I work at Borders Books in the cafe. One of the things we do in the cafe is save our coffee grounds. Sounds weird, right? I know. I thought so, too. Every 90 minutes when we brew a new pot of coffee, we dump the grounds into an empty coffee bean bag (a big one, too) that we save when when we’ve used all the beans. Once the bag is full, which only takes about 3 days, we seal it up and put a sticker on it and set it out for our customers to take home free. I asked about this when I first started working there. I was curious as to what it was all about. Apparently coffee grounds are great fertilizer for your garden. They have a low acidity, but still retain their nutrients. You can also use them in your compost pile, though I’m sure those of you who have one already know that.

I’ve decided to start saving my coffee grounds to do this for my plants at home. Since I brew coffee every day and only have a few plants, I shouldn’t need too much to fertilize all of my plants.

Just wanted to pass along this green tip for all of you plant lovers. If you don’t drink coffee, but have a Borders around with a cafe (maybe Starbucks does this, too, since the cafe is technically Starbucks), go pick up some free coffee grounds for your gardens

General, Going green | 3 Comments »

Shortly after we moved here, the boys started an organism unit in science. Zach’s class had earthworms as one of their organisms and his teacher sent home a note asking for vegetable scraps to add to their compst for the earthworms. So, now that the weather is a bit better (*ahem* warmer…sort of) I’ve been thinking a bit about starting my own compost pile. There’s some good info on the web about it, but I’d like to know if any of you have started one of your own and if you have any pointers? Reading the list of things I can include, I’m almost giddy. Since I’m a daily coffee drinker, you can imagine that I have quite a few coffee ground-filled filters, which I can include. I see that paper towel rolls (the cardboard part) can also be included, and I would assume that’s true for tp rolls. Dryer lint and hair are also ingredients I have a lot of (I cut the boys’ hair myself, and there’s always quite a lot). The only problem I see is in the grass clippings. Because we live in a townhome, we don’t have to take care of the lawn, so I’m not sure how I might go about getting some grass clippings. To my knowlegde, the crew who does the lawn uses a bagger, so raking some up isn’t really possible. How much of that do I need and is there something I can substitute for it? Also, is a bucket an okay place to store the compost pile, at least in the beginning?

Going green | 3 Comments »

I often get inspiration from my kids. Sometimes I’m inspired to take pictures. Sometimes I’m inspired to do a scrapbook layout (which I haven’t done in forever, btw!). This weekend, however, I was inspired to do something completely different. It’s the time of year where I purge winter clothes, and sometimes summer clothes, that are too small, pack them away for later use when appropriate (in the case that they are too small for the twins, but will fit Alex in the future), or list them on e-bay. I also do the same for boots/shoes that are no longer in season or no longer fit. Since shoes are something I’m not able to hand down because, well, let’s face it. Kids, but probably specifically boys, are hard on their shoes. DH also had some shoes he’s not worn in a few years that needed to be purged.

My first instinct was to thrown them in the garbage. Then I stopped myself. *Insert inspiration from my kids here* Ryan had brought home one of those scholastic newsletters that his class gets a few months ago and I happened to read the back article. The story was about recycling old athletic shoes and what they do with the recycled materials. They, of course, us the materials for playgrounds and tracks. Erie had a playground made with this sort of material. It happened to be our favorite playground. I decided to look on the web and see if there were any such stations around here where I could take these shoes. There happened to be a drop-off location right around the corner from our house. Needless to say, I was thrilled! I intended to take a picture of Alex dropping the shoes in the barrel, but when we got there, it was overflowing with sneakers. How great is that?!

Alex is enraptured with busses. Big busses, small busses, trolley busses, etc. While we were driving around this morning (I also had to drop off dh’s dry cleaning), he spotted several, and pointed them out to me. We even followed an RMT bus for a short time. Most of the busses we saw were the yellow cheese boxes that transport our little crumb-crunchers to school each day, but we also saw some of the hospital busses. You know, the little mini-busses that take patients back and forth for treatments and what-not. Alex has coined those busses “piggy busses.” I’m not sure what made him equate the little mini-buses with piggys. I guess because they are short and little, and he thinks of piggys that way. Whatever the thought process was, it was cute. And it isn’t so much the coined term that is cute, it’s the way he says it, with that little high-pitched “piggy bus!” and that big ‘ol dimpled grin that I love so much.

My dad is right. I’m gonna miss this.

Family, Going green, the kids | No Comments »

I know about Freecycle and Recycle Erie. I’m a member of both groups. But, the electronics I want to get rid of don’t work, or are shells, as in the case of our computer shells. Does anyone know where I can take these things to be recycled?? If not, do any of you want them? lol. I don’t imagine any of you do, since they don’t work. The shells might come in handy for someone who wants to build their own computer, though.

Anyway, if you know where I can dispose of these properly, please leave a comment here and let me know!

General, blogging | 5 Comments »