As Green As You Can Be

Green household cleansers are just as efficient as store bought cleansers.  Recycle the bottles from your store bought chemical cleansers and make your own!  The “recipes” are easy.  You probably have most of the “ingredients” in the house already.

Ready?
Give your paper towels to your neighbor or throw them in the compost bin!  I use “bar towels” for everything from wiping up spills to scrubbing the tub!  We get the bar towels at a big box store for about $4.00 for six.  Keep a basket of them under the kitchen sink.  When the towels are dirty, toss them in the washer with the other whites!

General All-Purpose Cleaner:
Using a recycled spray bottle add vinegar or ammonia to the half-way mark and fill the remainder of the bottle with water.  I use this to clean countertops, mirrors and windows.
I’ll admit the smell does take some getting used to but you can add a few drops of essential oils to the mix.  Peppermint oil is nice and Tea Tree Oil has antibacterial properties.

Vinegar has tons of household uses!  www.vinegartips.com

Paste Cleaner:
Mix baking soda and water until it has a paste-like consistency.  I use this for cleaning the stovetop, scrubbing the shower, baked on food from pots and pans and to clean the coffee pot.

Floor Cleaner: (Do Not Use on hardwood flooring)
In a bucket mix _ cup of ammonia to a gallon of water.  You can use more ammonia if your floor is really dirty.  If you want to you can add some essential oils.
* Extra tip – My wife used to use a Swiffer with all of those wasteful disposable cloths.  Now she still uses the Swiffer “stick” but she now soaks a bar towel in the water & ammonia and uses that in place of the disposable cloth.

Laundry Detergent:
Powder:  2 cups Borax, 2 cups Arm & Hammer washing soda, 1 cup baking soda and 4 oz. grated laundry soap.  Depending on load size use 1 Tbsp. to _ cup per load.  Fels Naptha laundry soap
is a good one.
*Extra tip – Use _ cup to _ cup of white vinegar in the rinse cycle help get rid of odors (since this lacks added fragrance) and keep colors bright!  Oh and LINE DRY!  You don’t need that electricity hog of a dryer!

The absolute best thing you can do to reduce the amount of garbage you send to the landfill is composting. We have been recycling for years but just started composting last week. When we started the recycling program, it cut our trash volume by two thirds at least! Now that we have a compost bin, our trash collector only picks up very small bag of non recyclable/non compostable items. And it was so easy!

Composting, for me anyway, has always been the “final frontier” in green living. It was always too complicated or too gross to deal with. I couldn’t have been more wrong. Its easy as having a separate, small trashcan with a lid next to your regular trashcan. We put everything organic in there, banana peels, food scraps, paper towels, even coffee grinds and filters. Don’t put meat scraps or dairy items in there, you will invite bugs and or a really bad smell. Neither of these things are welcome in my house so we avoid them.

We used an old “Rubbermaid” storage bin with a tight fitting lid and some holes poked in it. You want some ventilation, but make the holes small enough so that a lot of bugs cant get in there. You don’t want flies in your compost bin, they will lay eggs and nobody wants to deal with maggots. I don’t anyway. We punched a screwdriver through the plastic bin to make the holes.

In my opinion, too much emphasis is placed on the “layering” of the proper composting materials. I think this might even be why some people might be apprehensive about starting. Its really no big deal, if you start with the “proper” layering, it may break down a little faster, but its not a race, and its not anything to stress over either.

That being said, I think its best to keep the correct approximate ratio of different materials in your bin. We compost lawn and tree clippings, food waste and paper towels, you wouldn’t want too much of any one of those things in there because that will really slow things down. It will all break down, but it may take a while.

Chances are, you will have more grass clippings than food waste at any given time, If you are wondering what to do with it, just put a pile of clippings next to your compost bin and put some in every time you put in some food waste.

Some people have a compost pile or a very open container made with pallets or wood. There are a few reasons why we didn’t go that way. The first reason is that we live in a development where the neighbors would certainly have something to say about a pile of rotting waste in the yard. Another reason is the bugs like I mentioned before.

