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ourladyhart · 5 years

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Ethical Gift Giving (But On A Budget)

I stumbled across this today and I absolutely love it! This is a fantastic chart to get you thinking about ways you can give during the holiday season whilst reducing our future impact on the environment and get creative at the same time. Definitely a win/win!

I have a couple of extra tips to add for those of us on a low income or those who are on a tight budget. The holiday season can be particularly tough when you’re living below the poverty line or are barely making your pay check stretch month to month. It can make us feel excluded or even ashamed of ourselves; and whilst this couldn’t be further from the truth – you are so valid regardless of your financial position – there are lots of different ways that you can still give and feel included with little to no funds.

Give Memories: Lovely photo frames are easily found at $2 shops or op shops; and if you don’t have access to a printer, you can print from your phone or USB at Kmart for about 10 cents a print. Our generation often forgets how nice it is to have physically framed photos and getting a photo that means a lot to your friend or family is a beautiful personal touch.

Total cost: Less than $5

Experience days don’t have to be a trip to the movies, an escape room or ice skating, and the cost of these activities can rack up quickly. Instead, you can make a “movie day” at home for you and a friend. You could even give them this gift in the form of a handmade “IOU 1 Movie Day”. Set up a picnic on the living room floor and watch your favourite movie together. You can also bake together or get some cheap snacks from the supermarket whilst you both veg out.

Total cost: Less than $10

Give Your Time:

I love this one! Again, you could hand make cute vouchers for these, “1 Day of Helping You Organise Your Wardrobe” or “1 Day of Building Your Website”, etc etc.

Remember, in this busy day and age sometimes all we want is actually just time spent with the people we love; and your company is often enough. If your friend suffers from chronic pain or a mental illness; they may love some help with cleaning. Perhaps they don’t often eat a home cooked meal and you could whip something up for them. These actions are often invaluable.

Total cost: Free – Your time

Upcycle:

Well you know this one is absolutely going to be my favourite! I am huge on street finds and items I procure; fixing them up and then passing them on. You can often find great items of furniture or knick knacks in council clean ups. It’s a good idea to check out when the next dates will be in your area; so you can get ready for some “late night shopping”!

If friends give me hand me down items throughout the year, they often come with “Oh, it was almost perfect, but…”. I listen to what they didn’t like about the original item then give it a total up cycle before giving it back to them. It’s often a lovely delight! My favourite of these was when an old flatmate gave me a sad looking lamp. I gave it a really good Tiki Bar sort of look (which she was obsessed with) and gave it back for Christmas. To this day, it’s her favourite object she owns.

Total cost: Free – $50 depending on which materials you use

I’m going to add three of my own sections in here:

Re-Gift:

We all get gifts throughout the year that we’re not sure why they were gotten for us but you’re not really sure what to do with. SAVE THESE ALL! I put all mine in a bag or box in my laundry so when Christmas time comes round, you’ve already got a haul of presents to give. My husband and I often get thank you gifts of alcohol from the community, but neither of us drink. Other people certainly do though and this is a lovely gift for people who do drink to receive.

I know there is a bit of controversy on re-gifting, but I know if I gave a gift that wasn’t quite right, I would love for it to be passed on to someone who could truly appreciate it.

Total Cost: Free

Save The Accessories:

I can’t recommend hanging onto gift bags, used wrapping paper, birthday candles, banners, and cards throughout the year. You can even ask friends or family at the end of their parties if you can have the gift bags or wrapping if they’re going to just throw them out. This saves SO MUCH money each year on having to buy new wrapping equipment, and it’s readily on hand when you need it. If you haven’t been doing this already, start now and put them in with your re-gifting stash for the end of each year. You’ll thank me next Christmas!

Total Cost: Free

Ask:

Your friends and family probably have a whole heap of storage stuff they haven’t been through in ages; and once they do will be looking to unload a lot of stuff. I love to help my friends organise their stuff in exchange for anything they want to give me. The old adage “Ask and you shall receive” is gold here, so pop on your thrifty hat and don’t be afraid to ask those around you if they’ve got anything they want to get rid of.

