Heat Seeking Babe Does Old Greenbelt

The Most Wonderful Place in the World

2006-02-16T15:26:00.000-05:00

Or the most humanizing--the laundromat. Our Quietline, shall it ever live in infamy, is now technically dead. While it passes quietly into some special place reserved for front-loader dual washer dryers with zippo capacity, I recently found myself at the local Laundromat with denizens of the tri-city area.

It's a nice one that I used to visit in my college days and conveniently close to the university. Not many college kids there though. Surprisingly a lot of people who instead of washing clothes in their house elected to head out to the laundromat once a month and do them all there. Including a super nice guy, Adam, that I met who also works in the White House kitchen as a chef. Also an amazing amount of immigrants that used to be heavily African in my college days but now reflect the geographic trends in this area and were pretty much all Latino. Give me your poor, your tired, and your dirty sheets...

It took a little bit of finesse and equal parts bravado to position yourself for elusive open dryer space. I used several dryers until I found out they didn't work (and, much to my chagrin, wasted about 7 quarters on them) and then doggedly camped out in front of a fully functional one until it was free.

Two essential truths that I learned from this experience: It is hard not be friendly to someone folding underwear and I really, really need to learn Spanish.

Beg, Borrow, Barter

2006-02-06T11:57:00.000-05:00

This quick post suggests ways to get more out of what you have by thinking about your possessions less as yours and more as community objects to be shared. Some of these I've tried, some I haven't. Please post and let me know if you've ever used such a thing...

Beg:
Begging done correctly is not pathetic, it's an artform. My best begging is done online via Freecycle, a national web-based program with local affiliates that allows you to release, recycle and find loving homes for your things that would normally go to the landfill. You could, of course, just post "wanted" posts but frequent posters favor giving their things to those that give equally. The power of karma in action. Simply post a quick note of what you'd like to have/unload and pretty instanteously you are rewarded. It's not publicly admitted, but I think clever posts receive the best responses. Here's a short list of what I have acquired: about 25 canning masonry jars, canning equipment, a vintage sideboard/buffet, a small wooden chest of drawers, a bike.

Barter:
Just found this great service called Peerflix, a riff of Netflix (the latter of which I do participate in). Like Netlflix, Peerflix is an online-service for movies. Unlike Netflix, on Peerflix you are allowed to trade DVDs that you own for others in the network. You can trade as much as you want and only pay for the DVDs (99 cents a pop) that you trade as well as the postage paid mailer envelopes to send them to the central deposit station. Most of our DVDs are not ones I want to trade so I don't really anticipate the need for such a service (we also, do not own many DVDs), but for people like my BIL (hint, hint) this might be a really good thing to explore.

Also recently signed up for Trashbank another online system similar to eBay but with more focus on trading items within a network. Will provide feedback with my experiences.

A long time ago, I used to eat out very often cruising off of the barter points acquired by an old ex-boyfriend's father courtesy of the Barter System International. This very structured barter system allows you to trade professional services. You received a barter credit card or script, literally hard copy versions of gift certificates to apply toward pretty much any service you could imagine. There is a one-time set up fee of $495 but the network is endless (lawyers, plumbers, restaurants, skiing stores, etc) and if you have a business you can probably write it off (but don't quote me on that). Pending cash flow, I might consider joining since outside this blog I am a self-employed grant writer.

I am also beginning the process of setting up a babysitting cooperative within my community. Essentially a group of parents that trades child care instead of money.

Borrow:
Is there anything better than a good neighbor? I have some really nice ones and through a good old fashioned friendships have eliminated the need to a) pay for cat sitters, b) purchase a lawnmower, and c) store our ladder. With the proliferation of listservs, we also have a local community listserve of about 300 folks in my city where you can post questions and receive answers from a nice representation of the community. Beyond that small circle of neighbors, I also participate in a larger listserve, the DC Metro Simplifiers, a nice community in the metropolitan area of like minded folks interested in living more simply. There's also a companion website with a lot of truly useful links. Consider it a local advice sharing network.

We also have a really nice local parents group, the Mamas and Papas, where frequent clothing sharing occurs.

The bottom line is don't trash it--beg, barter, or borrow it!

What Once Was Lost...

