Green Living

Make your own non-toxic bathtub cleanser

Better Life

I found this recipe on Apartment Therapy (they credit Natural Home magazine with originally publishing the recipe). Seems to me you could go green AND save a bunch of money using this to clean your bathtub, instead of buying expensive commercial brands of cleansers. Silky Bathtub Scrub 1 cup baking soda in a medium-sized mixing [...]

11 May 2011 Read the full article →

The New Normal: save money on laundry detergent

Better Life

A while back I re-posted a money saving laundry tip from the blog HomeEc101. It mentions the many ways white vinegar can help you save money when you do your laundry at home. See the original money saving laundry tips there and over here too.  Then the super-awesome Sarah Cooper of CoopCrafts dropped by and [...]

22 March 2011 Read the full article →

Are CFL bulbs dangerous?

Green Living

(image courtesy of http://www.ipaa.org/Blog/?p=301) There’s a lot of kerfluffle around the Interwebs lately about the supposedly dangerous levels of mercury released if you break a CFL light bulb. I believe the most widely spread story crazy Internet rumor is about a woman in Maine who broke a CFL bulb in a bedroom, was quoted $2,000 [...]

30 April 2010 Read the full article →

The Results are in: We met our energy savings goals!

Green Living

It’s nice to know that one family can make a difference. Last year my wife & I decided to make a conscious effort to do a better job of conserving energy around the house.  We didn’t want to do any major home improvements, but we thought we could make an honest effort to do some [...]

11 October 2008 Read the full article →

Recycle CFL light bulbs at Home Depot

Green Living

Here’s a quick update to an earlier post I wrote about Disposing of CFL fluorescent light bulbs back in February of this year.  In it I wrote “I bet that before too long there will be enough public pressure that the places who sell the most bulbs (WalMart, Home Depot, Target, Lowe’s) will begin collecting [...]

18 September 2008 Read the full article →

Pickens Plan goes live today

Green Living

T. Boone Pickens opened a website today: www.pickensplan.com. You might not have heard of it yet, but you’re going to hear about soon, and you’re going to hear about it a lot, during the next 4 months. T. Boone Pickens made a fortune in the Texas oil industry. He made another fortune as a corporate [...]

8 July 2008 Read the full article →

Rain Gutters are useful – even in Phoenix

Green Living

Here is a picture of my old house – the one we moved out of a couple years ago. Regardless of size, style, number of garage bays, or area of town, this is a pretty typical design for most homes built in & around Phoenix over the last 20 years. The garage is on one [...]

22 February 2008 Read the full article →

Aura at Camelback: Green Luxury Living

Central Phoenix

Coming Soon – luxury living, urban living, and sustainable living will come together at The Aura at Camelback.     I’ve seen lots of residential “green living” options, but they’re generally on the small side, and usually outside of town. I’ve also seen several commercial projects using a sustainable approach (we’ve even written about some [...]

14 February 2008 Read the full article →

Disposing of CFL fluorescent light bulbs

Green Living

I’ve been a big proponent of conserving energy around the house, and have written about it several times on this blog. One of the easiest energy “fixes” is to switch your light bulbs to Compact Flourescent Bulbs, since they are ultra efficient and last for a very long time. The bulbs say right on the [...]

11 February 2008 Read the full article →

Proper disposal of old computers

Green Living

We’ve had an old computer sitting on a shelf in the garage for a long time. To give you an idea of how old, it was an IBM PC (remember when people actually had IBM brand computers?) which ran a high-tech operating system called Windows 98. (who knows when that came out…?) At some point [...]

19 January 2008 Read the full article →

We’re saving energy – right on schedule

Green Living

Last month I challenged us all to use 10% less energy, and then I outlined my family’s plan for achieving this goal. Yesterday our APS bill came in the mail, and I’m optimistic our plan is working. Good news is that our usage is down by 9%, and we didn’t implement our plan until the middle [...]

11 December 2007 Read the full article →