Total Cost: Free or Time

Buy Second Hand:

Op shops are my definitely jam, with about 95% of my clothes being second hand. My wedding dress was a $45 vintage dress from Vinnies Newtown.

Op Shops (or Thrift Shops for our American friends) are TREASURE TROVES of second hand trinkets, clothes, furniture, and weird things you can only imagine. Give yourself plenty of time to wonder around and let objects or clothes let themselves known to you.

Boutique antique stores can often come with a boutique price tag, but you can find just as wonderful vintage and antique pieces at markets or throughout op shops.

eBay and Gumtree are also great places to find items for a lot cheaper than RRP prices and you can often barter for a lower price or find something similar for a lot less.

Total Cost: $2 plus, depending on what you’re after

Make: One of the most sentimental gifts I made was with a $2 ball of wool and some knitting needles. I sat night after night and knitted my friend a scarf for her birthday. Along with it, I included a beautiful note about how the scarf helped me with my recovery after a hospital stay in June; and that I wanted her to always be warm and cosy. She wore it every day of Winter this year! Other things I’ve made over the years for gifts include hats (of course!), costume pieces, spell jars / spell kits often for success and love, candles, cookies, paintings and general pretty things.

Cooking or baking makes a lot of treats for minimal bucks. You can bake up a large batch of cookies, and even save a bit more cash by buying recipe boxes when they’re on sale at the supermarket. Decorate them then pop some into a tie up bag, it’s a super cute and delicious gift!

Total Cost: $2 plus, depending on what you make

Buy:

Finally, if you must buy; buy independently. Buy from small businesses, buy from artists. Your money will be funding groceries for another week for a family, or maybe even a special treat like going to the movies or purchasing new towels. Buy compassionately and support those who need it most. I can promise you the gift of support you give to these businesses and artists will cause the biggest smiles for Christmas; and that’s what spreading the true joy of the season is all about.

Bonus Tip!

You can also save money on feeding the masses by opting for food options designed to feed a lot of people at once. Meals like spaghetti bologanise, BBQ, pizza, rice and so forth may not be typically Christmassy; but they will stretch to feed a lot for less.

You can also ask everyone to bring a dish and then all the guests can share a bounty of food whilst keeping in with the community spirit.

Total Cost: $5 plus depending on what you make

#DIY #Christmas Ideas #Christmas Gift #diychristmas #tipsandtricks #lowincome #christmas on a budget #thrifty gift

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crazyflyingspip · 5 years

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The everyday household item being hailed on social media as a genius storage solution

So simple but so effective, a life hack to love! One savvy shopper shares her ingenious recycled storage box, made by reusing her plastic packaging after the washing tablets have run out.

Katy May Carmel Galloway shared her simple, yet smart, storage idea with fellow members on Facebook groups including ‘Cleaning Tips & Tricks‘ – and it’s going down a treat!

Katy shares how she soaks the labels off the liquid washing sachet boxes and uses them around the house as storage solutions.

Other ideas: Cleaning guru shares her ingenious space-saving trick for storing plastic bags

Simple recycled storage box idea

Image credit: Katy May Carmel Galloway

‘Just a bit of a random post really but thought I would share my idea recycled storage box. I love these liquid washing sachet boxes and didn’t want to throw them away so I clean all of the labels off with hot soapy water then get all of the sticky residue left over off with nail polish remover’.

Going on to say, ‘stick some craft stars or some pretty stickers on and I store things like nail polish, sanitary pads, pens, and other bits and bobs in them.’

‘They are perfect to store little things in and look pretty cute too, just an idea to reuse something that would of otherwise been thrown in the bin

#happyrecycling’.

Image credit: Katy May Carmel Galloway

Katy’s post has been met with plenty of adoration – with over 1.5 and 3.5 likes, loves and wow reaction along with comments aplenty.

‘It has been a huge hit and I’m blown away with the response’ Katy tells us.

Image credit: Katy May Carmel Galloway

Some of the comments say: ‘That’s a great idea

’.

