The 20-Degree Challenge

Matt and I have been trying to use our air-conditioning and heat less often in order to be better on the environment and our wallet. The thing about living in Central Texas is that you can literally go from AC to heat (and back again) in the span of a week. Oddly enough, it's not often the perfect temperature to have nothing on and the windows open. 

Matt and I have been trying to stretch what feels right in our home but undertaking the "20-Degree Challenge." We are trying not to turn on the air-conditioning until it gets hotter than 80-degrees in our house and trying not to turn on the heat until it gets lower than 60-degrees in the house. 

We've been doing this challenge for about a month, and so far it's working out well. The challenge has illuminated just how bad some of our habits used to be. For example, when it got hot in our home, we would immediately lower the thermostat, versus turning on a fan or removing extra clothing. For example, Matt has a habit of wearing long-sleeve shirts even in the summer (since so many commercial spaces are over-air-conditioned). When I get cold, it's easy for me to turn up the thermostat versus just putting on more layers, using a blanket, and sipping hot liquids. 

I honestly think the 60-degree low might be too difficult for me. So far, it's only dropped to 63 degrees during the day, and that felt like freezing. We might have to modify it to the 17-Degree Challenge. 

We'll see! 

At what temperatures do you typically turn on your AC or heat? 

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The End of Toilet Paper?

Listening to Kelsey and Chris's podcast, Matrimoney, is introducing all sorts of new ideas and goals into my life around money. But it's also getting me interested in the idea of eliminating toilet paper from our master bathroom. 

Yes, seriously!

On the podcast, they talk about using the diaper sprayer attached to their toilet to clean their private areas before using a resusable baby wipe (the kind made out of fabric) to pat dry. Then they went on to get a bidet for their bathroom.

I am always looking for ways to reduce our environmental impact, and I'm interested in exploring this idea. Kelsey, what kind of bidet did you get? 

This article explains that bidets are actually gaining popularity in the U.S. So interesting!

I'm considering this $27 attachment. It sounds crazy--even to me--but it's worth exploring!

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Busy Girl's Guide to Composting

Since Matt and I moved to our new house in Austin, we've changed up our composting system. Before I share our new system, I wanted to share our old one because it was super-simple.

I got the old one for free in Baton Rouge back in 2001 when I was doing Teach For America in rural Louisiana. It looked just like a trash can, except it had a big hole at the bottom that opened up to the ground. It was similar to this one. I'm convinced it's the absolute best system for someone who wants to keep as much out of the landfill as possible but a) doesn't care about actually using the compost when it breaks down and b) doesn't have a lot of time. We used this system by collecting our egg shells and fruit and veggie peels throughout the week in a big piece of tupperware in our refrigerator. When it got full, we would take it into the backyard and dump it into our composter. That's it. That's all we ever did. We never added water. Never really added brown material (like leaves and twigs). Never aerated it. We just used it like a permanent trashcan. Because everything was constantly breaking down, it never got full. It just decomposed back into the earth.

I may be giving terrible advice (if I am, please speak up!). Perhaps this strategy only works in warm weather climates. Or maybe it's really bad for the soil to have such a concentrated area of either carbon- or nitrogen-richness (I can't remember which it is). All I know is that I have used this strategy at four different houses, and it has worked well every time. I even used it at an apartment complex by hiding it among all the black trashcans.

With the kind of system I described above, I've found that it's difficult to get the compost out once it's broken down. It's constantly buried beneath new fruit and veggie peels. That's why Matt and I opted for a different system now that we actually want to use it for a garden. We searched high and low for a spinning tumbler that has two compartments. You can fill up one side and then let it sit and finish breaking down while you fill up the other, separate side. Although it was on the pricey side, I think it will be worth it (and thankfully the city of Austin is giving us a $75 rebate). The other option would have been to buy two separate composters, so we could let one sit and biodegrade while we actively used the other one.

The only downside with our new system is that it actually takes work if we want to get good compost out of it. We need to add three parts of brown material to every one part of our normal stuff. First, that's a lot! Second, we don't naturally have brown material (e.g., leaves) to compost. So every time we put in one part of normal material, we have to scrounge around for three times as much other stuff. The suggestion I've heard is to bag your leaves all fall/winter and then use them to sustain you through the spring and summer. But who wants bags and bags of leaves lying around all year long?

We'll have to see how we do with our new system. I do love that it's off the ground to discourage pests, and it's very simple (and even fun) to rotate, which helps the process a lot.

I'll keep you updated!

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Today on 2000 Dollar Wedding: Planning my next DIY quilt!

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Cloth Diapers

It can be a bit overwhelming to pick out products before the baby's arrival. I mean, there are simply so many options. Luckily, one of Matt's colleague's gave us this book early on in the process. It helped a ton. For example, I read their advice about car seats and just picked one.

In all honesty, I don't get that much enjoyment out of doing all the research it takes to find the most perfect option. Luckily, I have lots of people in my life who enjoy this kind of work (like my best friend, Andy, who told me exactly what kind of laptop to get).

When it came to cloth diapers, I read a lot on this website, but I ultimately decided to follow the advice of my "internet mentors," John and Sherry, over at Young House Love. They opted for bumGenius Elemental One-Size cloth diapers with snaps.

