Monthly Archives: January 2008

Composting Can Help You to Be Aware of What You Waste

My husband and I do a lot of composting of our food waste. It’s really not that hard… well, for me. He’s the one who goes and turns the compost pile, things like that. I just make sure the food scraps I make end up in the pile in the first place.

Some food waste is going to happen. If you peel a cucumber, obviously that’s going into the compost pile. Same for chopping the dried up end from broccoli.

But other food waste could be avoided if you just pay more attention. This is one of the areas where composting helps me to notice it more. It’s a rather more concious act than just scraping the leftovers into the trash. Or worse, the fresh fruits and vegetables you forgot to use before they spoiled.

Of course, not all leftovers are suited to the compost bin. Cooked foods don’t go well in a lot of them, nor does meat. Citrus peels tend to decompose very slowly. And worms just plain don’t like onions or citrus.

Our compost bin was pretty easy for my husband to make. Our landlords left a bunch of scrap construction materials, including a bunch of cinderblocks. He stacked those into a 3-sided box. The fourth side is open for easy access, and we keep the pile lightly covered.

Compost piles can accept more than just food. Soak and shred old cardboard, and throw it in. Other kinds of paper can work too. Leaves and grass can go in.

There are a lot of options for those who don’t want to build their own compost bin. Amazon carries a nice variety of composting supplies, and of course books on composting too. Green and More also carries a few composters in their garden department.

Of course, while composting can help you to become more aware of what you’re wasting, it’s still best if you can remember to eat the food you bought, rather than sending it to the compost bin.

One trick I use is to eat leftovers from the previous night’s dinner for lunch whenever possible. I’ve been trying to get my husband to do likewise, since otherwise he eats lunches that are cheap and convenient, rather than healthy or green. If I fall behind, excess leftovers go into the freezer if they freeze at all well.

Leftover salads and chopped raw veggies, of course, don’t fall into this group very well, but they are popular in my house. I know I overdid a salad if it ends up compost. Chopped veggies are such wonderful snacks for the kids that I guess I should be grateful my kids love them so.

While composting doesn’t solve all the problems associated with wasting food, it does take care of it filling up landfills, and puts the extras to some sort of a use. We’re pretty happy gardeners around here, so our compost ends up helping to produce some pretty nice food for our family.

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I Am So Ready to be Done with Potty Training

My son is being really reluctant to be potty trained. He’s about to turn 3, and just not quite ready to take that final step. He uses it at bedtime or during dinner as an excuse to leave the table, but any other time is a battle.

I thought a couple weeks ago I had found his key. He loves the color blue, and had been telling me he wanted ‘blue candy’ for going potty. Fine, if it works to get him trained that’s good enough for me. I found gummy blue sharks, cut them up a little because the whole thing would be too long, and he seemed happy.

For a week or two. Then he said it needed to be ‘blue balls’ (never mind the jokes). One of my sisters happened to have a container of blue jelly beans, excess from a gift basket she had customized. He was really delighted with those, again for a couple weeks.

Now we’re dealing with the disinterest again. He doesn’t care if he’s wet. Worse, he doesn’t care if he’s pooped his diapers, then screams about the ‘fire butt’. He’s stubborn.

But I do so look forward to not having the waste of diapers. They’ve been one of the battles for us, environmentally speaking. You see, my husband is completely against cloth diapers, and not into the alternatives, such as gDiapers. We didn’t hear about those until several months ago anyhow. I don’t win every environmental discussion in the house, although I do try!

We’ve finally decided that it’s just going to take picking a couple days when my husband is off and hauling our son to the potty every hour or so. It’s going to be when my husband can be home because I’ve tried this one before, and there were more tears involved than I like to deal with alone.

But I think my son is about ready to get serious. He’s not ready to just do it on his own, but the idea of ‘Thomas the Tank Engine’ underpants really appeals to him. With any lucky, the combination of the reward for using the potty each time, being taken to it regularly and the reward when he’s doing well enough of picking his own underpants will finally get the job done.

Another tactic we’ve considered is letting him roam the backyard freely for much of a day. We’re in southern California, after all, and even right now we’ve been having days warm enough for that. I’ve heard that it can greatly help kids to be aware of what their body is doing. I’m too much of a wimp to want to clean that up in the house, though. My husband has been working on gardening activities, so there’s be plenty of supervision.

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But Recycling’s So Haaaaard!

Perhaps not around the home, but recycling consistently can be really, really hard to do for a lot of people.

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Just think about it. When you’re out and about, and need to dispose of something that you would recycle at home, how often is there a bin for it? In some areas that’s pretty unusual.

I know in my area things are good in some places. I sometimes see parks with bins for recycling glass or plastic bottles. Recycling bins for paper are less common, but considering that a lot of people have trouble keeping trash out of the other recycling bins, that makes a bit of sense to me. The criteria for recycleable paper can be stricter, so I kind of get it.

While I work at home, I also understand that you’re lucky if a business does more than paper.

One of the key things I do is try to avoid having to recycle when I’m out and about. If I can plan ahead, reusable makes much more sense than recyclable. In most situations I’d have to carry the item back home anyhow.

At home, if you have kids around you can teach them what can be easily recycled in your area, and have them responsible for at least a part of it. My kids know that paper goes in the recycle bin, as does metal, but plastic they have to ask since our area only recycles #1 and #2 plastics that are bottle-shaped. At 2 and 5, they’re both pretty good about it.

Away from home certainly takes more of a conscious effort for everyone involved. The best solution is for more locations to make the changes to make recycling easier. That means more recycle bins in parks and other places, and workplaces making it easier for their employees to recycle.

It also requires local governments to take more of a role. They need to make recycling more appealing than throwing things in the trash. That can mean giving a discount on trash service if you recycle as well. It may complicate the bookkeeping a little for whichever company handles waste disposal, but how else are we to encourage it?

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