Living Small in Austin TX

Repurposing some ugly stuff I found around the micro-farm.

Who thought planter boxes were a good idea in Central Texas?

A couple of these were kicking around our yard when we moved in, and I'll admit, my first thought was to...you know...stick a plant in them, but then it got to be about a zillion degrees.  You'd need to water anything in those boxes a hundred times a day and even then they'd croak.

There were also these heavy concrete bench supports hiding in the weeds behind the shed.  Hmmm, bulk trash day?

As much as I hate accumulating stuff, I can't bear to just throw it away.

So I got to deconstructing...

and reconstructing...

I actually really like how they look!  Kind of rustic and actually quite comfortable.  I dragged them to a sunny-in-the-morning spot and now have the perfect place to warm up with my coffee and plan my day.

 

Let's start this week off with a confession.

The other week, I took out our kitchen trash out to the wheelie bin. 

Other than a couple of small baggies of dog poop*, there was nothing in there. 

Awesome, right?  Just one bag of trash!

Not really.  You know what fills up that bag every week?

Disposable diapers. Crunchy, non clorinated wood pulp diapers, but still...disposable?

Wait, wait, wait!  Before you hit send on your hate mail!  Except for a couple of road trips, we did use cloth diapers from my son's birth until just before we moved here in September.  That's close to 2 years of disposables that didn't hit the landfill. 

So why did we stop?  Well, Southern California has hard water, and hard water's not all that great for cleaning diapers.  No matter what kind of detergent you use, it tends to build up on the fabric and after some time the diapers start to repel the very liquid they are supposed to soak up and start to smell a little funky.  Ignore the funk, and it just gets funkier. 

All my little guy had to do was pee in his diaper once and if didn't just roll right off and dribble down his leg, it would activate this intense aroma reminiscent of inner city bus stops or alleyways behind dive bars. 

You can eradicate the funk.  It involves Dawn dishwashing liquid - don't ask me why, but it works - and repeated hot water rinsings.  So, every six weeks or so, I'd initiate this super long wash day.  Those diapers would get washed over and over and over again (in a single day) in my assuredly not high efficiency rented washing machine.  This was not the best use of water in a coastal desert, particularly a coastal desert in the middle of a drought. 

And then we went on our reconnaissance mission to Austin last summer, and those crunchy disposables were just so convenient for our trip.  Once we got home, I was in the middle of purging and packing and making sure we got to see all our friends one last time, and then another last time and...well, it was just so easy...to pop on a disposable and chuck it in the trash when he was finished with it.  

Yikes.  Felt horrible just writing that.

Anyway, then we moved, and my intention was to leave a bunch of stuff packed up until we bought a place, and I just never unpacked the cloth diapers.  Plus my boy started using the toilet and I thought, "well, if we're almost done with diapers anyway..."  But one step forward, two steps back, and my boy doesn't really want anything to do with the toilet anymore.

It hit me last week, that if I am only throwing away one medium kitchen bag of trash each week, and disposable diapers are a huge chunk of that trash?  We could get pretty close to Zero Waste if we just swapped back to cloth.  The water here is nowhere near as hard as the water in SoCal.  I can't possibly need to do my big wasteful de-stinkifiying wash as often. 

Plus, cloth diapers are waaaay cuter than disposables, aren't they? Yes, those are my son's pink and floral print diapers.  Our disposables ran out on Saturday.  I can't wait to see what we're (not) trotting out to the curb Thursday night!

^{* Let's save dog poop for another post.  There's got to be a more responsible way to deal with her output than wrapping it in a bread bag and tossing it in the landfill.}

 

In which my little eco-warrior and I chat about reusable menstrual products. No, it's not TMI.

I was snuggled up with my eleven year old the other night, watching Project Runway.  An ad came on for some sort of menstrual product.

"How long does a period last again?" she asked.

"Usually about three or four days."

"So how often do you use a new one of those pads?"

"Every three hours or so is probably best."

