How to Stop the Flow...or at Least Diminish the Byproducts

Warning: Guys, if you're not into bathroom talk (but seriously, what guy isn't?) then you may not want to read any further!

A woman's monthly menstrual cycle is a gift from God - allowing us to have children - while also being a "curse" a female must deal with for 40 or so years! This post will focus on the products to deal with said cycle: specifically tampons. Oh, to be free from these bondages of plastic, synthetic fibers, and waste! Growing up I really didn't think twice about how my choices in menstrual paraphernalia would or even could effect the local landfill. But now when those 5 or 6 days roll around every month, I find it to be in the forefront of my mind.

I know not all ladies, especially those just beginning this journey towards a greener lifestyle, will welcome the opportunity to use a reusable pad or tampon. Sadly, some women are just too grossed out by this. Since I still have no experience with reusable pads or tampons (though I plan to in the very near future), I want to speak to those women who feel they absolutely can't give up single use tampons. I believe in the importance of baby steps, though, and by actually thinking about the kinds of tampons you use, you can make a big impact in the amount of waste you produce and send to the dump.

Pictured below are two commonly used brands of tampons. Both packages contain 18 tampons, but it is immediately clear which puts a far greater strain on our environment.


For simplicity, let's say you use 18 tampons per cycle (some use less, some more, but 18 per box is probably the most common size sold). Eighteen o.b. super tampons, wrappers, and box weigh a mere 2 ounces compared to the 18 Kotex super tampons, applicators, wrappers, and box that weigh in at 6 ounces. Multiply this difference (4 ounces) by an average of 12 cycles per year, and you have an extra 48 ounces (3 pounds) of waste going to the landfill with the Kotex than you would otherwise have if you forgo the applicator and went with a brand such as o.b.. Due to the reduced packaging (mainly because of the lack of applicator), you can fit six boxes of o.b. inside of just one box of Kotex. Are you catching my drift? The beauty is we were made with the most wonderful reusable applicator - and it's attached to our bodies so you can't lose it - our finger! Yes, the first time or two it may seem a bit weird, but it's completely natural and washes off in about two seconds. And you don't have to throw your finger in the trash!

Seeing as I still have a few boxes of o.b.s left over from my coupon queen days (read more about that in this post), I want to use these up before I look into purchasing (or making - explained in this post from Frugal Babe) a more sustainable reusable cloth pad or DivaCup reusable "tampon." So, ladies - have you already stopped purchasing single use menstrual products? If so, what works best for you? Thanks in advance for your input! In a few months when I delve deep into the world of reusable pads and tampons, I'll do another post on my findings. -Carrie

Green Ingenuity: Houston Sustainabillity Design Competition

As part of our Green Ingenuity Series, I want to share with all of our readers a project by a planning and design company out of Houston. This project was born out of a competition for sustainable design. You will hear the speakers in the background while viewing their project.

Allow me to give you some background which will make for a better viewing experience. When a developer develops a piece of land, he or she is required to design that piece of land so that no additional water runoff is created. This presents a challenge when you start putting up a lot of roofs and roads because water sheds off these items quickly. This water shed, when multiplied by the homes and streets in a city creates flash flooding and erosion problems downstream. To help mitigate this problem, you often times see a huge depression at the corner of a new development. This depression is made to capture the said runoff and release it slowly back into the environment. Developers hate this because it is lost land. One solution which I will blog about in near future is a rain garden which captures and holds water, releasing it back into the environment very slowly.

The video is about 6 minutes in length. Please enjoy.

Houston Sustainabillity Design Competition. Residential Winner.

Save Money by Going Back in Time: Whole House Fans

My grandma & grandpa's house was built in 1953 and like all homes built then, central heat and air was not available. Matter of fact, high-tech for 1953 was Saran Wrap and radial tires, which both made their debut onto the market that year. Also in 1953, the first 3D movie was shown and color television aired for the first time. Air conditioners saw their first milestone when one million window units made their way into homes around the world. These window units were big ticket items then. My grandpa, being a truck driver with a family of 9 to feed, wouldn’t have put much money into this newfangled technology. They knew how to get around heat waves without cool air.

Fast forward 30 years. I remember as a teenager one day sitting in Grandma’s living room on a spring morning and enjoying a cool breeze passing through the house. There was a hum and slight squeak of a motor turning in the background which was abnormal too. I didn’t put two and two together for another twenty minutes and when I investigated found the source of the breeze, it was a HUGE fan mounted between the attic and living space. I had noticed before the louvers which remained closed when the fan was not on. This time, with the fan on, I got my first glimpse of the fan itself. I marveled for a moment at the strength of this thing.

Antique whole house fan like Grandma used to have.

To Buy or Not to Buy?

The whole house fan worked by sucking air through open windows, into the living space and pumping it into the attic. This brought outside temperatures inside and cooled the attic off as well. Earlier this year, I randomly recalled this wonder and decide to investigate this ancient appliance to see if it would fit into our lifestyle change. Step 1, find a serviceable unit somewhere close by which we could turn on and evaluate. Step 1 was short lived. After putting the word out, I found that nobody uses these things anymore. Bummer.