2006-02-05T19:50:00.000-05:00

Has now been found. Great God Almighty--it pleases me terribly to report that I have located the missing set of drill bits and can now in earnest complete many tasks I began several weeks ago.

Also--for anyone who still doubts the humidity in my home, after it rained three days in a row, the humidity in my house was 80%. Or, as my BIL said when I asked him to check the gauge, "Yeah, it's raining in here."

Meat and You: Partners in Freedom

2006-02-04T14:51:00.000-05:00

I don't know why it's taken me so long to talk about food--the raison d'etre in our household. I am not properly qualified as a "foodie"--I'm more like a food nazi. I love food, with a solid emphasis on good food. My blog title this edition comes courtesy of the Simpson's episode where Lisa becomes a vegetarian and is surrounded by the overwhelming pressure of her peers, the beef association, and Homer's herculean love of pork chops, and the ubiquitious power of meat in our society. It also features an epic Ralph line during the classroom worm dissection: My worm went in my mouth and then I ate it...can I have another one?

Over the course of my life I've been a vegetarian two times, once lured back by an innocently positioned steak and cheese sub on the coffee table. And later seduced by Chicken Korma. Fool me once, shame on me. Fool me twice, pass the pepper cause I'm clearly an omnivore.

I've been told point blank by activist aquaintances that people who call themselves environmentalists and eat meat are environmentalists in sheep's clothing. A statement which I now emphatically reject. Meat is the focus on many cultural traditions, and while I know that buying something wrapped in cellophane or even butcher's paper does not connect me to the bison hunts of yore on the American Plains, I cannot resist a perfectly cooked Peruvian chicken. Sorry.

Saying that, I will state that I eat red meat about twice a month, if that, and meat about once a week. I strive for locally raised, hormone and anti-biotic free meats. (I used to pass up meat offered to me if it didn't meet these exacting standards but then I realized that was just plain bitchy and rude and I stopped.) I will allow myself one crab feast a year given the overfished status of our blue crab fishery (an amazing level of self restraint that is difficult given my Maryland roots and affection for these beautiful swimmers). I regularly refer to handy overfished guides when purchasing fish and shellfish, and am proud to tout that my supportive husband carries his in his wallet.

Unlike Lisa Simpson, I must admit that humanitarian forces do not come into play here. I limit my consumption of meat for health reasons (saturated fat) and for environmental reasons (the amount of energy, water, and resources used to raise cattle and poultry is simply ridiculous). These are pretty established concepts but if you require more basis for these opinons please check out the website of the American Heart Association, the USDA's revamped food pyramid, and the Vegetarian Society. A lot of people tell me that they can't afford to eat organic, hormone-free meat products to which I respond, "Sure you can, just eat a lot less of it!"

When my son exhibited milk allergies, I went into a full freak out. How was I ever going to cook anything delicious again? I camped out in grocery store aisles studiously skimming labels looking for nefarious ingredients and nutrition information when one day I had an epiphany: Why am I looking at the side of a box to decide what's good to put in my son's body?

Thus began my obsession with nutrition and my awareness that much of our culture's nutrition education comes from the people, the marketers, and the industries trying to sell us food NOT nutrition experts. How many of us can readily quote what foods are nutrient rich in calcium aside from milk and cheese? Not many would know that the reason why cow's milk is high in calcium is because cows eat a diet high in whole grains and vegetative matter teeming with calcium.

Central to this effort has been my re-education of how to eat. There is nothing more important in our lives than making clear, informed decisions about how to nurture our bodies and those of our children. To anyone on the planet who wants to think more fully about the food they eat I heartily endorse and INSIST that you read The Whole Foods Encyclopedia and her companion James Beard award winning cookbook The Splendid Grain. Those two books have opened up so many gastronmic doors to me that I can not tell you.

To any parent with children, I recommend that you devour Cynthia Lair's Feeding The Whole Family: Whole Foods Recipes For Babies, Young Children And Their Parents from cover to cover and start them off on the right foot. Better yet, give it as a baby shower gift to any budding parent. Every new parent should at least be armed with the knowledge that nutrition does not have to come out of a can, a box, or a jar of squished up banana with a Gerber logo on it.

