frozen broccoli. Bag will be reused for pet waste pickup.
• 1 bag of dried great northern beans. Bag will be reused for pet waste pickup.
• 1 advertising bag. Bag will be reused to pick up pet waste. We get these weekly on our doorstep no matter what.

We have pooper scooper laws here. I have a dog. I have to have something to deal with this issue. This leads me to an extra category…

2c. Reuse 2 (Doggie Doo)

When we have an empty plastic bag, I put it away for doggie reuse. Here’s an example of the other types of bags we use/reuse to pickup Blitzkrieg’s daily payloads.

• The black bag is a biodegradable pet waste bag I purchased.
• A zip top bag from a gift of dried hot peppers.
• A clear bag that was part of the packaging of something we purchased. (I can’t remember what) – Bio is printed on the bag because they say that the bag is a corn based plastic and biodegradable.
• A blue plastic grocery bag. I use reusable shopping totes for groceries. In my mom’s city she has to put her recycling in a blue plastic bag. Many of the stores in her area switched to blue colored shopping bags so their customers can reuse them for recycling. My mom gives me some of her bag stash from time to time since I need bags for Blitzkrieg. Sometimes I use these bags for household trash since my city requires me to bag that too. It takes us about a month to fill a plastic grocery bag with trash.

3. Total number of items

• Recycle – 5
• Toss - 17
• Reuse – 4
• Reuse 2 (Doggie Doo) – 3

Grand total of plastic items - 30

4. Analysis. Answer the following questions as best as you can.

What items could I easily replace with plastic-free or less plastic alternatives?

• Organic mushrooms – During the summer we buy fresh vegetables at the farm market as much as we can. However we have snow that means that most of our winter vegetables are fresh nonlocal vegetables from the grocery store.

What items would I be willing to give up if a plastic-free alternative doesn't exist?

• 2 plastic wrappers that held 1 frozen salmon fillet each – I should give up the salmon because it is the only type of fish we buy that comes in shrink wrapped plastic in another plastic bag. But I really, really, really like salmon. We don’t try to eat it very often though.

How many of these items are from "convenience" foods that could be made from scratch with less packaging but might take more time to prepare?

• Organic balsamic vinaigrette. We bought this bottle for a dinner party and finished it this week by using it as a chicken marinade (NOM!)
• Frozen broccoli. We keep a small stash of frozen vegetables in the freezer for quick meals or when we run out of fresh.

What items are essential and seem to have no plastic-free alternative?

• Milk. As a runner my husband drinks A LOT of milk. I need to buy it by the gallon which comes in plastic. No creative reuse for the jug in my tally, maybe it will come back to me someday as a free reusable shopping tote?
• Allergy Medication. I switched both Blitzkrieg and I from prescription medication that comes in recyclable bottles to an over the counter medication that generates some waste (the box is recyclable) due to price, amount of medication, and to cut down on the number of follow visits to the doctor and vet to refill the prescriptions.
• Pet Waste. I looked into a pet waste composting system but they won’t work with our clay soil. Paper bags didn’t work very well either. I asked Blitzkrieg if he’d stop pooing but he gave me a look that said, “I’ll stop when you stop.”
• Frozen fish. The plastic free fresh fish are sometimes flown in, which tastes better and has less packaging but use many more resources and is insanely expensive. Frozen and economical win – there’s a recession on you know?
• Meat. This is how my store sells ground turkey. At least this has less packaging than the plastic wrapped ground meat on a tray method, less expensive too. Our health department is very strict about not letting customers use their own containers for meat.
• Beans. Dry beans come in plastic bags. When I buy them at Meier’s bulk bins, there’s usually drama when weighing the items at the cash register even when I use their plastic bags. I don’t dare use cloth bulk bin bags at Meijer.

What lifestyle change(s) might be necessary to reduce my plastic consumption?

