Ecominded Mama

Minimizing products packaged in plastic

I took a look at my recycling bin recently and was somewhat surprised to only realize NOW, after nearly a year of consciously trying to reduce my environmental impact, that many of the products I'd bought in landfill-clogging plastic bottles could have been bought in paper packages instead. To name a few: bar soap in a paper box instead of liquid soap in a plastic bottle, and powder laundry and dishwasher detergent instead of liquids in bottles. I'm going to make an effort to choose products packaged in paper from now on whenever I have a choice.

NYC clotheslines are back!

I'm still primarily relying on my clothes racks to dry our clothes, but I'm looking forward to using our clotheslines (see this and this) again (maybe even this weekend... the weather forecast says 78 degrees for tomorrow's high!). The article Sheets Flap, Socks Dance and Towels Just Hang Out in the NY Times got me excited to bring mine out of hibernation.

Wash clothes in cold water

I haven't been able to find it online this morning, but I read an article in the most recent Oprah magazine about the environment and things we can do to reduce our impact on it. I wish I would have written down the exact quote, but one of the experts said something that really stuck with me: The type of laundry detergent we choose has much less impact on the environment than the temperature of the water we wash the clothes in -- heating water (for laundry or anything else) has a major environmental impact. I washed several loads in cold water yesterday (darks, lights, and whites) and didn't notice a difference in how clean the clothes were. So for me, it's cold water for laundry all the time now. Mom would applaud this one: She always said clothes last longer if they're washed in cold water.

Use less. And then try using even less than that.

My latest environmental strategy was inspired by spots -- spots on my clean laundry. At first I thought they were grease stains, but then I noticed that they were on the backs of shirts and other spots where they couldn't possibly have been in the line of fire of cooking oil. Naturally I turned to the Web to research these mysterious spots, and although I found some conflicting advice, the majority of what I read indicated that I was using too much detergent. I was skeptical, but I ran a few loads using about a quarter less than the recommended amount of detergent and my clothes were perfectly clean (and without mysterious spots!). I decided to try using even less detergent, and once again, my clothes came out clean. Now I'm using about half of the recommended amount of laundry detergent, which means I'm getting twice as many loads out of the box of detergent. I'm also using a quarter of my dryer sheets rather than the whole thing (with no noticeable difference in static). Hooray!

It's been a good lesson to learn. I'm now trying to use less of everything -- less shampoo, lower heat when I'm boiling water (don't forget to use a lid), lower thermostat, less dishwasher soap, etc. If you're hesitant, try using just a little bit less, then try using just a little bit less than that. You'll be amazed, I promise.

Goodbye clothesline, hello second indoor clothes rack

It's gotten downright chilly where I live, so I decided to put away my clothesline until next summer. I've read that you can dry clothes outside even when it's cold (in fact, as long as it's not below freezing), but after one load was only partially dried after being outside all day I decided it was time to buy another indoor drying rack.

I bought a new one from Target, but I wish that I had done a little research first. I debated in the store about the wood one versus the metal one, and decided to give the metal one a try. It was twice as expensive as the wood one ($20 -- oddly, the price online is higher than it was in the store), but I figured it'd be more stable. It works fine, but it's essentially no different than my wood one. And now those negative reviews on the Target site are making me worry that I'll have to buy another wood one anyway. Grrrr. My recommendation: Buy a wood clothes drying rack.

Clothesline tips

It's been about a month since I started using my clothesline regularly, and I've figured out a few things that have made it easier to continue using.

