Wiping away tears means that I’ve got to pull my long sleeved shirt over my hands to wipe my daughter’s tears or giving a soothing back rub means that I’ve got to cover my hands first or else I might draw blood.

Lotions, Creams and Other Stuff

I tried all kinds of lotions and creams to ‘take the edge off’ of my sandy hands, but nothing seemed to work. Little did I know that the solution was sitting in my kitchen all the time.

My Rough Hand Solution

It’s so simple that I can’t believe I didn’t do it sooner. In a small bowl I poured sea salt (finely ground, not the chunks), some olive oil (just enough to make a paste) and a squirt of homemade hand soap (any liquid hand soap will do).

After wetting my hands with warm water, I apply the paste and massage the palms and backs of my hands (don’t forget to get between the fingers too). The salt helps to remove the dead, dry, craggy skin while the olive oil helps to moisturize at the same time.

The squirt of hand soap makes it easier to rinse it off with warm water. First I tried the hand scrub without the squirt of hand soap and realized that I had oily hands (oil and water just won’t mix). I needed a small amount of soap to encourage the mixture to come off of my hands.

I guess you could always omit the soap and just wash your hands with soap afterward, but the soap will serve to dry your hands out again (just what we’re trying to avoid).

You’ll be amazed at how soft your hands will become. I leave a little container of the mixture next to the kitchen sink, so at the end of the day, or at the end of a heavy cleaning session, I use the mixture to soften up again. After my hands are dry, just for safe measure, I apply my favorite hand lotion.

No More Embarrassment

No longer am I afraid to touch people. The other day in church the Pastor asked that we try something a little different. “Let’s try holding hands as we pray today.” I looked to the right and to the left and was able to confidently take the hands of the people standing next to me without fear of them screaming in pain and drawing back bloody stumps for hands.

If you have rough, dry hands, give it a try, you’ve got nothing to lose.

The author provides 10 solutions on how to recycle wine bottle corks.

The only one she seems to be missing is creating a wine bottle cork board. It’s simple and easy to do.

What You’ll Need

• Scissor

• Wine bottle corks (as many as you can accumulate)

• Glue. Preferably Gem-Tac Permanent Adhesive (hot glue gun works only temporarily. Over time the corks fall off).

• Velcro or hanging ribbon

Here’s what You Do:
Take a piece of cardboard. It could be round, square or rectangle, it doesn’t matter. Cut it into the shape of your choosing (a heart would be nice).

Decide how and where you want to hang the cork board. You could use either Velcro backing or place a string/ribbon through the cardboard and use it to hang the board on a hook. You need to decide this up front. It’s easier to poke a hole in the cardboard before the cork is adhered to it.

After deciding how you want to hang the cork board, pre arrange the cork stoppers on the cardboard so that there’s no space in between each piece of cork. Get creative. Lay some horizontally, some vertically. You can even stand some on the end (just cut the excess cork so that the cork board has an even/level plane.

Now that everything is arranged to your liking, individually glue each cork to the cardboard with the Gem-Tac glue.

Once the glue is dry, hang the cork board and start using it.

Get Creative

If you really want to get creative with wine corks, check out these wine cork flip flops (scroll down to see the flip flops).

Commitment to Change

I’m happy to report that many of my friends are now using .pdf software as the final version of their documents and if they, on occasion, print out something with an error, they cut the paper into quarters or thirds or whatever the size of choice and use the back as scrap paper (a small accomplishment, but one small step for the home office, one giant leap for the environment).

To further prevent paper waste, we networked the house to use one printer. The printer is an old printer and is not equipped with the infra red ability to print from a device, but hooking it into a Belkin wireless printer hub (which cost about $75 ), I was able to network all of the household printers and laptop to use the one printer.

Using one central printer helps to reign the kids in from printing 20 copies of the lyrics to their favorite song or 8 full color copies of the cutest puppy in the world. The kids also understand what it means to print on both sides of the page.