• Stop buying bulk items would cut down on plastic but would significantly increase the amount of our overall recycling/waste in my bin. Often the plastic bottle version is a large size that allows me to generate less household waste or is the only one available unless I want to zig zag all over the city buying one plastic free item here and there. That wastes time, energy, and gasoline (which are how we end up with the raw material to make all those plastics in the first place.) In essance I'm trading one type of recyclable item for another. Buying in bulk also helps us save money so we can easily afford more expensive items like Blitzkrieg’s kibble that’s made with USA sourced human grade ingredients.
• Grow more food. We are working on raised beds in the front yard that can accommodate more herbs and maybe a few vegetables tucked in amongst the flowers in next year’s front garden. Fortunately my in-laws offered to grow extra vegetables for us in their garden including eggplant, which they don’t even like! Since they offered to grow extra fresh food for us, we opted not to buy half a CSA share this year.

What one plastic item am I willing to give up or replace this week?

• Soda in plastic bottles. I’m looking for some creative and affordable alternatives to pop in plastic bottles. I’d serve my guests more Ohio made wine and beer in glass bottles but every parent I know and the law frowns upon serving such items to minors. Crazy, no?
  

What other conclusions, if any, can I draw?

I’m pretty selective about what I buy and I think our experiment shows that because our plastic waste is the only trash our household generated for the week. The rest was composted or recycled. We are very lucky to be able to recycle #1 - #7 plastic. We take full advantage of this service especially in situations when the price of the plastic free version of something is significantly more expensive or is of a much smaller size, which would mean that more containers would go into our recycling bin more often. Since we have to take our recycling to a city dumpster instead of easily wheeling it the curb for pickup we are just as conscious about the number of items that go in our recycling bin whether they are plastic, glass, metal, or paper as we are our city trash bin.

Blitzkrieg offers us a way to get an extra reuse out of the plastic bags that we can’t recycle. It’s not perfect, or ideal, because we are still throwing the bags away after one reuse but we’re trying to make the best out of the situation we’re given.

Overall, I think the amount of plastic that we generated was small. Although there's always room for improvement. I was surprised how quickly those allergy pill wrappers add up!

Stylish DIY Dog Toy Storage

I have a dog. He has toys. He likes to help me decorate The Condo by artfully placing his toys all over the living room and our bedroom. Blitzkrieg clearly needed a toy box.

Most dog toy boxes have lids. I didn’t want that because I wanted something that would corral Blitzkrieg’s dog toys in one spot (in theory) but that he would be able to access at any time he wanted to play with them. At the time we were still trying to teach Blitzkrieg what toys where, how to play with them, and that in this house; you won’t get smacked around for pulling your dog toys out of your toy box and playing with them. In fact, I was trying to encourage Blitzkrieg to find a toy and chew on that instead of stress chewing on himself.

Oh, and if the toy box could be somewhat stylish that would be nice too.

I mentioned this to another dog owning friend and thought that a wicker basket might do the trick. She said that’s what she used until her dog ate the basket. Apparently there are a lot of dogs that find wicker tasty.

I crossed that option off of my list.

I found a large brass bowl at Target. It was on clearance and it was a little beat up but it would hold a few toys in our bedroom. Hoping for a better solution, I decided not to buy it. You know, bass = 80’s = ugh.

5 Ways to Whiten Clothes Without Chlorine Bleach

I like bright white laundry but I don’t like to use chlorine bleach. Chlorine bleach has some nasty chemicals in it and if you’re not careful you could ruin your clothes (looks pointedly at Husband who bought a cleaner that contained bleach unbeknownced to me until it ruined the pants I was wearing at the time I was using it.)

Fortunately there are several ways to keep your white’s white without using toxic bleach.

How to Save Money and Make Things Last – Date It!

The Condo Blues Law of Oops dictates that I will run out of something only when I’m in the middle of using it to do something like cleaning, baking, or in a project.

Just so I won’t run out of something at a bad time I used to think that if it’s something we use daily like shampoo or toothpaste or cleaner then I should just buy it every time it goes on sale to save money. Then I’d have a backup on hand when we run out. In theory that should work just fine.

