That massive snowstorm stopped Seattle trash and recycling pickups and there was a massive influx of elder support supplies simultaneously, and I just let the recycle pile up in the garage during the extended freeze. Then I took an afternoon where it was just me and Alzheimer Mom, and we just slowly sorted and organized. She's so bored as we approach two years of quarantine, she loved having a more extended task to help with.
DIY pumpkin plushies:
Looking for zero-waste Halloween decor?
If you don't have enough fabric left to make a pumpkin in a single colour, you could combine different fabrics and tell your guests it's a Frankenstein-inspired pumpkin. Stuff them with fabric scraps that are too small to make anything new out of.
Miniature pumpkins would also work well as pincushions!
Don't throw your pumpkins out after your Halloween party. Try to find other uses for them, or keep them so you can reuse them next year.
(Image source) [ID: three orange pumpkin plushies with a stick for a stem and green fabric as a leaf. A bit of twine is tied to each stem.]
Solarpunking Apartment Living
Here are 5 ways I came up with to begin reaching for a solarpunk lifestyle while living in an apartment-style living space where you may not have a yard or permission to make changes to the property. Help me out by adding on more ideas!
1. Plants! I’m talking plants that clean the air such as peace lilies as well as growing your own herbs and/or veggies. If you have a window, even a tiny one without a sill, you can easily grow a simple herb garden.
2. Recycle everything! It’s not just your plastics, but make sure your toilet paper rolls are going to recycling, your boxes, your paper waste. Take the extra effort to find a recycling plant near you if one isn’t provided by your living accommodations.
3. Reduce your waste! Solarpunk is all about sustainability, and plastic water bottles are not sustainable. Begin to accumulate multi-use items such as washcloths rather than paper towels, a reusable water bottle, cloth grocery bags, etc.
4. Solar power! Maybe you aren’t able to use solar power for all your electrics, but there are great desk lights, phone chargers, and other great devices you can begin accumulating.
5. Repair your things! A solarpunk future embraces both technology and green living, and to have the best of both worlds you need to keep your things in top shape. Don’t forget to clean the dust out of you computer or out from underneath your fridge, and keep up with your car maintenance. The less often you need to buy new products and the less energy they have to use struggling to work, the better for everyone!
Here are five more steps for solarpunking your apartment living.
6. Reduce your water use and find ways to use your in-house grey water. Rinsing off veggies for dinner or spinning salad dry? Save that water to water your plants. Starting the shower? Catch the water that comes out before it becomes hot in a bucket and use as you would any other water from the tap. Get a kitchen timer and learn to take showers in five minutes.
7. Reduce your use of plastics. As your work on #2 and #3, look for opportunities to swap out plastic household goods for items made from sustainable materials and processes. Swap plastic for glass if durable goods or compostable/biodegradable materials if disposable goods. The majority of the world’s plastic is still made from fossil fuels. (Stop using paraffin candles too!)
8. Compost! Use your city’s food waste collection service or start a compost pile in your backyard or start a worm bin under the sink in your apartment!
9. Favor transit over cars, favor human-power over transit. Reduce your use of gasoline for individual transportation, increase your use of walking and bicycles.
10. Don’t presume “green” or “natural” automatically means beneficial, it’s about SUSTAINABILITY. Learn to investigate how things are produced, made or distributed and support local, independent crafters, manufacturers and resources over mass production.
If you live in Birmingham, AL, don’t ever buy wood. The Golden Flake facility stacks up tons of perfectly good used pallets and crates to rot, and you can just show up and take some (yes, legally) any time between 7 and 3. Plenty of sturdy 2x4s, plus a bit of scrap metal you may be able to find use for
Build a bench, or a fence, or a little free library. Improve your home or your community. I’m gonna use mine for a rainwater collector and a garden box!
Has the start of the new year inspired you to tackle a home decluttering project? Whether you've actually managed to start (using the tenets of Marie Kondo or the latest in Swedish "death cleaning") or still trying to find the inspiration, you'll eventually want some help offloading the excess.
But wait—don’t just toss all of your unwanted belongings in the trash just yet. A lot of the items that have accumulated in your home are probably still in good shape and could be used by someone else, which is why you should make regular trips to donation centers part of your decluttering routine.
Not sure what can be donated and where it can go? Here’s a handy list of the organizations that will take your appliances, home goods, electronics, and more.
This was just some of what got gathered up at my Mom’s house and hauled off to the thrift store. The original plan had been to take all this to the recycled art supply store, but with how things are going, that store is actually swamped with materials and we could have made an appointment to make a donation about four weeks from now.
We opted for “it’s leaving the house today.” We got another set of plastic drawers to leave with the set shown here, and a contractor bag of huge art paper.
I scavenged pavers from all over the backyard, taking out a whole path and some stepping stone spots to expand the sidewalk path from one paver-width to two. The leftover half bag of playground sand got poured into the spaces between the paver stones. Once it rains, they will set more firmly in place.
The backyard streamline continues with late summer projects that reduce mess and reuse what is on-hand. I have a broken planter that had a redundant something that is all over the yard, and the lemon balm. It was formerly invasive all over the ground patch in this area but was dug out of the ground and established itself in the planter at that time by creeping into the busted bottom, essentially moving into the planter to escape being weeded. I think a different and bigger planter needs to have a chunk of the lemon balm introduced into it and the intact wooden box can replace the busted one, and get new resident plants. This will get a planter box off the deck, opening up a bit more space.
Yes, electricity-free air conditioning is a real thing — and it kills two birds with one stone.
Follow @the-future-now
We all need way more of this type of thinking and this type of action in the world.
Backyard progress. Most of the heaped up stuff on the back porch was empty temporary potting. I looked at every single one of those containers. Top photo: left is unmarked/garbage, and on the right is everything marked with a Recycle logo. Why all this was kept, I have no idea. Bottom right photo: broken ceramics and crockery. Often smashed smaller and used for drainage inside pots. A few artful bits may get added to the fairy garden but this can go. Bottom right: a metal vase, a ceramic cache pot, a really nice bonsai pot and a glass ashtray all turned up in the mix that seem nice and still useful.
Ultimately, the house I'm living in will get downsized too: it's my elderly parents' investment property. I'm doing a lot of yard work, not only focusing on aesthetics but ease of upkeep. In short, what can I do with all the junk lying around? Or can I rearrange what's here? Rocks removed from problematic pathways are recycled and reused easily for new borders. The second photo shows more clearly how I'm camouflaging the awkward pavers used to edge the deck.
From Fast Company, 5 Apps To Help You Jettison The Junk:
After being locked inside for an abnormally long winter, it’s finally time for some spring-cleaning. Here are a handful of apps to help you cut through the clutter—physical and digital—in your life.