#22: Bag Lady.

Around a month ago, the Student Union on my college campus caught on fire.

I'm not going to pretend that this isn't funny.

The point is that I couldn't buy my lunch on campus even if I wanted to. Which I don't. And even though I use a washable, reusable container for my sandwiches, I still use plastic baggies for snacks. And despite the fact that I use them until I start to get a little uncomfortable, I do have to toss them eventually.

So, today, I got myself some unbleached, natural waxed paper bags that are "non-toxic when incinerated, landfill safe and will not contaminate ground water" (says the box)(...by 'Natural Value').

Also, they make all of my food look like gourmet treats, even though I got them at Costco. Hooray!

AND, at around $2 for a box of 60 bags, it's not some big expenditure. It might even be a better deal. I guess we'll never know.

#21: Door...Whore.

Okay, I like the handicapped. I like things that help the handicapped. But it really chaps my ass when perfectly able-bodied human-beings push the Handicapped Door Button so that they don't have to exert the teensiest amount of effort to push open a door.

Anyway, I have noticed as of late that many of these doors now open electrically even if you're not a jackass. Even if you're trying to simply push the thing open yourself! So, I am doing my damndest to avoid** these and other automatic doors to save even the smallest amount of electricity. Because, seriously, how lazy are we?

**I do acknowledge that sometimes this is unavoidable, like at Safeway, if I want to enter a building. Also, sometimes I accidentally push on the wrong door and it turns out to be the auto-door and then I get SUUUUPER pissed. But I internalize it, so that's good.

#20: College. Online.

(Thanksgiving made for a busy week. I may not have had time to blog, but I definitely had time for some Shenanigans...This is one of a week's worth of catch-ups)

College creates a lot of paper waste. Also, brain waste. But, back to the paper:

I discussed before some ways that I cut back on paper waste, but, then, a teacher of mine and I were talking about a review I needed to turn in and it dawned on me that I could try to eliminate paper all together!! Hooray!!

Instead of printing out a huge-ass paper, I just emailed it straight to the professor and she read it and marked my grade without it ever needing to be printed out! Admittedly, this is a Shenanigan that wouldn't work with every professor, but from now on I'll be checking it out and utilizing this process whenever possible. Good for me.

By the way, I got an A. Good for me some more.

#19: Dial 'R' for 'Recycle'.

(Thanksgiving made for a busy week. I may not have had time to blog, but I definitely had time for some Shenanigans...This is one of a week's worth of catch-ups)

Whooooo hates phonebooks?!?

"I do, I do!"

For serious, has the phone company never heard of the internet? And what happened to the days of only one phone book? And why in the hell do I have an entire section of my linen closet dedicated to these bastards?

I collected all of those ridiculous phone books and recycled the hell out of them. Almost 700,000 tons worth of phone numbers every year. I know it's tempting to light them on fire, right there on your front porch, but, until some kind of legislation is passed to make the horror stop, recycling is your best option.

Sorry.

#18: Razor's Edge.

(Thanksgiving made for a busy week. I may not have had time to blog, but I definitely had time for some Shenanigans...This is one of a week's worth of catch-ups)

Yes, yes, hairy legs are gross. Especially on Women. Whatever. Why is it that some things are okay for men, but are abhorrent for women? Ugh.

Well, this isn't going to seem like a very big Shenanigan to some, but let's all remember that I'm CRAZY, so this one's a huge deal for me. I am only shaving my legs every other day--sometimes longer--to cut down on not only water waste in the shower, but material waste due to constant razor use. I'm a little freaked out just thinking about it. I hate stubble. I'll get over it.

There ARE recyclable razors, as well as razors that can be sharpened when they get dull. Unfortunately, I haven't found any that are terribly realistic for me yet, but I am on the hunt and will blog it on up when I do.

#16: Fizz, Fizz, Clean, Clean,

(Thanksgiving made for a busy week. I may not have had time to blog, but I definitely had time for some Shenanigans...This is one of a week's worth of catch-ups)

This was a Thanksgiving Shenanigan...Thanksgiving makes for food which requires pots and pans. Here's the thing: Remember the clove boiling? Yeah, we have a new rule in our house...

I'm not allowed to do that alone. Because I leave the room. And forget about it. And then it burns. And the burnt clove water doesn't come off so well, I don't care how long I soak the damn thing. Fortunately for us, our gravy pan was saved by forgoing usual chemical laden cleaners and using a safe mixture of vinegar and baking soda to clean with.

A-mazing!

#15: Down Under.

(Thanksgiving made for a busy week. I may not have had time to blog, but I definitely had time for some Shenanigans...This is one of a week's worth of catch-ups)

I work in an accounting office. Have you ever SEEN one of those? It's like paper-freaking-central. So, I started a recycle box under my desk. I'm still new there, so I'm not quite comfortable taking photos of boxes under my desk yet, so just close your eyes and visualize a small cardboard box with "Recycle" written on it. Under a desk. Then, picture me putting spreadsheets and whatnot into it. Now, try to imagine that I have picked up this box and taken it to the copy room down the hall. Let's all use our "inner eye" to see me dumping this box into the giant recycle bin. Aaaah.