Bottleneck Blues

2006-01-05T13:37:00.000-05:00

It's been a long time since I've posted. Mostly because I've not been in a terribly positive place: very busy, very frustrated at alternate avenues, and crunched to illuminate the merrier, lighter side of life. So haven't been posting because honestly, who wants to hear me bitch, right??

But I have been thinking about you (all three of my readers: my husband, my brother-in-law, and my mother) and this blog. Since I last blogged I've slammed up several plastic insulating sheets around my house only to have them unceremoniously ripped off by the underaged resident or occasional toddler visitor. Clearly not a great system.

I bought door sweeps but then managed to completely lose our drill bit sets which have eluded capture for the last three weeks.

I received my blue all-paper recycling box which I've been using with glee.

We've begun buying refillable milk. The latter which, quite frankly, I had no idea still existed in the city, and had gone the way of the hand plow (to Amish country). Come to find out that refillable bottles, which used to be the rage pre-1950s are virtually extinct. All glass beverage containers used 1947 were refillable and used up to 50 times a pop. Post-war, however, one-way glass began to be circulated into use and ever since then the key word is disposable--today less than 1% of glass bottles are refillable. Big deal, you might say, we recycle them today anyway. But you'd be wrong.

Presently most of our recyclables are still thrown away:

73% of glass containers
77% of magazines
75 % of plastic containers,
and 45% of newspapers

America is Number 1--at throwing away trash. We throw away more trash per person than any other countryman (or woman) on this planet (roughly 4 lbs a day and a little over 1600 lbs a year). Our trash winds up in landfills but also on the shores of places, piling up as litter on beaches so remote you wouldn't believe it--like the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands pictured above. Every year, the International Coastal Cleanup organizes hundreds of thousands of volunteers to pick up all this accumulated crap, and it just keeps on coming.

Maybe education will get us to change, but in my very limited experience financial incentives are the best bets (this came from my experience living in Massachusetts where bottle deposits facilitate the highest refillable bottle use program in the country--18% of beer bottles were refillable). This is also echoed in various muncipality-based programs where cities striving for a zero-waste goal are instituting very successful pay-as-you-throw programs linked to the volume of garbage you throw out each week. As much as this fervent optimist hates to say it, money talks. Several refillable beverage bottle bills are currently being proposed to reverse the trend of one-use glass use. So don your pinko commie hats and insist on subsidization and regulation!

My next project is to start weighing our garbage can to see what we are actually dumping into the landfill every week and whether or not my attempts to reduce trash are actually working. I hope to incorporate a counter on this site so you can follow along with my progress. The ultimate goal is to see how close to zero waste I can get us. Back in the last 1990s I had heard about a Seattle couple that reduced their waste to a one and a half trash bags per YEAR profiled on the landmark Escape from Affluenza.

Looking for tips about how to reduce waste? There are some very nice ones on the National Waste Prevention Coalition site. Please share any you might have.

Return of the Christmas Ficus

2005-12-24T16:46:00.000-05:00

It is definitely a tree, I thought, that only a mother would love.

For the third year in a row, the Christmas Ficus graced our living room--plucky, irregular, and honestly--a little homely.

This spirited little tree more resembles a shrub these days, but it has been with me for going on ten years now. My mother gave it to me as my first house plant when I moved into a questionable apartment complex, my first solo pad, the summer before my junior year in college. Somehow it has lasted despite near neglect at my youthful hands, eleven moves, and a blistering overnight in my brother's car last January. The latter incident, we thought, had doomed it for good. My brother, however, hacked off all of the dead branches (a lot), and miraculously the three stumps that were left flourished in the summer sun. Gotta love our Maryland summers...

Last night I finally brought down all the Christmas ornaments and Ben and I decorated the tree while waiting for Jeremy to come home. I have never before experienced such an emotion as watching my son kneeling before the Christmas Ficus asking me in hushed tones, "Mama, is this our christmas tree?"

"Yes, Wiggle," I replied, "This is our special tree, this is the Christmas Ficus."

Ben helped me pick out all the ornaments--many we could not hang because they were simply too heavy for the young branches to bear-- and such joy that went up when the single strand of white lights went on...well, it is enough to make you remember that Christmas, really good Christmases, are just about that: very simple pleasures.