Paper Saving Software

The more mature folks in the house understand the need to conserve paper and print on an ‘as needed’ basis. Therefore I installed PDF Create (a software program that makes pdf’s out of just about anything) on each computer. If anyone wants to share documents its pdf’d and sent electronically. After a little training its amazing how infrequently it becomes necessary to print.

Old School

This post may sound very old school and very ‘yesterday,’ but not everyone is equally ecologically evolved. There are still a few folks out there who have several household printers and could stand to help the environment by consolidating and printing less.

One hundred ideas is a lot to digest, but I think it’s worth a review.  If it’s too much for one sitting why not institute one or two ideas each week.  Imagine how much of a difference you and your family can make in a year’s time.  Better yet, share the list with a few relatives and friends.  See how much of a change the bunch of you can make.

Just a Few Ideas

The list starts off with the most practical of all ideas, buy less stuff. Then it continues on with things like growing your own veggies, having green picnics, fixing leaks and another practical tip, live within your means.

Updates

In addition to the great post on 100 Green Ideas for the Family, the Tree Hugging Family blog seems to be updated regularly (ahem… unlike this blog) and has tons of great information on making green choices to live a more environmentally friendly lifestyle.  I think it’s a must read for anyone interested in converting.

For the Non Bike Rider

How many times have you gotten a great idea to get in shape, run out purchase a gym membership, order the Total Fitness Gym from TV or the latest get in shape video/DVD only to fizzle out and realize that you spent a ton of money for nothing? C’mon, you know you’ve done it once or twice or more in your life.

Well, the idea of a recycled bike sounded great. Currently I don’t have a bike, and my old ’spend and waste’ personality would have gone to a bike store and allowed the salesperson to convince me that I needed the latest, best most expensive bike loaded with a ton of useless gadgets. After purchasing such a bike, with all of the intentions of riding it regularly, I would ride the bike once or twice and it would sit in the garage, or my kids would ride and ruin it.

Recycled  Bike

A much more economical approach is to find a second hand bike, and fix it up. Not only is it more cost effective, it’s recycling at its best. You just have to know what to look for in a used bike. After all, brakes can always be repaired, tires replaced and gear chains replaced and oiled. A bent or broken bike frame is another story.

For folks like me looking to get back into the swing of biking, I think a used bike is a great place to begin. However, once I get to Lance Armstrong’s level, then I’ll contemplate getting a new bike.

While searching the internet, I came across these interesting sites involving bike recycling. If any of the recyclers are located near you, it might be worth checking them out:

Local Motion in Vermont
Recycle a Bike in Providence Rhode Island
Recycle a Bicycle in New York City
Recycled Cycles in Colorado

Keep in mind that your footprint includes your own CO2 production, and a portion of the CO2 emitted in the manufacture of products you use. It’s tough to allocate one person’s individual portion of the emissions created in the production of a disposable bottle of water, but there are websites and CO2 footprint calculators available on the internet to help you figure it out.

Below are a few websites to help you do just that, calculate your carbon footprint:

The Nature Conservancy Carbon Footprint Calculator

Household Emissions Calculator

Terrapass

Visit all three of the sites. Check your carbon footprint thrice. Sometimes it takes multiple times for it to sink in. If you’re anything like me, after seeing your carbon footprint, you’ll be a lot more receptive to the tips for reducing your CO2 emissions.

Consumer World has a fountain of information that everyone who buys anything should be aware of.  As a result of a link from their site, I recently read an article on how Purina Dog Food reduced the size of their dog food bag from 20 pounds to 18 pounds.  The price?  Well of course the price remained the same.

The folks at Mouse Print attempted on more than one occasion to get an explanation from Purina as to the reason for the downsized portions.  Rather than re-word their findings, check it out for yourself.

Lots of Info

No need for me to say anymore.  Check them out and check out the sites they link to.  If you’re like me, you’ll bookmark the Consumer World as a valuable resource.

