These green home goals are immediately gratifying and won't ask you to "exercise more." The new year is a time for growth, and whether or not resolutions are for you, it's a good time to rethink things and mix them up for the better. New Year's Day was at the first of the month. Lunar New Year just passed. And Mongolian New Year is next month! The spirit of renewal is happening everywhere. Here are five quick and easy tips to green your home this year.
1. Take a couple of hours to detox your home of chemical waste.
Improve your indoor air quality and gain more usable space by clearing out chemical clutter like unused household cleaners, old paint cans, automobile fluids and even expired pharmaceuticals. Just be sure to use your city's guidelines in disposing of it.
2. Just once this year, resist the throw-away impulse.
Do one DIY reuse project on a piece of furniture or accessory instead. A new coat of paint does wonders!
3. Spend one hour recycling all the e-waste lingering around your home.
You don't need that old fax machine or cell phone anymore. They served you well. Let them rest in peace at an e-waste recycling center. (Goodwill recycles e-waste too!)
4. Oldie but goodie: Make the switch to CFLs already!
Sure you might not like the initial cost, but you'll enjoy the lower monthly bills. They'll pay for themselves in six months and last ten times longer.
5. For one week, try turning off the heat a couple of hours before bedtime, instead of waiting just before hopping into bed.
Don't worry! The residual heat will tide you over. Plus, a gradual nightly decline in body temperature helps you sleep more soundly.
MORE NEW YEAR'S TIPS ON APARTMENT THERAPY
• Start 2012 Off Clean: Best Cleaning Tips for a New Year
• The New New Year's Resolution: A DIY 2012 Manifesto
(Image: Flickr member Hammer51012 licensed for use under Creative Commons)
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One thing I'd add because it's easy and money saving is to put everything on power strips that can be totally turned off at night and during the day. We haven't done this with everything, but we put everything in our entertainment system on 2 power bars. That includes the TV, the cable/DVR box (apparently a BIG energy suck), the stereo and subwoofer, the blu-ray, the Wii, the modem and the router, and our apple tv (yes we have a lot of entertainment equipment). We don't use any of that when asleep or at work so now it's off from 11:00 PM or so until around 6 or 7 PM the next day when we get back from work. I'm anticipating a pretty big savings on our electric bill...
Whole Foods also takes and recycles unusual items, as do some universities in New England. Another great resolution is to save trees through house habits. Buy recycled paper towels and stop junk mail. 41 Pounds is pretty good for that.
Princess Fiona good ideas, I dom't buy from Starbucks since they stopped carrying shade grown coffee but they have the absolute best spill proof travel mugs!
Ugh, not that old fluorescent light bulb thing again. Really people, mercury! Still, make sure you're not throwing them away. Recycle - and make sure you're doing it right. There are online options and local options. Just make sure you're using one of them.
Seriously... enough with the CFLs. I had one that conked out sooner than an incandescent bulb would've, they take too long to "warm up," and they give off ugly light too. I'm just not buying all the propaganda from the military industrial complex.
I don't use paper towels at all and I use the plastic bags that my groceries come in for sandwiches and some storage. I shop at thrift stores and yard sales almost exclusively and am complimented quite often on my clothes and home. I have also done away with most of the grass in my yard replacing it with vegetables and fruit. Our heat is at 60 during the winter and it's fine with a sweater on. There are lots of small things we can all do.
If someone can really lower their electric bill through the use of CFLs I think that person is probably has way too many lights and is using way too much electricity.
I love my CFLs, thank you very much. I don't know that they saved me money, but they last FOREVER and EVER - I've been living in this house since 2004 and I'm *just* starting to have to replace actual light bulbs. Convenience for the win!
Oh, and my rooms did get quite a bit cooler when I got rid of the incandescents. I live in Texas, and in our summers it's amazing what even the littlest changes sometimes add up to! Even if I didn't save on electricity for the bulb...I suspect I saved on AC.
I get the Daylight kind - the ones with white, not yellow, light - and yeah, they may not be as bright as incandescents (I don't remember) but they more than do the job, and during the day that's what I have windows for!
As for disposal: if you've got a Home Depot on your area then you've got a place for easy drop off of your dead bulbs.
Sure, I'll be happy when the next thing, hopefully mercury-free - arrives, but I really do NOT see why everyone is so scared to lose incandescents; they are truly nothing special or awesome.
@Patmac, I'm with you. We used old towels, rags and linen napkins in place of paper towels. It seems to work well for us. I live in Portland and we have a place called the "Bins". It is where Goodwill takes it's leftovers and sells by the pound. So cheap and I love the thrill of the hunt. Our new home as so many found vintage items we have upcycled or given a little love!
This year as Portland has instituted curb-side composting, we are focusing on reducing our trash to less than a small bag a month to hopefully none. Far West Fibers has been a big help, we can recycle almost everything there that curbside won't take. It's taken a little time separating out our bins to look nicely in the kitchen and then having larger bins in the basement, but it's slowly working. And I feel so much better about having less trash.
It has been surprisingly easy to reduce paper towel use by ~95% - cotton towels clean much better and are easy to throw in as extras in a laundry. Sumatran rain forests are coming down to feed the paper towel market. Enough.