Category Archives: Eco Friendly Home

Eco Living During the Holidays

While trying to be eco friendly is important throughout the year, it can be harder to remember during the holiday season. There are so many excuses to buy stuff you don’t need, and cut corners to make things easier, whether or not it’s a good choice for the environment.

Being green isn’t at all impossible around the holidays, however. You can make choices that are good for the environment while keeping to your eco living ideals.

Use Natural Decor

hollyWhat’s available to you in terms of natural decor? This can vary quite a bit from person to person, so take a look around. Pine trees can have a lovely scent, a nice alternative to artificial trees, especially if you can deal with the limitations of bringing in a live tree.

Pine cones look nice, and certain kinds of produce, such as gourds, can sit out through the season as decorations rather than food.

Use Natural Scents

The holiday season is full of wonderful odors, especially if you love to bake. Take advantage of natural scents when you’d like your home to smell more like the holidays.

A simple way to start is to throw some herbs in simmering water. The heat releases their scent all around the house. Just pick your favorites.

You can also time your baking for when you want a particular smell, at least some of the time. Who doesn’t like to smell cookies or an apple pie baking? If you don’t need the oven for other things, think about making something delicious to give your home a scent no candle can beat.

Reuse Gift Wrap & Bags

My supply of used gift bags is ridiculous. I can find a bag for just about any gift I’m likely to give. I’m pretty sure some have made it to my home more than once, as I’m not the only one in the family to reuse gift bags.

Reusing gift wrap is trickier, as it doesn’t always survive in a smooth form. Take a look at what remains, and consider crafts that can be done with it. At the very least, kids love anything they can cut up into interesting shapes and tiny pieces.

Rethink Gift Wrap

Of course, you don’t have to use traditional gift wrap or bags. The wrap itself could be a part of the present. I wrote about a variety of eco friendly gift wrap ideas a few years ago.

Trade Decorations

You’re tired of some of your old decorations. Someone else is tired of theirs. Can you arrange a trade with them? Be careful about moving around any sentimental items, but often there are other decorations that you’ll be content to part with, either forever or for a time.

Simplify Gift Giving

This works especially well with extended family, but kids can be willing to get in on it too. Cut back on the number of people you buy gifts for, whether by instituting a name drawing or by simply agreeing that you don’t need to exchange gifts anymore. Try setting a price limit too. This can really ease the stress around the holidays.

Make Recycling Easy

When you have family and friends over, make it easy for them to recycle as appropriate. Just think about the wine and beer bottles, beer and soda cans and so forth that get used. They’re easy to recycle, so make sure it happens.

6 Ways to Use Leftover Turkey

I was reading an article the other day that said about one third of the turkey meat bought for Thanksgiving is thrown out after. This doesn’t include the bones. That sounds bad, but not as bad as it could as U.S. food waste is at 40% overall. Even so, it’s a good target to practice at wasting less food.

It’s also important to understand that in the regular food supply, not all of that waste happens in the home. That number comes from the entire food stream, such as losses in transporting food to the store. That’s a bit different from the food waste that comes from throwing out leftover turkey.

1. Freeze the Excess

I don’t let my family get too tired of turkey. I freeze the extra meat first. That means I have quick supplies on those nights that I don’t particularly feel like cooking. This point usually comes after a few days. I just haul out the knife and start carving up whatever is still on the bird.

2. Send Leftovers Home With Guests

If you had company over, offer some of the leftover turkey for the ones who live close enough to take home. You can’t guarantee that they’ll eat it, but some will be quite glad to have it.

3. Toss It In the Skillet

You don’t have to serve plain turkey as leftovers. I find it goes very well with turmeric and cauliflower. Simmer the ingredients together on the stove, possibly with some other vegetables, and it’s pretty good. There are lots of leftover turkey recipes online.

4. Make Turkey Sandwiches

Kind of a classic here, I think. Bread, turkey, and whatever other toppings you enjoy can make an excellent sandwich.

5. Add to Salads

A bit of turkey goes well into a salad. Mix up your favorites, and it’s good for at home or on the go.

