It’s Not The Heat, It’s The Humidity!

Sorry for talking about “the cold” two days in a row, but it’s good to plan ahead!

If you live in an area that gets very cold in the winter months, one way to be able to live more comfortably without burning all that energy (and wasting all those dollars) of turning up the thermostat is to invest in a humidifier.  More humid environment helps you feel warmer without the added expense of the furnace kicking in.  It’s also very good for you and your surroundings:

• Can help relieve cold symptoms by making the air you breath moist, which helps keep your lungs more elastic.
• Reduce susceptibility to infection by keeping the mucus membranes of your throat and nasal passages moist allowing the tiny hairs (cilia) in both to work at expelling foreign objects such as mold, pet dander and bacteria.
• Relieve and prevent dry, scratchy skin and lips.
• Keep valuable wood furniture from drying out and cracking.
• Reduce static electricity, thus reducing the tiny shocks received from touching certain objects and other people.
• Can help prevent wood floors from buckling and separating.
• Reduce nosebleeds, as the air you breathe is moist.

So do it cuz it’s good for you, not just cuz…

Smell The Sunshine

Summer is nearing a close. But there is still time to harvest the energy of the sun before the rain and snow of Autumn and Winter blow into town.

Instead of using your dryer, take advantage of the few sunny days left and use a clothes line! Unfortunately, I live in an apartment situation and there isn’t any clothes line for met to use, but I do have a small and secluded backyard area. It’s the perfect place for a drying rack that I got from the store. And I can hang at least some of my stuff – my towels and pillow cases – on the rack to absorb the suns rays.

It saves me a few quarters in the dryer, but more importantly, it saves a little bit of electricity.

So save some electricity, just cuz…

Stop Recycling!

When we were children, we were told that the most important things we were learning in school were the three R’s – Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic. As a kid, I was pretty good at spelling, and thought it was weird to call it the three R’s when it was really an R, W, and an A.

Now in the beginning of the 21st century, there’s a new set of “R’s” – namely, Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle.

It seems the most prominent of the three is the last – Recycle, however, when you think about it, it really should be a last resort!

Here’s a different way to think about it all:

Reduce – when purchasing items, consider how much extra packaging is being used to contain the product. If the product’s packaging wastefully uses plastic or empty space, consider buying an alternative!

Reuse – Although storage is a concern in many households, before you toss something in the trash to be carried off to a landfill, or toss it in the recycling bin to be carried off to a recycling plant, perhaps there is an alternative! Many churches, schools, and daycare centers use cleaned tin cans, egg cartons, and other items for children’s crafts.

Recycle – This doesn’t mean “Replace!” There have been times when friends or co-workers tell me that they’re “Thinking Green” by replacing all of the non-green things in their lives with green things. So they go out and purchase paper cups for their picnics and throw away their unused Styrofoam cups that have been collecting dust for three years. They buy the new fangled swirly fluorescent light bulbs and replace all of their current (WORKING) light bulbs, throwing the perfectly good light bulbs away. Once a recyclable items has used up it’s life (so to speak), and can no longer be used (or reused) as something else, then (and only then) should recycling be the option.

So I’m not really saying DON’T recycle, I’m saying we should think about reducing and reusing first, and then choose recycling as the last resort.

Don’t Buy Bottled Water

Another twist to this blog will be my feelings on some of the things that are happening with our environment. Now, I don’t consider myself a “tree hugger” or a “crunchy person” by any measure. I do, however, try to think about cause and effect, and how little things I do (or don’t do) may not make a dramatic change in my daily life, but a thousand little changes can at least make a dent and promotes that good stuff.

Recently I heard a statistic that I won’t repeat here, because frankly, I am wary about how statistics are formulated. The statistic had to do with the amount of empty water bottles that are filling up landfills. The numbers stated in the statistic were huge, so of course, the cynic in me (which I need to work on) doubted the authenticity. I’m pretty good in math, so I try to form my own rationale regarding things.

Back in the 80s, when Olivia Newton-John was getting physical, there appeared on shelves a product called Evian. I thought the world had gone insane. Buying water? That’s just silly.

Almost 30 years later, it’s not so silly. Everyone seems to be doing it. And I’m all for the convenience of carrying around a 16.9 ounce ice cold helping of clean and tasty water. But the packaging is what concerns me. Millions of these small plastic bottles are being thrown away (or recycled). And while recycling this material is better than throwing this material away, what’s even better than recycling is not having the need to recycle.

Now, you may be asking, “What? What do you mean by “not having the need to recycle?”

If you didn’t purchase individual servings of bottled water, you wouldn’t have to recycle the individual bottles.

Do you want a potentially cheaper and more convenient alternative? Rent a water cooler. Yes, rent a water cooler. Many of the well-known bottled water distributors now offer rentable water coolers for home use. They deliver those 5-gallon polycarbonate water jugs to your home, and you place it in the rented cooler. Most of the time, it ends up being much cheaper than those individual bottles.

So run to your nearest convenience department store, and purchase a water bottle that you can refill from your own home water cooler, and skip the whole recycling process. You’ll be saving money, energy, and doing a little bit of good stuff.

Just cuz.