Dryer Lint Fire Starters - Do They Really Work?

As any of my regular readers know I am absolutely not a fan of waste and like to try to avoid it as much as possible.

We had gotten a free fire pit from a neighbor that was moving and within the week of getting it, it was perfect bonfire weather. Better still, the neighborhood maintenance had come through our bachelorhood and done tons of tree trimming. Wanting desperately to make bio-char but having not moved yet I would have to settle for the usual byproduct of a bonfire, ash - which I would be saving to use for dust baths for our future chickens (and I did, but I ended up having to leave it with many other things at the old place).

First I found a few toilet paper rolls that had not yet found their way into the compost or recycling bins. Then I checked the dryer for dryer lint.
I sat the toilet paper rolls on end and lightly stuffed them. I made sure that the lint should be in contact with all sides of the roll but that it was not tightly packed (didn't want to make air flow too difficult.)

These really didn't seem to work any better than any other form of kindling. Will it work? yes. Is it any better than something else? I really don't think so.

HOWEVER!

Dryer lint IS extremely flammable and I found I was able to light it on fire with plenty of ease to begin fires in our fire pit.

Pintesting - PreFold Cloth Diapers Pt. 2

Today's pintest comes via this pin and the information found here.

For quite some time now I've had all the flannel in my fabric stash pulled out and have been either buying more or guiltily shopping grandma's infamous basement full of fabric.

Mommy-ing is some pretty serious business that tends to keep you pretty busy. When it came time to cut my fabric into 12.5" (or in my case 13") x 21" strips, I just neatly stacked all of the flannels I felt like cutting on top of each other.

From there I measured and cut.

Now I had a nice stack of flannel ready to be turned into pre-fold diapers.

It was awesome to know that I was going to be able to sew right away instead of having to wait until another pay day to make my trip to get the microfiber cloth that I didn't already have on hand.

Fold the flannel in half, right side to right side, and sew down the long side of your fabric.

 You should now have a tube.

 You're going to want to place whatever it is you're choosing to use for absorbant pads in the center and zig-zag stitch on either side of the pad.

Now it's time to serge

If you're not new to serging this part will be super duper easy. Just serge those open edges et viola you're done!

I have issues on occasion where near the end of my piece I would only be serging with three threads so I went back over spaces I missed or that i was worried about with my sewing machine and zig-zagged until I felt there should be less issue.

By nights end I believe I had twenty-one or twenty-two of these.

The Worms - Week 2

Every year plenty of us get pumpkins to cut up, paint, carve, or use in whatever your personal chosen method of Halloween or Thanksgiving craft is. As you might remember I had quite a few this year, courtesy of my one of my brother-in-laws who grew over 100 of them.

In mid-January - I still had some. In fact, a few had gotten to the point that if you picked them up, the stem would break off. One or two were mushy. Some of these got thrown onto the lawn by husband to let them fertilize the lawn natural (and just generally get the heck out of our house.) Seriously hating to feed a landfill with more waste, and now the proud owner of a VermiHut I could barely shut up about to anyone who spoke to me - I opted to compost them.

I did my best (with the aid of a hammer) to break up the pumpkins (I think there were three or four) and put them into the composter. I felt the tiniest bit guilty about it all because my worms were still supposed to be acclimating - but I really couldn't let these sit around much longer.

Obviously, the amount of pumpkins I had filled an entire tray.

It took me two or three days later to finally shred some paper waste to add to the composter along with the pumpkin.

Let's stop for a moment. I want to hold you hostage (isn't that what you came to my blog to essentially have happen to you for a short while?) just long enough to give you a little information.

Whenever I talk to mothers that ask me about cloth diapering I eventually get to the point where I warn the ones who have decided they want to go that route that, "No matter how much research you do. No matter how prepared you are. The first time your kid poops in a cloth diaper - there's a good chance you're going to freak out at least a little bit."

My experience with splitting the pumpkin guts from one tray into two, mixed with paper waste - was similar to my first time changing a poopy cloth diaper.

I knew there were worms in there. I even had more on the way. I knew what they were in there to do. I worried for a little while maybe they died but felt pretty good that they were still alive. And I had also spent significant time wondering to me how quickly they reproduce and in what time period.

YET!

