The Rage Diaries

Reduce, Reuse, Recyle ... your TV armoire

The Miami Herald recently ran an article on how flat-panel TVs are making ye olde TV armoire obsolete ("TV Armoires Get Reinvented," June 29, 2008). While the people in the article were doing things like turning their TV armoires into office storage or display cases, I asked myself, "How have shelter mags covered this?"

Martha Stewart would turn it into a craft armoire -- or perhaps an area to store baby things. Sure, she also flogs the home-office idea, but come on -- everyone's doing that.

Cottage Living suggests turning an armoire into bathroom storage galore, or into a kitchen storage space. I'm sort of smitten with the latter -- a lot of the older houses in Alameda have kitchens when there's little storage but plenty of odd-sized nooks and crannies for a standalone piece like the one here.

Personally, I'm disappointed not to be able to find the one conversion I was sure someone had done: turning one of these monsters into a bar. Think about it! You could nestle a wine rack in the bottom drawer, put the glassware in another shelf, then tuck your ice bucket and liquors into the shelves that rest where the 37" Triniton used to go. Then, you're bringing over your special man friend (or lady friend, whichever) and you're like, "Can I mix you drink?" and don't you look smooth?

Please, someone, repurpose your TV armoire and show me what you did.

Animal + vegetable != miracle

My tomatoes are doing beautifully. I have four plants -- two brandywine, one green zebra and one yellow plum -- across two raised beds, and they are now so hearty and vigorous, I've had to stake them to the skeleton of a vandalized "Yes on H" sign someone stuck in our yard.

(Side digression: Alameda's about to vote on Measure H, which would tax homeowners to make up a massive school budget shortfall. People who dig the prop have been putting signs in their yard. However, we can home last Friday and found that someone had stuck a "Yes on H" sign in our yard with a big, black "NO" spray-painted across it. Anyway, I huffily recycled the sign but kept the the metal frame for it. Thank you, vandals, for saving me the cost of a tomato cage.)

Because I had some room left over in the raised beds, I figured I'd do some co-planting. I have some French breakfast radishes coming up in one bed. But alas, in the other ... I have a pile of dirt and a suspicious hollow. There are no green onions coming up, because Zito has apparently been peeing on them. I've scooped out the dirt and have a screen over the bed now to prevent our idiot cat from jumping back in there, but still ... if it's not one thing in the garden, it's another. (At left: the pissy culprit lolls in "his" chair, which is parked in our garage instead of at the dump where it ought to be. He has no reason to look as irritated as he does.)

I can only imagine my headache if I really committed to urban homesteading, like these people:

I think I may have found a lucrative sideline

I don't recall whether or not I've told youall this already, but our trip to the Big Island that I was all excited about a few months ago ... was cancelled. We had our tickets on Aloha airlines, and while we were in Blacksburg, that's when we learned that Aloha had shut down operations.

In theory, I was supposed to spend this past week marveling at lava flows at Hawai'i Volcano National Park. In practice, I have been reading about the vog that the park is grappling with and fuming at our credit card company. You see, when we learned that Aloha was shutting down, we turned to each other and said, "Hey! One of the good things about using a credit card to purchase goods and services is that when said goods or services fail to materialize, you can call them up and dispute the charge! Credit card companies even tell you this!"

I first contacted the customer service hotline at our credit card company on April 1. We are still negotiating with the company. We have sent them copies of the billing statement where the tickets showed up (copies which -- heh -- they had to send to us first before we could officially send them back), copies of our e-tickets and proof that we tried to resolve this matter with Aloha airlines before asking the credit card company to eliminate the charge for the service that was not delivered. I look forward to seeing what delaying tactic the card company uses with us next.

And by "look forward," I mean "sublimate my irritation by writing cranky consumer letters." In the past month I have:

-- Heavily edited a letter Phil sent to the San Francisco Giants front office after he had a thoroughly unpleasant experience with some peanut-throwing gibbons in the Oracle suites.

-- Sent an email to Martha Stewart Omnimedia after a peel-down Swiffer ad kept me from clicking a hyperlink five times in a row. I'm okay with ads on websites. I am not okay with the ad completely biffing the entire user experience. It is not a good thing.

-- Sent an email to Dairy Queen denouncing this commercial as sexist and revolting.

-- Sent an email to my representative on the EBMUD board of directors pointing out that an across-the-board 19% reduction in water use effectively punishes people who were already conserving and only provides incentive to whoop it up in the fat times so that the next round of cutbacks doesn't hurt.