She considered this for a moment, "Boy, that's really wasteful!"

Yes!

I love that for my daughter, these considerations are becoming second nature.  We got to have a good little chat about reusable mestrual products.  I rely on The Keeper (Made in the USA!) and an assortment of cloth pads by Glad Rags (an awesome female owned company doing great things for their community).  Lately, I've noticed a lot of super cute cloth pads on Etsy, and I mentioned that maybe we should start accumulating her a little stash.

My girl is hip to Etsy being an excellent source for all things handmade and retorted that we should just make our own.  It is just like her to take it one step further.  Makes a mama proud.

No poo.

"I'm thinking of going 'No Poo'," I announced from behind the shower curtain. 

"No what?"

"No POO.  I think I'm going to give up shampoo."

Nathan stuck his head into the shower, "You know, I hardly ever use shampoo..."

Oh.  This reminded me of the time I asked my brother what he used to wash his face.  I was probably in my late teens at the time, with an arsenal of facial masks, scrubs and cleansers cluttering up the bathroom.  My skin's never been all that great, but he always had the nicest complexion.  "C'mon, aren't you going to share your secret?"

He paused a moment, "I don't wash my face."

Not washing my face didn't work, but then again, neither did washing it.  At the moment, I'm finishing up a monstrous bottle of Cetaphil facial cleanser I bought at Costco well over a year ago.  It hasn't worked any miracles and I'm only using it because I feel obligated not to waste it.

Part of my personal Zero Waste initiative, is to focus more on the Reducing part of Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.  The seond two are second nature and pretty easy, but the first part trips me up.  It's hard to stem the tide, not because I know there isn't another way, but because the other ways require time.  I've grated castille soap into homemade laundry detergeant and it's not a ten minute job! Some things I know I can replace, but I need stuff like...shampoo and sun-screen, in their blasted little plastic containers.  Or do I?

Apparently not.  Using shampoo sets us up for a cycle wherein our scalp produces an excess of oil.  If I could just push through through the adjustment phase, I'd never have to buy an expensive bottle of paraben-free lather again!  And my hair will probably look and feel better than it ever has!

I'm thinking it's the perfect time for me to attempt No Poo.  I'm almost out of shampoo.  I'm wearing hats all the time anyway, because I'm growing out my hair and it looks pretty awful most of the time.  I have plenty of baking soda, and apple cider vinegar and essential oils* already on hand for my grand experiment. 

So, I guess this is Day 1 of No Poo.  Or maybe Day 2 or 3.  I'm not particularly obsessed with bathing as it is, nor do I have the time, and I do have a lovely array of hats.

^{*You didn't think it just meant completely ignoring the old head, did you?} 

 

In which the City of Austin makes composting a little easier

At least once a day, one of us trots our little plastic bin out to the compost pile behind the shed.  The bin holds 23 cups, so we're keeping 161 cups of egg shells, coffee grounds, bunny litter, vegetable peelings, banana skins, apple cores and so much more out of the landfill every week!

With all that organic matter going directly into the compost and slowly breaking down into a lovely fertile soil amendment for our garden, we really didn't have much need for a 60 gallon trash can. 

I figured I'd save us some money by swapping our big can out for a little one, but while I was poking around on the city's website, I came across the Green30 Challenge.  Switching out our trashcan meant we were eligible for a $75 rebate on a backyard composter. Sweet!

We already have a couple of different composting arrangements in the backyard, but I've been after one of those fancy tumbling barrel composters.  Supposedly they make compost much faster, and the Envirocycle also has a means of capturing compost tea in the base.  Besides, who can resist a good challenge?!?!

Apparently the City of Austin can't.  Did you know our Zero Waste Plan calls for us to collectively reduce the amount of trash we send to the landfill by 90 percent?!?!  We have untl 2040 to get there, but still...90 percent?!?!  I'm impressed.  I've been trying to stem the tide of things that come in and out of our household, but I'm just lollygaggin' compared to the city!