Waste Not, Want Not!

Green Living: Making it Last by Carla Hill

We live in a disposable society. The products that fill our daily lives are used and discarded. This habitual "use and lose" puts a dent in not only our pocketbooks, but also in the environment.

According to Cleanair.org, every year Americans throw away enough paper and plastic cups, forks, and spoons to circle the equator 300 times. Yes, 300 times.

This is just the tip of the trash iceberg. Parents all across the nation gird the loins of their joyful little cherubs with disposable diapers.

Cleanair notes, "Disposable diapers are the third largest single consumer item in landfills, and represent about 4% of solid waste. In a house with a child in diapers, disposables make up 50% of household waste." In addition, these diapers take hundreds of years to decompose and cost thousands of dollars to use.

Plus, the oil used to produce those dandy disposables is more oil than used during the lifetime use of your car!

The EPA reports that in 2010, American generated about 250 million tons of trash, with just a 34.1 percent recycling rate. What is being tossed that could be repurposed, reused, or revisioned?

Learning to reduce, reuse, and recycle is a great way to cut down on household expenses, something that many homeowners are searching out.

There's a honorable movement spreading across the nation bent on saving money and preserving the environment.

The new book Make it Last: Prolonging and Preserving What We Love bridges the gap between life in a disposable culture and the basic skills needed to save money and live more sustainably. This book teaches the reader how to extend the lives of the things they love by repairing clothing, preserving home-grown food, and even repairing your kitchen sink.

Raleigh Briggs takes her longtime commitment to community building through the DIY movement and shares her valuable experience with the reader through a conversational tone in her hand drawn and illustrated guide.

"People are starting to realize not only that they can do this stuff, but that it's fun and fulfilling to boot." says Briggs. "Whenever you think about the choices you're making, you're doing a good thing."

Verbicide Magazine described it as "a Gideon Bible-like manual that should be heavily circulated to people who are just scraping by in life. Her pragmatic approach to taking back your home is what makes this book so appealing."

Save money while saving the planet. That's some noble work!

Published: November 29, 2012 realtytimes.com

Type #2 - 5 Types of Neighbors and How to Handle Them

You can pick your friends, but not your family -- or your neighbors. Here's what you need to know.

By Geoff Williams, FrontDoor.com | Published: 9/22/2008

If you have a neighbor who may be dangerous, know about his dislikes and boundaries, so you don't cross them.

The Dangerous NeighborWho they are: Sad but true, some neighbors are not worth getting to know well -- but it's still good to know something about their dislikes and boundaries, so you don't cross them. In 2006, for instance, headlines were made when Charles Martin, an elderly man living in a suburb of Cincinnati, Ohio, shot a 15-year-old boy to death because he had apparently made the error of walking across his meticulously manicured lawn.

How to handle them: Martin -- who is in jail -- may have been destined to snap no matter what his neighbors did or didn't do, but he was well known for the care he lavished on his lawn, and in theory, if that 15-year-old had been more aware of the kook's devotion to his lawn, it might have kept him from going anywhere near the home.

You can't consume yourself with worry looking for red flags in your neighbors. However, if you're aware of them, it may help you from igniting their fury.

And if you have young kids, you really should look at www.familywatchdog.us, the website for the National Sex Offender Registry. If there is anyone in your neighborhood you need to be aware of, and they're on this list, they'll pop up on a map of your community.

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