With the exception of the last letter, I've received quite nice replies. (As I should, since I wrote quite polite letters.) And someday, Phil will tell you how the Giants made everything okay. But here is the weird and guilty thing: I freakin' love writing these letters. It is better than yoga for reducing the tension in my back.

So now, I have only two things to worry about. First, that I really am on the road to becoming one of those cranks who writes everyone about everything. And second, that I'm never getting my money back from the credit card company. Because if that's the case, I'm going to need to do a lot of letter-writing to get the tension out of my back.

Attention, East Bay residents and businesses

EBMUD has introduced mandatory water rationing. I read the press release, and here are the salient points:

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, Retail

Just a collection of links that connect filthy commerce, media and eco-consciousness:

"Wal-Mart Green Push Supports Earth Month" (BrandWeek, Apr 1, 08) -- "The Bentonville, Ark.-based retailer said that more than 50 products spanning various aspects of sustainability will be featured on store shelves in April and that more than 500 eco-friendly items will be available at Walmart.com."

"Mags Go Gaga for Green, with Just a Nod to Own Hypocrisy" (AdAge, Mar 31, 08) -- "[A]ny of those green glossies seem determined to test their readers' capacity for cognitive dissonance by editorializing for eco-friendly action on virgin paper that lugs big carbon emissions behind."

(On a related note: I recently picked up a copy of National Geographic Green Guide, and I recommend that anyone who's embarking on a greening of their lifestyle -- or anyone who wants to study magazines -- do likewise.)

"Crate & Barrel Keeps Pulse on Environment" (ChiTrib, Mar 24, 08) -- "As for going green, Crate has got a head start. It got rid of packing peanuts in 2006 and has been moving to eco-friendly catalog practices for years. Last year, it advertised its sustainable furniture in national magazines and just recently created a section on its Web site to tout its green strategy."

I love it when efforts collide

I was mopping the floors on Monday night when it finally occurred to me to wonder: I've been using an O-mop and the Method Wood for Good cleaners for a year. How does a year of this compare to a year of Swiffering? Let's assess the material and financial costs.

I dry-mop weekly and full-on clean the house's hardwood floors once a month. So let's assume 36 dry cloths and 12 wet cloths as a baseline. Let's throw in the typical life-happens stuff -- weather-related mud or dust, OCD hostess cleaning before wingdings, three months of contractor-generated dust all over, the cats vomiting hairballs all over the place at least once a week -- and double that. So, with the Swiffer system, that's 72 dry cloths and 24 wet ones. They come in packs of 32 (dry) or packs of 12 (wet), so an average year sees me buying three dry packs @ $11.26 and two wet packs @ $4.29. It costs me approximately $42.36 per year, and I toss out 96 wipes over the course of the year.

Back in April 07, I bought an O-mop starter kit ($30) and an extra microfiber mop pad ($6). About two months ago, I had to buy a bottle of floor cleaner ($6). All told, it will cost me $42 to clean my floors this year. So could you argue that financially speaking, it's not cheaper to be green?

Maybe not in the short term, but in the long term, it will be. After all, $36 of that $42 I spent is on reusable equipment I only have to buy once. I figure in year two, I'll have to buy two more bottles of cleaner, so the cost drops to $12 per year. Best of all, I'm not using up wipes.

What other green lifestyle options have turned out to save you both money and resources?

Space, the elusive frontier

Commenter Stephanie notes that I'm not the only weblogger doing the new-year-new-finances thing -- there's also this nice lady at Tales from the Den of Chaos. I was thinking, the who get-control-of-your-commercial-world appears to be creeping across the personal blogosphere. A few months ago, the Site Formerly Known As Sarcastic Journalist relaunched as The Simple Family, and another very popular mommyblogger has decided her family's taking a year off of shopping.

Surf around and select the right links and it would be easy to think that we're all on a quest to spend wisely and mindfully. And then ... you can actually read things about the wider, un-subjective world. On Jan 4, 08, the WSJ reported:

Annual consumer expenditures have almost doubled in the U.S. since 1990 to $8 trillion in 2006, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis. "We've been through an orgy of getting, and now there's an orgy of storing," says Perry Reynolds, vice president of marketing at the International Housewares Association in Rosemont, Ill.

[...]

According to the International Housewares Association, closet and storage items were the fastest growing housewares category over the past five years, with consumer spending increasing at an average of 20.5% per year. The association's latest HomeTrend Influentials study ranks home organization and home storage among the hottest housewares product categories through 2010.