Animals can also be curious about your pile of waste, raccoons are notoriously curious and will make a pretty big mess if given the chance. Open piles also don’t breakdown as fast as a closed bin because they don’t get as hot and when it rains, all the good nutrient rich stuff gets washed away from the top of the pile. Our little compost bin is tucked neatly under our deck no mess, no smell, no worries. I don’t know why we didn’t do this sooner. Now if I could get our town to allow us to stop the trash pickup all together we could save a ton.

The only things that we throw away now are meat and dairy food waste and items that our recycler doesn’t want. That really isnt too much. So I’m feeling even better about our impact on the environment. We can afford a huge solar array or a wind farm (yet) but we can do something, and the feeling you get when you are as green as you can be, makes it all worthwhile.

Well, I received a few emails at asgreenasyoucanbe.com requesting a Rain Barrel how-to so here it is.

I have to admit that I was a little nervous to start this because I thought it might not work, or be leaky, but it was simple and doesn’t leak a bit.

The first step is to acquire a barrel, preferably a plastic one.  There are several sources you can get these for very cheap and sometimes even free.  Our local soft drink bottler sells them for $5, but I got mine free from a friend who works at an industrial plant.  You have to be wary about what it was used for. Mine was used for some kind of cleaner, I might not drink out of it but I think its okay for plants.  The barrel I got was bright screaming blue (ugg) so I got some tan spray paint specifically for painting plastic (low VOC of course) and gave it a good coat so it doesn’t stick out like a sore thumb.  Then, off to the home center!

At the home center I picked up a brass spigot that was threaded on both ends and a brass garden hose female to female adapter.   These were both the same size threads.  I also picked up one of those flexible plastic downspout extenders.

I drilled two 1 inch holes in the sides of the barrel.  One at the top and one at the bottom.  When drilling these holes, try to keep in mind the bottom hole is where the water comes out and the top hole should be directed to where you want the overflow to go. Hopefully the pictures will explain this better.

With the 1″ holes drilled, I threaded the spigot right into the hole.  I was tight but the threads were tapered a bit so they cut right into the plastic and made a water tight seal.  Same thing for the F to F adapter, just thread it in and be done with it.  You may need a wrench, because it was pretty tough to screw it in all the way.  I planned on adding some silicone sealant but it wasn’t necessary, that sucker is tight!

Next you have to cut a hole in the top large enough for the flexible downspout extender to fit in.  I used a jigsaw, but you could use a hacksaw blade or a circular series of drilled holes. This doesn’t have to be exact, but the tighter you get it the less chance you’ll have of foreign material getting in there, like leaves or sticks that can clog up the spigot.

Now you have to give the barrel a nice stable, level place to sit, next to your downspout.  I used a couple of 6×6 cut offs that I had lying around to raise the barrel up a bit so I can get a watering can under the spigot.  In hindsight, I would have raised it up a but more, maybe a foot off the ground.   It is important to dig the ground level under the barrel supports because a 40 gallon barrel full of water will weigh over 350 pounds and you don’t want it sliding off! You can use cinder blocks to raise it as high as you’d like. They are very cheap and easy to come by.

Place the barrel where you want it to go and put one end of the flexible downspout extender into the hole in the top of the barrel.  Now stretch the other end over to the downspout and mark a place on the downspout to cut.  You can easily cut it in place with a hacksaw.  Remove the lower piece of downspout and hook up your flexible downspout, I put a little screw through the plastic to secure it to the metal.

Make sure you close the spigot and wait for the rain!  You can hook up a length of hose to the overflow and direct it where ever you want.  You could even direct the overflow to another rain barrel and have a series of them.  When the first one fills up, it will start filling up the second.  Pretty cool, just make sure you have spigots in them or you won’t be able to get the water out.

There you have it, this is easily done in an afternoon. All you need now is a decent rainstorm and it will fill up very quickly.  Now it wont run a lawn sprinkler but I use a soaker hose or sometimes I just squirt the grass.  We also fill up a watering can when ever the garden needs a drink.

I hope this helps you on your journey to be as green as you can be.