Problem was that I still seemed to run out of stuff like brown sugar in mid-cupcake baking frenzy while on the other hand I constantly had at least four extra tubes of toothpaste in the linen closet on any given day of the year. There were times when I had so many extra tubes of toothpaste laying around that I considered giving them out as party favors to guests, “Hi how ya doin'? Want something to drink? Snacks are on the dining room table, and oh hey - here you go - have a tube of toothpaste as a parting gift!”

Husband wisely vetoed my bizarre attempts at generosity.

To get a handle on how long stuff lasted, or not, I decided to write the date I opened it on the label of consumable items like toothpaste, cleaners, olive oil, etc. You may think that’s incredibly anal retentive of me, because, I admit it, it is.

But you know what? Well my little born on date experiment also made me realize a few things. Our happy little family of 2 didn’t go through nearly as many bottles, tubes and cans of cleaners, condiments, and health and beauty aids as I thought. For example, we only use about 2 tubes of toothpaste a year even though we brush our teeth a lot.

I found that I really didn’t need to buy that extra bottle of whatever every time it went on sale if I already had a backup item in the pantry or utility room. That saves me money, cuts down on waste, and gives me a little extra storage room around The Condo!

Husband no longer has to worry about me foisting pantry extras at guests in the guise of parting gifts either.

How long do things last at your house? What are your money saving shopping tips?

This post is part of Works for Me Wednesday.

Make a Garden Border Out of Old Bricks!

The arrangement goes that the Homeowner’s Association is responsible for mowing our lawns and common areas but we Condo owners are responsible for the maintaining the flowerbeds in front of our homes, including the edging. Well, I don’t think someone gave the new lawn service guys that memo because shortly after they started taking care of our neighborhood, they put in trench edging in everyone’s flowerbeds, much to our dismay.

Trench edging is cheap, but it doesn’t keep mulch from sliding out of a flower bed. Even worse, since we have clay soil that doesn’t drain, every time it rains the trench turns into the perfect mosquito nursery.

This is my neighbor’s yard after a rainstorm. They are very nice people and don't deserve such crappy edging.

Needless to say, most of my neighbors dealt with the trench edging by replacing it with their own garden edging.

What are Your Favorite Power Tools for Women?

I like to do DIY jobs. I hate nagging Husband to do my projects – I think that’s mean (no nagging also helps preserve marital harmony.) I don’t believe in a Honey Do List. In my world it’s a Do It Yourself Honey! List.

One of my long term goals is to set up a little workshop in my garage. Operative word Lisa’s Workshop. Where I have a space to fix things or more accurately, an out of the way place to stick stuff that I need to fix or want to build until I find the time to get around to it. Just like my father and his father before me.

I’m in the market for tools. Unfortunately most tools made for women or a woman’s workshop are along these lines.

The biggest problem I find with power tools that are designed for women is that that just plain suck.

Why is it that most tool companies think that all women want are tiny tools in pretty colors? Sure, those cutesy tools may sell but what the tool companies don’t realize is that when those itty bitty cheap pink tools eventually break, and they will, the woman is going to march into the store and replace them with a real grown up version of the tool in question – the type of tool the industry typically thinks of as a “guy” tool like this.

This isn’t a super duper powerful hammer drill that will drill through concrete (unless that’s your need - then have a ball), but it’s more than adequate for the typical handy guy or handy gal who needs a good screw gun or to build something simple like a toy box for their kid. Think a mom (or awesome Aunt) could use that lavender “woman’s drill” to build a simple wooden toy box or turn a trash can into a compost bin? Me neither.

I wish tool companies had opportunities for women DIYers and bloggers to be consultants just like household and appliance companies do because I’d love to test and try out tools and tell them (and you my fabulous readers men and women alike) what really works and what doesn’t. *sigh* but a girl can dream…

Since that’s not reality, I’m going to spill my guts here. Hey tool companies listen up!

