Freshaire paint - totally worth it!

Well, I'm painting my room, and I was SO HAPPY to find that my local Home Depot finally offers a low-VOC choice!!! It was about 35% more than me getting "normal" paint.


Freshaire paints don't have quite the color selection of, say, Behr or Glidden (it's closer to Ralph Lauren's palatte), but I am blissfully happy with my choices of "Reef Pink" and "Arbor Vine"... and my sinuses are even more happy with the fact that there is barely any smell at all. One of my housemates, when I apologized for any smell he might have noticed, said "Oh! That was paint? It smelled a little funny, but i had no idea you had painted the room!"

I think that is pretty much a perfect endorsement of the product. That and my lack of migraine!

I painted two walls green and two pink, then added some funky striping running around the room.

Guest Post on Just Move Monday for the Zaftig Chicks

Over the past two months I've been doing probably a million, bajillion things, but one of the less-stressful ones has been to read some of the blogs on the fat-o-sphere feed.

That's how i came to know of Bianca & Sylvia, the Zaftig Chicks.

As a way to fight the stress of the past two months, i've been hot-yoga-ing a lot, and when the girls asked if anyone wanted to guest-contribute a blog post, it seemed like a nice opportunity to write about my practice. You can check it out here.

Meanwhile, although I haven't been posting anything here, I HAVE been tweeting, and those tweets relate to green things, including the chickens (now there are 15!). The garden has been producing the first tomatoes of the season, and my belly is READY to give them a home... I'll definitely share more as Dallas' harvests come in.

I've been doing a little "activist" stuff, too. My friend Molly and I went to check out the new TN headquarters of Repower America and then I went with a couple strangers to visit the offices of the two TN senators to tell them that I support the ACES act.

ALSO - I give a hearty thumbs-up to the Murfreesboro toothpaste I got from The Green Wagon, as well as the castile soap shampoo (i can't remember the name of it) that you can buy by the ounce (!). They'll be opening their East Nashville location oh-so-very soon, so you'll have 100% more opportunities to buy green!

Meanwhile, think good thoughts for me as I embark upon a quest for better living through altering my chemical composition with the help of the Pharmaceutical-Industrial Complex :(

25% off sale at The Green Wagon this Saturday!

Find your thrill(er)...

The Green Wagon's shaking off the summer weirdness and playing Michael Jackson tunes all weekend... plus everything's 25% off on Saturday.

I suggest trying the new toothpaste they have in stock - it's made in Murfreesboro!
And an Alchemy of Sol soap bar is NEVER a bad bet.

Go Check out The Green Wagon!!!

You guys, this is very exciting!

My friend Jen Casale is opening her store, The Green Wagon, today at 10 AM.

I am sure that this place is going to be AMAZING. Jen is brilliant, creative, and all sorts of superlatives.

Go check it out and buy something!

good vs. evil

So, I've run into two products today, both of which deserve a mention.
First, Brunswick Beeworks
is a new local honey supplier! The closest local honey they have at Whole Foods is from Goodlettsville - and Brunswick makes candles and skin stuff!
Whoohoo!

Second, there's a Slate article about Proctor & Gamble's Olay Body Wash Plus Spa Exfoliating Ribbons. YUCK. I read a while back about the Giant Sea of Plastic and was freaked out, but this Olay stuff is actually DELIBERATELY putting microplastic out there! We're not talking about plastic trash that's breaking down, this stuff is MADE like this and put in something that we're using to wash our bodies and then flushing "away".
Yuck yuck yuck.

E2A: I sent that article over to Beth at Fake Plastic Fish, and lo and behold, she already knew about it! Check out her blog post on it, from nearly a year ago!, because it's got some great resources.

I want some of these

Ideal Bite, an enewsletter I subscribe to, is selling bags with their logo.
They are super-cute... when i have some cash to throw at those folks, I'm going to buy some.

For now, go subscribe to their newsletter - my designer friend Molly put me onto them and they are sassy and funny and ALWAYS topical! Love 'em!

Green remodel follow-up

I've been enjoying the bamboo floors for 6 months now, and stumbled upon an article on Slate.com today that had me revisit the decision.

If I'm remembering properly, this is the flooring that we bought.
I have searched and searched but I can't find anything about this company on the internet. Next time I'm at HD, I'm going to look for the company's number on the box... although it's possible i'll have to call HD instead.

I'm still pretty happy with the floors. They're easy to clean and haven't undergone any real damage since I've been using them daily. I wonder, though, about the points cited in the Slate article.
What kind of sealant is on there? what kind of growing practices were used on that bamboo?

In the end, i guess, there's only so much we can do. There are only so many hours in the day. I hope that, like my Prius purchase, my buy will spur others to also buy bamboo products and make them more popular and prevalent. But I can't spend all day, every day researching the minutae of different companies. It feels exhausting.