"The Struggle to Contain Ourselves."

So I'm thinking this whole shop-til-you-drop thing is not going away any time soon, despite the fretful speculation that ensued when holiday sales rose at a slower rate than in past years. (They still grew, by the way. We spent more in 2007 than in 2006.) And given that discounters like Costco are seeing robust year-over-year sales growth (probably due to cost-conscious consumers shopping in bulk), people are going to be looking for a way to store the 96 cans of tuna they just bought for $12.

Thinking about where to store bulk purchases always leaves me feeling slightly claustrophobic. I think I have some sort of internal Material Monitor; I can only handle so much material mass in the house before I get squirrelly. Which is why this advertisement for a storage company hit so close to home. Watch and see. I have to see what I'm going to do with the two and a half short boxes of comics I've just decided I can live without.

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle: The Final Check-In

This is the last post on reduce-reuse-recycle. I'd love to know how all of you did this year -- what habits stuck and what behaviors you're still trying to change.

I know for me personally: My cyclamen found new pots and doing fine, my gifts went out in tins or with reusable tags; my brother and mother's packages were assembled in the same boxes they sent to me (Dec); we went light on the foil and carried a lot of necessary kitchen supplies to Florida instead of buying what we needed once we were there (Nov); I rehung some old shelves in the garage, and although line-drying the towels didn't work, it's fine for tea towels and kitchen linens (Oct); I cannot remember the last time I nuked a frozen meal, my Sigg water bottles go everywhere, and I'm re-using the same plastic baggie for my daily allotment of Kettle chips (see this post); my wonderful husband has hopped on the Tupperware lunch wagon (Jul) and the hardware cloth did save my pumpkins from a summer suntan; I use the water from the shower-warmup to keep my plants happy and hydrated, and the only items in the house that have corn syrup now are the ones we bought before June 1 -- we've even managed to avoid corn chips and popcorn since then (Jun); although the porch demolition didn't take place for another three months after my May vow, we did indeed recycle the materials the porch was made of -- it's just too bad the person who was supposed to pick up our bushes flaked (thanks, Craigslist!) and they ended up dying within a week after our hasty re-planting (May); I have the water bottles and I do use 'em, although I can always do better (Apr); I haven't had a Lean Cusine since early March, and my little cloches did protect my spinach seedlings -- the only March setback was with those sweaters, which I am still trying to reuse somehow (Mar); I haven't used a Swiffer since February (and unloaded the sweeper at a yard sale) and have been refreshing and revitalizing the soil in my containers all year (Feb); and in an amusing call-back to the January post ... I have not had a single Diet Coke since June 20, and I have not had any caffeine at all since June 23. It is sort of amazing how that changed the amount of litter/recyclables I was generating, so it just goes to show ... you can reduce anywhere.

Also, inspired by you all, I have been using fewer paper towels in cleaning and fewer wet wipes; my sponges and tea towels are getting more use and re-use. I'm a tote-bag-totin' fool, and most of the time, I'm telling the cashier, "I don't need a bag for that [book/gift card/ bottle I can slip in my purse]." I'm planning to keep the R-R-R credo alive and going in 2008.

Now tell me about you: what did you do this year? What stuck? What would you like to try next?

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle: Give up the post-holiday report

The ho-ho-ho: We gave a lot of gifts in reusable tins, bought gift certificates, magazine subscriptions, zoo animal sponsorships and hockey tickets in lieu of giving people more stuff (none of the kids in our life got toys), and composted every last scrap of paper and waste from the Christmas feast.

The coal in the stocking: I still used wrapping paper -- actual, bona fide wrapping paper -- on some presents. Although I got rid of some of the guilt by forgoing the usual schmancy additions and tacking on a brightly-painted, wooden stocking as a name tag, the guilt over the wrapping paper, she lingers. And then there's the e-commerce question: because we have many far-flung friends and relatives, I did some online ordering and let the merchants handle the shipping issue. But that's not exactly green, is it?

Overall, I'd give our efforts a C -- we did adequately, but there's always room for improvement. How about your holiday?

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle: How are you doing this month?

So, how is everyone doing? Are you doing your best to find alternate gift wraps or gift-holding containers? Planning on replanting the tree on December 26? Or are your efforts this month confined to re-using  your wassail glass, reducing the number of Hershey's mint miniatures in the candy dish, and recycling your January resolutions to lay off the Hickory Farms cheese ball?