Here’s What Real Women Want in Power Tools:

Quality – I want a tool that will last. More often than not the cheaply made, lightweight women’s tools break too easily during routine tasks. That’s dangerous. I snapped the head off of a diminutive “girl” claw hammer when I tried to use the claw end to remove a nail from a wall and rehang a picture - a simple and straightforward task. The force of the hammerhead breaking knocked me on my butt. Fortunately for me, I wasn’t on a stepstool at the time because I could have been injured. I grabbed a grown up “boy” hammer from the toolbox and I was able to remove the nail without breaking the claw or snapping the head off of the hammer.

Weight – I’m 4’11 and I’d like to use a tool that’s physically light enough for me to handle without forsaking the power needed to do the job. Sure I’ll suck it up and heft a heavy tool if the jobs requires. I’ve done it. But if you can design a tool that allows me to work just as effectively as or more so than my current heavy tools not only will I buy it but I’ll shout about it from rooftops! I’ll also buy one for every guy I know.

Scale and Grip - Not every DIYer is a big burly dude with massive man hands. Husband is a lean long distance runner and is also on the short side. A tool that’s scaled for to a shorter person will work for both of us as long as you don’t skimp on the quality. Something that allows me to set the grip of the tool for my small hands but would also allow me to switch the grip so that a person like my Dad with his bigger guy hands could also use the same tool when we work on a project together would be awesome.

Better Ergonomics – This is what I think of when I say “tools made for women.” Tool companies I know you put a lot of research and development dollars into studying the body mechanics and how to redesign tools so that customers can use more efficiently. A good example of this are the hammers with the slightly curvy handle that allow you to drive a nail into a board better but without needing an extra “oomph” of power to drive a nail into a board. Typically those studies are being conducted and the resulting products are being aimed at older male DIYers who have more time to DIY during their retirement years but may not have the same physical strength as they once had during their younger years. Tool companies – these studies also apply to women! If you market to us we will buy these products! Or maybe the men in our lives will buy them for us (hint, hint.)

Color –In all honesty, if I see a pink tool for sale, I’m not going to buy it. Experience has taught me that pink tools are crap. Sorry toolmakers but you taught me that all you care about is making a woman’s tool pink and pretty not about quality or performance. By the way, my Husband and I share tools just like we share kitchen appliances. We have one refrigerator not a pink one for me and a blue one for him. That means I could care even less about tool color.

Tool companies, this is something the guys won’t tell you – as a women I get an extra boost of confidence and self-esteem when I complete even a minor job with a tool that looks like the real deal and not like I need to store it in Barbie’s dream house after I’m done using it. If you can design a tool that meets my performance needs, makes me feel confident when using it, and might even make the men in my life a bit little jealous because it looks like a kick ass tool that they’d want to own - mission accomplished – you’d have yourself a customer for life.


Real World Example: Tool Purchase Based on a Woman’s Needs

Recently, Husband and I needed to buy a mini sledge hammer to break up some concrete in our front flower beds. Here’s how our purchase stacked up to the needs and wants I have on my tool wish list.

Quality: We made our purchase at a home improvement store not a cheap closeout or discount store.

Weight: A four pound mini sledge (a little bigger than a traditional hammer) would do the job quite nicely. Husband could use the four pounder but it was a little too heavy for me. I could only comfortably use the two pound mini sledges on display.

Scale and Grip: We wanted a tool that both of us could use because chances were that we’d be switching on and off until the job was complete.

Ergonomics: We ended up buying a much more expensive three pound mini sledge hammer because the handle and grip were designed so that it was physically lighter to swing (so a small person like me could use it) but delivered the “whoomp!” of a 4-5 pound mini sledge hammer (something that a bigger person like Husband could use.)

Color: By the way the hammer was blue. Who cares? The tool worked and now it’s the color of the dirt in my yard.

That’s my wish list for women’s power tools. What are yours? What do you think about pink power tools? Love 'em? Hate 'em? What power tools would you recommend for women?

Did you enjoy this post? Get more like it by subscribing to Condo Blues.

What’s this Yellow Mold Doing in My Compost?

As with most newly built homes, my developer sold off all of the wonderfully fertile topsoil in my neighborhood and built our homes on the clay subsoil residing underneath. Unfortunately the builder didn’t put any topsoil back into the planting areas. Ever try to grow anything in clay soil? It doesn’t work very well.

