Update

Wow, it's been almost a month since I wrote anything here! I've been very busy at work, though, and I've had to work some in the evenings. Several little things to report:

The Geekdo/BGG team on CarbonRally isn't doing as well as I'd hoped. We've got six members, but I was hoping for more. Please join our team!

We got some dishwasher powder from Seventh Generation, and it's doing much better than Cascade, even. We've also changed the setting on our dishwasher, reducing the energy used both to wash and dry the dishes.

Gaiam is running a sale until mid-October where they're only charging 99 cents shipping on everything (unless extra shipping normally applies). They've also reduced the price of their Seventh Generation items permanently.

I don't remember if I've posted this before or not, but we've started saving on laundry by rewearing a shirt once if it's not dirty. We've noticeably cut the volume of laundry.

Someone has recently sold my address, and I'm getting at least ten new catalogs a week in the mail. I'm hitting Catalog Choice pretty hard, and they've stopped appearing -- and I'm not getting any repeats.

And finally, we're continuing the waste-free lunch. Once you get started, it's not that difficult to keep it going!

Green Cleaning

Cleaning product are often full of nasty chemicals, made from petroleum, and are toxic. The first thing we changed was our dish soap, followed shortly after by changing our toilet cleaner and shower cleaner. We use Seventh Generation products for all of these, and they clean just as well as the older name brands that we used to use, but are not made from petroleum. We really like the dish soap -- it smells so good! Later, we started using their laundry detergent because we couldn't find Era for sale anywhere in San Antonio, and no one could get it for us. I prefer the Free & Clear to the scented, but they both work just as well.

We had been using Bounce dryer sheets for some time. Again, we used their fragrance free variety, but it was often hard to find. About two months ago, we got Nellie's Dryer Balls from Gaiam. Dryer sheets have carcinogens in them. What I hate about them is how many you have to just throw away. These dryer balls do the trick, as long as you put them in separately, and while your loading your dryer, not just thrown in on top. I find less lint and that the drying time is reduced by a couple of minutes.

Just a few weeks ago, we replaced the Swiffer. Swiffer was great -- it was the difference of me cleaning my floors vs. not. But I was sad about the amount of "dry cloths" I was throwing away. Again, from Gaiam I bought something very similar, but with cloth attachments that you can wash. It seems to pick up dirt and dust even better than the Swiffer, and the handle is both longer and adjustable. I think this is really the way to go. I was thinking of selling the Swiffer broom at my next garage sale, but I think I might hang onto it until I can find a better way to mop. Again, it's Swiffer, or it's me not mopping.

I want to hang the sheets and towels outside to dry. It's been over 100°F here for three weeks, with hardly any rain. I know they'd fade, but let's face it -- they're old anyway. I'm just worried about bird poop.

Save the Paper!

Something we did to reduce our paper usage awhile ago was to stop buying paper plates. I hated throwing them out all the time. Sure, you're not using water and soap to wash them, but if you use glass plates, you're not responsible for all the electricity and chemical usage in the manufacturing process as well as the trees used. And if you use a dishwasher, you'll probably have it full of glasses and flatware that need to be washed, so you just fill the rest up with plates.

And importantly, you're saving money. It's $45 for a pack of 1200 paper plates on Amazon. One of these packs is about what a family of four uses in one month if they each use a plate every morning for breakfast and for lunch on Saturday and Sunday. That's $540 per year. Many things that you can do to reduce and reuse actually save you money.

We often trade games through the mail. Sometimes we've bought a game, thinking that we're going to like it, but we really don't play it that much, or it's not what we thought it was going to be. So we find someone else who wants it and trade. We save the packing materials from these shipments, along with materials from online purchases, to box up our trades to send. I'm sure some of these packing materials have been used in many, many trades. We just keep everything organized in the closest in the office. Also, if we sell something on eBay, we can use the packing material to ship the item. Again, this is saving us money by reducing what we need to buy. Also, when we're done with a cereal box, I cut it up to use as backing to send pictures to family.

Just recently, we've started purchasing napkins made from recycled paper from Seventh Generation. They're a little thinner than what we were getting, but hold up just as well.