LILL's LIST

Is your sofa a little worn? Has your recliner declined? Does your coffee table look like it’s been attacked by a family of beavers? Maybe you need to redecorate, but that doesn’t mean you have to fill your living room with toxic chemicals or spend a fortune. If you’re willing to be flexible and a little creative, you can furnish your living room with cozy furniture that won’t outgas and doesn’t cost a fortune.

Do a search for patio furniture. That’s right. Find furniture that’s green, made of sustainable materials and  sturdy enough to stand up to the elements – or your hyperactive toddler and Black Lab. Whether it’s made of bamboo, “polywood” which is a recycled material made from milk jugs and other plastic, eucalyptus or another sustainably harvested wood, patio furniture can be used to decorate a living room, den or even a dining room

Add some cushions to a wooden couch. Use a bookcase for a bedside table or divider. Put a bamboo lounger in front of the TV and really relax. Hey, there are no rules anymore. Anything goes, as long as you like it and it’s comfortable. Of course, if it’s eco-conscious and fits into the budget, it’s even better.

May I suggest that you investigate making your own cushions with kapok or natural latex rubber filling and cotton or wool coverings? If you’re not into sewing, maybe you can find some cotton slipcovers at Goodwill or have someone run you up some for a small fee. Or maybe you can barter. If there’s something that you have that a seamstress wants, you’re in business.

I once traded some healthy strawberry plants for a dining room table. There are all kinds of possible deals if you talk to people wherever you go. Let people know that you’re looking for a sustainable wood kitchen island, and you’ll be surprised at how quickly one will turn up. Start looking at patio furniture as less expensive eco-furniture for the living room and you’ll be sitting pretty in no time.

Most of us are feeling the economic pinch of higher prices these days. Rising fuel and heating costs are contributing to higher prices for just about everything. So how can the average family combine cutting back on luxuries with going greener? True, many organic, natural and eco-mindful products cost more than the cheapest alternatives, but that just doesn’t mean that we have to give up and buy generic detergent at the dollar store. It means that we have to be ever more creative, innovative and clever. It also means that we might have to trade time and/or convenience for cost.

For instance, I love 7th Generation products. I’ve used them for years and I know that they work as well or better than their polluting, less ecologically sound counterparts. At my supermarket, they’re usually priced higher than the generic brands, but sometimes only a few cents higher than the big national brands like that detergent that comes in the orange package, for instance. What really helps is their newsletter and the coupons they almost always have on their site.

I signed up for their newsletter a while ago and have enjoyed several of their coupons since then. Here’s the link if you’d like to sign up to get the Seventh Generation newsletter. And here’s the link for their coupon page. Last time I looked, they had coupons for cleaning products, diapers and detergent. I really like their new 2X concentrated detergents.

Here are some other sources for green coupons: Pristine Planet always has a good selection. My favorite coupon site for everything RetailMeNot has a long list of coupons for green goods. However, be sure that you check the expiration date on the coupon you want to use. Some of them are out of date. OrganicCoupon.org also has a very good selection of online, offline and printable coupons.

If you can’t find a coupon, maybe you can use something else. A couple of pieces of aluminum foil for dryer sheets. White vinegar in the fabric softener ball instead of that blue softener that has formaldehyde in it. Hey, you want to soften your clothes, not embalm them, right? Ditch the paper towels and say what we do when we dust. Holey socks, Batman! (Since my only method of darning socks involves dropping them into a trash can while muttering, “Darn these socks!”, dusting with them works better than darning them.)

Use your ingenuity and figure out how to do things without all the gadgets and plastic junk they sell at Wally World. You can do it. You might even find that it’s fun to think outside the box. (And after you’re done, give the box to your kid to play with instead of buying them a lead paint covered cute little toy from the discount store. Kids love boxes.)

If you think of anything that can help save money and the earth at the same time, share it in a comment. I’m always up for new green info – and saving green too.

My 17 yr old son is trying to eliminate artificial flavors and colors from his diet. He’s noticed that they aggravate his asthma and make it harder for him to focus. We’ve always read labels, but lately we’ve been poring over them like government lawyers looking for loopholes in fine print. After squinting at hundreds of bags, packages, boxes and jars, we’ve come to the following conclusion. The best way to get food that doesn’t have (as my son would say) that toxic crap in it is to get food in as close to its natural state as possible.

Granted, it would be best if we raised our own chickens and vegetables, kept our own milk cows, and ground our own grain and coffee. However, not all of us have the room, the time or the inclination for farming. So, short of cooking a chicken that was walking around in the henyard this morning, how do we get food in its natural state, not to mention not packaged in plastic?

One thing I’ve done is request freezer paper for my meat, rather than plastic film. Most supermarket meat departments have it. And if you ask them to, they’ll wrap your chicken legs or beef roast in it. If they don’t have it, ask them to stock it. You’d be surprised what supermarkets will do to retain a customer. They could even advertise that they have it for other eco-mindful customers.

