SECONDHAND NATION

Vinegar, Thou Art So Sweet

I can't seem to make black beans.

I burn them.  Or they're too tough.  Or they smell funny or taste gross and then I throw the whole thing away, cursing and muttering.

As much as I want to make them - cheap! healthy! meatless! child likes them! - I have no luck.  I should really call Lynn Rossetto Kasper about this and I'm gonna one day.  For serious.

Meanwhile, I had to clean out my lovely Dru Holland cookpot ($7 at St. Vincent de Paul's, natch!), which was full of some foul-smelling, encrusted em effers. 

Figure 1:  Scene of the bean crime. 

So, to paraphrase Ann Wilson of the perennially-underrated band, Heart:

Who do I run to when it all falls down?

White vinegar.  This shiz is so awesome and so cheap.  It cleans toilets and removes odors.  Dump some in yer potty overnight and then scrub in the AM - so beautiful you'll cry! 

It's almost too good to be true - I worry about Dateline doing some horrible expose which reveals that white vinegar is actually made by wringing the bodies of baby seals or something horrid like that.

I keep jugs of white vinegar under the  bathroom and kitchen sinks. Then it's handy whether you need it for cooking or cleaning up.

You can also spray a mixture of water and white vinegar on vegetables and fruits to clean them before eating.

Didja know that May is National Vinegar Month?  Dork it up with me on vinegar trivia and uses at The Vinegar Institute!

Change Your Evil Ways Part VI: Biodegradable Poop Bags

Dear Crazy Neighbor Lady:

Hi. 

I'm your next-door neighbor. 

You know, the one who moved into the house with the yard that your eerily-silent, non-restrained, bug-eyed, UGLY Basenji dog comes over to shit his brains out in every day?

Yellow house with brown trim?  Yes, that's me.  Poop-and-pee-colored house, I used to joke.  All humor does have a kernel of truth, turns out.

See, I don't have a dog.  Instead, I have a four-year-old.  Wiping her butt is as close to Shit-Not-My-Own as I feel comfortable approaching right now.

Unfortunately, you have some idea that I'd like to get closer to Shit-Not-My-Own and so you insist on letting your eerily-silent, non-restrained, bug-eyed, UGLY Basenji dog come over and crap his fool ass off in the lush bounty which is my backyard.

Figure 1:  Example of the fecal scourge of my yard, courtesy Wikimedia.

If I had a dog - and I assure you, if I did, it would not be anything like your eerily-silent, non-restrained, bug-eyed, UGLY Basenji - then perhaps I'd feel okay about having to deal with its turds in a socially acceptable manner, i.e. pick them up with a plastic bag and dump them in the garbage.   

But since I don't have a dog, I'm running into some cognitive dissonance here.  Namely, why should I have to pick up the shit of your eerily silent, non-restrained, bug-eyed UGLY Basenji?  The likes of which often features bits of bright plastic and string amidst the foulness?   

Lady, to be frank, you are a lunatic.  Your make-up application is reminiscent of an blind trainyard whore one might find underneath a passed-out hobo.  You come out of your house at all hours of the day wearing strange garb, hollering and dragging around bits of refuse from your garage and calling for your various animals to come back (after they've ostensibly shat in my yard).  You wear strange bandanas over your wrists after your carpal tunnel surgery. You have a rotating crew of ne'er-do-well children who apparently see fit to stick you with wretched animals like the eerily-silent, non-restrained, bug-eyed UGLY Basenji, after they play too much World of Warcraft (when not at their jobs as pizza delivery men) and their girlfriends dump them.

And speaking of dumping.  Holy Coincidence, Batman!  My lawn has become a dumping ground, too!  The symmetry of motif is astounding!

Back to the point.  This is my long-winded, round-about way of recommending, though you are clearly addled, that you pick up after your creepy, aestethically-deficient dog. 