This Christmas Ficus means something more to me than just a tree though, it is our family's tree--a tree that has only ever risen to the heights of Christmas Ficus in the warmth of a home habited by my brilliant husband, my exuberant son (even in utero), and our somewhat faithful cat, Jezebel.

So my special holiday wish goes out to everyone who reads this message to remember the simple pleasures, indulge in whatever wonder graces you, and to embrace your family that makes it a season to remember.

And, of course, a special thank you to my brother who resurrected the most wonderful tree in the world!

The Necessary Accesory

2005-12-22T10:24:00.000-05:00

This post comes courtesy of my recent reuseable bag addition from MOM's (my nearby organic market). Cheers to MOM's for starting a free bag giveaway and incentive program that rewards customers with ten cents bag everytime they reuse their bags. It's a pretty sturdy one and will go hand-in-hand with my cloth string eco-bags. I love MOM's for their produce, but still shop pretty regularly at my local co-op a mere 5 minutes walk from my house.

According to the helpful information supplied on the side of the bag, by reusing my bags I will be helping to reduce the nearly 100 billion plastic shopping bags out of the landfill. It also solves the sticky question of whether to use paper or plastic bags at the grocery store. I always thought that paper bags were the better choice, but come to learn some startling things: Paper bags used in the U.S. require the deforestation of tens of millions of trees, to say nothing of the toxic pollution created by paper and pulp mills (some of the dirtiest polluters in our country according to the EPA's U.S. Toxic Release Inventory report). So goodbye toluene, methanol, chlorine dioxide, hydrochloric acid, and formaldehyde and hello fresh clean air. I've also requested a recycling bin specifically for paper products from my local department of public works, so no more paper bags used for paper products and junk mail. They provide free bin and special "mixed paper" stickers.

I am trying to remember to take my reusable bags to "regular" stores like Target and the like where I get raised eyebrows but thankfully no plastic bags. My husband is also, for his part, doing his best to try too.

Speaking of junk mail, I highly recommend this excellent site set up by the Center for the New American Dream that provides step-by-step instructions to de-junk your mail box. I did this years ago, but now that we have moved back I need to repeat the process. I have also done this for my husband, my sister and brother-in-law, and my parents, and plan to put this forms into addressed envelopes with the stamps already affixed in their Christmas stockings.

More fun trivia for the holiday season--a nifty little footprint calculator that summarizes your impact on the earth's footprint on the basis of shelter, transit, food, and goods consumed. Good news, bad news on this front...I get high marks for using public transit, rarely eating meat, and buying unprocessed foods. My small home also figures into the equation, but I am still depressed to learn that my lifestyle requires 9 acres per person to support my needs. Worldwide, there are only 4.5 biologically productive acres per person. I suppose this is not bad compared to the average 24 acres consumed by the typical American, but we would still need 1.9 earths if everyone would live exactly like me.

Costs of Childbearing

2005-12-15T14:47:00.000-05:00

I am confronted today with the reality of parenthood. Lots of ideas but little time to implement.

Today I awoke with lots of gusto to go forth and do good: winterizing, research, a little contract work but was instantly recruited for an unexpected morning of co-oping at my son's daycare. After a rather rough morning with Ben, we returned home. Inbetween lunch and naptime I channeled an intense urge to be productive and went upstairs to do laundry. My son, throughout the various pajamas and turtlenecks that I pulled from the dryer was quietly amusing himself by spreading fecal matter over our entire living room carpet.

The joys of parenthood!

But how could you stay mad at that face?? Impossible.

So my productivity took a U-Turn and I found myself cleaning up crap after bathing my smeared son and placing him in his crib. The carpet (wall-to-wall) is an arch nemesis even without shit to contend with--an unforgiving cream that readily embraces spills, stains, dirt, and anything else my young son can bring in the house. Whatever the previous owners thought by installing it--themselves the parents of three small children--I cannot fathom. And of course, given my last entry, there is no doubt all matter of mold and spores growing throughout it. In fact, perhaps one of the most unhealthful items in your home could be your carpet: incubator for mold and dust mites, respository for volatile organic compounds (VOC), and a time capsule of toxic adhesives that linger for decades. My husband and I would love to replace it with wood flooring but that is not an expense we can afford at the moment.