I'm doing the best I can, I guess, and ultimately I'm happy with those floors b/c they were the best decision I felt I could make.

And they are just so pretty...

So much going on in the 'ville!

In case you missed it, last Sunday was Earth Hour, where you were supposed to turn out your lights for an hour, but apparently the folks down in Australia didn't take March Madness into consideration when choosing a Sunday. Sadly, we did not participate due to the pressing need to watch the Elite Eight games.

Down in Williamson County, the kids at Hillsboro elementary/middle are participating in the Free the Children Water Project. The thought of all the bottles of coke and PowerAde that are not being trashed warms the cockles of me 'eart it does... but they're still drinking water out of bottles:

According to the scorecard, students can save up to $1.50 per glass by drinking water rather than milk, soda or juice and up to $1 per bottle on sports drinks. Every time they drink a glass or bottle of water, they put that savings into a cup. At the end of the two weeks, the money will be collected. (emphasis mine)

I don't know anything about the Free the Children thing, but the project sounds like a good idea to me, at least to raise awareness... but I wish they were thinking about the bottled water part of it as well (see Think Outside the Bottle for why)

In other news, there's finally an answer to the question of what will be done with the old Wild Oats building... a Trader Joe's is moving in! I think I've talked before about how I miss the old Wild Oats - I liked how small and homey it felt compared to the new Whole Foods. Not to say I don't like the WF, but I miss the way things were. I'm excited to see what a Trader Joe's is like, finally, and maybe I'll be going there instead of WF soon.

Also, in case you haven't checked out the Greener Nashville site or you don't get their eblasts, there is a big Green Business expo going on over at Lipscomb today.

That's it for this week, folks! Stay dry and warm, and let me know if you want to buy a condo!

Green Remodel phase 1: floors, tiling & lighting

So, we're getting pretty gung-ho about this green remodel!

Admittedly, some of the stuff we have done thus far has not been very green - we did buy standard lumber to finish out the header in the kitchen/living room (to create a bar pass-through from the kitchen to the living room, creating an actual dining area), and we have used standard sheetrock to finish it out. The door we put in to replace the window in one of the bedrooms was just a normal ole door - nothing really special except that it should be MUCH more insulative than that old drafty window that was there.

Still, we're working on some really big projects that ARE green, including flooring, tiling and lighting.

The flooring is what i have been most excited about for the longest time - we have 100% bamboo sitting in boxes ready to be laid. We looked for a long time for a product that was not veneer - I do love the look of bamboo, but what really flips my skirt up is the fact that bamboo is so very sustainable. Yes, taking out the old flooring to put in new isn't exactly 'no impact', but the idea here is to do a remodel, which buyers want, while also being as low-impact as possible. We are planning to 'freecycle' the old floors if possible, so ultimately i hope that someone will get some use out of the old wood floors.

The bathroom tile we're using is standard ceramic tile, which is made out of mud and then baked in ovens. There are tiles that are sun-baked, but they break easily; one of the perks of using ceramic tiling is that, if you get a quality product, it should last for a really long time (scroll down for the meaty part). We were able to buy this at the closest Home Depot, rather than have something specially shipped (I'm going for the least of any evils here while being on a tight budget, so I grudgingly went to HD for the purchase). We will install this ourselves in a few days, over the existing, broken/gross tiles. Sadly, Home Depot does not offer any overtly 'sustainable' tiling (they have this promo going called "Eco Options," so I thought they might, but the store associate we talked to didn't have ANY clue about this. If you're going to shop big-box, you've definitely got to come prepared and know exactly what to ask for. Sure, our tile is made of mud, but what about the grout compound? and what about the manufacturing process?)

We have already had the new lighting installed; we purchased 'Radium' track lighting from ikea - this replaces the old tracklighting, and it's only mildly green. First of all, they're halogen lights, which are the gluttons of the lighting world. However, these halogen bulbs have a lower-wattage than those used in the Home Depot version of the fixture. So, you get the same pretty lights without as much of an energy sink. We will also be reusing an old tracklight set for above the bar area, and reusing some old pendant lights. The rest of the house will be outfitted, where possible, with CFL bulbs (there are already a few).

So, that's it for the biggest projects - next up, I'll talk about the bathroom counters & sinks, dual flow toilets, and re-painting. Also,

If you're still hungry for more info, check out this site... I am finding it incredibly useful!

New Year's Resolution - stop whining and start acting

I'm pretty sure that, with my hamburger-part-2 post, I hit rock bottom.

I was pretty depressed about price versus cost.
Probably, this depression came from the fact i was eating crap (read: free crap).
I feel SO MUCH BETTER when i eat fruit for breakfast and spinach salads for dinner!

Anyway, just about the time I hit "publish" on that post, I started reading Going Green: "A Step-A-Day Program for Lazy Suburbanites". It's a blog by a mom who is making one change a day toward going green.