Isn't that nice?

#14: Battery Acid Reflux.

(Thanksgiving made for a busy week. I may not have had time to blog, but I definitely had time for some Shenanigans...This is one of a week's worth of catch-ups)

I think that proved with my last post that our vehicles are wasteful wasting wasters. Not only do they guzzle up everything in sight, they drop parts like gangbusters!

What to do, what to do...

So, we took an old car battery to be recycled. There aren't any photos, but this is what a car battery looks, in case you've forgotten:

Car batteries are chock full of toxic chemicals just dying to leak out all over the place. Taking it back to the place of purchase kills two birds with one stone: Not only are you saving the world from the leakage, but the recyclage prevents more from being born.

#13: Over a Barrel.

Cars are a pain in the ass. Especially if you live in a place that's all spread out idiotically in such a way that public transportation isn't a viable option if you want things like a job or education.

I love where I live.

Anyway, to see just how much damage my car is doing to a place like the goddamn desert, I visited fueleconomy.gov. Getting an estimate of your car's Carbon Footprint is a large part of understanding your own Impact on the Earth.

Not Perfect, but not awful either. Though that 14.3 barrels a year made me throw up in my mouth a little bit. Yeah, I'm going to have to work something else out.

Ugh. I'm going to go punch myself in the face now.

#12: This Little Light of Mine.

Hooray! I am mucho excitiedo for today's Shenanigan!

Today, we switched the lightbulbs in our home from regular bulbs to Compact Flourescent bulbs. We journeyed to our beloved Costco today and delighted in amazing food samples (Turkey Meatballs?!?!) and CF bulbs by FEIT Electric in bulk. Which, by the way, brags that replacing ten bulbs with their "Earth-Friendly" ones is the greenhouse-gas prevention equivalent of planting 80 trees. Sweet action.

We had a glorious time hunting down the non-energy efficient bulbs in our house (we had already replaced a couple of them a few months back as an experiment in which kind we liked the best), piled those suckers up and went to town.

Admittedly, I didn't have enough for a couple of the outdoor ones, but I'm going to grab some more on the way home from school tomorrow, before it gets too dark to see the front door. Oh! Also, if you do this, I definitely suggest making it a daytime activity. We waited till 10pm and couldn't see a damn thing.

#11: Shower Power.

Get your dirty minds out of the gutter...I am a married woman and I can do what I want!

Okay, having Pre-Scolded you, I'd like to share my Shenanigan for today, risque though it may be.

Look: Showering uses up a lot of water. But, unfortunately, these are hygenic times that we live in. Also, I live in the desert and things get a little ripe, so the showering must happen. The spouse and I are currently investigating low-flow shower-heads, but until we find one that we approve of, temporary measures must be taken. So...

On the weekends, we shower together to save water.

Since there's no way in Hell I'm posting a photo of that, I drew it for you. It goes a little something like this:

It wastes less time, less water and actually works out well for us since I usually make Husband sit on the toilet and talk to me while I shower so I won't get bored anyway. Unfortunately, we have drastically different wake-up times during the week, so it's not really realistic as a daily Shenanigan. We'll just have to settle for being Weekend Water Warriors for now.

And that's the end of the details, you pervert.

#10: It's Great to Be Crazy.

I like to recycle. It's a good time. But I am really trying to Reduce and Reuse, and leave the Recycling as a last resort. In the spirit of this, Friday's Shenanigan was that I made better decisions involving computer print-outs, so that I would create less waste. Let me explain:

So, I had to facilitate a lesson in one of my classes and part of the grade is giving a copy of your lesson plan to every member of the class. That's 23 copies of a two-page lesson plan that I have to print out. Yeesh. So my 1st Reduce move was to condense it onto one page. Then I actually utilized Print Preview for once to double check my layout so that I wouldn't have to print them again. Good for me. Of course, I should have also used this to double check the text. Stupid.

Here's where I become Psychotic:

After the 23rd lesson plan was warm in my hands, I realized--GASP--that it was still labeled a Rough Draft! Normally, I wouldn't allow such a thing and anyone who says differently can go straight to Hell. I would rather scratch off my own skin than allow a text mistake that I had made exist in the world. My neck was sweating, my hands were shaking, my mouth was foaming. After some deep breathing, I realized that I wouldn't lose points for the flub and chose the good of the Planet over my OCD and didn't print out a whole new batch of papers for one tiny mistake. I scratched it out in pen. In an almost perfect square shape, I might add.

It's fun to grow.

#9: Frigid Bitch.

