West Glenmoore, PA - Beautiful. Green. Home.

Looking to Get Rid of Household Items? Or Maybe Looking For A New Fridge or Bed? Join FreeCycle

I wanted to share and let everyone know about Chester County Freecycle, www.freecycle.org, a Yahoo! group devoted to helping keep household items such as furniture and appliances out of landfills by offering them up FREE to other county residents.

My wife and I have used Freecycle for over a year and have already cycled in a spare refrigerator and a few toys and book for our young kids. Things that we’ve given away to others have included an electric treadmill, an older (still in good condition) refrigerator, weed whackers, lawn spreader, and other various items.

If you’ve never heard of FreeCycle I suggest that you stop over and check them out. Here is a sampling of an email that you can get. (Also, if you join, I suggest that you select Daily Summary for the emails, that way you get one message a day!)

Messages In This Digest (25 Messages)

If you are a resident of Chester County, PA you can join the Chester County FreeCycle Network, or if you live elsewhere and want to see if a FreeCycle network exists in your neighborhood, click this link for the FreeCycle Network.

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Organic Gardening Tips

Image by looseends via Flickr

We’ve been trying to take a more Green approach to our lawn and garden for the past two years and this year even more-so. I found this great list of 50 , yes FIFTY , oops, I was too fast to type, there are 300, yes, that is three-double-zero tips to help you improve your Organic approach to gardening and lawn care.

I am going to show you the first four tips and then you can click on the link to read the other 46 tips on the original article.

1. Mulch your flower beds and trees with 3" of organic material - it conserves water, adds humus and nutrients, and discourages weeds. It gives your beds a nice, finished appearance.

2. Mulch acid-loving plants with a thick layer of pine needles each fall. As the needles decompose, they will deposit their acid in the soil.

3. The most important step in pest management is to maintain healthy soil. It produces healthy plants, which are better able to withstand disease and insect damage.

4. Aphids ? Spray infested stems, leaves, and buds with a very dilute soapy water, then clear water. It works even on the heaviest infestation.

Read the rest of the organic gardening tips.

If you have other tips to share, please leave a comment so we can all learn more!

Get Toasted! Small Appliances Work Just As Good

Toaster ovens use much less energy than conventional ovens, and they have more applications than you may have thought of.

A week ago our toaster oven stopped working and we debated on whether or not to replace the appliance, we did after considering a normal toaster or just not using a toaster/toaster oven.  Well we did go with replacing the toaster oven with a new one as it is much easier to bake and warm up the dinners we serve or preschool-aged children.  Nuked chicken nuggets never taste very good, they need to be baked. 

View Original Article

Sharing Links: Here’s a Handful of Home and Garden Tips

Just a few links that I found listed on LeapTag this morning. The links cover composting, using household items for cleaning and freshening your indoor air. From time to time I’ll just include simple posts like this with a list of great links! Hope you find some useful information.

• Indoor Air - Houseplants
• Green Living: Housecleaning with Baking Soda and Vinegar
• Container gardens may ease grocery bill
• Cucumbers love radishes but don’t like potatoes
• Composting the Easy Way

Discovered with LeapTag

Are the products you buy really recyclable?

This article was passed onto me and is very interesting.  I never had time to really think about the differences in product containers when buying certain grocery items.  Give this article a read and learn how to be a more eco-conscious shopper.

Article from the Philadelphia Inquirer: GreenSpace: Is it recyclable or trash eternal?

Confused About Recycling Symbols on Plastic?

Image via Wikipedia

Tonight’s browsing of some of my usual sites landed me on The Daily Green and one of their great articles about recycling plastic and what ALL of those symbols on the containers mean.

They came up with a Guide to Recycling Codes which can be viewed here .

But here is a little snippet of what the code looks like, what type of plastic it is, how to recycle and what that specific type of plastic is recycled into.

Number 1 Plastics
PET or PETE (polyethylene terephthalate)
Found in: Soft drink, water and beer bottles; mouthwash bottles; peanut butter containers; salad dressing and vegetable oil containers; ovenable food trays.
Recycling: Picked up through most curbside recycling programs.
Recycled into: Polar fleece , fiber, tote bags, furniture, carpet, paneling, straps, (occasionally) new containers

Waterless Car Wash?

Huh? This doesn’t even seem possible. I mean, how could you possibly wash a car without using water to rinse off all the soap bubbles? Part of the car washing process is changing into clothes you don’t mind getting soaked as you dip your washing towel into a big bucket of water, then spraying down your car with the hose.

EcoTouch sells a product called waterless car wash for $9.99. You simply use microfiber cloths, spray the product on both the cloth and your car, then wipe. Sounds too good to be true. We’ll try it out and let you know how it turned out. Or if you’ve tried the product let us know by leaving a comment for us and other readers!

A Handful of Green Living Tips for Your Home

Here is a list of Green Living tips that we’ve started to compile from various magazines and web sites. Maybe you’ll find a new tip or two. Also, if you have a tip or something you do please leave us comments.

When drying your clothes in the dryer , try tossing in a couple of dry towels. These towels will help pull moisture out of the other wet clothes, which reduces the number of minutes you’ll need to keep the dryer running.

Wrapping your water heater in an insulating blanket , available for about $10 at any hardware store, can help lower your energy bill by retaining more of the heat produced by the water heater. Another valuable trick is to turn down the thermostat setting on the unit to WARM, or 120 degrees. It is also safer to keep your water temp lower if you have young children in the house.

Put your computer to sleep. If you put your computer in sleep mode when not in use, you can save about $75 a year on your electric bill, according to the EPA . Also, when your computer is not in use, make sure you fully close programs that run in the background looking for updates, such as iTunes and spyware. You can find your computer’s sleep settings and energy management settings in your System Preferences. (If you can’t find that, it is typically on the screensaver settings under Power Settings).

Keep water in your refrigerator. In order to have your refrigerator run efficiently, it should be kept full, but not overstuffed. If you do not have a lot of food in your refrigerator, consider adding a pitcher of water. Not only will this provide instant cold water, but the pitcher acts as an insulator or cold pack would in a cooler. Over and under crowding your refrigerator makes it work harder and is a waste of energy consumption.

source: cleaning.tips.net; Women’s Health Magazine, thedailygreen.com

Sharing Links: Here’s a Handful of Home and Garden Tips

Just a few links that I found listed LeapTag this evening. The links cover composting, using household items for cleaning and freshening your indoor air.

From time to time I’ll just include simple posts like this with a list of great links! Hope you find some useful information.

• Simple Composting
• Indoor Air - Houseplants
• Green Living: Housecleaning with Baking Soda and Vinegar
• Composting grows in popularity

Discovered with LeapTag

Image via Wikipedia

WaterSense® makes Cents

WaterSense® is a program sponsored by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) with a mission of promoting water efficient products and ultimately protecting the future of our water supply. The WaterSense® label on a product indicates that it meets water efficiency and performance criteria established by the EPA.

According to the EPA, the average American home uses more water for flushing the toilet than running the shower. If you install WaterSense® labeled toilets and faucets or faucet accessories you can save more than 11,000 gallons annually. The EPA states this will reduce your water bills, and could pay for itself in a few short years while continuing to save water and money for years to come! Taken from http://www.epa.gov/WaterSense/basic/index.htm