WOW. She is so positive, ambitious, creative, and driven! One change a day! Reading through all of her past posts, I have decided to get busy doin' instead of being busy whining.

Thanks to an awesome Christmas present from my brother, a "Living Green" page-a-day calendar, I think I'll have an easier time of keeping perspective on all of this.

After all, I already do some pretty green stuff without really thinking about it... so perk up, D!

- I don't use paper towels anymore (still using toilet paper, though... there are some people who are much braver than I am!)
- I don't run the water hardly at all when i brush my teeth
- The heat hasn't been on all winter, and I've used the fireplace like 3 times.
- I'm not showering and/or washing my hair as much. I find that, when I'm doing *nothing* but sitting all day (i.e. not going out for dinner with friends or going to a meeting during lunch), I don't need to shower every day. My day job really is conducive to not showering as often, so if all I'm doing in a day is going to work and back, i can shower every other day. Washing my hair every other day has become so much of a habit that I forgot to wash my hair the other morning on an "on" day! It didn't make too much of a difference, really, so i might need to re-evaluate the every-other-day thing.

Stuff I still consciously think about:

- Recycling. Some days, I just want to throw stuff "away". Since I'm in the middle of a giant house purge (moving soon, maybe?), I'm getting rid of a lot of stuff, and it's very tempting to just throw it in the trash. The sheer volume is overwhelming. I have been able to set some stuff aside for eBay, and recycle some parts of things (cereal boxes, for example) - other stuff (damn those envelopes with plastic windows!) seems like it takes too much mental energy to figure out if it can be recycled.
- Turning off lights. I have to consciously make myself turn off lights, because I'm so lazy I'd really rather not - so it's still not a habit. But I'm getting there!
- The dogs' mess. The topic of Georgia being on reusable puppy pads deserves a post of its own - but suffice to say that, though I've got it set up so that cleaning up after the dogs is relatively green, there are still parts of it that are hard. When we travel, Georgia uses reusable pads and I use paper towels to clean up messes. When I give them baths, I use too much water. The Green Pets Initiative is still a work in progress! More on that later.
- Treating my car gently. It really requires presence of mind to maximize my use of the Prius. Easing up on acceleration, turning it off when i run inside somewhere, driving at 60 on the highway instead of 75, using the windows instead of the a/c - all of this really takes concentration for me.
- Buying stuff. Christmas had me thinking about how much stuff I and my family buy. It's really quite staggering. Even with my recent reductions, we're still going through SO MUCH STUFF - which creates trash, of course. I did some reading over the past week about "green" Christmas presents - buying handmade, giving sustainable gifts (events or services rather than things), and one of the items I stumbled on (I can't find it now) was about how one woman asked for things like having a family member take one less shower a week - this was a gift to her because it not only helped her in her pursuit of being greener, but it also meant that if she wanted to take a longer shower every once in a while, she could rest easy knowing that someone else was using less water so she could enjoy that luxury.

So, moving forward into 2008, I'm very optimistic. I don't expect to ever fully change my stripes (my packrat tendencies are primal, somehow), but developing new habits is good practice for life as well as "living green". The page-a-day calendar will help me stay focused on my desire to develop good habits, which is what I hope 2008 will be about.

grocery bags and the apocalypse

Okay... a little extreme, I know, except...

I have this eerie vision in my head that morphs that 'I Am Legend ' shot of the deer running through the streets of post-apocalypse NYC into a shot of Nashville's Broadway with millions of plastic bags scudding along the empty lanes down into the river. I really must stop watching TV so much.

Anyway, on Monday I went to Whole Foods, and I had once again forgotten my reusable Ikea bag. Problem is, it's so huge that it really doesn't work for my little one-person, two-or-three-meals trips to the grocery. I joked with the checkout girl that in addition to wanting paper bags, I'd take a healthy dose of guilt to go along with them. Sadly, Whole Foods does not stock guilt, but luckily I had my own to pull out. So, upon my return home, I took a few minutes out of my mad dash to do two weeks worth of laundry to sit down and sew together the bottoms of some of my old tank tops (during which I saw the preview for I Am Legend and thus we've come full circle).

I'm going to use these as reusable grocery sacks. I only made two since I want to try them out before sewing up the bottoms of what could conceivably be wearable shirts... and since I rarely use more than two bags at the grocery anyway, this should be a good start. I know I'll need to sew up more, though, given my propensity to completely forget to take my own bags. I'll start with these two and then stock up the Prius with 10 or so.

Good thing I did that, because my lovely Aunt Louise sent a site called One Bag At A Time. Check out their breakdown of the life of a grocery sack! Holy moly!

That's the sort of stuff we need! Hard numbers to calculate impact! That's why I'm so excited about the new curriculum at Warren Wilson (I swear I'll post this next) - maybe we can figure out how to communicate these metrics (look at me with my shiny corporate lingo!) to broad audiences!