Breezy Benefits

Fresh laundry on the newly installed clothesline

Today was a beautiful, atypically warm, breezy April day that felt more like June as the temps climbed to the 90s.  It was the perfect day to hang out some laundry and let the sun and breeze dry the clothes naturally...

...but there was one small problem...my clothesline had been taken down in the the wake of Hurricane Irene this past August for fear of tree damage (the tree it was attached to is dead) http://alacartegreen.blogspot.com/search/label/Hurricane.  But never fear, hubby to the rescue!

Besides being a warm April Day, we also had a holiday celebrating Patriot's Day in MA, and the Boston Marathon.  For those of you who live outside of MA, Patriot's Day is a state holiday commemorating the anniversary of the Battle of Lexington and Concord and the start of the Revolutionary War.  With hubby home for the holiday, he agreed to reinstall the clothesline in a new tree and after some effort, sweat, and thankfully no swears or injuries from tree climbing, the clothesline is back up!  It didn't take long for me to get the fresh load of laundry up on the line and take advantage of saving some energy.

For more information about the benefits of clotheslines and the energy savings, please check out:
http://alacartegreen.blogspot.com/2010/06/c-is-for-clothesline.html
and
http://alacartegreen.blogspot.com/2010/07/e-is-for-electricity-and-energy.html

H is for Home Improvements

Of course I mean green home improvements!  Over the last few months we've been doing some green home improvement projects that are helping us reduce our carbon footprint and save money in the process. One of our favorites comes in the form of a fluuuuuuusshhhh :) 

As Ed Begley, Jr. likes to say, we've been "picking the low lying fruit" and doing simple things that don't cost a lot of money, but in the end are better for the planet and our pocketbook.  Since we began our green journey, we've taken the following home improvement babysteps.  We started with:

• outlet insulation gaskets http://peaceloveplanet.blogspot.com/2010/02/outlet-small-changes-big-results-day-11.html and kept on going, 
• replacing our old showerheads with low flow heads http://peaceloveplanet.blogspot.com/2010/03/water-water-everywhere-day-26.html, 
• replacing bulbs that burn out with either CFLs (please recycle them back to Home Depot or Lowes when they are spent) http://peaceloveplanet.blogspot.com/2010/03/cfls-day-15.html or LEDs, which are more expensive, but result in huge savings in the long run, then, 
• Hubby figured out how to rewire and replaced an electric eye on our front entry lights instead of buying new lights and adding to the landfill http://peaceloveplanet.blogspot.com/2010/04/picking-low-lying-fruit.htm and saving us money by only having the lights on when it is dark.
• Back in the spring, we made "lemonade out of lemons" when our basement rec room was flooded after New England was deluged with rain and we suffered our first flood; when we redid the room we used biodegradable paint trays http://peaceloveplanet.blogspot.com/2010/04/who-wouldve-guess.html, 
• chose carpet made from 100% recycled PET from plastic bottles and chose an eco-pad to go underneath it  http://peaceloveplanet.blogspot.com/2010/04/lemonade-from-lemons.html  
• When it was time to replace the gross matt in the mud room, I was excited to find a green mat...I mean we are talking babysteps here, so each time we step into the house I smile at that green choice, http://peaceloveplanet.blogspot.com/2010/05/ecstatic-over-ecomat.html  
• One of my favorite home improvement projects this year has been the installation of the clothesline.  Not only are we saving energy, but it is kinda therapeutic hanging out the laundry listening to the birds and the crickets...I do have the kids helping me to hang, and take down the laundry, and while they don't like how the towels turn out ("they are crunchy mom!"), they have done a good job of helping with it, and believe it or not, it's good exercise reaching and pulling on the line to move the clothes along!  http://peaceloveplanet.blogspot.com/2010/06/c-is-for.html  We've also saved quite a bit of energy with this home improvement, and I hope I can continue to dry clothes outside well into the fall http://peaceloveplanet.blogspot.com/2010/07/e-is-for-electricity-and-energy.html.  