Here are the benefits:

1. They are made with organic cotton, which is super-soft.
2. They are "all-in-ones," which means you don't have to mess with separate covers and inserts.
3. They are designed with many, many snaps that supposedly allow you to adjust them to fit children from 7 pounds to 35, so you don't have to waste a lot of money investing in different sizes that your child inevitably grows out of way too quickly.
   

We ordered 12 of them so far. John and Sherry said that 18 cloth diapers seems to be the magic number for families that use cloth diapers.

Our stash arrived last week, and now we have to wash them 5-7 times before using them. We quickly realized that the reviews were right: These suckers take way, way too long too dry. Honestly, if we dry them in the dryer, I feel like we would be negating all of the environmental benefits of using cloth diapers.

So, we need a solution. Matt and I ordered this drying rack and figured that we could let them air dry. Before we ordered it, we searched high and low for a concealed place to use it in our house. We are trying to minimize baby clutter as much as possible. We seem to have two good options.

Once the drying rack arrives, we'll see how long it takes for those suckers to air dry. My brain is guessing it will be a while! Depending on how long it takes, we'll probably have to order more diapers to use while the other set is drying.

And for those of you who are interested, we ordered this trash can with two of these liners to hold our dirty diapers. We are using cloth wipes, mainly just old cotton flannel receiving blankets that I cut with pinking shears to prevent the edges from fraying. For the first few days of meconium, we are using disposable diapers and wipes. For diaper changes on the go, we still plan to use cloth and store them in this wet bag. We also bought a sprayer for our toilet to clean off the poop before we put everything in the washing machine.

I think that's everything! Let me know if you have any questions...

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Eco-Friendly Mattresses

While Matt and I are busy trying to squirrel away more savings (for things like a midwife and doula, nursery, new couch, 12 weeks of UNPAID maternity leave, etc.), I keep adding to the list of things to buy. For example, I really want a new mattress.

Throughout my first trimester, I found sleeping to be pretty difficult on our uncomfortable bed. However, every time we traveled this summer, I had no problem falling asleep (usually on pillow-top, hotel mattresses). Plus, Matt has been hankering for us to upgrade from a queen to a king.

The thing is, if we buy a new mattress, I'm pretty convinced we should get an organic mattress. Regular mattresses are chock-full of disgusting chemicals that off-gas as soon as you bring them home. In general, I don't mind paying more for products that are healthier for us and the environment. Plus, I try to spend one third of my life in bed, so it's a worthwhile investment to me.

However, the folks over at Young House Love did lots of organic mattress research and settled on the Savvy Rest, which would cost us $3,000. Gulp! That is a serious financial commitment! Sheesh!

So what are our options?

1. Postpone buying a new mattress until we can save up enough money. I really don't like this option because I agree that it would be nice to upgrade to a larger and more comfortable bed now, especially since I'll be heading into the third trimester in a couple months, and after that we'll be heading into serious sleep deprivation.
2. Just go ahead and invest in an expensive, organic mattress. This option doesn't feel right either. So many other things are financial priorities right now!
3. Upgrade to a quasi-eco-friendly mattress (like the ones at IKEA). This option feels like such a waste because we'll probably want to upgrade to a nicer mattress in a few years. Then again, we could probably resell it on Craiglist, which would keep it out of the landfill.
4. Upgrade to a quasi-eco-friend mattress but invest in an organic mattress topper. Hmmm....this might be the way to go. That way, our faces would be pressed against something that is eco-friendly, while the rest of the mattress wouldn't be too terrible. Then again, if the total cost comes to something like $1,500, it might make more sense to just double it and go with quality from the very beginning.
   

Oy vey. It's moments like these that make me a twinge sad that Matt and I rake in non-profit salaries. (But just for a moment. Then I'm really happy that we managed to find jobs that we enjoy and that make the world better. I just wish they paid more!)

What are your thoughts? Are there other options I'm not considering?

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Rain Collection System

Hooray! We finally had our rain collection system installed. We hired our neighbor to install a little piece of gutter that will feed into our barrel. One inch of rain will collect 175 gallons. Oy vey!

We had it installed on the side of the house that we will use for our raised garden beds this year. It's out of reach of the dog and chickens, which will keep it a little safer (although I imagine the neighborhood cats will make their way to it).

We ordered the rain barrel a long time ago from a project to raise money for a Montessori school. It's just been sitting around for the longest time while we figured out where to put it and how to install the gutters.

I wish we lived in a city that would let us use the gray water to flush our toilets. I mean seriously. Why wouldn't a city allow that?

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Reusing Security Envelopes

I was clearing out our mail pile yesterday (we have a new and improved place to put it rather than on the dining room table), and I noticed--for pretty much the first time ever--the inside of security envelopes. I'm smitten!

And then I remembered a post that the lovely Kristina did about using security envelopes to make a wedding card. Now I realize what she was talking about! [Yes, I feel like an idiot for catching on so slowly.]

I'm going to start collecting those envelopes (hooray for reusing!) and then make something very similar to Kristina's without feeling any guilt about copying someone else's idea. That's what blogs are for, right?

Photo courtesy of Lovely Morning

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