Long story short, here’s what I did learn through the internet.

1. The larger the fan, the more noise they generate.

2. The more blades they have, the less noise they generate.

3. Vibrations travel through the fan and into the frame of the house producing noise.

I ended up purchasing a mid-sized fan for my 1100 sq/ft home. I’ll spare you the installation details, but I will mention that I hung the fan from the rafters to avoid the vibration transfer to the frame! This is the first I’ve heard of this and I haven’t seen anything negative as of yet. You can see the one I purchased HERE.

Fan with louvers closed.

Fan with louvers open.

Suspension system from rafters.

Here’s what we’ve learned from our fan.

1. Hot air outside = hot air inside. (We knew this already, but worth saying again.)

2. Air circulating in a hot house is more comfortable than stagnant air in a hot house.

3. Occasionally, you can get cold and need a sheet to sleep with on a July night in Dallas.

4. My fan is a good bit smaller than Grandma’s was. We get a pretty good breeze with a 24” (4500 cubic/feet per minute) fan, but can only open two or three windows. Strategically, this is ok in most instances because for us, opening a window in the kitchen brings air through the kitchen, dining room, and part of the living room before it moves through the fan. Opening every window in the house creates a very light breeze which does nothing to comfort you. I will go with a much bigger fan next time.

5. The breeze is best by the open window.

6. The two speed option works great. High for daytime use, and low (quieter) for sleeping.

7. Seriously, if you pass gas in the kitchen, don’t expect it to stay in the kitchen. It’ll hit every olfactory nerve between you and the fan.

Side note: It’s currently 101.5° F outside with 25% humidity. I have the WH Fan on, a desk fan on me and ceiling fan on in the living room for Carrie. We are both comfortable. A lot of this has to do with acclimation to the heat and the humidity as we never put the thermostat below 85 and often see temps as high as 89° or 90°.

I do recommend using a Whole House Fan to mitigate the heat. Currently, we use it about 12 hours a day in a Dallas summer. In case you’re wondering, Grandma had her fan removed about 5 years ago in favor of a pull down attic stairway. As far as I knew, it still worked after fifty years. What I wouldn’t give to go back in time and get that from her. That’s the kind of heirloom that’s worth passing down. -Jason

Addendum: Illustrations show the difference between Attic Fans and Whole House Fans, as we know them here in Dallas, TX.

Green Watchers

I had a profound thought yesterday which I feel I need to share with all of my readers. If you’ve ever gone on a diet, you know it’s infinitely easier to do when you have other people on board with you. There’s a social aspect to dieting which makes it easier, hence why Weight Watchers is so popular because of the encouragement you receive.

If you are lucky enough to have a partner in your house to diet with, then the ease rises another notch. Why? Two reasons. 1) Accountability to the other partner. 2) You mutually agree not to bring temptations into your home.

A green lifestyle is a diet of sorts. You abstain from petroleum, paper, or electricity on a regular basis and commit to using more of the good stuff.

As with dieting, if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it. Keep a track of the number of gallons of gas you use on a monthly basis. Review your electric bill and watch for opportunities to reduce. Count the number of paper towel rolls which make their way into your house. Commit to reducing these numbers and increasing the earth friendly things you are already doing. Find someone else who is committed to the same ideals you hold about the environment and keep each other accountable. Now go hug a tree! -Jason

Up To My Ears In Compost!

We love to compost around here. You might even call us composting fools. We can't get enough of the "black gold." Sometimes I feel like we should be the poster family for compost. We currently have four areas devoted to composting in our backyard. What a difference from our non-composting-selves only a year and a half ago! When we started composting in Arlington (read more about that here), I don't think we had any idea how composting would just become second nature to us - to all of us. Our three year old's main job other than helping to clean the bedroom is to take out the compost. Due to our vigilant composting and recycling, the picture below shows the amount of trash our family of 5 generated over a one week period. In contrast, our single next door neighbor more often than not has TWO full trash bins out every week.

One week's worth of trash for our family of five!

We even know gardeners that don't compost! Composting is just such a natural extension of gardening, and helps to bring us to that hallowed closed-loop system you hear so much about these days. You grow the food, to feed your body, and put the food waste products into the compost bin, to make the soil that will feed the food you grow. Perfection! We really started composting as an experiment ("May as well give it a shot!"), but it's quickly become big business around here. I think some people don't compost because when you read some of the manuals (yes, they make manuals!) it can seem very scientific or confusing. Certain percentages of green/brown, etc., etc. We don't follow any special formula. We just throw almost everything into the bin. Garden waste, spoiled fruits or vegetables (no meat or dairy - they attract vermin), straw, hay, leaves, grasses, weeds, sawdust, plain cardboard or shredded paper, chicken poop, and egg shells. We even add a few things some newbies may not have heard of before like dryer lint, ashes from the chimenea, hair (from brushes or haircuts), and even the junk collected out of the vacuum cleaner. Additionally, some grocery chains are starting to print their weekly specials with soy ink on recycled paper - making them completely compostable. I sometimes get their extras at the end of the sale and shred them, place them in the coop as part of the chicken litter, and every few months clean out the coop and add the mess into the compost pile, too.