Instead, we are getting the carpets cleaned. I'm not exactly happy with this decision. The chemical solvents and persisent organic pollutants (POPs) used in carpet cleaning have been linked to Kawasaki Disease and are not exactly on my Top 5 list to inhale. I plan to keep Benjamin out of the house for as long as possible and fully ventilate the area. My parents are bringing over their dehumidifier and we will put all the fans on. God willing, that carpet will be gone in the spring anyhow.

This decision was made after researching the possibilities of getting a low-VOC carpet and replacing the whole thing. Even for carpet tiles, by far the cheaper way to go, it would cost us at least $600 bucks for a wall-to-wall unit that would replace our existing carpet. That's not including shipping, new carpet padding, installation, or the energy devoted to removal. All in all, going green right now is an expensive proposition. Kind of frustrating...

Holy Humidity

2005-12-12T12:49:00.000-05:00

My husband likes to often quote Mark Twain on matters of weather: "Every one talks about the weather but no one does a damn thing about it."

Ain't that the triple-truth, Ruth.

According to my friend Tom's hydrometer, our indoor humidity this morning (after boiling hot water for tea on the stove) was an amazing 85%. To give you a little perspective, most sources suggest 40% for relative humidity levels within your home. In fact, the EPA, not exactly a credible source these days I know, suggests maintaining levels between 30-60% to control mold growth. Particularly for kids with asthma, which is a definite factor for us since our son Ben (almost three years old), is asthmatic. By about thirty minutes into Tom's visit and after opening and closing our front and back doors a number of times, the humidity dropped to about 70%. And there it has stabilized.

Being a tropical flower myself, humidity, per se, is not a terrible thing. In fact, in awfully cold weather, raising the humidity can actually make a room feel warmer. But raise it too high and the end result is moisture. Every morning, it looks like about a half a cup of water has been poured down the front of our windows. The prime culprit is no doubt our Quietline ventless washer/dryer. As is the fact that our fan inside our bathroom is not operational (motor broke, never replaced it). And that I cook a lot on the stove. The fact that our home is made of concrete, probably doesn't help either.

So it looks like getting a vented dryer is a pretty good next step for us. As is fixing the bathroom fan motor. And opening our house up for about twenty minutes a day to properly ventilate it. This latter move is a good idea to improve air quality anyhow. I am still not sold on getting a dehumidifier since our humidity may come more into line once we install the vented dryer and the exhuast fan. I am loathe to plug in another piece of equipment when my sole source of fascination these days in DECREASING my energy load, not plugging more crap in. I wish I could find a remediation effort to do this without plugging anything in. Ideas are definitely welcome.

Tom, a solar physicist and self-proclaimed energy efficiency fanatic, came over for about two hours to look at our house. With him, he brought an infrared thermometer which is just about the coolest thing this energy geek has seen all year. Pointing the thermometer across surfaces in my house, Tom can detects drops in temperature and, in doing so, sources of poor insulation. My top three culprits:
1) I have no storm door on my front door, and horribly ineffective weatherstripping. On my back door, I have the screen still our out-of -vogue storm door.
2) The doors originally installed for these 1937 homes are paneled and the inset panels are pretty thin resulting in a temperature difference of about 5 degrees.
3) I have no air conditioner cover on our ancient thru-wall air conditioner.

To wit, I will probably head out to Home Depot later today to get some plastic insulating material. And some brass weatherstripping as Tom thinks the brass stripping currently installed on our doors has lost its spring. Tom also recommended a good cover for our air conditioner unit. There are custom kinds but our air conditioner is so old that it would probably be too big to fit any of these. Some quilted fabric from a craft store would probably do the trick. Finally, Tom thinks that when the previous owners of our house installed the tile floors they essentially created a leaky threshold that allows huge drafts. A simple shim and some door sweeps would do the trick. When we get the dough in hand, some Pella storm doors will follow.

While looking for links for this blog entry, I found a nice step-by-step on solving insulation problems from this Old House. Of course, they don't show you how to do it, but if you stay tuned here, I'll provide some (hopefully) Idiot Proof instructions as I go through the process.

