recycle
Video of a free, pesticide free fruit fly trap
http://www.youtube.com/user/thewheatguy Re-use, recycle and rethink…the three R's of homesteading and stretching dollars! This video is the re-use of the flimsy plastic produce bags to make a fruit fly catcher. No chemicals and no pecticides. The items used are free or would be trash. Enjoy!…(read more)
Homesteading on a porch
I always love to hear the trials and triumps of others who have that same pioneering spirit of a homesteader. Many people are overcoming the limits in which they live (financial, spacial, educational,etc) to find ways to improve their lives on a deeper level than monitarialy. That is the homesteader's spirit! Below is a partial blog/newsletter from a ministry in Isreal that I follow/support. I find this to be one of the most useful recycling ideas for styrofoam. With this plan, anyone can grow…(read more)
Home-made conditioner for hair
Okay, this might sound weird, but it really works to keep your hair soft. It's vinegar… regular old vinegar (white, red wine, apple cider) diluted 1:4 with warm water. You just pour a bit of it over your head then rinse it out after shampooing and it leaves your hair really really really soft. And it's not a "my hair is coated with synthetic smelling polymers" kind of soft — it's soft like petting a (soft) goat or cat kind of soft.
This is my first batch — I used apple cider vinegar and added a few drops of lemon essential oil. It smells like vinegar when you put it on, but after rinsing it out, there's no smell. I'm going to try white vinegar next.
I'm working on some home-made shampoo, too, but the first batch came out too thick — it works great, but it's a paste, not a liquid, so I'm going to change some proportions on my next batch before I post the recipe here.
(Free) birthday organizer
I've been looking everywhere for a birthday book, aka perpetual calendar, which is a book where you write down people's birthdays by month. I'd seen one online that I was going to order (for $9.99 plus shipping), but their only shipping method was UPS, which doesn't work for me.
I found myself at CVS today and they had those free little Hallmark calendars at the register. I picked one up and realized — aha! — there's no need for the calendar to be undated! So I took one of these cute and slim little calendars and will write down all the birthdates of my friends, and their increasing numbers of offspring (very hard to keep track of), and can tuck it into my little day planner. What a nice solution — especially because it was free to me.
One woman’s trash is some man’s treasure
I've been furiously de-cluttering my house in order to ring in 2009 in a clean and tidy house. The area I left until last was my icky (some say creepy) basement. It's dirty (half dirt/half cement floor), dark, dusty, and dank. I have some cans of paint and tools stored down there, but mostly it has been a place where I've tossed empty boxes (from ebaying mostly) and avoided at all possible costs.
This November, however, I got a new furnace (boy has it helped in oil conservation — I've gone from burning more than a tank a month to about 1/2 a tank a month). So that event spurred the total clean up. I posted ads on Craigslist and Freecycle for the boxes and packing materials and had people take a lot of them. Then the guys who took out the boiler cleaned up the dirt and hauled that and the rest of the empty boxes away for recycling.
I still had a couple of barrels' worth of debris, a whole lot of scrap lumber, miscellaneous odds and ends that I haven't used in seven years (beach umbrella, motor oil, electrical bits and bobs), and a bunch of copper piping. I know that copper has some value, so I posted an ad on Craigslist to see if I could find someone who would clean the rest of the junk out of my basement in exchange for the copper piping. I had a bunch of responses, and went with a very nice (and strong) gent who hauled EVERYTHING out, saying he knew someone who would buy whatever I had to dispose of.
So, the old saw, "one man's trash is another man's treasure" holds true here. If you have stuff that you think is of no value, don't put it in the landfill as the first response — there may indeed be someone out there who would like to take it off your hands at no cost to you….. even if it's a pile of dirt!
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