My first thoughts were along the lines of, “I dunno, methane sounds great! Use it to power cars, and power plants!” Then I wished I spoke more legislativeeze. Green Florida says this is not a great bill, would end mulch programs, but does it?

Solid Waste / Recycling and Landfills 
 
HB 569 was considered on second reading Tuesday and passed by the full House on Thursday. The bill would allow certain Class I landfills with an active gas-collection system to collect yardwaste. It also requires such a landfill to obtain a minor permit modification to its operating permit from the Florida Department of Environmental Protection which describes the beneficial use being made of the landfill gas and modifies the facility’s operation plan before receiving any yard trash. Its Senate companion, SB 1052, has yet to be heard in the Senate Environmental Preservation and Conservation Committee. County staff will continue to oppose these bills as contradictory to the state’s 75% recycling goal and in an effort to preserve space in Class I landfills.

Further reading seems to indicate what Green Florida is worried about – looks like counties can cut their costs by combining waste and yard waste pickup and just methaning everything.

Hard thing for there to be a quick and easy “right” answer for. Use waste we’re creating anyway by the massive yard manicure industry that is parts needed and parts overdone to create methane/energy, or separate it out and use it for mulching and things. Maybe if this bill had a provision for keeping mulching operations open, through simply requiring it (unfunded mandates?) or through benefits to the counties for keeping existing operations open, or build new ones.

Reminds me of a big version of Sim City, but it’s real. You can’t just “plop down” one methane production facility per, oh, 50,000 people and two mulching operations per 45,000 people and N acres of compost-generating land. Ahhhh.

Click here to urge the Governor to veto the mulch-nixing bill. Meantime I’m going to get back to reducing – recycling is the last thing we should be doing. Reduce and reuse first.

Back when I was still diapering our pair, I’d hang out the diapers to sun the spots* out, and it got me thinking more on the use of the phrase and the word. About old laundry and modern laundry and the pile of folding I’m ignoring.

You’d air dirty laundry if you just want to get some of the smell out, letting it dry out and get out. Much like you air your shoes out by rotating them through a couple of working pairs. And you sun dirty (soiled*) laundry to get the color out. After you wash it through your washer, or smash it on a river with rocks, ymmv.

So I decided** to try it out with a shirt my youngest had spilled spaghetti sauce on. Washed it twice, still had a stain, hung it out on the laundry line***. Stain was gone within two hours. Laundry line only fell over three times (first time I’d set it up and I didn’t have a proper foundation) before I leaned the bricks on it correctly.

Not just the “fresh feeling” of dryish clothes from the air, not just the de-scenting that can be done with some vinegar and airing, but sunning out of stains. Fun****! Got a bunch of work and workout clothes done for me, too.

* poop stains
** dryer conked out
*** don’t tell the home ogres assciation
**** dryer conked out at 5:30 in the morning with my work and workout clothes all tumbling around – luckily it was a dry run day and I didn’t have to actually be anywhere at any set time ..

I want more. Oh, I want more. They don’t have to be that pretty, but they should work. However, I grew up in the desert, and I know what the ravages of the sun can do to household goods repurposed to other lives.

However, it looks like garbage cans will work fine after all. :) I spent a few moments speaking to a friend of the hub, who has lived down here longer than I have. She too likes catching rain, and has employed several large garbage cans to that task. Thicker ones, of course, not thin flimsy $5 cans.

The verdict? Perfect. They work just fine. She leaves them open, and claims that a spot of dishsoap keeps mosquitos from breeding in her cans. I don’t know if it does or doesn’t, or if household vegetable oil would do the same thing, but I’m so glad to have a report from reality.

Trashcans and tulle, here I come! I may not turn on my sprinklers again this summer – here’s to hoping!

However, the sides of the house are getting soaked. I’ve got a big tub out there, catching water that also doubles as a mud-rinsing sink. So, why not move it? But the rain barrel just looks good at the front.

So I got a bucket and moved the water from the side of the house to the rain barrel one gallon at a time. Ridiculous, I know, but at least it’s getting filled …

And I’ve got the back garden beds cleaned out. They’re falling apart but they should last me one more season. I’ve layered in some veggie potting soil and just spent this lovely cool sixty-degree morning transplanting in some vines and fruits.