Major incentive for these actions was supplied by Tom. He's got about three times as much exposed surface area on his unit but his energy bills are about a 1/3 less. Holy dinero!

The Importance of Being

2005-12-10T15:39:00.000-05:00

When I was 14 years old, somehow I stumbled onto this quote by Oscar Wilde:

Pleasure for the beautiful body,
Pain for the beautiful soul.

What angst-ridden teenager would pass up that battle hymn? Definitely not me. While I was no where near as much of a tortured soul as Oscar Wilde, I didn't need a bout with hard labor to adopt the boiled down premise of that verse: No Pain, No Gain.

This sentiment has, for better or worse, guided my outlook on life. It propelled me through years of chronic depression without the assistance of medication. It fueled me during my bid to complete the Marine Corps Marathon despite a training that was plagued with heat exhaustion (Try running for 5 1/2 hours straight in August in Maryland, it'll exhaust anyone). These things I endured, but not without a lot of heartbreak and body ache thrown in for good solid measure. Am I a masochist or just hard-headed? As my husband would say: Maybe a little from column A and a little from column B.

In the late-1990's I read what may have been one of the most influential books in my life, Cecile Andrew's The Circle of Simplicity. It was kind of a watershed moment for me--the idea that living a meaningful life could be best approached, encouraged, and spread through the exploration of joy in partnership with other people. Pleasure for the beautiful soul on a community level. No gloom and doom, no haranguing or playing that tired environmental shame and blame game, no feeling that I was only one righteous force in a supremely screwed up society. What a breath of fresh air.

In 1998, a Washington Post Magazine article followed three young women on their journey to practice voluntary simplicity through participation in local simplicity circles. I was one of them.

Oy vey--That article! Never, in my humble opinion, was a more misguided article ever written. I even hated the picture they took of me. The photographer set up floodlights that could have lit Yankee Stadium. He commanded me to stare unsmiling into the camera. After he was done with me, I looked like a heroin addict at a methadone clinic ready to clock anyone who tried to butt in line.

What was absent from the article was a pretty straightforward message that voluntary simplicity is just plain fun. During that time and under the watchful eye of reporter Bob Thompson, I allowed myself to for the first time think independently about who I was absent of cultural norms that I was supposed to adopt and models around me that I was supposed to follow. But I also started to question what it was that made me feel alive. I know, I know. What a big fat cliche. But in this culture there is a lot of noise that drowns out what it is that makes us feel individual.

My life, and my world view changed after reading Cecile's book because I realized that I could say no to whatever I wanted. The power of choice. That is a heady realization for a twenty-something to discover. And I didn't have to wait to start living the life I wanted until I retired at 65. I could do it now.

I attribute voluntary simplicity to this major wake-up call. I don't think I could ever choose to voluntarily work a 40 hour work-week again unless finances dictated it (and we live pretty simply so that they don't have to). When I tell people this, they incorrectly take it as a sort judgment call on their personal choice to work the standard 9-5 job. What I am trying to convey though, is that a full-time job in our culture creates a pretty one-dimensional person. You physically don't have time to devote to exploring everything that interests you. And after commuting and working you don't have much energy to do anything but either fall asleep or engage in mindless activity. I choose to work less (and earn less) to have more time to fully participate in this world. And I ask a lot of questions. Mostly, I guess, because I have the time and the energy to do it.

Sure, sustainability is about energy efficiency and water conservation and economic development. But without a motivated and alive citizenship that has the will and enthusiasm to question the long-term benefits and consequences of our actions just how far can this train chug? Who will come up with the solutions if we are all too tired and worn out to even begin the conversation?

Base Camp

2005-12-08T15:15:00.000-05:00

Alright, so now that I'm rolling. Thought this project would not be complete unless I provided a clear understanding of where I'm starting (at the very bottom). But also, you should probably get a gist of the assumptions I am operating under throughout my project:

1) I live in a super small home (1000 square feet, no attached garage, no attic, no basement) in an interior unit townhouse.
2) I do not have air conditioning (in my estimation, there are only 5 bad days in Maryland that require my entire family head downstairs to sleep on our tile kitchen floor and gnaw ice cubes to escape the heat. Note: my mother-in-law distinctly disagrees with this statement).
3) Aside from my computer, I don't really have equipment that uses a lot of energy (we don't watch TV aside from movies and I am not a real gadget person).
4) I line dry our clothes in the summer.