 

Since this is highly unlikely, I'll toss out some more ridiculous requests:  please consider using these biodegradable earth-friendly poop bags instead of regular plastic sacks.  I am considering buying some, as I frequently find myself indecorously stooping on behalf of your eerily-silent, non-restrained, bug-eyed UGLY Basenji. 

Though as neighbors we must tolerate each other, there's no reason the planet should also suffer perpetual plastic-wrapped insults from your grody dog. 

TTFN -

Your Secondhand Nation Neighbor

The Human Stain: Fels Naptha to the Rescue!

 

Photo Credit:  Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, FSA-OWI Collection, [reproduction number, e.g., LC-USF35-1326]

Slate had a rather prosaic plodding review of stain removers that I normally wouldn't have given a second look.  But now that I'm totally crazy, and making my own laundry soap, I checked it out. 

Mostly they reviewed products that would probably kill you if ingested, which seems to be against my fuzzy logic that I use for proper items to use in my home.

In my recent turn as Laundress, I discovered Fels-Naptha.

Great guns in the morning!  This soap is powerful.  There's a reason parents of old used it to punish their potty-mouthed spawn.

Ever have that menstrual stain in a white sheet that never comes all the way out?  Of course you have.  And so have I, or at least I used to. 

Merely wet the area of the stain (I just run it under the water stream in the washer) and then rub the bar of soap all over the stain ground zero.  Toss it in the wash and WALLAH!  Beautiful!

Purists might object to some of the ingredients in this soap, but I think when you consider the other bullshit put out there by the Dial Corp, this huge retro-slab soap is a pretty solid choice. 

Got nothing better to do?  Tell me about your old-timey laundry practices!  Woo!

This Season's "It" Bag

Not, it's not an Hermes Birkin or a turd-colored Louis Vuitton satchel that costs more than the GDP of Sri Lanka.

It's a reusable lunch bag!  Ping!  Hard nipples!

My good friend Amber so thoughtfully brought this back for me while on vacation in South Dakota!  But though all of you can't have friends like Amber, you can still get your own reusable lunch bag.  They're everywhere.

With your own chi-chi lap napkin and silver flatware, you can eat in a dignified, slow way.  They call it fast food because you don't really want to stop and savor (or think) too much when you eat it, right?  Slow Down.  Bring food you can enjoy.  It's not called "Lunch Break" for nothing.  There's a whole lifestyle devoted to this, too - The Slow Food Movement.

Think of all the waste you'll avoid with a little tupperware and planning.  Quit fooling with crappy to-go cups with their skin-curdling, straw-squeaking unsustainable wastefulness.  Have your lunch on a plate or in a bowl, not in some ghastly styrofoam atrocity, without plastic cutlery breaking off fangs into your meal.  Eat your leftovers and keep your refrigerator cleanout to a minimum. 

So you wanna pack heat but need some fire power?  No problem - there are many before you who have dealt with this quandary, so let them provide you with ideas.

The Tiffin Tin has a great manifesto that will quell your fears about what and how to pack.  Brown Bag Blues keeps it real with great recipes for all ages.  And Pack My Lunch has great how-tos for parents who pack out their kids, too. 

Your body deserves proper nutrition and your wallet will thank you by saving you many, many wads of cash.  When you don't waste all your money on the slop these propaganda-spewing factory farming idiots provide, perhaps you can buy that ridiculous luxury handbag with the 10 year waiting list.   

Unusual Potting Benches

Check out SimplyGreen's take on the impromptu potting bench!

I'm no longer a voice in the wilderness for eschewing ready-made potting benches!

(P.S. I spotted another kitchen cabinet in someone's trash stash a few nights ago and had the husband spirit it away.  I might set it up to its companion or let Adrian put it in his garage lair.  More later.)

Change Your Evil Ways, Part IV

Potting benches, bah!

What, are you some kinda corseted Victorian lady with a parasol and a $3,000 watering cart from Smith and Hawken?  Can't pot your flowers on the picnic table like the rest of us? 