Yay rainy season, bring it on! (But no more tornado warnings, kthx!)

Sorry. Tangent. Harder for me to get to the library. I don’t work in a different county anymore (though I may again), but part of the harder now is not trying. We could bus it, or drive it – it’s just a quick trip downtown. It’s a lovely large library that always seems empty when we go. :| But I’m trying to get there, with the kids, alone, both. Get in the habit of borrowing books instead of buying them.

But I do get quite a selection from the pile of remaindered books at book stores and dollar stores. It’s how I picked up a second copy of Driving with Boys and a copy of Haters by Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez. A book on women’s health issues, a romance novel about a former monk, and Zoo With A View.

It led me to think about starting a remaindered books club – but I suppose that doesn’t do the authors any good. :P We’re saving the publisher the trouble of recycling the books, is all. But how do we get they payment to the author? It’s a similar issue with ebooks – I can’t find a definitive source that tells me if an author gets payment for the ebooks I buy (rather than make – haven’t figured out the mechanics necessary for me to start scanning in my own books).

Maybe I should see if they have tip jars. I remember signing up for PayPal back in the early ‘aughts, and sending Ted Benna a quarter after hearing him interview on Morning Edition. I can’t recall the quote exactly, but the conversation went on about how many 401(k) plans there are in the US, and if Ted had a quarter for every account he’d be quite a rich man. So I sent him a quarter using PayPal. We had a nice little conversation and he sent it back (fees would have taken about half back then, I think).

Maybe that’s what a remaindered book club should have – people pick a book and pass it around, and pay some of it direct-to-author.

Slimy usually meant earthworms – and earthworms are our friends. As well as good fishing bait.

Walking the kids to school yesterday, I saw a strange and creepy slimy thing. As we’ve had enough ickies in the house, I let it be, merely pointing it out for a quick science lesson, then popped home to see what it was. Long, striped, with a spade-shaped head (hammer head). Land Planairian, I know for next time, squish it dead. I ran back with a cup of microwaved water, but it had left the sidewalk by the time I got there.

But I know for next time, no good can come of them.

Ah, shoes and socks and bits and bobs, it’s time to get ready for school again. Yesterday I pulled out the school clothes tub to sort through what we’ve got an what we need. Pulled three shirts I’m going to try and de-stain, added three I picked up from an outlet store last week. Pants and shorts we’re good on, but I’ll need to take my eldest shoe shopping.

The day before school starts, we’ll pick up his classroom assignment, teacher assignment, and supply sheet. The supplies usually range from typical, such as paper, pencils, and crayons, to class-wide, such as construction paper, hand sanitizer, and modeling clay.

Some of these things can be acquired sustainability – sure I can go buy a pack of Play-Doh, but I’ve been saving it up from kid meals and party bags. Even getting it out for the kids to play with from time to time, I have a fat ton of that stuff in the house. Paper? Notebooks? Pencils? Recycle-content goods! Even plastic bags have gotten into the act, made with less plastic (and at a higher price, go green gouging!).

And what am I sending the supplies in this year? A reusable bag. The price on decent totes are up and down – a dollar for a basic one, more for canvas, and a middle ground at some places for recyclable heavy-duty plastic bags. I picked up an adorable one with “apples for the teacher” at Target – just the right size to slip those classroom supplies into.

I’ll be doing this all year, like last year, sending in supplies when I find a deal on something useful, need to declutter stuff we end up acquiring – sending books to share to school or after care, donating kid-meal toys (unopened) to various “treasure boxes”, or other class treats. And I’ll encourage general recycling as well – I’ll speak to the teacher about having a broken crayon collection box in their room so we can use the power of many fingers to recycle them as a project or send them off for re-use by someone else.

I’ve got tea bag wrappers. No reason to save them, but they smell so nice. And I came up with a use for them. But not the time to use them in.

I’ve got old mailing envelopes. Some can be reused, some can’t. The “can’ts” can be reused in other ways, but I want to do more research on Tyvek before I get into it. I had hoped to have a nice long piece about Tyvek tonight, but I was thwarted by bad javascript. :( I understand DuPont wants to capture information about their users, but should I really have to fill out tons of personal information to read a PDF about the Tyvek life cycle? And I still don’t have the PDF. I’ll have to wait for a sales professional to call me.

