Greener than Red -OR- ikea saves the day

Even though our dryer started working, we decided to still go forward with our indoor clothes drying experiment.  It wasn't going to work well with the compact dryer we bought.  Not even with 2 of them.  Or 3.  (etc.)

So I looked on-line for clothes drying racks.  I found lots of them.  Some were lousy and not worth my $30.  Some were really awesome, if I wanted to spend $80 - $250.  Which I didn't.  I mean, if I'm going to spend $250, why not just spend twice as much and buy a new dryer!

And then a friend suggested I look at ikea.  (Disclaimer:  I had never been to ikea.  I have friends who SWEAR by it, but I hadn't been convinced.)  She said they had the best selection.  Well, I'm here to tell you that they don't actually have the best selection, they just have the best designed drying rack for the fairest price.

Our compact one ($15 at Bed Bath and Beyond--we bought the wood one.  The metal ones are $5 more) has, technically, 23 feet of drying space, though most of it is unusable because of the design, unless you're drying really small items.  Like so:

The ikea drying rack has roughly triple the drying space (21 yards) and only costs $20.  Plus, nearly all the drying space is usable.  Behold: 

So for $35 total we can continue with our indoor clothes drying experiment.  Thank you, ikea.

I Am the Anti-Green

I have a good friend, RB, who is very green. I like to tell her that I am the Anti-Green: I'm Red.

But I'm not really. More and more I'm becoming aware of our environment and the need to conserve. Not coincidentally, at the same time I am becoming aware of how much things cost. Going green is also friendly for the budget. I have been finding out that I care about both.

Starting last summer, and particularly when we started the Dave Ramsey class, Rob and I became hyper-aware of our energy usage. Why? To save money. I'm not going to claim that there was any other motive involved. We shut down our fish tank. All our light bulbs are now the cute swirly florescent ones. We turned off our deep freeze (did you know this can save almost $100 a year? We didn't). We consciously drive less. ... Those don't sound like big things, but giving up the fish tank and the deep freeze were both something of a sacrifice for us, and little things add up.

The whole time we were working on conserving energy, I knew that I am NOT a water conserver. In fact, I never gave my water usage a thought until a month ago when RB, my green friend mentioned above, casually mentioned what her water bill was. Over a 3-month period, her water bill averages $100 LESS than mine. Woah! What are we doing wrong?

This got me thinking very seriously about our water usage. I talked to Rob about it and suggested that the water bill went up when we got a dishwasher. Dishwashers are wonderful things, and I'm not sad we have one (thank you to Dad Thacker for buying it for us. It's lovely). But I over-rinse my dishes before putting them in the dishwasher. I know this. I ALWAYS have done it. It's something of a compulsive need. And as I was talking to Rob about it he said, "Maybe we should put the dishwasher on "light" instead of "normal."" I thought about this and then laughed. How silly! How silly that Rob would be suggesting that we change our dishwasher setting instead of asking me to just rinse the dishes less. I mean, I'm a human being. I can change my behavior!

I told Rob I would try for 3 weeks to rinse the dishes less. So far so good. The dishwasher does a good job, for the most part. I have adequately surpressed my irrational anger if the dishwasher doesn't get something completely clean. I do miss over-rinsing the dishes, though. It's some of my best thinking time. Plus, I like the sound of running water. Maybe I will allow myself a few cheat days when I can rinse the dishes all I want.

Next, we tried the water save feature on our washing machine, but that's a no go. The feature fills up the sink and then puts the water back into the washer on the next cycle. For some reason, though, the feature isn't working right. We've had it work a few times, but more often than not, it won't spin all the water out of our clothes. And that's just not worth it. Increased drying time would make up for the decreased water usage. So our next option there is buying a new washing machine, which I'm actually considering. But it'll be a long way out.

At the Natural History Museum there's a whole "use less" exhibit that's disguised as a time machine. They've recently added little "rain drops" throughout the exhibit that tell you how to conserve water. One of those rain drops said that we use 70% of our water in the bathroom. That number seems a litlte high to me, but still, it led me to think about the shower. I often take multiple showers a day--long showers--just cause I like them. They're soothing. They're warm. And I can tune out the world.

So when I went to Home Depot this week for some part of our continuing home project, I looked at the shower heads. Out of the 30 - 40 shower heads there, only ONE of them was a low-flow shower head. So I decided to look on-line. I found this shower head:
http://evolveshowerheads.com/roadrunner_showerhead.html
And I bought it. Not only does it reduce the water flow by a gallon a minute during the shower, at the START of the shower, when you just turn the water on, it runs the cold water out and then slows the water flow to a trickle until you're ready to step into the shower (they call this ShowerStart Technology). How cool is that? The feature that will speak to Tamra's over-water-usage? 1.5 gallons/minute. The feature that will speak to Rob's over-water-usage? ShowerStart Technology.

Next on my list: finding a low-flow faucet (or attachment for a faucet) for the bathroom sink.

(For a review of the Evolve shower head mentioned above, go to this site:
http://fivepercent.us/2008/01/06/evolve-shower-head-roadrunner-washes-green/
It challenges us all to use 5% less energy. The tag line:
If you cannot change the world by yourself, start by making a small change … just 5% less is easy, and here’s how. )