This was written many years ago. I no longer compost; I use the Green Bin program from my city. I still tune my small engines, but during the Pandemic, cloth bags were a big no-no. They are now back, and plastic bags are a no-no. Happy Belated Earth Day.
Compost
My wife and I have started composting again. We also use the compost in our garden so it is a money-saving thing as well (don’t need as many expensive fertilizers or have to buy top soil). Sometimes we forget about our kitchen bucket, but eventually, either the smell or the fruit flies will remind us the bucket needs to be emptied.
We always end our composting year by throwing our Jack-O-Lanterns in there for the winter (the bins we use are at the bottom of the backyard and inaccessible in the wintertime).
Tune Your Small Engines
I had Hunter Power Equipmentcome over to do an end of season tune-up for my 20 year old snowblower. They did service on it about 5 years ago, and after that, it ran better than when I first bought it, and now it is ready to keep blowing snow for many years more (and do it in a much less toxic fashion). A tuned engine, especially on a snowblower or a lawnmower, is a very good thing (the amount of pollutants from small engines is a major contributor to the Smog issues of the world).
I am also not buying a new snowblower, which is a frugal thing, too! I have replaced my old lawnmower with a battery-powered one, which works just fine.
Cloth Grocery Bags
This annoys me since I keep forgetting to bring the darn bags to the store. I either end up buying another cloth bag or having to purchase plastic bags.
A good friend brought up an excellent point that most real shoppers have already thought about what to do about the meat you purchase. If you buy meat, normally you put it in an extra plastic bag to keep it from leaking, but now with cloth bags, meat blood or fluids will now leak onto your cloth bag. This means the shopper in the know will either:
- Wash their cloth grocery bags often
- Designate one or two cloth bags as the “meat” bags and wash them very often
- Use the plastic bags in the vegetable department to wrap the meat up in.
