A way to go green

More than a decade ago, I was reading a copy of Martha Stewart magazine and took note of an article on ways to go green. In it, one of the suggestions was to use "kitchen rags" instead of paper towel. Not long afterward, I went to K-Mart and sure enough, there were kitchen rags. Basically, they were washcloths. I bought a set of eight for a few bucks and used them a few times. Then they got relegated to the rag bag and I didn't think of them much until I needed to dust furniture or clean up a spill.

Recently, I decided to revisit Martha's advice.

As it happens, we had maybe fifty or sixty washcloths stuffed into a drawer of our cottage. They've been there for ... a long, long, time. Now why does anyone need that many washcloths? They probably came from yard sales. They were in there so long, they were musty. I took them home and washed them in a little bleach and then rolled them up and put them under the sink.

Now when reach for a paper towel I stop and think ... would a dishcloth work in this situation?  About half the time, it will. So while I'm still using paper towels, I'm going through a roll every other week instead of every week. That's less paper going to the landfill.  Although ... if the paper towels aren't soiled (like if I use them to dry off a washed apple), I'll let it dry and put it in with the recycling.

Does it take time to roll them up? Yes. Why do I do it? Because I can fit iin a lot more rolled up than I can folded. And I'm usually listening to an audiobook when I do it. I love audiobooks. I listen to them when I drive (usually it's a story I've heard before because ... I don't go very far in the winter) or any time I have a task to do that's going to take a awhile.

P.S. If you want to know about audio editions of my books, check out the follow links for Lorraine Bartlett, LLBartlett, and Lorna Barrett.

I did a lot of my holiday shopping online.  I also bought a bunch of clothes this fall ... again, online.  Only now I'm being flooded with catalogs!

At first it was fun getting all these wonderful catalogs and perusing the pages to see if there was anything I wanted, or anything I wanted to give as a gift.

But then I finished my holiday shopping.

I figured once the holidays were over I'd stop getting so many.  Uh-uh.  I'm still geting one or two a WEEK from every one of these outfits.

STOP ALREADY!!!!

Here's a place to do it:  Catalog Choice.
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I have no sympathy for rodents

Last week I posted on Facebook that we caught a bunny in our Havahart trap.  Presumably the bunny that has destroyed 75-85 percent of my bean crop.  Never mind the woodchuck that has destroyed ALL of my gladioli, potatoes, coneflowers, and shasta daisies on the other end of the yard.

I was surprised so many people were sympathetic to Mr. Bunny and not to my plants.

Hey, plants deserve to live, too!

Pity the farmer behind our house.  I estimate that the animals that have been having dessert in my yard have been dining three meals a day on his soil and have destroyed a very big portion of his crops.  THEIR LIVELIHOOD.

Yes, Mr. Bunny and Mr. Chipmunk (I found one munching one of my tomatoes last evening) are "cute" but they aren't Chip and Dale or Peter Rabbit.  Give them skinny tails and they are what they are--RODENTS.

RODENTS = RATS.  Do you think rats are cute?  Are tiny mice, so cute in fiction, sweet and nice when they are running around in your silverware drawer crapping on the forks and knives?  Because I sure didn't think so last winter or in June when it happened again.

RODENTS = DISEASE.  The plague.  The Black Death.

Excuse me, but I don't find rodents in any form to be cute, nice, or Disney-esque.

The bunny we caught in the trap was let go in a rural area.  We did NOT kill it (unlike my rural neighbor down at the cottage who would catch critters in his Havahart trap and drown them in the bay--guaranteeing they would never eat his flowers and veggies again.)  I'm perfectly fine with relocating them.  But I'm not perfectly fine with them destroying crops, be they my own or my farmer neighbor's.

I realize this attitude will not win me friends with those who read Beatrix Potter -- but I'm sure the lady farmer wasn't happy when these pests ate her kitchen garden, either.  She just wrote about the "cute" side of rodents who wore waistcoats and spoke in full sentences--not squeaks that only a cat can hear.  And that was her livelihood.  Pity the poor farmer, already dealing with this year's intense weather conditions, who won't have money to feed his/her family this winter because not-so-cute rodents ate a big portion of his/her crops.

I am an animal lover.  (You wouldn't believe how much money I send to animal charities.  And not just those for cats and dogs--but a farm animal rescue, too.) But I draw the line at crop-eating, disease-ridden rodents.

This is just one subject where some of us just won't see eye to eye.  I'm afraid we're going to have to beg to differ.

I'm sure those in the rodent court have never planted gardens.  Maybe they should try.  I see a garden as eco-friendly and trying to limit my carbon footprint.

I can't do that if rodents trump humans in this food chain.

Waste not--want not!

Ever since our county initiated its recycling program they have taken glass bottles, newspapers, cans, and plastic that's labeled 1 and 2.

That all changes on Wednesday.  As of June 1st, they will now allow you to toss out ANY plastic.

Yea!

As it happens, because of the Memorial Day holiday, our garbage, which usually goes out on Tuesdays, will be picked up on Wednesday:  June 1st.

Ever since I heard of the new ruling, I've been saving all my other plastic.  Why let it go into the landfill when in two weeks it would be recycled.

Does your county recycle all plastics?
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Recycling I Will Go . . .

Once upon a time I belonged to a local writers group.  Several of the ladies had been published.  Of course in those days, I thought published meant rolling in dough.

I was shocked to learn that one of the multi-published authors would reuse her manuscript drafts and print on the other side of the paper.
Whoa!  I'll never do that.

I always worked from clean copy.  In the olden days, that mean if I made a mark on a manuscript, I'd retype the whole page and/or chapter.  We're talking in the days of electric typewriters here.  When the computer came along, I'd just print out a fresh page.

Well, a few years went by.  I lost my day job, and darned if using the backside of a sheet of paper didn't seem like a pretty smart way to go, especially with the cost of paper constantly rising.

I had a HUGE stack of old manuscript pages I've slowly been going through and--holy smoke--this week I ran out.  No more big pile (and we're talking over a foot tall at one point) pile of paper. Good grief!  Now I was going to have to use NEW, UNTOUCHED paper!!!

I actually felt panicky.

And then to make it worse the dreaded toner light on my printer went on.

I see a trip to Office Max in my future.

What do you recycle on a regular basis?