Along with one grateful member who writes, ‘Thanks for posting this.. I was going to buy a wooden box to store my essential oils in but now I have seen this it jogged my memory that I have a few of these boxes stored… Off to find them to stow away some bits. Thanks once again’.

After it proved a hit Katy reported back to the group writing, ‘Wow thank you so much everyone

.’

Possible household storage uses…

‘Some really amazing ideas have been thrown in, on what else these could be used for. I wanted to give you all some more ideas so here goes for example’

Medication Arts & crafts bits Lego Make-up/Hair accessories Pens, crayons etc Paint Plants Soap Pet biscuits Screws, nails and drill bits, Pasta/ rice Tea/sugar Bin liners Toy cars Changer plugs and wires

Image credit: Katy May Carmel Galloway

The community of like minded cleaning fans added further food for thought with the following suggestions;

‘We use ours for medications because they are child proof. Obviously still on the top of the cupboard where the kids cant reach them but if they ever did they shouldn’t be able to get into the box xx’ says one.

‘I put my loose change in it

’ says another.

A hack to celebrate: Wave goodbye to limescale with the £1.49 toilet cleaning hack dazzling the internet

Now in an ideal world we wouldn’t use plastic packaging at all, but given it still seems to be on offer in many large supermarkets, finding an upcycling solution is a great compromise.

The post The everyday household item being hailed on social media as a genius storage solution appeared first on Ideal Home.

from Ideal Home https://ift.tt/2wnrGZu

#Ideal Home #https://crazyflyingspip.tumblr.com

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biofunmy · 5 years

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They Love Trash – The New York Times

JOSHUA TREE, Calif. — Soph Nielsen was sewing garbage onto her black T-shirt (a chicken wing, a crushed Bud Light can, a plastic fork) and struggling to attach a snarl of crusty pad thai.

“This is to get people to see the trash,” she said, her fingers slick with grease. “We don’t want to be the invisible janitors.” With her distinctive appliqués, that was unlikely.

It was the last day of the Joshua Tree Music Festival, a family-friendly event of didgeridoo sound baths, yoga, crafts, electronica and other familiar fare held at a dusty desert campground for three days in October. Ms. Nielsen, a 25-year-old artist whose medium is trash, was one of 20-odd Trash Pirates working the event.

The Pirates are a loose collective of waste management specialists, to borrow a phrase from Tony Soprano, who make sure events are as sustainable as possible through recycling and composting. They also educate attendees about how to do both properly.

Garbage has long been the uncomfortable fallout of the festival world, and as these gatherings multiply like glow sticks at a Phish concert, stretching the season into a year-round party (hola, Costa Rica), its impact has roused young artists and activists like Ms. Nielsen.

Most Pirates start out as volunteers, helping with trash or performing other tasks so as to attend for free. Then they have their “trash moment,” as the Pirates put it, the epiphany that turns volunteer work into a career, and trash into a calling.

“Your first experience of the mass of it, whether it’s loading dumpsters onto a trailer or driving out to the event grounds when everyone is gone and it’s a sea of trash, is an existential crisis,” Ms. Nielsen said. “You are baptized into compost.”

“You’re either in or you’re out,” she added, echoing the rallying cry of a long-ago counterculture movement that involved a bus, “and it becomes a way of life.”

The events themselves — both community-minded and escapist — are morphing into trash camps: days-long immersions into the politics of waste, with lectures and workshops on developing your garbage-handling skills along with your yoga practice.

Some trash stats are in order. In 2017, according to an environmental impact report, Coachella, in Indio, Calif., was generating over 100 tons of trash each day. Many events are now committed to becoming zero-waste endeavors, or as close to it as possible. High “diversion” rates (the percentage of waste not sent to the landfill) are badges of honor. Last spring, the Trash Pirates brought the Joshua Tree Music Festival’s rate up to 77 percent.

In 2017, Coachella’s diversion rate was just 20 percent, apparently because attendees weren’t using the recycling bins. Veterans of Burning Man and other festivals learn acronyms like MOOP, for “Matter Out of Place,” an umbrella term for trash and anything else that doesn’t occur naturally on a site; cigarette butts, broken tents and human waste are some common examples.