Our most recent home improvement project that hubby embraced, researched, and installed (I'm soooo lucky to have such a wonderful, handy, guy who is supportive of the green babysteps we've been taking), is a dual-flush system for the toilet!  When he first tried to find it locally he couldn't and when we were on the road recently he found it at Home Depot in NJ (they told him they'd just started carrying it).  It's called HydroRight Smarter Flush Technology by MJSI, Inc.  This system replaces the regular flusher mechanism inside the tank and the outside flusher as well.  The upper button is to "flush liquids and paper with less water", errr or #1, and the lower button is to "flush with more power", err or for #2.  The HydroRight claims it will saves up to 15,000 gallons after one year ("the equivalent of stacking water bottles 45 miles high"....yikes they used disposable water bottles as their example...heaven forbid!) and result in savings of about $100 in water/sewer costs each year.   At $24.98 per dual-flusher, we plan to install two more for even more savings, because with a family of 6 our septic gets a workout and we'd love to trim our water bill even more.   http://www.gomjsi.com/dual-flush-hydroright/?utm_source=adwords&utm_medium=us&utm_term=hydroright%2Bdual%20flush%20converter&utm_campaign=hydrorightdualflush&gclid=CIvU4rXOsaMCFRafnAodkDLuVA

Stay tuned to find out what our next green home improvement project will be! 

C is for clothesline...

C is carbon footprint, compost, cleaning supplies, and clothesline...

Growing up, my Mom had a free-standing umbrella-style spinning clothesline, and I can remember standing on my tippey toes and helping her take the clothes off the line.  When a friend asked if I'd greened my laundry yet, I had to admit that the only thing I'd done so far was to use cold water instead of warm or hot, and I've switched to eco-friendlier laundry detergent.  But I know we can do better!  

I checked out some info on the net, and found some pretty interesting info.  Here are 10 reasons to use a clothesline from www.laundrylist.org

Why line-dry?  For starters, dryers use 10 percent to 15 percent of domestic energy in the US.

10. It saves money — more than $25 a month on electric bills for many households.
9. Clothes last longer when line-dried.
8. Clothes and linens smell better without exposing your body and the environment to potentially toxic chemicals in many detergents, bleaches and fabric softeners.
7. It can conserve energy and the environment, while reducing climate change.
6. It is moderate physical activity that you can do indoors or outside.
5. Sunlight bleaches and disinfects.
4. Indoor racks can humidify in dry winter weather.
3. Clothes-dryer and washing-machine fires account for about 17,700 structure fires, 15 deaths and 360 injuries annually. The yearly national fire loss for clothes-dryer fires in buildings is estimated at $194 million.
2. It is fun. And it can be an outdoor experience that is meditative and community-building.
1. Line drying clothes demonstrates that small steps can make a difference.

With these reasons fresh in my mind, I began looking into installing an old fashioned clothesline to dry the clothes with the power of the sun instead of paying for the electricity :)  There are basically two types,  the umbrella-style spinning clothesline which is typically installed on a post in the ground with cement  (I did see one at Lowe's) and the pulley-type of clothesline (which is much less expensive, and the materials area also available at Lowe's).  I decided I wanted a pulley-type, and we found out what hardware and supplies we'll need, and went so far as to buy the items.  But then the project stalled as life got more hectic than usual and we had an ah-ha moment that I'm glad we had before doing the project.  We realized that the distance from the house to the tree, is pretty long and that traditional cotton clothesline will sag and stretch a lot as a result.  We thought back to a dog run we had at one point that went from the house to the same tree, and decided we'd have to get creative and instead of traditional cotton clothesline, we will have to use coated wire to support the weight of the laundry over the distance similar to the dog line.  

There lots of different options for installing outdoor clotheslines too.  I found some good info on the following sites:
http://www.clotheslineshop.com/mm5/merchant.mvc?Screen=SFNT&Store_Code=C

http://www.thisoldhouse.com/toh/article/0,,1558520,00.html
www.laundrylist.org
I'm very  excited to see how it helps to decrease the electric bill and the yummy sunshine smell of sun-dried laundry!    Stay tuned and I'll let you know how we make out...