Can't I Just Find a Nice Cave?

Updates from a lazy urban environmentalist


I just ended a major spring cleaning jag yesterday. Well, there is more work to do, but for now I am all cleaned out. While cleaning, or actually, when I wasn’t cleaning, I can multi-task but reading and washing windows is an unlikely ability I cannot claim to possess, I was also reading the book Organic Housekeeping by Ellen Sandbeck. I have been meaning to read this book for a long while, it’s languished on my ‘to read’ shelf for the better part of a year or so. And it is a great book, right in line with many of my philosophies. It also made me see living in modern day American society as nothing more than a death trap.


I mean, much of what she discusses, it stuff that when I allow myself to actually sit and think about, tends to make me feel helpless and induces a mild apocalyptic panic. VOC’s, petroleum based products and other synthetic materials, ‘cleaning’ solutions we take for granted as ‘safe’ simply because they are marketed to us as what we are supposed to use to clean stuff, uhhh all kinds of things. I am not here to evaluate and regurgitate the book, basically stuff we have in our homes that actually is super toxic to our lives. And I did this thinking while the paint in the bathroom was drying. Maybe it was the fumes getting to me. Who knows.


It freaks me out because how on earth can you really escape a lot of it? I mean some of the obvious ways are to buy completely organically made things and to use natural cleaning products, choose a natural living environment or a green building (huh yeah as a renter that will ever happen.) and the like, but not all of that is something one can just DO. I can use vinegar till the cows come home to clean stuff, but does that change that this house I reside in is over 100 years old and who knows what is under my synthetic fume emitting carpets? Or that the basement has strange bottles of hazardous materials of unknown age and stability? No. There is a lot I can’t really control.


So, I know what I can do is control the things I have control over. But I still feel really overwhelmed when I really stop to think about modern society. Not just this stuff, bathroom cleaner or drain opener or any other number of things that someone who is not a chemist should really handle, but everything, the excess, the wasting, the sterilization, the disconcert with people and nature. It’s all a big basket of eggs.


Anyway, outside of me becoming independently wealthy and buying my own off grid homestead where I can control every element of my own home design and furnishing and grow my own food and raise my own animals, or Janine get’s her co-op started and I can move into the crofters cottage and raise sheep and goats and teach city kids about permaculture, I guess I will just do what I can within my means. I still feel frustrated and helpless sometimes though. Yesterday I had a whole lot more to say on home environmental toxins and stuff but it’s gone. Sufficed to say, just stay away from the drain opener and stuff ok? Baking soda and vinegar are awesome you need little else. Maybe some borax. Did you know there is wax in window cleaner? I didn’t. I have been using vinegar for awhile. But for real?


Anyway…


After a lull last year of doing anything outside of getting my life put back together, I have indeed, still been working on greening my life. So here are some updates:


I have managed to give up paper towels. Being the user of massive amounts of paper towels, I am rather proud of myself. I am not anti-paper towel, but trust me, trees are better off with me not using them over judiciously. I use kitchen towels napkins and dishrags and the trees are better for it.


I went through most of the winter without using my space heater. There were times when my room was just too cold, but the less I used it the more inured I got to the cold and so I’d use it even less. But days like today make me want to break it out. It’s chilly!!


I have been slowly phasing out the cosmetics in my life. There have been several purgings. Last night I unceremoniously dumped out my “favorite” moisturizer that made my eyes burn. I got a new moisturizer though, I need one, my skin so dry in the winter, but I know what each of the few ingredients are and they are all natural. And they don’t make my eyes burn, fancy that…I still have a lotion or two I particularly like the scent of. I do still own and sometimes wear makeup, but it’s that mineral powder kind, at its worst it has an anti-caking agent in it. It does not make my eyes burn. It’s about as pure for makeup as you can get. I also still have lip gloss, I like it sometimes. But overall, I am makeup free unless I feel like getting dolled up for some reason. I give myself a year to move away from that too. Since giving up perfumed things last year (not things scented with like, essential or natural oils, but perfumes) I have become much more aware of them elsewhere and they are irritating.


I switched back to shampoo awhile back when my roommate moved in. But I have since become itchy scalped again and so, when it’s gone (maybe a shampoo or two), its back to baking soda for me! Ugh.


I am still attempting to give up shaving; it’s useless and conformist but AUGH! It’s one convention I have hard time breaking out of. Especially in the summer.
I am trying to buy fewer things in plastic. This can be so tough. But I know I can do it! Since the trash company I have refuses to accept a lot of the recyclable plastics, it’s even more important to avoid buying them.