Burning Man has a “Leave No Trace” ethos, but the messy camps of bad Burners are called out each year on the festival’s MOOP Map in the hope that public shaming will be a deterrent next time around.

‘Shepherds of the “Away’’’

While there are many waste organizations dedicated to mitigating the environmental impact of such gatherings, the Trash Pirates are distinguished by their zeal and their punk aplomb.

Take Moon Mandel, 24, a filmmaker and Trash Pirate who was managing the operations that weekend at Joshua Tree. Mx. Mandel is nonbinary, and with their bright orange jumpsuit emblazoned with patches stitched with trash graphics (the recycling whorl and other insignia) they looked like an indie Eagle Scout.

As Oscar the Grouch sang his gruff-voiced hymn “I Love Trash,” one of many trash-friendly songs on the Pirates’ playlist, Mx. Mandel said: “It’s very important for people to see the work we do and understand the human scope of it. We are trying to alter the cultural norms of a throwaway society. We teach them that there’s no ‘away.’ We are the shepherds of the ‘away’ and it’s being buried inside the earth forever.”

And so Mx. Mandel performed trash collections, dancing with colleagues as Oscar warbled under a festive tent with gaily painted bins, and sorting garbage (earning $5 a bag) for those campers too busy or negligent to do it themselves.

To attendees who had dutifully separated their food scraps and recyclables and were tipping them into the appropriate bins, Mx. Mandel called out a hearty, “Yarg!” their preferred Pirate cheer.

“Thank you for composting!” Mx. Mandel praised a young woman scraping scrambled eggs out of a frying pan, and then recited some recycling basics: “You can’t compost paper with too much printing on it, or recycle greasy paper. Single-use bags can be taken to supermarkets in California for recycling, so we are collecting them. Make sure everything is clean. You don’t need to rinse your soda or beer cans. But if your stuff is covered in yogurt, it’s not going to be recycled.”

Mx. Mandel has a policy about not working festivals where organizers are charging for water. “The decommodification of water is one of my core beliefs,” they said.

Mx. Mandel was particularly proud of their cigarette-butt program. For the last two years, they have been collecting butts (200,000 and counting, they said) at festivals and sending them to TerraCycle, a company that teams with manufacturers and retailers to recycle or upcycle all manner of products and materials, including action-figure toys, backpacks and toothbrushes. Cigarette butts are turned into plastic pallets; the tobacco is composted.

Sarah Renner, the operations and site manager for the Joshua Tree Music Festival, wrote in an email that the Trash Pirates are “the down and dirty, real as can be, heroes of the event world.”

The Pirates have handled her festival’s waste for the last four years, sweeping, handing out bags and painting barrels with children. “They don’t just pull trash bags and sort recycling,” she said. “They are on a mission to change the way people think while getting everything to where it needs to go.””

The work is brutal. Heat stroke, sunburn, cuts and bruises are common hazards, as is a dousing with trash juice: the pungent slurry that pours from a trash can and into your armpits when you’re hoisting it over your head.

Close-toed boots are encouraged, but don’t always protect. Mx. Mandel’s foot was sliced open, they said, this past February at a festival in Costa Rica by a severed iguana hand that pierced their boot, but most dangers are what you’d think: nails, screws, shards of glass.

Tools of the trade include MOOP sticks, which are long claws for grabbing trash without having to bend over. These are light and rather delicate, with a nice action, and are precise enough to pick up a grain of rice.

Hand sanitizer and liquid soap are requirements; one Pirate, Moose Martinez, had a Purell bottle clipped to the strap of his over-the-shoulder water bag. Work gloves and thin blue food service gloves are part of the uniform, but many of the Pirates were working in their bare hands.

“We call that raw-dogging,” said Luke Dunn, 33, a musician and preschool teacher, as a colleague with clean hands fed him a chocolate-chip cookie. “You try not to touch your face, you wash a lot.”

