Keep your car smelling fresh and clean with a homemade air freshener. Fill a large tea strainer with either charcoal (the kind for the grill) or dried lavender. Charcoal is a natural deodorizer, so it will absorb foul fragrances. When it’s left in a warm car, lavender will perfume the air with a soothing and pleasing scent. This is a healthy alternative to chemical, artificial car fresheners.
Small Repairs, Big Results
The simplest repairs sometimes create the biggest results. If your faucet is dripping water, visit the hardware store and replace the washer. When your faucet is dripping at a rate of one drop per second, you’re wasting 2,700 gallons per year! For less than a dollar, you can stop the waste and end up saving lots of dough on your utilities bill.
Swap Pillowcases to Refresh Bedding
Experts agree that it’s best to wash your bedding at least once a week. But in the real world, that can be too much of a chore, so do the next best thing and swap out the pillowcases. Stock up on organic cotton pillow cases and change them once a week, and wash your sheets every other week.
Fill It Up
It’s better to get a full-tank of gas than making multiple trips to the gas station. While you may need to pony up more money for gas when you fill up, you’ll save money in the long-run because you’ll make fewer trips to the gas station.
Water Outdoor Plants at Sundown
If you need to water the lawn or outdoor plants, do it at sundown. Watering the plants at night is the most ecological method, since there is no sun to evaporate the water immediately. If you have automatic sprinklers, set the timer to water the lawn at night. Not only does this save water, but the plants and lawn will get a proper soaking, too, and will thrive.
Celebrating Independence Day at the beach?
Consider using non-disposable containers when bringing lunch with you. Chinese stacking tins keep sandwiches, pickles and cookies organized and separate from each other. (Pickles and chocolate chip cookies together? Yuck!) And these are easy to carry with a click-in handle on top. Check out www.pearlriver.com for a selection of lunch boxes you can use over and over again.
In my house, I had these very generic, very white and very ugly vents installed when they put in the state of the art heating and cooling system throughout the house. Fortunately, all of the vents o . . .