In posting #4, I suggested unplugging all unnecessary appliances to save energy. Yeah, don't do that with your refrigerator, okay? Unless, of course, you're an astronaut and all you eat is freeze-dried sea monkey eggs. Because then you don't even need a refrigerator, silly!

For those of who aren't busy faking moon-landings, you should know that your buddy the fridge drinks electricity like it's water...Did somebody say, "Segue?" No? Oh, okay.

Anyway, a great way to trick your ice box into thinking that it's icier than it really is is to put a glass pitcher of water in the refrigerator so that it will use less energy trying to cool down. I just blew your mind, didn't I? Basically, since it has this chilly core inside of it all of the time, exuding coldness, your fridge doesn't have to do the work to lower the temp itself.

Does that make sense? Whatever. Go Google it. I'm going to bed.

#8: Hankie Pankie.

So, I live in the desert. What this means is that for the past few months my sinuses have been drying out in such a horrific fashion that I wake up most mornings with delicious nosebleeds and spend the rest of the day coyly dealing with the, how you say, leftovers?

Well, apparently the dry time is over and as of today I am officially a snot-nosed brat. Which got me thinking about the ookey wastefulness of the thousands of tissues that I alone will be going through in the next few months.

So, like the age-ed old man that I am, I went and procured myself some hankerchiefs to cut down on tissue waste.

(I've got to stop taking these photos after the gym. Eek.)

Ew! Right? ...Not so much. Magically Machine-Washable Hankies are probably a lo-hot less knarly than the sensation of a particularly forceful Achoo ripping through a flimsy, porous tissue and exploding warmly onto your hand. Now who's "Ew?"

#7: Flushing Queen.

When initiating yourself into the world of Eco-friendliness, it is important to realize that you now must become very passionate about toilets.

There are these bathroom stalls on campus that I always stayed away from because they had what seemed to me to be forboding plaques on the doors. I just figured they were trying to make people REALLY aware of which were the handicapped stalls. Then, one day, when I was alone in the group-loo, I decided to give the thing a read and...

...Holy Frijole!--it's a water-saving device! So, today, I made it a point to use the water-conserving commodes. Turns out it's made by a company called Sloan (which also makes waterless urinals...oooh-la-la) and not only is the cheekily green-colored flush-handle symbolic of it's mission, it's also anti-microbiotic.

Basically, it's a push up to use less water when, you know, it's a liquid situation...And down for a full flush when you, ahem, might need an extra wave.

So don't be afraid of little silver plaques and give these Green Flushing Machines a chance. And you didn't think relieving yourself could get anymore exciting, did you? Live and learn.

(p.s. can I just mention how uncomfortable it is to take photos in a women's public, college campus bathroom, two doors down from where you just had a women's studies class? Great.)

#6: Dine 'n Dash.

Okay, listen, my seaweed-and-soy-cheese-eating friends:

I am forever impressed by your commitment, will-power and time management skills. I do my best. But, dammit, sometimes I eat fast food, alright? I am ashamed of it and disgusted by it and throughly sa-tis-fied by it. But, today, I at least got my To Go's in a lovely shade of Green.

When I stopped in to enjoy some deliciousness, courtesy of The King, I went in to the "restaurant" instead of the drive thru to reduce unnecessary vehicle emissions.

I get that you want your fast food fast, but the nonsense that you're releasing into the air as your car idles while they make it YOUR way is incredibly damaging to, you know, the planet. (And, if you're like me, and you avoid going in to these places because you're freaked out by how dirty they are, it's maybe time to realize that a drive-thru isn't going to make it any less ebola-esque) So turn off your engine and don't make future generations pay for your addiction to salt and grease.

And, before you argue, if my hormone-enhanced crispy chicken sandwich was bad for the planet, why would it taste so scintillatingly glorious?

Check and mate.

#5: Urinetown.

Sometimes my cat pees in the hallway.

I'm telling you this because it does not smell nice. When she did it today, the spouse went running for the Febreeze and scented candles. Thanks to my Earth-friendly reflexes, however, I quickly threw myself in his path and punched him, right in the throat. Then I told him that I had a Shenanigan-worthy solution.

.

Instead of relying on toxic, chemical laden air fresheners, I boiled cloves and cinnamon to substitute air freshener.

It worked really well, and the spice-soup's aromatic steam traveled through the house at the speed of light...but not in an irritating way. Which is good, because I do not like to be irritated.

All that's needed for this is a small saucepan, some H2O and your spice rack. I may have used cinnamon and cloves, but you can also use whatever other herbs that you want to...Follow your nose, yo.

.

#4: Electricity Sucks. For Reals.

Today's magical treat was a lot harder than it sounds. Actually, it was also really frustrating. And, by the end, I felt pretty badly about myself. Hooray for the Environment!

I unplugged all unnecessary electronics, appliances and chargers.