• Dry clothes for about 5 minutes to remove wrinkles before hanging on the line. I was a little frustrated in the beginning by how wrinkled the clothes were (it has been breezy at best, but never windy on clothesline days so far), but I learned that if I dry them in the dryer for just a few minutes the clothes are not wrinkled.
• Hang clothes from the top or bottom, not the middle of the garment (as I did in the top picture... sorry it's so fuzzy!). This probably is obvious to some, but it wasn't to me -- I started out hanging clothes so that they were folded in half over the line. I know now that if I hang just a portion of the garment over the line (clipped with clothespins) and have the majority of it hanging down one side (as I did in the bottom picture) the clothes dry much faster.
• Socks take forever to dry outside. Hang them on the inside rack instead. Ditto for towels.
• If you don't have a huge line and have to hang some things inside, hang the clothes inside that will take longer to dry and the ones that will dry faster outside. That way you're pretty much guaranteed that the clothes outside will dry by the end of the day, and it's not a problem if the inside clothes take longer to dry.   
• Dry everything for about 5 minutes in the dryer after they've dried outside to remove stiffness. Our clothes smell great when they come off the line, but because there's hardly any wind, they're stiff. I put them in the dryer again for just a few minutes, and they're pretty much as soft as I'd expect them to be if I dried them start to finish in the dryer.

The term of the day: eco-anxiety

I just read a post by Risa Green on Mommy Track'd that's focused on her "eco-anxiety" (which Plenty magazine describes as "a chronic fear of the environmental future," but which Risa describes more along the lines of guilt related to doing things she knows are detrimental to the environment). I'd never heard the term before, but I can certainly relate -- my own eco-anxiety is why I started trying to be more environmentally conscious in my daily life and it's why I started this blog (when I discovered that it's not really that difficult to be more eco-friendly, I wanted to share what I'd learned).

Anxiety in general is not good, of course, but eco-anxiety can be a good thing. It prompted me to start making simple changes -- and they really are simple changes. They take a little extra time to do, yes. In the grand scheme of things, though, I'm talking a few extra minutes, not hours. Not even quarter-hours. I'm catching up on laundry now after being away for four days, and I hung up some clothes on my clothesline and put the rest on my drying rack, which is one of the most time-intensive things I do for environmental reasons on a regular basis. It took me about 10 minutes to do both things. 10 minutes! I feel great that I'm not using my dryer for non-environmental reasons, too:

• Air-drying is saving me money on my electric bill, which is astronomical

• The heat from the dryer isn't heating up the house, which means that I can continue to leave the windows wide open and the air conditioner off

See, my eco-anxiety has its upsides!

Sun & Earth dryer sheets

I ran out of the dryer sheets I bought a while back, so I decided to try the Sun & Earth Fabric Softener Sheets (bought at my local grocery store). They have a plastic-y feel to them so I was skeptical that they'd work, but I've done a handful of loads and they've all come out static-free. Check out the picture of how they biodegrade in 21 days! Pretty cool.

My clothesline

I've been thinking about buying a clothesline for a few months, and it's finally warm enough outside that our clothes might actually dry in the course of the day. I did a lot of online searching and almost bought one from The Clothesline Shop, but then my friend suggested that I go to our local hardware store instead (DUH!). I originally wanted a retractable one so that the line wouldn't be up all the time (I had my eye on a $29 model), but the clerk in the hardware store suggested that I make it even simpler by using two hooks and a long length of clothesline with a knot at each end that I put up and took down as needed. I followed his advice and bought 50 feet of clothesline for $3.79 (the distance between my intended "posts" is 16 feet), two large metal screws with hooks ($1.58 for both), and some old-fashioned wood clothespins for $3.50 (a pack of 50). So for less than $10, I was set.

I drilled a hole for one hook in the patio pillar and another in a tree, screwed the hooks in, then cut the clothesline to fit really tightly between the two (with a slipknot at each end), and voila! My clothesline was up. I had a load of laundry ready to hang, and it was on the line billowing softly in the breeze in about 10 minutes. I had some laundry that didn't fit on the line, which I dried for a few minutes (to get the wrinkles out), then hung on my indoor clothes rack (purchased at Bed, Bath & Beyond for $10). It was easy and fast, which in my world are key considerations for continuing any environmental effort.

I must admit that my plan wasn't entirely hitch free. It started to rain about 4 hours after I hung the clothes (such is life in the northeast). Just a light rain, but I ran out and pulled everything down. The clothes were a little damp so I dried them in the dryer for about 15 minutes, but I still felt good knowing that I'd cut the time in the dryer for the load by more than half. I also know that I won't be able to hang every load outside, but even if I hang one out of four that's more than I was doing in the past.