Something Else that Needs to be Reused: Plastic Bottles

I've started a war on plastic bottles. Basically my strategy is to re-fill every plastic bottle in my life with the same product that originally came in it. However, there are very few manufacturers, even of green products, that make this easy. Whole Foods does get the bulk bottles of Dr. Bronner's soaps and offers refilling stations in their stores, but there aren't any Burt's Bees or Natural Organics or Zum refills available.

So my latest idea is to brew my own.

I'm looking at taking the Baby/Mild version of liquid Dr. Bronner's because it is unscented, biodegradable and available in large quantities. I'm thinking a gallon might do us fine for a year.

Next, I want to add fragrance oils to match the soaps we're using. That means lavender in the kitchen, frankincense and myrrh in the powder room, and grapefruit and ginger in the bathroom.
The dirt scent is interesting too... maybe I'll take that camping when my almond soap runs out...

Links

I have an odd space in my bedroom that I've been thinking about turning into something useful... and in searching for loft construction ideas and platform bed ideas, I ran across this article by Joseph Schwartz (note: That link is in .doc format. For a Google html cache of it, try this). It's titled:

“Reduce, Reuse and Recycle": Prolegomena on Breakage and Repair in Ancient Jewish Society: Broken Beds and Chairs in Mishnah Kelim

And is an academic paper presented at Bar Ilan University in Israel.

I haven't gotten very far into its 34 pages, but it seems to be a study of how one ancient culture avoided making trash, at least in regard to furniture.

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A New York Times article on how 9 ft ceilings are the new 8 ft ceilings. Says the article:

"eight-foot ceilings are acceptable for secondary living spaces like bathrooms and vestibules but not for living spaces."

Since I spent some time reading in Shay Solomon's Little House for a Small Planet this weekend, I have a bit of an inoculation to the pitch here -- people who are cool want higher ceilings, they're cheap, everybody is doing it. And my response: "No they're not. They're hiring Sarah Susanka to create niches and nooks they feel safe in. They may cost less than other options, but you still have to heat them. And 6 ft ceilings used to be standard." Still, I felt the sting when it went in.

Keeping cool in summer

No Impact Man was asking for advice about washing laundry and keeping his NYC apartment cool without using power. I commented that hanging the laundry to dry inside the apartment might act as a swamp cooler. I don't know if that will work in NYC... you need to get both a breeze and a humidity that's less than 100. But I unwittingly performed this experiment today. One of my roommates is fond of loose embroidered shirts which she washes and then hang dries. She hung four of them in the doorway to my office today and as long as the shirts were damp to the touch, my office was noticeably cooler.

I may need to start hang-drying my laundry...