Not sure why I’m still stuck in “Depression” mode, as in The Great. The news says the economy is picking up, but the news also failed to anticipate the crash. Maybe it’s less GD-save-twist-ties-and-bread-wrappers mode and more awareness of the general wastefullness of our lives and how to reduce it.

Part of it, I think, is that a local city is having a contest for ideas to generate revenue. Great, I’m full of good ideas, I submitted one for taxing plastic shopping bags. Then I did a search on all the words in the rules of the contest – they want to raise revenue without raising taxes. Um, duh. What are they thinking? Should I suggest we draw a circle on the ground, throw all the money up in the air, and whatever the city wants, it keeps?

My friends who are voting (and not eligible but talking about) on the Seattle “bag tax” pointed out that they use those bags for every day garbage. Most of them cloth diapered, or have kids out of diapers, and don’t really create a lot of garbage. For them, it would be the loss of garbage bags, free garbage bags … but on the other hand, we’ve been paying for them all along – we’re just noticing it more.

I guess I’m just all over the place tonight. I’ll try for coherent in the morning. Anyone got any creative reuses for “trash” to share?

Over its lifetime, it housed kids and cats, toys and laundry, bolts of fabric and the occasional birthday gift. Despite the manufacturer’s claims of less than a minute set-up time, negotiating all the bits into position usually took at least ten more minutes and three more inches in height than I have. Nothing like trying to ratchet the “pull and twist” mechanism while trying to not fall into the pen.

Despite the mostly fond memories, the time has come for departure and recycling. I hope someone picks it up to sell the metal tubing for scrap – but we have quite a parade here on Friday mornings, so I think it likely. If I knew where to recycle/sell the tubing or we didn’t have the informal pickups before the formal pickups, I would have taken a sledge and knife to it myself for recycling.

I can’t pass it on, because the wear of a dozen children, pets, and my own rough assembly finally caused something to give and break about a year ago. Not enough to get out of letting it hold “some laundry” for “just a little while”, but enough to catch all the clutter I could throw its way.

Two weeks ago, we finally broke it down, and disabled it as much as possible to discourage its unsafe reuse for children. If I’d thought it through enough, I would have kept the netting to reuse for a project; I didn’t think of one until I finally laid it on the curb for bulk pickup. Too little, too late.

Goodbye, Clutter Catcher of Doom. Good riddance, and dang you held a lot of laundry.

Growing up, we had a huge cake box full of cookie cutters. We’d get them out once or twice a year, taking over the kitchen to make COOOKIES. Great busy, messy fun during the summer and winter breaks. But excavating them was a major chore. And the box usually sat around until all the cutters were washed and put up – usually a few days or even weeks (eep!).

I was pretty good about cookie cutters at first, but they seemed to take up an awful lot of space in the “whatever” drawer (Which reminds me – any use for corn holders? I’ve given up on those little stabby knobs.). The cutters spread to the boxed lunch area (cute sandwich shapes!) and the toaster oven (ghostest toastest with the mostest!). I did a quick purging of the kitchen and came up with a count of seventeen, and I know that doesn’t even cover the ones in our art bins.

But out of the drawers they are. And how to store them? Hanging up! My little combination pantry and laundry room (panlaundrium) has several hooks installed here and there, so hanging them up was a breeze. Of the knicknacks uncluttered as I evicted the cookie cutters, I chose an old nebulizer tube on which to string the cutters. Easy to thread, easy to tie, easy to hang – and to un-do. If the youngest hadn’t been sleeping at the time, I would have set her to stringing and unstringing the set, but it seems to me that anyone old enough to push cutter into dough can put them away afterwards.

And never mind the drawer (or cabinet) space I got back. I don’t have to “wait until they’re all clean” to put them away again. I can wash them up, hang them back on the tubing, and store the clutch of cutters on a drip-dry hook back in the panlaundrium room.

If you don’t have an old nebulizer tube, another option are old breast pump tubes (I’ve got Medela tubes I have yet to un-rat from the house). Locally owned neighborhood hardware stores might sell some as well, if you don’t have anything just right that will do. And if the tubes get scungy, you can always soak them in soapy water, then use a flavor injector to force clean water through until the tubes shine.