I figured I'd take you all on a tour of our backyard composting, hopefully spurring some of you who haven't yet tried, or for some reason stopped many years ago and are thinking about beginning again, a nudge. It is truly so easy and is a wonderful (free!) way to make beautiful amendments for your garden beds, container plants, or ornamental landscape beds. You can even put finished compost out on your lawn to help green it up and make it lush. Seeing as we have no front lawn (and the chickens have taken over the small back yard), our compost goes straight to helping produce more food.

Composting for us starts in the kitchen. We've tried out many compost "collectors," but finally settled on an old, large plastic juice jug. It holds about a gallon, and our family routinely fills it up about every two days. It's not pretty, but it gets the job done. We keep it in the fridge so it doesn't start to stink or attract fruit flys.

Kitchen refuse bin

We used to take our kitchen waste and place it straight in an outdoor compost bin. However, now that we have acquired chickens, we're trying out something new. Now this waste goes straight to an area beside the coop. We just throw it right on the ground. The chickens love to scratch through these treats. They eat the vast majority of it. What they don't eat or poop out gets left to decompose. And it does this very quickly. About every other day I go to this area and spend 30 seconds with a rake making it into a pile again. The chickens return to scratch, spreading it out while looking for bugs. My 2 foot wide by 1 foot tall pile gets obliterated in a matter of minutes to just a few inches tall and about 5 feet wide. The chickens have a blast while also reducing our costs for their feed.

Compost by the chicken coop. That bag near the middle is a supposed compostable Sun Chips bag, but it's taking forever - we've had it just over 4 months - probably because the pile doesn't get very hot. In a hotter pile it would decompose much faster, I'm sure.

This small pile sits right next to a much larger pile (3.5' tall x 8' wide) of shredded cedar and hardwood mulch we got for free from a local tree cutting company (note the edge of this pile in the top right of the above photo). I add a bit of this to the "chicken pile" every few days as well. This also decomposes, though slower, and adds some bulk to the kitchen waste.

Free mulch pile slowly decomposing, too.

Note the closeup of the amazing soil being generated between the compost, mulch, and chicken poop.

The last two areas sit on the opposite side of the yard from the coop. This is where we compost larger yard waste (small tree limbs, leaves, dead garden plants, straw, etc - in the wood bin) and other kitchen waste, chicken poop, and the more uncommon vacuum waste, hair, and ashes (in the black plastic bin).

Inside view of wood bin

Inside view of plastic bin. That gross mass in the middle is from the vacuum (ewww!), and yes, to the left of the vacuum mass that does appear to be a beautiful red necklace with a charm attached. I think an older (or younger?) brother has been getting into his sister's jewelry. I need to investigate this!

So that's it, ladies and gentlemen. There is minimal rhyme or reason to our composting madness, yet it indeed turns into compost every single time. It may not happen as quickly as the manuals declare, but it does happen. Don't be afraid. Seriously do it. You'll greatly reduce what you send to the landfill, and you'll potentially save hundreds (thousands?) of dollars over your composting life by not having to go to a big box store to buy it. You won't regret it! -Carrie

An Ova-tion for Swoope!

I guess the golf balls helped!

Yes, folks, you read that right! It's official - we have our first egg! (Imagine a beam of light shining down on the coop with angels singing in chorus...) I actually got goosebumps when I came upon it yesterday evening! An almost inexcusable 76 days after bringing home our 5-6 month old hens - one small white egg, about the size of a golf ball. It was from Swoope, our Brown Leghorn. The other two lay brown eggs, and leghorns lay white, so she's our gal. She has been kind of squawky recently, but we were gone for a few hours yesterday morning and the chickens were "cooped up" as it were, so that's probably when it happened. She appears no worse for the wear. Needless to say, it was a big day around here. No eggs this morning though, I think she's taking a well deserved break. Hopefully the other (much larger) two will catch on soon!

Swoope taking a dust bath while basking in the evening sun.
The perfect end to a momentous day!

Please excuse the somewhat blurry pictures. I was so overjoyed I just didn't take the time to focus the camera! Also, thanks to my dad for the sweet post title. You're a genius! -Carrie

Around the Homestead...

Here are some recent pictures from around the old homestead. Enjoy!

Sun tea, brewing in, you guessed it, the sun!
Jason makes this about every other day.

Action shot of chickens eating a custom blended mix of grains, fruit, etc. I try to give them something like this about twice a week. Probably completely unnecessary but it makes me feel good!

Swoope waiting for said mix....

Jason bringing it to her.
He honestly feels like we wait on them hand and foot!

Three new 4'x8' beds! I'm so excited about these and will do a post on them in a few weeks. Still trying to fill them at least partially with free (or almost free) materials. Will get a delivery of blended veggie growing soil towards the end of August. Stay tuned!

Lone strawberry in our strawberry pot. We get a paltry one or two a week!

Attempting to cook a pizza in Jason's solar oven. Still needs some tweaking, though. It's never gotten over 200 degrees inside. After about two hours we had to take the pizza out and finish it in the oven.

Sweet little lizard on a growing cantaloupe. -Carrie