6. Turkey Soup

Even though the waste statistic doesn’t include the bones, I prefer to use them up. It’s very easy to make turkey soup. Get a large pot, put the bones in, add a lot of water and start simmering. I usually start mine in the morning, and take the bones out in the midafternoon, by which point the remaining meat comes off very easily.

I even have a bag of frozen vegetables to add in at the start for flavor, ones that would have otherwise gone bad before I got to them in the fridge. Chopping and freezing them means I have great vegetables for homemade soup of whichever variety. Just one more way to cut waste.

The turkey soup needs to be spiced up however you like, and have more things added, depending on your tastes. I find barley works well, as do potatoes or rice. Lots and lots of vegetables, usually beyond my “frozen just in time” supply.

Is Citric Acid an Eco Friendly Cleaner?

I’ve been trying something new in my dishwasher lately because my dishes just weren’t looking clean. It was getting frustrating always having glasses and cups look cloudy even when they were clean. I came across an article that mentioned using citric acid along with your regular dishwasher detergent gets great results.

So I tell my husband about it, and he recognizes it right away. Turns out they used citric acid to keep the glasses for the tasting room shiny at the winery he used to work at.

I bought a bag of citric acid through Amazon, and I have to say, I’m impressed. My dishes look better and feel nicer too, that literally squeaky clean feeling. Citric acid doesn’t remove food bits or anything like that if your dishes were a bit too dirty for the dishwasher to handle, but if you’re getting residue, it works great.

Still, my one question remaining was whether or not it’s really eco friendly. I hope we all know that natural doesn’t always equal the most environmentally friendly products.

I did some looking around. The EPA considers citric acid GRAS (PDF) or “generally recognized as safe.” Obviously, that’s a really good sign. It’s not something you’d want to get in your eyes; it’s still acid after all, but it’s pretty safe stuff.

Despite the name, citric acid is not necessarily produced from citrus. Matter of fact, that’s the expensive way to do it, so it really doesn’t happen much. It has been long known that you can get citric acid from a fermentation process with the mold Aspergillus niger. The production may involve corn, so you may want to check on that if you’re trying to avoid corn-based products.

Some say you shouldn’t put your silverware into the dishwasher when you use citric acid. This may depend on the type of silverware you have, so it’s something to be aware of. It may be problematic for silverware with actual silver, but may not be so bad for your typical stainless steel variety. If it’s enameled or anything like that, you may be looking at problems with citric acid and silverware (search for citric to see the parts I found most interesting).

Citric acid can have an impact on wildlife, but for the most part it doesn’t seem to be too bad. It’s used to help control the coqui frog in Hawaii, for example. It may, however, be associated with brown tide blooms.

Overall, I’m pleased with what I’ve found out about citric acid. As with anything else, it has its problems, but they don’t so far appear to be as much of a problem as other cleaners. It cleans a lot, too. It did an amazing job on the soap scum on my bathtub. Stuff that I’ve scrubbed and scrubbed in the past with baking soda and vinegar came off easily after a soak with citric acid.

Coping With a Clogged Dishwasher

We had a little problem here last week – the dishwasher wasn’t draining well at all. I could hear a bit of water draining, but there was still a significant amount of water in the bottom of it when I checked. Of course, as the dirty water was staying in there, the dishes weren’t exactly getting clean either. Needless to say, I was close to calling in my fallback dishwashers (AKA the kids) by the time the plumber got here.

This time, it was an issue I needed the plumber for, as he took out parts I wasn’t comfortable working with. He had to detach the various hoses, and blast them clean with water. Worked really well. That said, we did try some other steps before calling on the plumber.

The first step is to make sure the garbage disposal is clear. I do this every time I run the dishwasher because I don’t always know if someone has dropped something down there. It just takes a moment to run the disposal and ensure that it will be clear for the dishwasher.

The next thing was to get the water out of the bottom. I had been using a cup to scoop water out, then my sometimes efficient husband brought out the shop vac, which handled the water issue quite easily.

A quick check showed that there was nothing outside the drainage basket, which is an area I check regularly. I had pulled some pineapple tidbits from there the other day, so I knew the kids weren’t being careful when they loaded the dishwasher. Or somebody wasn’t.