According to Energy Star's home energy analysis my home scores a 9.2 out of 10. That means I use less energy than 92% of the homes in America. God damn. I knew I was good, but that good??

To date, I have made one stellar move toward greening my home: updating the appliances that suck the most energy. It's not sexy, I know, and it probably won't win you anywhere near as many compliments as a bamboo floor, but appliances are soul sucking things. I learned this from touring Mike Tidwell's house. He runs CCAN and almost monthly lets people tromp through his house to see all his earth-friendly energy modifications. I admit to being absolutely starstruck by his corn burning stove, but what got me the most was his caution to update the most energy-greedy appliance in our culture: the refrigerator.

So I did that with a nice little Energy Star certified one and went over the top to get a new combo washer and dryer, my pride and joy: The Quietline. For the first month I had it, I used to pop a beer and sit in front of it throughout the entire spin cycle. I was smitten. I extolled its virtues at every opportunity (parties, on the metro, to my future husband). I loved that I could, in the infamous words of Ron Pompeil-- Set it and Forget It. Had they asked me to sit in on an informmercial audience, I would have done it happily without pay. I did not care that an entire wash cycle took roughly 60 minutes and it took about 90 minutes to dry a full load. I was in love and blind to all else. Besides, I was at work and what did I care how long it took me to do a load of laundry as long as when I got home it was done?

That was until I got pregnant, married, and washed my own cloth diapers and realized that my Quietline was a one-woman kind of machine. This may come as a shocker, but I no longer have the time or energy to peer into the depths of its porthole window. I am, in a word, disenchanted. My QuietLine is woefully unequipped to work in our very humid environment. And has a rather dismal capacity that slowly chugs under the weight of our son's nine bizzillion outfits a day that we go through (potty training...) I am a woman betrayed with a lot of flippin' laundry that keeps piling up.

You live and learn I guess. Or you just head to your parent's house to hijack their extra-large capacity washing machine for a day (Guilty as Charged). My husband and I finally decided to invest in a small capacity dryer and put it in our kitchen (space considerations and all that). I got my eye on a sweet little compact model from Home Depot and have requested installation from my parents as a Christmas present.

If I had enough will, I would probably replace our dishwasher, another energy sucker according to this nice little chart I found on appliance energy use. But I'm kind of torn. On one hand, our dishwasher is perfectly serviceable and getting rid of it would just generate more waste...On the other hand, it would give me something else to talk about at holiday parties...

The Beginning of The End

2005-12-03T16:52:00.000-05:00

Welcome to the first installment of my labor of love. I'm writing to you from the close proximity of my 2003 Dell computer from my home office just several miles outside of DC. It is December and though I am inside, I am bundled up in a polar mint green fleece. If my very small nose is any kind of predictable gauge of my surroundings, it is damn cold in this office. In fact, it is damn cold in my whole house.

I have two undeniable talents:
1) Being able to smell cat urine from about 20 feet away, and
2) The unique ability to detect a draft in any space.

Both talents render me mildly freakish. Similarly, they are not real great assets to showcase in social situations. No one wants to hear that you think there is two month old cat pee on their bathroom mat, and that their garage door leaks like a sieve.

Countering these talents, several areas where I require major self improvement:
1) Cleaning litter boxes
2) Navigating Home Depot and successfully purchasing anything there that does not merit two additional return trips.
3) My tightfistedness toward spending money on trivial things such as: gas, electricity, clothes.
4) An immense distrust in using any product that should be used in ventilated areas.

Because I own a virtual bomb shelter (literally a concrete block home built in 1937), my latest fixation is modernization. I am intent on radically overhauling this house (within the strict limitations of my cooperative rules) to decrease my heating and cooling bills and improve our indoor air quality. It's not all about the money though. I also think it's insane that our culture pumps all this crap into the atmosphere.

This blog will follow my steps (and missteps) toward implementing more sustainable designs and practices inside my home. That means everything from sealing cold air leaks so I can shed this fleece to convincing my husband to stop bringing home the flippin' plastic grocery bags. Wish me luck.