The reason why this was so difficult was because it's really hard to put your finger on every single thing plugged in in every single room. We are living in an electronic world, afterall.

The fact is that our outlet-dependent appliances and electronics account for a large percentage of our individual energy output. I'm not going to pretend to know what that percentage is. I'm not a fan of remembering numbers.

Chargers for phones, laptops, batteries, et cetera, suck idiotic amounts of power even when they aren't in use. VCRs are another example of evil-doing. I considered things like this alarm clock in our guest room that gets used like, I don't know, 5 times a year?

Waaaaaasteful.

So go unplug some stuff, dammit.

#3: Shoe Filth, Don't Botha' Me

Remember when I said, two days ago, that I was going to do simple things?

I wasn't kidding.

Today, I declared my home a shoes-off house.

"What?!" you say. "That isn't Environmentally friendly!! That's crazy-lady-who's-afraid-of-dirt friendly!!" While this is certainly true, it is also a known eco-tip. Oh, the crap we walk through everyday. Yesterday I picked up my briefcase (which had been sitting on, erg, the couch for a day or two) and discovered a neon-yellow piece of chewing gum stuck to it. And my briefcase only touches public ground a few times a week. Compare that to your shoes. Ew.

Anyway, by keeping Allah-only-knows what shoe-transported toxins out of your home, you are not only ensuring a less toxic lifestyle for yourself, but you are SERIOUSLY cutting down on the frequency of sweeping, mopping, scrubbing, vacuuming, dust-busting, Swiffering and whatever else it is that you do to keep hygenic. So, in the long run, a shoes-off home is a less wasteful home.

TA-DA!!

p.s. yes, this DOES mean that if you visit me, you best lose the sneaks. Or I will destroy you.

#2: Bottle Blonde

Today's Shenanigan is something that I have been wanting to do for a while. The thing that always held me back was that I thought I needed to order special materials for it. Obviously I wasn't thinking like a Reduce-Reuse-Recycler,

now was I?

So, using my crafty Triple-R wiles, I used an old water bottle to cut down on water-wasting flow in my toilet tanks.

It's a very simple process, really. You just take an old, Earth-killing plastic water bottle, toss a few small rocks or a bit of sand to weigh it down, fill the bottle with water (this isn't wasteful because it's pretty much a one-time fill-up) and stick it in your toilet tank. The idea is that it keeps your tank from filling up with precious H2O any higher than it needs to! Hooray!

Some do this by sticking a brick in the tank, but apparently, the bricks will disentigrate and the minerals get into the water system and, well, what's the point of saving water if you're just going to poison it, hm?

Note the sheer glee on my face at the idea of putting things in my toilet tank:

Now when you watch a movie where a bad guy hides drugs or money in his toilet tank, you can feel good that at least he's rounding out karma by giving back to water conservation.

And don't you feel bad for cheering when he was run down by his enemies? I thought so.

#1: Park a Little, Pick a Little

So, one could argue that starting this mission to begin with could be considered my first Shenanigan of the Day. But, just in case, I thought I'd do a little somethin' somethin'.

I picked up some trash from a parking lot and took it home to recycle...Which is really pretty nice of me, since I wouldn't even have spotted this particular refuse if my tires hadn't been slashed, but whatev.

Here is what it looks like when I recycle parking lot trash:

Please understand, I recycle EVERYDAY, so that's not really Shenanigan worthy. The idea is, afterall, to make life changes, not focus on the stuff that I'm already doing. The difference here is that I recycled trash that I found 45 minutes away from my house.
Got it? Good.
I swear my efforts will get more interesting. Maybe.

One a Day, The Lazy Way

Okay, so the idea is this: I am going to try to do one, simple thing a day to help out the environment.


I have been a freak for the environment since about kindergarten, which was difficult as I was raised in that Wasteful-Midwestern, Hamburger-Helper, Toss-Your-Cigarette-Butts-Out-the-Window type of culture. Also, I am kind of lazy. And forgetful. So I don't feel that I have really lived up to my potential as the Environmentalist that I was meant to be. I have a lot of trouble making giant lifestyle changes, no matter how good they might be for me or, you know, humanity.


SO...I have decided to take baby steps. I don't care if I am only pointing out to the rest of the world just how lazy I truly am. I am going to do one thing a day to help the environment. In order to think globally, you have to really dig in locally...and it's hard to get more local than every place that I am currently standing.


Some things might be little, like picking up trash on my way to class. Others might be medium, like switching all of the bulbs in my home to something more energy efficient. And, hopefully, I can manage something huge, like...well, I don't even know yet. Maybe I'll buy a whale. And then not kill it.

Baby steps, people.

I am setting my inital goal at three months. Once I've reached that goal--on February 7th, 2008-- I'll re-evaluate, recommit and re-establish what on Earth I am doing...

...I can't turn back now. I've blogged it.