Recent Comments

1. Compost Your Leftovers - 29 Oct 2005

   I’ve been composting for a while and I’ve found out that it helps a lot if you have several composting bins (you are less likely to run out of space, it helps with mixing up the inputs e.g. you can spread the leaves or grass cuttings over 2 or 3 bins; and crucially, you can leave bins alone for a while whilst you wait for the composting process to complete).

   You can speed the composting process up by using a tumbling composter which aerates the soil or by adding an activator.

   Another way to compost is a wormery for kitchen waste – Can O Worms works well; the compost is great but you do have to extract the worms – I use my children to help with this – they are learning not to be squeamish and to care for the worms. There is an art to getting the balance in the wormery correct – but we find this fun.

   A great source of supplies and information is wigglywigglers.co.uk

2. Send a Child a Christmas Box - 01 Nov 2005

   I love this tradition – it is very special planning what to go into the boxes and thinking about how the child will recieve the gifts.

   We organise for this throughout the year, saving our shoe boxes, large chunks of wrapping paper from birthdays and putting aside gifts that my children really don’t need.

   It’s very much orchestrated by me, but it’s heartening to see what my children bring when they realise a fifth soft toy or pack of crayons (etc) is needed to complete a box.

   We do a mix of reusing what has already come into our house (save the environment) and buying new (generous – especially necessities like toothbrushes, warm hats/gloves).

3. Give Something Away - and declutter your life - 06 Apr 2006

   I’m a big fan or decluttering and passing on our reusable stuff to others (and recycling as much as possible of what is left).

   Recently I’ve started to think about the next use for things that I’m buying now. For example, certain toys I buy my children (lego, wooden toys, nicely boxed toys) will be easy to pass on (to friends, school fairs, toy libraries, local nurseries)

   Other things will be difficult to pass on so are destined for the bin (many craft based toys; easily breakable toys, toys with lots of small bits which are easy to lose, soft toys, crazes (e.g. no one wants bayblades now).

   It applies to lots of things – high fashion clothes, make up (you can’t pass any of than on); electrical items, MDF furniture.

   I’ve seen considering the next use called “pre-cycling” and it will save you lots of money and make next years decluttering less guilt inducing and much easier.

4. Make A Positive Lifestyle Change And Tell Us About It - 06 Apr 2006

   We have started getting our milk delivered in glass bottles by the milkman instead of in plastic bottles or cartons from the supermarket. This means less plastic to be recyled and fewer cartons to throw away.

   It took a few weeks to get used to it (and we lost our milk a few times too) but now we remember to bring it in first thing – and it’s great not having to go to the shops as often.

5. Ditch The Disposable Items - 06 Apr 2006

   I’ve made a start by loading up a kitchen drawer with lots of washable cleaning cloths (to avoid needing kitchen roll).

   Does anyone have any good suggestions for avoiding the need to line oven trays and grill pans (to prevent nasty cleaning jobs). I’m experimenting with not using kitchen foil for this (aluminium extraction is a hugely polluting process) but using non stick baking paper (don’t know the environmental impact of this).

   Does anyone know what is in ecoballs? Are they really better than ecover/bio D laundry liquid?

6. Compost Your Leftovers - 07 Apr 2006

   A “Peely bin” from the lakeland catalogue www.lakelandlimited.co.uk provides a nice looking container for storing organic kitchen waste before you get round to taking it to the composter – this also gets over the yuck factor from some visitors who haven’t embraced composting yet!

7. Switch To Energy Saving Lightbulbs - 06 Sep 2006

   Try to remember your plan to use energy saving bulbs when upgrading your light fittings. I have discovered that lots of light fittings now do not take “ordinary” bulbs (especially the more modern looking fittings). The most available energy saving bulbs fit like “ordinary” bulbs (i.e. they are bayonet or edison screw (E27).

   You can still get spotlights which take the ordinary edison screw (E27) bulb, but they take a bit of searching to find. I haven’t found any decent light fittings taking ordinary bayonet bulbs.

   There are a few other types of energy saving bulbs but they are much more difficult to find – so check out you can get an energy saving bulb before you shell out for the light fitting.

8. Switch to Green Household Cleaners - 19 Apr 2008

   You can get large containers of Ecover stuff from wigglywigglers.co.uk to refil you’re little containers of – say washing up liquid, shower gel etc. And then when the big containers are empty you can send those back to wiggly wigglers for a refil – so endlessly reusing the containers rather than recycling them. I’ve just bought the laundry liquid and washing up liquid, and will get the other products I use as funds allow.