When I reached in and began removing pumpkin and adding it to the other tray and looked at the worms squirming around in my organic waste - I had a moment where I freaked out. Just. A tiny. Bit. I didn't scream, squeal, or recoil - it was just a moment of, "Oh my god there are WORMS in there! . . . . I'm picking up and handling worms . . .  right now."

So my composter has gone from one tray to three trays.

A response I read online in a forum said I shouldn't be collecting quite so much leachate and that this means my composter is way too moist.

This is over 2 qts of leachate - YIKES! I shredded more paper and added that along with some of that stuff you get out of your vacuum bag.

Related reading about leachate:
Leachate vs Worm Tea
Using Worm Bin Leachate
 Leachate: Use it or Lose, Right or Wrong: You Decide!

Toxic Teas

I love me some tea. I've been in love with tea and the many opportunities for ceremony and ritual surrounding it ever since my mother asked me if I wanted to have a peppermint tea party with her when I was a little girl. Heck yeah I wanted to have a tea party! She brewed us a couples of cups of tea and we sat in my room enjoying it. Tea is simply magical.

There are secret dangers everywhere these days and unless you actually go looking for them you have a great chance on missing out on what could prove to be useful information. Looking for trouble sounds crazy and exhausting. I look at it this way - if you're reading this blog then it's likely you're interested in these hidden dangers and I'm happy to share whatever I've learned with you.

The subject of toxins in tea was just one of those thoughts I had in passing and chose to revisit. Honestly, it came to me while I sat watching The Backyardigans with my daughter. I let my mind wander and suddenly found myself wondering - are there hidden toxins in tea? It wasn't a search that took much digging to find an answer to my question, and that answer was a resounding yes.

Many tea bags are produced using a nasty chemical used in the production of plastics and insecticides. When this chemical, epichlorohydrin, comes in contact with water, it hydrolyzes into a carcinogen. In a world where we are trying so hard to rid our homes and bodies of endocrine disruptors we sit down with a nice, hot, cup of cellular metabolic process disruptors.

But wait there's more! (I'm so so sorry . . . )

Tea bags are also usually bleached (that's how most of our household items [examples: toilet paper, baby wipes] get that lovely white color. The edges of these bleached bags are also sealed using MORE CHEMICALS!

After these tea bags have been made with epichlorohyrin, bleached, and heat sealed with chemicals; the bags are "wet strengthened" using additional chemicals making sure that the bag doesn't fall apart upon impact with your hot water.

How can you avoid these pitfalls? Check labels. Some teas are made with chemical free bags. Look for "chemical free" or "bleach free" and I should think any company side-stepping a clear answer about if their products are exposed to these things or not should be side-stepped when it comes to your next cup of tea.

Tea companies I found to be free of epichlorohydrin
Twinings (uses a thin layer of polypropylene plastic to seal the tea bags)

Tea companies best to avoid on this issue
Celestial Seasonings
Stash
Bigelow (contain polyamine-epichlorohydrin resins)
Yogi (contain polyamine-epichlorohydrin resins)
Numi (provided an inconclusive response when questioned)
Lipton
Ahmad (will not respond)
Salada (will not respond)
Tazo (will not respond)
Harney & Sons Fine Teas (will not respond)
Ginar (will not respond)
Red Rose
Tetley

Alternative options
Loose tea
Bag your own tea

Related reading
The Truth: About Tea Bags
Twinings FAQ
Bleach in teabags - health risks
Bleached tea bags
Yahoo! Answers
Green Tea May Fight Cancer But The Tea Bags Might Cause It
List of Epichlorohydrin Free Tea Products
How To Tell if Epichlorohydrin Is In Your Tea

Trash Day

In making the choice to increase our greener actions within our household while decreasing our carbon footprint we have managed with little effort to drastically decrease the amount of waste our household produces each week.

Here is an example:
Right now our garbage goes out every Friday (there's an odd rotating schedule of when the garbage is collected here) and a couple of weeks ago I missed trash pick-up. There have been many times where if we missed trash collection we found ourselves drowning in our own garbage by the next week. Well maybe not drowning, but the can would usually be overflowing.

This time, a week's worth of waste only filled the can about a quarter of the way. At that rate we could miss it a few times without having to worry about having missed it.

Next up on the chopping block is excess plastics. Slow and steady wins the race and making too many life-changing alterations could just leave us backsliding into our old wasteful ways.