Challenge Update
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Shoppy Shop Talk, Part II
Yesterday’s shopping adventures included the purchase of several personal care or cleaning items. I made the leap and purchased a wooden comb and a wooden-handled toothbrush, both by Bass, silk dental floss, tea tree oil toothpicks, and a box of baking soda. Why baking soda? Because, in addition to the many other uses of this amazing ingredient, from cleaning the sink, toilet and floor to washing your hair, brushing your teeth, washing clothes, and eliminating odors, the 1-pound box is about $1, and it’s cardboard. A pound of anything for $1 is a good deal, if you ask me, but this stuff is truly miraculous. And unfortunately, I found almost nothing else for…
- Challenge Update, family, food, frugal, green, My World and Welcome to It, no waste, plastic, recycling, sustainable living
shoppy shop talk, Part I
I’m back from a full day of grocery shopping and exploring non-plastic items. I went to three stores today as well as the farmers’ market and a small cheese shop. I have good news to report almost everywhere, except at the bank. There, the news is scary. See that shopping cart in the photo? Those two bags of groceries cost me $98. (falls over in dead faint…) There’s so much to tell that I’m gonna spread this over two days. Because who doesn’t want to talk about food prices and plastic, ad nauseum? I do, I do!! Today I went to Lucky, CVS, Alameda Natural Grocery, Farmstead Cheeses and Wines, and the Alameda…
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Sunday musing
One of the pleasures of a Sunday morning (besides a tasty bowl of cereal) is the newspaper, that fat bundle lying like a gift on the front step. I (heart) the Sunday paper. The nice delivery person, a mystery visitor to our home once a week, leaves the paper on the front step, so close to the door that I could fetch it bare nekkid and still be OK. So why does s/he feel the need to wrap it in plastic? Not just on rainy days, but every week? Note to self: contact San Francisco Chronicle and have the plastic bags stopped. The worst thing that could happen without the bag is…
- Challenge Update, frugal, green, My World and Welcome to It, no waste, plastic, recycling, sustainable living
Punked by Plastic
I was punked by plastic. In my grocery shopping adventures Thursday, I cheerfully bought two (minuscule and pricey) glass jars of mustard, and when putting them away, discovered Ambient Plastic (unnecessary extra plastic) bands around the lids. Why? Why is this necessary? (insert existential yawp here.) I opened the waxed paper bag of salami I bought at the deli counter yesterday, after expressly forbidding the use of plastic in my order, and found the thin blue plastic sheet she used to load up the bag and not get her hand greasy. I guess they always throw that into the customer’s package? I wonder if they couldn’t use some tongs or a fork,…
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what’s new, pussycat?
Hi. It’s me. Been busy. Just wanted to poke my head in the back door and share what we’ve been doing. In a word, LOTS. We are days away from making the offer on the pot house — the gutted, in-foreclosure dump in the West County (Sonoma) that was once a pot-growing house. We’ve been taking measurements, poking through floors and woodwork, calling the county, pacing off boundary lines, scraping together our cash (since it’s a cash-only deal), talking to neighbors, and thinking, thinking, thinking if we can really do it. We think we can. We’ve been talking with family and friends who have the know-how. My dad has a barn…
