Plastic In a New Light

I know this video has been buzzing around the net for the past month or so, but I thought it was worth reposting.  This is the future folks!  With depleting resources, combined with a disposable mentality, it won't be long until we're all rummaging through landfills and recycling centers to furnish our homes.  Frankly, I wish it would happen sooner rather than later - when there's nothing left to mine/cut-down/use up, etc!  I often wonder why we don't have more of those earth ships, which are homes made from recycled materials, around.  Instead, I see more and more new developments built from raw materials like wood and steel and such (another phenomenon I don't understand with so many forclosed homes).
While I appreciate the "green" movement, market media has us thinking we need to purchase our way in to it.  Not so folks.  Just look at these remarkable people who have taken something like a plastic bottle and made it useful...like a light bulb.  

The Pillow Pot

We've all done it:  lined up at checkout to realize we left our reusable shopping bags in the car/house.  It's really not that bad since I use the bags to line our bathroom trash, but I've done it so often that I have enough bags to line 50 trash cans for the next two years.. and yet the bags keep piling up.  I tried other uses for these dreaded plastic bags.  I use them as a lunch bag, gym bag, laundry bag, but it inevitably ends up in the trash (and we all know how I feel about that)...until today.  

With Fall right around the corner (2 days to be exact), it's time to move my plants indoors.  I have two particular plants in large clay pots.  They were once little house warming gifts that, over the years, have graduated to larger and larger containers.  The problem with house plants as big as these, is that once they're down on our hardwood floors, they don't move until it's time to take them out again - around late Spring.  Even then, they leave nicks and scratches on the floors, and ring marks for when the water filters down to the bottom of the pot.  Enter the Pillow Pot (made this name up).  It's a plastic bag filled with other plastic bags that allows me to move these clay pots around my living room without scratching the floors. 


Materials:
a bunch of plastic bags
1 fancy, thicker plastic bag
packing tape - preferably the clear ones

Procedures:
1.  fill thicker plastic bag with the smaller ones... the fluffier the better
2.  fold the bag to a size just slightly larger than the bottom of your pot.
3.  seal with tape, and tape in corners (or if you want to keep the square shape - do it up!)
4.  place pot on top
5.  PRESTO:  Pillow Pot

Hooray!!!  I am no longer that crazy woman who walks out the supermarket carrying 10 items to avoid using the plastic bags. 
 

Note:  ziplock bag is optional.  I happen to have one that wasn't quite ready to be thrown out...but didn't want to reuse for food either.

My rubber and aloe plant. These two gave me hope that I can be a gardener. 

Worth my Pepper.

When cooking, I opt,as much as I can afford, for fresh, organic ingredients with as little additivies as possible.  So when I read that most pre-crushed peppers have saw dust in them among other things, I started using the whole peppercorns.   Only problem is they need to be crushed.  

For the past year, I have been talking myself out of buying a salt/pepper mill.   Perhaps if they didn’t sell these whole peppers in flimsy grinders I wouldn’t have held off so long.  Because the semi-crushed seeds would slip through the grinders and in to my cooking, I'd end up taking an unexpected chomp on a peppercorn.  I warned dinner guests of these sneaky whole peppercorns all because I couldn’t get myself to shell out $15 for a good one, $30 for a salt and pepper set.  Well, fast forward to a recent visit to my mother-in-law.  I somehow mentioned to her about this dilemma and she says, "Oh is that all?” and takes out from her cabinet, a wooden pawn shaped salt/pepper grinder set.  The same kind I've been picking up and putting down at the supermarket.  ALAS!!!!  All that ridiculousness of frugality finally “paid” off!!!!