I know home stores have nice-looking potting benches you can purchase new.  For new homeowners, it's tempting to imagine oneself as some refined, uber-organized Martha-bot: planting cutting gardens and hand-twining up the tomato vines and transplanting on a reliable schedule, every six months, with a lovely potting bench as a practical, attractive workstation...

Snap out of it!  Potting benches are a huge waste of cash! (300 smackers for this simple thing?!) Plus you gotta fiddle around and assemble everything yourself, which just fritters more of your finite time on earth.

Instead, cruise your alleys and streets on trash day, with an eye for people who are doing kitchen remodeling.  (Here are some clues to look for:  a constant stream of junk left out for the trash hauler, a fine drywall dust covering everything in sight and the fact they're getting a divorce.) 

You may get lucky and score something like this:

Oh my sweet and creamy lord!  Isn't this dreamy?  My neighbor Amber found this gem abandoned on a street corner - poor little orphan - with the intention of incorporating it into her own kitchen.  Lucky for me, that day never came and I swiped it from her trash stash one weekend when she cleaned out her garage in recent junk purge.  Thank you, Amber  *air guitars*

The nifty red formica counter is easy to wipe clean and the drawer contains seeds, hose nozzles, pruning shears and other hand tools I'm constantly losing.  The cupboard has two shelves and stores bulbs and extra pots.  If you're worried the wood might rot, seal with some spray gloss. (I plan to store mine away during the winter.)  And if you need more storage and prep space than I do, I'm quite certain there will be more displaced kitchen cupboards for the taking - just check out places like The ReUse Store in Minneapolis. 

Don't follow the potting bench herd!  Be unique!  Why spend cash when you can re-use trash?

Change Your Evil Ways, Part III

Quit buying spices in those little picky plastic or glass containers!

Instead, buy some glass jars at a thrift store, refill them with bulk spices and label them with file folder labels.

(I had my nephew do mine as a tactic to keep him occupied. But you do whatever you want.) 

Change Your Evil Ways, Part II

My sister and I used to have Swiffers.  But then one day, my sister despaired of having to run to the store on behalf of the damn Swiffer.

"I'm tired of having to buy everything a goddamned diaper," she said.  The vacuum cleaner needs bags, the Swiffer needs new cloths.  It's all going to the landfill, and then we're headed straight for hell.

Neither of us can barely manage to get to the grocery for our own families, so you can see how long we catered to our dumb Swiffers' needs.

I've recently gotten more psychotic in this area, however.  When we moved to our new house in April, I declared No More Paper Towels.  Sure, for green reasons.  But mostly because I hated having store them (of course, you can't buy 3 rolls of paper towels;  one must have a package the size of a city block) and having to run and fetch more when I spend most of my week at Target or the grocery already. 

Because I have 876 dishtowels.  I really like dishtowels.  I like to collect the vintage kind, with embroidery or calendars and what not on them.  So why in the name of Al Gore was I rushing to the store every month to buy a pallet of disposable papertowels?

So, I've sworn off on the Brawny and now I keep my grody dishtowels in one of my crocheted grocery totes (which I constantly forget to bring to the grocery with me, by the way).  This is a better place to store wet, food-encrusted items, it turns out - no more moldy laundry!  The one in the photo is so eco you might puke - it's made from yarn I unravelled from a sweater I bought at a thrift store.

Blog.Too.Crunchy. Must.Buy.Big Mac.

Now what in the name of Frosted Flakes do I do with this dumb thang? 

 

I want to rip it out, but feel perhaps I should use it for some other kitchen-y purpose.  Ideas?

Change Your Evil Ways, Part I

I know it's fun to use the cardboard toilet paper core as a pirate spyglass, but really, it has a more noble destiny.  After you're done seeking out the land-lubbers, recycle those bad boys.

Same goes with the junk mail, people.  I actually started keeping a recycling-only trash can in my office, where the majority of the bullshit mail gets opened and tossed.  My goal is to only need one of those skinny trash cans like the old people on my block use.  A girl can dream.