The drainage basket can be pretty easy to remove, just find the screws or bolts and remove them. Check your owner’s manual to be sure you’re doing this right. Once there, you can clean out any mess you can see, but you may not be done yet.

Now, I wouldn’t use a drain cleaner in a dishwasher. The acid may be too strong for that kind of pipe and besides, that stuff’s nasty and dangerous. You could end up with an even bigger problem if you tried it. Better is something like your typical baking soda and vinegar drain clearing procedure. I’ve seen a few sites suggest it, and I assume it’s safe enough. Pour some baking soda down the drain inside the dishwasher, followed by some vinegar and let it work for a while. Pour hot water or run the dishwasher to clear this out.

We were lucky, of course, in that it wasn’t the dishwasher pump causing the problem. I had been pretty sure, as I know the sounds my dishwasher makes when running, including the sound of draining water, and the draining water sound had decreased, but not disappeared, so I was confident that we had a plugged drain and wouldn’t need to replace a part.

After all this, it’s probably unsurprising that the dishwasher looked pretty bad down in the bottom. All the stuff that settled out as the water failed to drain was just sitting there, and I didn’t want it getting sprayed all over the dishes.

The solution was citric acid. You can buy dishwasher cleaners that have this in them, or just buy it separately. Amazon has it available in a lot of sizes. It’s a good boost for your regular dishwasher detergent. I just poured it into the dispenser in my dishwasher, ran it until the citric acid dispensed and had been in the water for a bit, then turned the dishwasher off and let it sit overnight. That took care of a lot of the mess. Get food grade citric acid, and it’s pretty safe stuff. Still acid of course, so you should be a little careful. Using it with my regular dishwasher detergent has resulted in dishes even cleaner and shinier than I’m used to.

4 Ways to Cut Back on Your Meat Consumption

Most Americans eat too much meat. It’s a big part of the standard American diet, bigger than it needs to be. There are a lot of good reasons to cut back on meat, including consuming less saturated fat, health concerns, decreasing your environmental impact, and cost. The hard part is actually doing so. Today I’d like to share some ways to cut back on your meat consumption.

1. Participate in Meatless Mondays

Just skipping meat one day a week isn’t too big a change. Meatless Mondays have gained some popularity, and there’s even a website with all kinds of ideas to help you do it.

I do know how hard it can be to get some families to accept any vegetarian meals at all. My husband used to comment with every vegetarian meal on which meat he thought would improve it. Then I told him one day how much that pissed me off and pointed out how it really wasn’t so different from our daughter’s habit of announcing that she disliked unfamiliar meals before trying them. That was a habit of hers we’d been trying to break, so pointing out the similarity really made him think.

2. Eat Smaller Portions of Meat

If you have trouble giving up meat completely with your meals, you can always go for smaller portions. The portion size many people eat is too big anyhow when it comes to meat.

You can also think of meat as flavor, rather than a major component of the meal. Use a small amount of ground beef or ground sausage in pasta sauce, for example. If you’re making stir fry, add more vegetables and less meat.

3. Buy Grass Fed Beef

Grass fed beef costs a lot more than other beef, and that will encourage you to eat less of it. Many say it’s healthier for you and of course better for the cattle.

You can do similar things for other types of meat you eat. Pay attention to the conditions in which the animals were raised. You’ll pay more for the meat, but it will probably have done less environmental damage and may be better for you. You can find sources at eatwild.com. I don’t get results very close to me, but you may do better.

4. Eat Meat Only One Meal a Day

You don’t have to have meat at every meal. Pick one meal a day and make it vegetarian. You may have to experiment to figure out the recipes you enjoy most, but that can be the fun part. It’s an excuse to try new food combinations. I have a fondness for black bean and artichoke burritos, for example. I usually keep some beans in the freezer and assemble the rest fresh, although I suspect you could make a bunch and freeze them if you prefer.

Remember that there are many other places to get your protein, and they’re often cheaper than meat. Get used to making meals with other protein sources, and you may find that they can taste great too. Do a lot of experimenting to find recipes that work for you and your family.