Search Results for: blog how to reduce the impact of your laundry

Extra Expenses of Caring for an Elderly Parent in Your Home

If you will be caring for an elderly parent in your home, you may need to budget for some extra expenses. Even if your parent has his or her own income to pay for items such as prescription medication, you still may have additional costs that creep up and raise your bills at the end of the month. Make sure to put a little extra aside in the following categories of your budget. Electricity With an extra person in your home, you may see an increase in your electric bill. Many elderly people can’t get around and tend to watch … Continue reading →

Five Ways to Reduce Your Packaging

Excess packaging is everywhere, and it has a hug impact. Just for one day, keep track of the amount of packaging you generate. Weekends are probably worse than weekdays. If you can fill a box in a couple of days of regular living, with all of your packaging, I wouldn’t be surprised. Reducing that packaging takes a little forethought, but it isn’t as hard to do as it might first seem to be. 1. Go for non-processed. Non-processed foods generally have little to no packaging. Think about produce, for example. Stay away from “bagged apples” for example and bring your … Continue reading →

How to Reduce the Impact of Your Laundry

Did you know that the average family uses 13,500 gallons of water a year just washing clothes? Add into the impact of the detergent and machine drying, and you can see how drastically your laundry can impact the environment. Here are some ways that you can reduce the impact of your laundry. The easiest way to go for an immediate reduction in the impact from your laundry is by switching detergent. There are a number of good ecologically friendly detergents on the market right now. Choose a responsible laundry detergent, to lessen your impact. The next step you can take … Continue reading →

Reducing Your Laundry’s Carbon Footprint

Laundry is one of the number one ways that a typical household uses up resources. From hot water heating for washing, to gas or electric for drying, our laundry appliances can really impact the carbon footprint of our households. In addition, laundry detergent can add chemicals to the environment, and treatment of the water that is expelled from the washing machine adds energy costs and lessens resources. There are ways to reduce much of this impact without resorting to never washing our clothes again. The first thing you can do is to examine your clothes wearing habits. Do you automatically … Continue reading →

Home Blog Month in Review: August

Did you have a good month? We seem to have packed an entire summer’s worth of activities in this past month. Now, it seems, it is back to school and time to get ready for autumn. Still, it is nice to look back toward warm sands and wearing shorts even as we will soon be crunching leaves and taking out the sweaters. August 1st Getting Out Grass Stains With summer in full swing, chances are that your family has been playing outdoors quite a bit. And with all of that outdoor play comes the grass stains, especially if you are … Continue reading →

Consuming Big

One of the problems we face in terms of eco-friendly living is in our nature. The instinct to hunt and gather, to put things away for the winter, to be prepared, to consume big in case there is a shortage in the future. Humans aren’t the only ones who do this, of course. Think of the squirrels who sack away as many nuts as possible to get them through the cold weather. Or think about how some pets will eat and eat and eat until the dish is empty or they become deceased from the excess. There is nothing wrong … Continue reading →

Make Clothes Last Longer by Machine Washing Less

I just read an article about a woman who lived on a fifth floor walk-up in New York City and does he laundry by hand to save her back. The added incentive in doing her laundry by hand (in a very efficient system)is that it costs her very little to do laundry this way. This took me back to the year that I lived in New York in a 3rd floor walk up. I also found it easier to use my bath tub as a washing machine. Not only was it less expensive than visiting the laundromat which I did … Continue reading →

Five Easy Ways to Go Green Right Now

Make an impact on the Earth in a positive way today. Here are five different ways that you can reduce your footprint and go green right now. They don’t require major changes in your lifestyle or complicated equipment. 1. Wash your laundry in cold water. Since heating water is the biggest energy requirement in most houses, switching that dial or setting to cold will immediately make a big difference. For a bonus, use a clothesline or indoor drying wrack to dry your laundry. 2. Give up the bottled water. Here is a secret. Most bottled water is actually just tap … Continue reading →

Frugal Living Can Be a Blessing

We all have different reasons for trying to save money and live a frugal life. But too often, we focus on the deprivations of living frugally, such as not being able to eat out often, or living without cell phones and cable television. But this is the wrong attitude. Frugal living is a blessing in many ways. It fosters appreciation Just the other day, my family and I were at a local park and everyone was having a great time. I felt completely blessed to have this great free resource nearby. In the past, before living frugally, I wouldn’t have … Continue reading →

Six Ways to Have a Greener Home

The little things that you do around your home can make a big impact in how much energy you can save. if you want a greener home, concentrate on the following six areas. 1. Conserve hot water. You can conserve hot water by taking shorter showers, washing your laundry in cold water and lowering the thermostat on your furnace or water heater. 2. Replace your blinds. If you have traditional metal blinds on your windows, you’ll save money when you replace them with wood or fabric. This is because blinds will suck up the heat and the cold from outside … Continue reading →