This week I decided to look for the impossible and improbable. The economy is down the tubes, people are being laid off from their jobs and living green, for many, is being put on the back burner. If people would only recognize the fact that if we all instituted green living habits from birth, there is a possibility we wouldn’t be in this situation.

After all, we irresponsibly used our tomorrow’s resources, so now we’re facing a world-wide crisis. Just like we irresponsibly spent our tomorrow’s money and now many folks are in debt (I’m off of my soap box now).

Money Saving Offers for the Car

Here are a few articles/websites I wanted to share for folks looking to save a few dollars on car purchase and maintenance.

• If you’re willing to do the research, it is possible to get free car history reports. It takes a little more time than it would if you were to purchase a car history report from carfax.com or any of the other sites that charge, but it can be done.
• How about a free oil change for your car? Yep, that’s right, here’s a website that offers a free oil change. I’ve got to admit, I didn’t sign up as yet, but I thought the idea was interesting.
• The final one that I thought was really clever is the FreeGasHelp.com website. It seems that if you drive your car at least 1,000 miles a month and it’s in good condition, you can sign up to receive free gas if you’re willing to put allow advertising on your car. The advertisement is a magnetic sign. The size of the sign will determine how much free gas you’ll be entitled to. According to the site you can earn anywhere from $17 to $200 a month in free gas.

In a tough economy, we’ve got to search far and wide for ways to save money. I just wanted t share a few that I’ve found.

Shortly after watching that show, I received an electric bill. Hmmm, time to do some trimming. Immediately I went around the house to unplug and deactivated all unused electronic gadgets. I unplugged the few devices that weren’t in power strips, and I deactivated (or turned off) the power strips.

This is going to take some getting used to because my family believes that the dust particles in each empty room enjoys watching TV so they travel from room to room watching 15 minutes of a show never turning off the TV in the room they just left.

Nightly Savings

I think I’ll start them off painlessly. We’ll start by unplugging all unused electric devices every night. They won’t even know we’re saving money. Once I can show them the financial savings, maybe that will be enough motivation to get them to turn off and unplug devices as they leave the room.

They’re going to complain about things like the cable box taking time to reboot and TV’s having to warm up, but I’m hoping the savings will win them over.

I’ll report an update in a few months. Anyone with a few encouraging words?

BTW, check out the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy website. It’s a neat site that helps to explain the amount of energy some devices used even when they’re off.

More than just the monthly or annual expense for phone service, think back over the past three to five years and ask yourself this question:

• How many home phone systems or telephones have I purchased in the past three to five years?

Then ask yourself this question:

• How many cell phones have I purchased in the past three to five years?

And the Answer Is?

I’d wager to bet that you purchased more cell phones than you did home phones. Heck, you’re probably still using the same old wireless phone system you purchased several years ago. Your cell phone, on the other hand, probably has the latest bells and whistles.

Now, while you’re interviewing yourself, ask yourself this question:

• What did I do with all of my old cell phones?

Hmmmm, anyone who has read more than one post on this blog knows where I’m heading. It’s all about recycling the cell phones.

What to do with Old Cell Phones

I’m going to share with you a few places where you could put your old cell phone to use:

How to Donate Your Old Cell Phone: This quick how to lists three organizations that accepts donated cell phones. It also offers instructions on how to erase the data from your cell phone.

Below are more organizations that accept old cell phones. The cell phones are recycled, refurbished or sold. The proceeds are used for a good cause.

Support Network for Battered Women

Recycling for Charities:

Eco Cell – cell phone recycling

If these organizations don’t tickle your fancy, contact your State’s Department of Environmental Conservation or counterpart thereof.

For example the state of New York offers sites for cell phone recycling or donation:

Chicago has the Chicago Recycling Coalition

QC Canada has Charitable Recycling Program

No matter where you live, you can find a charity that can put your old cell phone to good use.

Marching Orders

I’ve got my marching orders. Now all I have to do is raid my daughter’s toy chest to retrieve all of our old cell phones and start donating them to charities.