I can fit all my clothes in my dresser or on one rack in the closet now. I do have a bin to store summer vs. winter clothes, simple because it’s easier to keep non seasonal clothes clean and in a box out of the way. I have maybe 3-4 things now that are clothes is really do not wear, and have for memorabilia purposes, such as my ren faire costume and my leather motorcycle jacket with skinny puppy and NIN logos I painted on it. Those I just can’t be rid of. I have also halved, at least, my shoes. I need to rid myself of more. I only NEED maybe two sturdy pairs of shoes…but you know... shoes.


The garden is sort of started for the year; I dug up a patch and seeded it with lots of lettuces and stuff.


I am still in a process of lessening the amount of stuff I own. I have done a good job but some of it is only sort of removed. I have two boxes that need to go to Powell’s; I have furniture in the basements that needs a new home. I have another, much smaller, stack of things for goodwill. And of course, stuff out is pointless if you keep bringing it in, I have been pretty good about that. I went through my craft stuff and pruned. I also went through my yarn and pruned out the stuff I will never use. Haven’t decided what to do with it. I think it should get donated.



Future projects include:


A further reduction in books, removing some has made me realize I would really not miss some others. If I could get down to two bookshelves, I would be very happy.


Selling my giant mattress and getting a smaller bed again, maybe a futon couch. I would have SO MUCH MORE SPACE! It’s kind of sad. The bed is suuuper comfy, but the size for one person is a wee bit ridiculous. However, mattress resale values are very poor. Even if they are pristine and barely a year old. But I cannot imagine carting this giant thing around with me for the next 10 years (its lifetime or so)


Considering selling my television that is currently languishing in the basement. I haven’t even been watching my roommate’s TV )which is larger than mine so we stowed mine) I am happy to watch dvd’s on my computer, why the extra appliance?


Going through all my camping gear and getting rid of some of the stuff that is just ‘there’ I never use it. The water filter that is broken, extra water bottles, stuff. Get it all to one bin instead of two.


Get rid of the books in the basement I have no idea why I am actually hanging on to. They are in a box in the basement because I deemed them unworthy to hangout on my shelves so, why do I still have them eh??



Remaining cleaning projects include:


Major appliance cleaning (for sunny warm weather)
Carpet cleaning
Hazardous waste removal
Yard clean up (big project this year. *sigh*)
But that’s it. The rest is more or less done.
Yeah!

Fabric out of Matted Fiber

Or felting.
Erica and I are making a workshop on felting wool and other naturally fibery things. This will be at the Linus Pauling House on Hawthorn on Monday the 31st of March in association with Cascadia Wild. (My last name is uh, actually spelled with an "F" but this is one of the things that makes me love my last name, I know, I'm weird, I think we have already established this though..moving on!)

Erica came over tonight and we had dinner and then played with wool. It was a lot of fun. I made pork ribs, which gave us drippings enough for a nice pork gravy to go with Biscuits Erica whipped up and She also brought a nice mixed wild foods and garden grown salad complete with flowers that was very tasty. It was so pretty I took a picture of it.




Then we got down to business. Wet felting carded and raw wool. This consists of layering the wool so the fibers in each layer lie more or less perpendicular to each other, dousing it with soapy hot water and massaging it with your fingertips for about 10 mins, flipping it..continue this until you have a solid fabric, rinse, dry, throw in dryer if you wish to full (not fuull, long u, but fulll, short u long double el.) Fulling is when you have an existing fabric of wool (be it felted knit, woven whatever) and then you felt it again. A knit sweater, that shrinks when you wash it and then put it in the dryer is fulled not felted, even though it IS a felting process. (which you should never do to wool knits! Unless you WANT them smaller...) Lost yet?
heee.



The raw wool(not pictured) was harder to felt but closer to a true raw technology than when you add the step of carding the wool. Carding we discovered, not only lays all the fibers neatly in line, but also causes a lot of the debris from the raw wool to fall out (plant material and dirt mostly.) And Erica, being the brilliant woman she is said something like, "Well, that makes sense, it's like when we brush our hair." SO obvious it was too obvious, we both laughed we didn't realise that sooner.



I also played with a fulled cashmere sweater of mine and made a hat from one of the sleeves. I like this hat. I like it so much I then NEEDLE felted it. I'm not done but I took a picture anyways.



Needle felting is when you taker a felted item, (felt or fulled or what have you but, general a wool item) and push little bits of wool into desired shapes and patters using small needles with tiny barbs on them that force the fibers into the main fabric and the hooks push the fiber in, but the slide out all smooth leaving the fibers locked in place.
Pretty cunning, don'tcha think?