On the Pirates’ Facebook page, “Trash Pirates and Waste Naughts,” with over 4,000 followers, they share job tips (a recent post was for waste management at McMurdo Station in Antarctica); inspiration (“It’s Called Garbage Can, Not Garbage Cannot”); and education (news clips on California’s recycling woes and posts reviewing the best trash bags or instructions on how to make compostable confetti out of leaves with a hole puncher).

One long thread discussed cleaning up glitter, a particular scourge of Gay Pride parades.

‘The Lost Boys’

The Trash Pirates formed six years ago when two friends, Caleb Robertson, now 26, and Kirk Kunihiro, 29, then living in the San Francisco Bay Area, wanted to go to festivals for free.

While volunteering for the green teams, as they are called, of these gatherings, Mr. Robertson said, “We came to realize that there was a way to express our zero-waste passions within the event industry.”

They learned their craft at Green Mary, a two-decades-old company dedicated to making events sustainable that was founded by Mary Munat, an environmental activist and former Army reservist.

“They are fast, hard-working, green-hearted people,” she said of the Pirates. “I love their energy and greenness, and I am so glad my age-old eco-passions gave birth to so many little green pirates.”

The Trash Pirates was a nickname they gave each other early on, when festivals were more haphazard, and it stuck. In the beginning, Mr. Robertson, said “It was more seat-of-the-pants. Many of us were living out of our vehicles. That’s the thing: Trash can attract people who don’t feel like they have a place to go, giving people purpose in a space where they had none. Kind of like the Lost Boys. People are interested in the party, but it becomes empty if you don’t have a purpose.”

Next year, they hope to work upward of 30 events. “The work isn’t going to stop, I’m almost scared of it,” Mr. Robertson said, adding that he and many of his colleagues are looking to expand beyond the festivals and tackle community projects in Los Angeles, where he now lives, and beyond.

Mx. Mandel is devoted to filmmaking; Ms. Nielsen to art and activism. “But we are all still united by trash,” Mr. Robertson said. “We recognize that festivals are a stage and a platform to reach people, but we also know that it’s just a Band-Aid and the best thing we can do is to concentrate on government policies and community work.”

Mr. Kunihiro, who also lives in Los Angeles, started his own waste-consulting business, which includes a waste sampling service that analyzes the composition of waste streams — work that makes festival trash seem as clean and fresh, he said, as birthday cake.

He has led tours for fourth graders of recycling plants in the Bay Area; at Joshua Tree, his water bottle was a tiny blue toy recycling bin, a gift from his mother.

Another Pirate, Stephen Chun, talked about the awkward moment when he is asked what he does for a living. “A lot of people are like, ‘Huh, that’s nice. Good for you,” he said. “The feedback over time goes from being, ‘Oh, you’re the trash guy’ to, ‘Oh, you’re a hero.’ Now I say I’m a zero-waste events consultant.”

Ms. Munat said, “People see us going through the recycling and offer us their sandwiches. And we’re like, ‘No, it’s O.K., we’re getting paid.’”

Because trash is ascendant as a problem and a paradigm, it continues to grow as a métier. “In 1995, when I first starting teaching about waste, it was a boutique subject and not considered appropriate for academic study,” said Robin Nagle, a professor of anthropology and environmental studies at New York University who specializes joyfully in garbage.

She has been anthropologist-in-residence at the New York City Department of Sanitation for more than a decade; her book “Picking Up: On the Streets and Behind the Trucks With the Sanitation Workers of New York City” was published in 2013. Professor Nagle is a founder of what’s known as discard studies, a new interdisciplinary field of research examining waste politically, culturally and economically.

“You can take any piece of trash as an object in the world and track it from its raw materials though its journey into the marketplace as a commodity,” she said. “At any of those points it will connect not just to the proliferation of garbage as a form of pollution but a host of any other environmental crises including the big megillah that is climate change.”

Of the Trash Pirates she said, “They are pushing boundaries in wonderful ways. I would be curious to see what they’re doing in 20 years. Do they bounce from this ebullient, youthful thing to something more settled? And will the planet be even closer to the brink of destruction?”

