I call myself The Frugal Artisan, determined to provide good quality original design at inexpensive prices. But my frugal ethic is more than just about quality and price. It's a personality trait in my everyday life.
* What's for dinner?
Easy on the meat which uses multiple times the environmental resources (such as land space, water, and feed) to produce than grain diets. And heavy on the local fruits and vegetables which are not transported with fuels or grown with chemicals and are hopefully not even in a package! Perhaps better, I reach for a healthy serving of my own backyard farm foods.
* Time for a new sweater?
The thrift store offers hardly worn choices already on the market in more colors, shapes, and sizes than any place else. Support to the non-profits is a nice secondary benefit, as is the affordable cost.
* Cradle-to-Grave
Before I pick up that plastic sandwich bag, I think of where it will end up. Trash? Better to pack lunch in reusable containers, which can be recycled when they wear out in a few years. (I also think of where it came from, um, can you say fossil fuels?)
* Getting there to here
I'm fortunate to live near a grocery, or perhaps it was a semi-conscious decision in choosing a home location. I don't even think about driving to the nearby store! Bike riding and walking are ingrained for anything within a mile. Once a bus rider, always a bus rider. When gas went up to $4.50 a gallon I took the bus to work. I'll never go back to driving (except this year ARGH). Next year it is back to the bus to get to work.
* Just one more
Recently I discovered an online book trading group, requesting used books from others and sending those I am finished with. Some of you already belong to
And so it goes with nearly everything I touch and do in everyday life.
Were not it better that humans were more like plants! The life cycle of a plant in the presence of water/sun/soil is truly the definition of sustainable. Plants ingeniously make oxygen (we still do not know exactly how). But, sorry, but by virtue of our physical arrangement, humans use stuff and make waste. All of us can however, make choices big and small leaving only a tiny footprint of consumption and waste. Our grandparents never heard the word recycle, and now our kids do it without a second thought. Next step? Set a living example, and advocate that all, poor and wealthy, think ahead to the Seventh Generation.
My work includes all these elements; reuse of materials already produced, reduced impact on natural resources, and a long life which does not end in the round file! The good quality original design at inexpensive prices is just the beginning.
October 22nd, 2010 at 05:07 pm 1287767261
I think this part is often overlooked. You don't know how many people snidely told me that "Washing cloth diapers was WAY worse for the environment." Excuse me? Washing 80 diapers every week is worse than buying as many manufactured/packaged diapers, every single week, 3+ years per kid? I don't buy it! I just find it hard to believe *washing* 80 diapers every week was a bigger environmental impact than *manufacturing* as many. (This doesn't even get into the whole landfill thing - realizing all those dirty diapers have to go somewhere when they are done being used).
Of course, I think most everybody has room to improve when it comes to the ideas above. Good stuff to chew on.
October 22nd, 2010 at 06:15 pm 1287771323
October 22nd, 2010 at 06:47 pm 1287773231
October 22nd, 2010 at 09:08 pm 1287781715
Cloth diapers have a higher environmental impact where water is scarce (southern california for example).
I chose cloth for my first with a few disposable for outings. I used those diapers for a million things so many times even after they weren't worn!! However, my second was a preemie and the tiny sized cloth ones soaked extremely often (sometimes several times in an hour). She also had way more sensitive skin and got a rash when wet for any length of time over a quarter hour. So it was disposable for her.
Thnks for the chat ladies.
October 22nd, 2010 at 10:06 pm 1287785205
But besides recycling where one sent away stuff to some distant factory, the generations before us were accustomed re-using, and remaking many things. An old leather glove or belt might become washers for a bolt. A wooden crate might become drawers for a chest, while metal jar lids or wooden thread spools became the drawer pulls. An old inner tube would be a source for patches for the next inner tube. Some pieces of the inner tube might be cut up to make rubber bands. An old dress became a new apron plus a sunsuit for the toddler, the zipper from the old skirt was re-used for the new skirt, on and on.
My garage was built from the wood scraps salvaged from crates shipped to an airplane builder in my town--I think that was in the 1930's. Cool, huh? I know of another garage that was built from the decorative limestone goofed by the stone masons --so it is full of amazing ornamental pieces.
The previous generations were not always angels about how they treated the environment, but they would have many things --interesting things, even-- to teach us.
October 22nd, 2010 at 11:39 pm 1287790755
Jerry