Before I can even consider turning this dirt patch into a raised garden bed I need to mix organic material into the clay soil – preferable compost. Fortunately, sneaky person that I am I have a big ol’ composter making some fertilizer for me by way of a garbage can I made into a compost bin that fully complies with my Homeowner’s Association Rules. My first batch of compost came out well. After feeding the Covert Urban Composter food scraps all winter it was time to check how much Gardner’s Gold I had to work with this spring.

I mosey on over to the compost bin in the backyard. I take a look. I see this.

I get grossed out.

After some research I discovered that this yellow spongy, foamy and phallic looking blob is a slime mold. Specifically, Dog Vomit Slime Mold .

Aptly named don’t you think?

Dog Vomit Slime mold (gosh you just don’t get to type that several times in one sitting do you?) usually develops in damp, shady areas where there is a lot of decaying organic matter like soggy flower beds that use bark mulch.

This makes perfect sense because we’ve had a very rainy Spring. When I took the lid off of the compost bin everything was water logged. There was slime mold all over the top and sides of my compost. And boy did it ever stink! Bad.


How Do You Get Rid of Dog Vomit Slime Mold?

Easy. You don’t.

First off Dog Vomit Slime mold is not harmful to people, plants, or pets. In fact, some people in Mexico eat slime mold.

No thanks, I’ll pass.

It’s lifecycle is very short. When slime mold first appears it’s usually bright yellow and can grow as it chows down on the decaying wet leaves and whatnot (legend has it that slime molds were the inspiration for the kitschy 1958 sci-fi movie The Blob.) Next, the slime mold turns light brown and finally dries into dark, powdery spores. The whole process can take a couple of hours or a couple of days.

If this slime mold grew in the mulch in my flower beds I could just leave it and it would go away on its own. In this case I was advised to throw the moldy compost out.

Oh and just to you gross you out a little further, when I emptied the bin I found a nice big family of maggots in my compost.

Yummy.

Once the compost bin was empty I was told to clean it with either bleach (no thanks) or hydrogen peroxide (yes, please.) I mixed up a solution of hydrogen peroxide based “oxygen” bleach and water and used that to clean the compost bin inside and out, including the lid. I let the clean bin dry in the sun.

I emailed Gardener's Supply Ask an Expert and asked them how I could prevent my compost from molding again. This is what they said.

If you're developing mold in your compost pile it certainly sounds like the materials are too wet most of the time. Drilling more aeration holes would definitely help the ability of the pile to receive more air and should keep the materials more dry. Too much moisture will drown the microorganisms, and too little will dehydrate them. A general rule of thumb is to keep the material in your compost pile as moist as a well-wrung sponge.

To do their work most efficiently, microorganisms require a lot of oxygen. When your pile is first assembled, there will probably be plenty of air between the layers of materials. But as the microorganisms begin to work, they will start consuming oxygen. Unless you turn or in some way aerate your compost pile, they will run out of oxygen and become sluggish.

When your pile is very wet, try adding materials to sock up some of the moisture, such as paper, dried leaves, sawdust, or straw. Keeping a good balance between these "brown" ingredients, and the "green" ingredients such as grass clippings and food waste is very important

To make sure that I didn’t have moldy, soggy, maggoty compost again, I drilled more aeration holes in the bottom and sides of the Covert Urban Compost Bin. This last batch of compost was mostly kitchen scraps so I’m going to concentrate on adding more paper from my paper shredder for "browns." I’m also going to ask the lawn service to leave the grass clippings on our lawn so I can rake them up and put them in my compost bin. Oh, and this time I’ll try to turn the compost more often because last time I didn’t mix my compost at all - oops.

Looking for more compost options? Check out the following options - and more! - below!
Did you enjoy this post? Get more like it by subscribing to Condo Blues.

This is Condo Blues’ submission for the May Green Moms Carnival where our topic is gardening. The Carnival will be held at Green and Clean Mom. Please check it out after May 18th!