Condo Blues: eco friendly
Showing posts with label eco friendly. Show all posts
Showing posts with label eco friendly. Show all posts

Tuesday, February 22, 2022

Can You Replace Halogen Light Bulbs with LED Light Bulbs?

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I light my home office with a row of halogen desk lamps on top of the bookcase wall because our builder didn't install an overhead lighting option.

I chose halogen lights because that's what was available at the time and while halogen light bulbs are physically hotter when they turn on they are more energy efficient than incandescent light bulbs. I also hoped that the halogen light bulbs would last longer than the incandescent light bulbs that came with my house and replaced as they burned out with CLFs. LED light bulbs were extremely expensive and not widely available at the time.

That didn't seem to be the case.

Any time I turned on the lights and wondered why it was still dark in the office, I'd see that one or more halogen light bulbs burned out. This happened much more often than in other rooms of the house when I switched over from my CFL light bulbs as they burned out to LED light bulbs now that they are cheaper and more widely available. 

I figured it was time to upgrade my halogen desk lamps (that I still like) to LED desk lamps because this constant bulb changing was getting annoying.

Unfortunately, most of the LED goose neck desk lights I found used a permanent LED light bulb which after 10 or 13 years is going to burn out and I'd have to get rid of four lamps instead of four measly light bulbs. 

OK. Fine. Halogen light bulbs it will be. 
 
Or will it?

Friday, April 30, 2021

Friday Favorites Week 579

Time to link up your favorite projects, recipes, and posts! 

  

Please support and follow our lovely blog party hostesses:

Jerri at Simply Sweet Home - Twitter | FB | G+ | Pin | Inst

Lisa at Condo Blues - Twitter | FB | G+ | Pin | Inst

Amy at A Day of Small Things - Pin

Penny at Penny's Passion - Twitter | FB | G+ | Pin | Inst

Jennifer at Busy Being Jennifer - Twitter | FB | Pin | Inst

If you are featured this week, be sure and grab a featured button for your blog!

You can show your love for this week's favorites by going over and commenting on the posts and by pinning or sharing!

Thursday, April 22, 2021

Celebrate Earth Day with the Rule of Half and Friday Favorites Week 578

Today is Earth Day, although honestly we try to make every day Earth Day around here by refusing, reducing, reusing household items with the goal of running a low waste home.  One useful and FREE way to do that is to follow The Rule of Half whenever possible. The Rule of Half is to try using half (or at least less) of the amount of stuff  you would normally use to get the job done. 

how to save money for FREE with the Rule of Half

A good example of this is toothpaste. Instead of loading up the length of your toothbrush with toothpaste like the toothpaste companies show you, put the dentist recommended pea size to half a length of toothpaste on your toothbrush. You create a little less trash because a tube of toothpaste lasts a little longer. One tube of toothpaste might not seem like such a big deal but if you do the same (or at least measure items instead of just chucking it in) with the majority of items you use on a daily basis it can make a difference in the amount of household trash you put by the curb every week and all for the affordable price of FREE. No fancy eco products required! (Unless you want to.)


Time to link up your favorite projects, recipes, and posts! 

Tuesday, January 19, 2021

12 Real World Ways I Went Zero Waste This Week

Some of the things they don’t tell you about trying to reduce your household trash with zero waste living is that it depends a lot on where and how you want to live. Most of the year’s worth of garbage in jar folks have access to big fill your own container stores, year round farm markets, or huge gardens where they can grow almost everything  they need. Not all of us are that lucky,  would rather not drive all over the place, or crunched the numbers and found some the prices in those shops sky high. *raises hand*


But’s not to say that zero waste is impossible!  Instead try the more realistic goal of concentrating on reducing your household waste than making it absolute zero. By focusing on reusing, the Rule of Half, recycling, reducing, and composting (when the bin isn’t frozen shut) my family has reduced our weekly household waste to approximately one grocery store size shopping bag (ish. We reuse any packaging, dog food, etc.  bags for garbage which means the size varies) a week. We average a 3/4 full recycling bin every two weeks. We also give ourselves a break if our output is more than that because we have seasons and that can determine what we can do and how we do it.


To give you some realistic ways to reduce your household waste (and possibly save some money doing it) I made a list of the zero waste practices, tips, and tricks I do in a normal week to give you some ideas and jump start your thinking machines to find a zero waste solution that works for you!

 

12 real world zero waste tips
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Monday, November 18, 2019

10 Quick, Easy, and Eco Friendly Kitchen Cleaning Hacks

I love a clean and tidy kitchen but I don’t love spending all of my time cleaning and organizing it.  That especially goes for the holiday season when I’d much rather be entertaining my guests than slipping out to the store because I ran out of some disposable cleaning doo dad or supply in the middle of cleaning up after dinner.

Because if I run out of something, it is always going to be when I need it use it immediately.

It. Never.Fails.

 
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Luckily I developed have several hacks that replace disposable kitchen cleaning tools with reusable and others that make those disposables last a little bit longer so you aren’t stuck with a Holiday Hostess Fail in the middle of your party fun!

Sunday, May 26, 2019

How to Make Garden Plant Markers

The theme of this year’s container herb garden is Hey, That’s Different, Let’s See If It Will Grow (and We Need Cilantro.)

Which means I need plant markers to identify what this stuff is once it comes time to harvest it for cooking.  Sure, some of the plants came with a plastic plant label stuck in the pot but I had to split some of those plants up into different plant pots that make up my small patio container garden.

I want a set of plant markers that is cute and somewhat unique.  I turned to my little stash of on deck items to repurpose (or formally recycle in our bin after a given time limit) and made plant markers from recycled aluminum cans. I got four plant tags from one aluminum pop can and put the scrap into my city recycling bin.

DIY Garden Markers from Recycled Aluminum Cans


How to make cute unique  DIY garden plant marker tags
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Tuesday, April 23, 2019

6 Ways Plastic Helps Me Live Zero Waste

Almost every blog post I read that offers tips and tricks how to live Zero Waste they almost always use plastic free as a synonym. They say something like, “We got rid of all of our plastic stuff and bought the same exact thing in wood/bamboo/natural fiber to replace it and wow how cool we are living zero waste now!”

It. Drives. Me. Crazy.

Throwing away usable items to buy a cool looking replacement is the exact opposite of zero waste living folks!

Zero waste living means giving up using disposable single use plastic and items as much as possible, not no plastic at all.

Plastic free is great but that is a different goal.


6 Easy Ways to Live Zero Waste (ish) and Save Money Doing It!

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Photo used with permission  by Sophia Marston on Unsplash


Thursday, May 5, 2016

Win a Naturepedic EOS Standard Organic Mattress Giveaway!

Welcome to the Naturepedic EOS Standard Queen Organic Mattress Giveaway ($2599 Value), sponsored by Naturepedic and hosted by Happy Mothering and the Green Moms Network.


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Shopping for a new mattress can be an intimidating experience. It seems like there are so many mattress brands to choose from, and it can be dizzying to find the one that's right for you. Before you go mattress shopping, let's talk about why most mattresses on the market these days are toxic. Did you know that most mattresses are full of lots of toxic chemicals?