Of course, the best way to be sure that your food is as pure as possible is buying organic. But what if, like us, you can’t afford the higher prices? Well, we compromise by buying our meat, milk and fruit organic whenever possible. My kids have grown up on organic milk and hate the taste of non-organic. I do too. It tastes flat, maybe because the cows have been eating grain, not grass. The milk we buy comes from cows who spend most of their time out to pasture and get silage in the winter, not corn. Actually, lately, organic milk isn’t much more expensive than non-organic.

For meat, we buy organic chicken, beef and pork, usually when it’s marked down on Sunday. Most supermarkets have a day when they mark down meat and will gladly tell you when that is. Just ask. If you’re lucky enough to have a natural foods supermarket nearby, they also mark things down, especially when they near their sell-by date. We don’t buy ham, bacon or hot dogs, except when the unprocessed ones are marked down. All of these meats are high in nitrates and salt.

Neither do we buy frozen dinners, chicken products like nuggets or patties or anything else covered in breading and fried. Have you ever looked at the list of ingredients in most processed frozen foods?  The picture on the cover shows a piece of chicken, some mashed potatoes and some green beans. Yet, the list of ingredients is ten inches long and you can’t even pronounce some of the words. Is it worth it for convenience, not to mention is it worth paying the high price of frozen dinners? I don’t think so.

Instead, we just overcook. When we make a meal, we make more than we need. The excess goes into our version of frozen dinners. Only, ours are more flexible, because we freeze the items separately in glass containers. So, one container will have four chicken thighs that have been cooked in BBQ sauce. Another container will have oven-browned sweet potatoes, onions and white potatoes drizzled with olive oil. Other containers hold rice pilaf, pasta with sauce or veggies, so that we can mix and match to our hearts’ content. Let’s see Marie Callendar do that!

It would be nice if we could buy local produce year-round, but in Maine, except for cold-weather greens, that’s not possible unless you have your own greenhouse. (Eliot Coleman, the author of several good gardening books, has one about growing your own veggies year-round, but so far we haven’t gotten motivated enough to do it. You might like to try.) So we try to buy veggies that have the least amount of pesticides used on them. Here’s a link to the Environmental Working Group’s list of veggies with the least and most amount of pesticide residue. You can even order a pdf file of it to take with you when you shop.

My shopping cart looks a lot different now. It has far fewer processed items in it and more fresh produce. Even with the many organic and natural items we buy, my costs haven’t gone up nearly as much as I thought they would. Actually, some weeks, we spend less, because we find bargains and mark-downs. What’s in your shopping cart?

Utility bills are a big part of our budgets. Gas and oil prices are rising everyday and electricity is expensive. Trying to keep up with rising prices is hard enough without wasting money on energy thieves. Are you guilty of these cleaning mistakes that waste energy?

1.How about the baseboard heaters? When is the last time that you took off the covers and gave them a good vacuuming and then a wipe with a damp cloth? Did you know that dust build-up reduces heat output? So you’re wasting money on oil or electricity if your baseboard heaters are dirty.

2.What about your computer’s CPU? When you start thinking about places that dirt can build up in your environment, think about anything with a fan. Anywhere that a fan pulls in outside air – for instance your computer’s CPU – should be vacuumed at least every few days. When dust builds up on components inside the CPU, it takes longer for heat to dissipate, which shortens the life of the unit and uses more electricity.

3.Hairdryers also have fans. When is the last time you really looked at the intake on your hair dryer or gently vacuumed the lint and hair out of it? If you let it build up too long, it can actually catch on fire. Even if it doesn’t, just like the baseboard heaters, it has to work harder to do the same amount of drying, so keep it clean and save electricity and drying time.

4.When was the last time you cleaned your dryer vent? Especially in winter weather, many people forget to clean their outside dryer vent. Sure, the little door is supposed to open automatically and release lint into the air, but lint still builds up on the inside of the vent and even on the pipe inside the house. It’s very important that you check the vent regularly, clean the vent and as far inside the pipe as you can. There are long brushes that can do this and you can find them at hardware or home products stores.

5.Have you vacuumed your fridge lately? Not the inside; the coils. Either in back or underneath your fridge, there are coils of tubing that hold the refrigerant that cools your food. These are delicate and you have to be careful when vacuuming that you don’t break them, because the refrigerant is poisonous. Just gently vacuum the surface, because when they’re dust-covered, they don’t work as efficiently. It takes more time and electricity to cool the interior.

6.Isn’t this a bright idea? Clean your lightbulbs. When they’re off, just wipe them with a damp cloth. Dust makes them dimmer and can even make some of them overheat, which can make them fail sooner than a clean bulb.

It doesn’t take long to get the dust and dirt off these items. The time it takes is worth it when you think of the money you’ll save. And let’s not forget that using less energy is better for the environment, which is certainly as important as saving money is.