What’s more, there are likely a few more appliances that I’d be eager to buy used, even though there are more efficient, “greener” versions being made today. I mentioned in the roundup that we bought a used clothes washer and dryer. We found the advertisement on our local Craigslist, went up, and found the set … Read more
A friend at work mentioned a few days ago that he was interested in getting some solar panels. He’s already taken a few steps to make his family more self-sufficient and less reliant on public utilities, and this is the next step. I began to wonder what kind of money solar panels were going for. … Read more
There is a silver lining to the recession: gas is about half as expensive as it was just a year ago. (It’s just north of $2 per gallon around here.) It didn’t seem to get high enough for people to change their driving habits drastically — people were still sitting in the parking lot idling … Read more
(Fair warning: rant ahead! Check out some really cute puppies or join MyPoints if rants aren’t your thing.) I think I knew that Earth Day was coming up but the real reminder came when I checked Google today. They changed their logo’s primary colors to a happy, huggy lush waterfall scene with a shiny, happy … Read more
A couple of weeks ago we went to IKEA to pick up some light bulbs for some of our lamps. I was a little surprised to find out that IKEA had started charging a nickel apiece for plastic bags. We don’t go to IKEA often, and the bag charge had been around for a couple … Read more
With Memorial Day around the corner and gas hovering around $3/gallon, the cost of getting around is on a lot of people’s minds. It’s on mine, for sure. Last time I gassed up I was pleasantly surprised to see that my Oldsmobile Achieva got over 31 MPG — over the past few months it had … Read more
You may have heard of this trick before. You can save energy on the operation of your freezer (or refrigerator) if it’s only partly filled by freezing (or cooling) bottles of water. It takes energy initially to get the water down to temperature, but once it’s down there, it will hold its temperature a lot … Read more
Sorry that the posts have been a little thin this week, but I read a book that has occupied almost the full attention of my thoughts and caused a great deal of reflection, sorrow, and a small amount of panic. The Long Emergency by James Howard Kunstler, if written ten or twenty years ago, would … Read more