We shall see, but in the meantime, as is their practice, the Pirates swept the Joshua Tree Music Festival campgrounds clean by forming a MOOP line, as it’s known, with each Pirate three to four feet apart and armed with a MOOP stick and a bucket, and moving from the perimeter to the center.

Mx. Mandel said, “Like one amoeba we slowly devour the MOOP.”

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diabetesinsider · 5 years

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Riced Broccoli

www.diabetesinsider.tumblr.com

You’ve heard of riced cauliflower...well here it is - Riced Broccoli! It’s made from the florets and stems of the broccoli plant. Use it as you would riced cauliflower, enjoying the nutrients attendant in the broccoli tops we already know and love. The wrapper boasts that riced broccoli has 75% fewer carbs than rice - really!?! Hooray! Just microwave this and plate it - that’s it. I like to add another bag of microwaved chopped broccoli to add more vegetables to this meal. Very good...very easy...very much a part of my diabetic diet plan!

Note: I have no connection with the above products. I am just another diabetic looking for ways to eat right to keep my blood sugar numbers/A1C in the good range to please myself and my doctor.

When I’m not thinking of ways to save time cooking to have more time to devote to sewing, I’m actually sewing cotton pocket half aprons for my online shop - www.etsy.com/shop/topdrawerthreads .

Or I’m pairing subtle tones of upcycled yarns with soft textures of those yarns to knit into warm winter caps - www.etsy.com/shop/topdraweryarns .

My daughters have an online shop - www.etsy.com/shop/yesdesigns - where they sew cotton pockets knickers from wild colors and prints.

My older daughter has an online shop - www.etsy.com/shop/wildwovenwomen - where she works upcycled yarns into brightly striped cozy afghans.

Looking for a little humor into your listening? Me, too! Check out my audio book review blog for some ideas - www.lendmeyourears2017.tumblr.com .

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biofunmy · 5 years

Text

They Love Trash – The New York Times

JOSHUA TREE, Calif. — Soph Nielsen was sewing garbage onto her black T-shirt (a chicken wing, a crushed Bud Light can, a plastic fork) and struggling to attach a snarl of crusty pad thai.

“This is to get people to see the trash,” she said, her fingers slick with grease. “We don’t want to be the invisible janitors.” With her distinctive appliqués, that was unlikely.

“You’re either in or you’re out,” she added, echoing the rallying cry of a long-ago counterculture movement that involved a bus, “and it becomes a way of life.”

‘Shepherds of the “Away’’’

While there are many waste organizations dedicated to mitigating the environmental impact of such gatherings, the Trash Pirates are distinguished by their zeal and their punk aplomb.

To attendees who had dutifully separated their food scraps and recyclables and were tipping them into the appropriate bins, Mx. Mandel called out a hearty, “Yarg!” their preferred Pirate cheer.

Mx. Mandel has a policy about not working festivals where organizers are charging for water. “The decommodification of water is one of my core beliefs,” they said.

Sarah Renner, the operations and site manager for the Joshua Tree Music Festival, wrote in an email that the Trash Pirates are “the down and dirty, real as can be, heroes of the event world.”

One long thread discussed cleaning up glitter, a particular scourge of Gay Pride parades.

‘The Lost Boys’

The Trash Pirates formed six years ago when two friends, Caleb Robertson, now 26, and Kirk Kunihiro, 29, then living in the San Francisco Bay Area, wanted to go to festivals for free.

They learned their craft at Green Mary, a two-decades-old company dedicated to making events sustainable that was founded by Mary Munat, an environmental activist and former Army reservist.

He has led tours for fourth graders of recycling plants in the Bay Area; at Joshua Tree, his water bottle was a tiny blue toy recycling bin, a gift from his mother.

Ms. Munat said, “People see us going through the recycling and offer us their sandwiches. And we’re like, ‘No, it’s O.K., we’re getting paid.’”

Mx. Mandel said, “Like one amoeba we slowly devour the MOOP.”

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