Head Games?

Paint + Sleeve = Head Scarf!

I was helping my friend paint her living room and noticed all the other ladies had on head scarves except me. I don't typically wear one because it would slide off my head constatantly. Of course, I was also the only one who had paint in her hair that night, too.

Then a week later, my husband decides to cut off the sleeves of a t-shirt. Then he shows up with a sleeve on his head, the newly sleeveless shirt and a sarong. So I slipped the other sleeve on my head so we would match. We were both wearing hot pink shirts and now hot pink head gear. Oh yeah, then I put my sarong on, too. Sorry no pictures on that scene - it's just too ridiculous!

This is awesome. It doesn't slip. It acts like a headband and absorbs sweat. It's washable and it's free.

Ladies, grab those sleeves. When they get too dirty, you can toss without regret because you have reused and recycled.

Sustainable Essence

Wednesdays are devoted to sustainability


My grandparents called it reusing as in

Buy it new

Wear it out

Make it do

Do without



My parents called it recycling



And the latest version is re-purposing.

My grandparents were children of the Great Depression. Really more like teens of the Great Depression. All four worked to make ends meet for their families. All four were masters of re-use.

One of my grandfathers dropped out of high school his senior year to work full time to help support his family. He went to night school after work and earned his high school diploma. He went on to graduate from Carnegie Tech. With five boys in his family, clothes were constantly passed from one boy to the other.

My grandmother, whom he married, recalls wearing dresses made from the flour sacks her mother got her flour in. That family even recycled the ties from the ties from the railroad track. When the old ones were replaced with new, my grandmother's brothers would haul them up the hill from the tracks and chop and split them into firewood. Probably not very environmentally friendly, but they were warm when they wouldn't have otherwise been.

My other grandmother was already out of school and working. She always had a special drawer in the kitchen for bread bags, wax paper, string and rubber bands which she re-used when refrigerating leftovers. Sometimes these items would cover thoroughly scrubbed meat trays of cut vegetables for visitors, such as my brothers and I.

Her husband, my grandfather, taught me the important skill of salvaging nails from old boards and reusing them. I learned how to pull them out straight without bending them, so I could use them again on another project. He also built several bicycles from parts he would find in the woods. They all worked wonderfully well.

My father recycles lumber scraps from garbage collection day in the city by making them in roll-top desks and other carpentry projects around the house.

My mother is a master of recycling cereal boxes, doilies, wax paper, cardboard tubes, newspapers, Christmas cards - the list goes on. They all become new items in her various craft projects she does with teens and seniors.

This week, I had an especially inspirational week. I re-purposed feed sacks into garbage bags, old drink bottles into terrariums, and broken lead ropes into goat tethers.

Call it re-using, recycling or re-purposing, whatever you like. This is the essence of sustainability. Ask yourself, what do I usually buy at the store and what do I usually discard? Can I pair any discards with needs?

Now What Did I Do With All Those Leaves?

Wednesdays are devoted to sustainability.

I first came in contact with sustainability through organic gardening. As far back as I can remember, my mother had a very large and quite productive garden. She grew everything organically. One of my brothers had the daily chore of putting things in the compost pile. Every so often, my father would spend a Saturday moving the compost pile from place to another. There were discussions of good locations for the pile tempered by conversations about what comments the neighbors might say regarding our pile of nameless brown stuff in the yard.

A regular composting routine is essential to organic gardening. You do not want to spend hours of effort handpicking pests from plants or spraying plants with various organic anti-pest remedies. You want to build success into the equation from the very beginning. From the bottom, up. As you tend a garden, you realize that you often have lots of vegetative matter and nothing to do with it. Maybe it's weeds. Maybe it's straw. Maybe it's the leaves you raked of the ground from last fall. All of these things go towards composting.

Now is the time to start. As you rake your leaves up this fall, you need to find a spot for them to stay. Leaves are the secret ingredient, the magic potion of the whole affair. You can pile them up loose and cover them with a tarp. You can buy a special purpose compost bin or tumbler. Or you can build a quick conatinment system byt driving 4 metal t-posts in the ground about 3-4 feet from each other. Then you attach fencing material that doesn't have openings more than 4". Chain link, poultry net. Garden fence. Whatever. T-post clips are relatively inexpensive or you can recycle some wire coat hangers if you have a pair of wire cutters and pliers for twisting.

Now you can just leave the leaves where they are and next year you might have compost. But really you want is compost in the spring. So here is how you do it. Have another pile. When you put kitchen waste in it like fruit peels, squash innards, potato peels, etc., you add 30X that amount of leaves. That's right 30, not 3. Then at least once per week, you want to flip the pile. If you make a third compost bin, you can flip the pile between the two bins leaving the leaves where they are. Make sure the pile stays damp but not wet. About the dampness of a well-wrung sponge. You can use waste water from your dishpan for such a thing.

Optimally the pile should be a 3 or 4 foot cube in contruction size. This is approximate because as you know, piles don't come in cubic dimensions usually. At least at my house they don't. Also make sure the pile is not in the shade. When you walk up to it in the middle of winter and the pile is steaming, you know you are on the right track.