SECONDHAND NATION

37 Green Things To Do In Spring

 

1.  Pee into your compost bin.

2.  Walk around neighborhood and pick up all the recyclable trash revealed by melting snow.

3.  Start bean plants in half cartons of milk.

4.  Hang laundry on the line.

5.  Fill the air in the tires of your bicycle.

6.  Cruise college campus dumpsters for furniture and other cast-offs ditched by whimsical collegiates.

7.  Make home-made iced tea.

8.  Eat asparagus.

9.  Have kids wash the cars with hot water and soap in buckets.

10. Host a cook-out in the backyard (easier than cooking and great before the mosquitoes get really thick!)

11.  Pull out all your winter clothes you haven't worn all season and donate them.

12.  Wash all the rugs in your house and hang them out on the line.

13.  Plan a butterfly garden.

14.  Pick up dog poo and see if you and your dog-loving neighbors would want to make a doggie composter.

15.  Turn off the television and sit outside after dinner.

16.  Change your winter bedding to lighter blankets.

17.  Dust off the ceiling fans

18.  Clean out your coffee pot with vinegar.

19.  Make a bat house.

20.  Make home-made blowing bubbles.

21.  Wash and donate all winter gear your children have outgrown (boots, jackets, caps, mittens)

22.  Buy some sunblock and a sun-hat.

23.  Clean out and install (or buy!) a rainbarrel.

24.  Ask your city or community to improve recycling services.

25.  Find a park near you and acquaint yourself with its hours, amenities and programs.

26.  Get out your hammock.

27.  Bring your yard waste to a compost site.

28.  Collect dryer lint and leave it in the yard for nesting birds to use.

29.  Use the e-File option when you file your taxes.

30.  Join a CSA (find one in your area here).

31.  Look up farmers' markets near you to see their opening dates.

32.  Replace one car trip with a walk or a bike ride and see how you like it.

33.  Wash all your sheets with borax and line-dry them for that lovely sun-dried scent.

34.  Plan one energy free meal per week:  sandwiches, wraps, salads, anything that tastes great and doesn't need heating, grilling, baking, or frying.

35.  Make your own exfoliating scrub to scour off all that dry winter skin.  This can be as easy as using regular sugar or as complicated as some of these recipes at Craft Gossip

36.  Download and make this cool egg design felt book for an Easter gift for kids in your life.  

37.  Sit outside for 30 minutes a day doing nothing but soaking up the Vitamin D and thinking about how long you've waited for winter to end.  

Image via Library of Congress.  

And now, for my favorite topic: LAUNDRY

Figure 1:  My frozen urchin of a clothespin bag. 

I hate most housework but I love love love doing the laundry. 

I love making my laundry soap, I love folding laundry, and I especially love hanging laundry.  If it's free, it's me, so using the sun for power makes me bubble like cheap champagne. 

But in the winter?  I confess to seeing a pic a long while back of a woman hanging laundry in a huge snow drift. Impressive eco chops, no?  So I dutifully  bought a pair of good winter boots at a thrift store and got ready to climb the drifts in search of free energy.

Figure 2: Not only do my clothes suffer from constant stain drippage, they also get subjected to polar temperatures. 

The main problem with outdoor laundry isn't that it's cold, or that navigating snow drifts is difficult, or that my neighbor's damn ugly bug-eyed dog keeps shitting in my lawn and the pristine blanket of white snow just makes that fact all the more clear. 

It's that you need a perfect combination of windy + sunny in order to get your clothing at all dry and that's not easy to get in Minnesota.

So, First thing.  Weather Is A Factor, Just Like In Summer Drying.  I can't believe I just typed that.  But for all our anencephalic or Martian readers, expect to become even more intimately connected with your local forecast than before.  Otherwise you are looking at frozen jeans and shirts stacked like arctic pancakes in your brittle plastic basket, which will thaw upon returning indoors.

Second thing?  You'll need something to set your basket on, lest it get encrusted with snow.  I usually keep a chair in my yard for this purpose anyway, as I hate bending over and what not.  Right now it's frozen in position.  NIIIIICE.

Figure 2:  Helpful chair that prevents bending over.  Which both saves your back and your neighbor's eyes if you have an unsightly ass.   In the case of my neighbor, I don't give a shit.  Stare all you want, pervo.  Just keep your shitting bug-eyed dog outta my yard. 

Finally, consider Domestic Blowback.  Not to be waved off is The Husband's potent dislike of line-dried clothing, which he generally grumbles about in balmier weather as being too crunchy and coarse.  This rachets up to a fierce hatred when his socks are brittle and icy. If you're dealing with hostile locals, consider using the dryer for their duds and save the Laura Ingalls Method for your clothing.

(As much propaganda as I've deluged him with, he's not buying my argument that stiff bath towels are better for skin exfoliation, which they are.   Hello, the coarse mitt used to scrub your bod after you heat up in the sauan in a traditional Turkish bath?  An air-dried towel works similarly.  Jeez.  I can't help knowing everything about everything.  It's a curse.)

For crappy winter weather (also known as "most of the time) I use an indoor drying rack.  I keep mine in my gacky furnace room, where it is warm and there's space to hog up that nobody else wants to occupy.

There endeth the reading.  Go forth and launder sustainably!