Making a Recycled Notebook

"We may recycle newspapers and glass and take proper satisfaction for doing so, but we remain caught in a web of spiritual assumptions about success and consumption, progress and waste that effectively undermine and trivialize our efforts to escape."  - William H. Becker

In preparation for graduate school, I decided to not only reuse some of my partially filled notebooks from my undergraduate days, but also use some one-sided printed paper to make a recycled notebook. I used a cereal box from my recycling bin to make the cover, three-hole punched everything, and bound it with ribbon. Instead of leaving the cover as the front of the cereal box, I used a bunch of old stickers we had lying around just waiting for a use. The end result is a thick notebook of mostly one-sided sheets of paper that didn't cost me any money beyond stuff I already had as waste from other purposes or as leftover stuff from years ago, and it reduced how much we would be throwing away or recycling by reusing instead. Have I mentioned I love finding ways to use the waste stream as a resource?

The cover in all its cheesy glory. At least it isn't an advertisement for a brand of cereal!

As you can see, the face of each sheet is blank and ready for writing. Why recycle this sheet of paper when there's still more room for words and pictures?

And while I'm at school, I have the added benefit of some pages reminding me of my budget season deadlines so I can get my department budget figured out and submitted on time. Worry not, they gave me two copies.

While I'm at it, I can use some down time to brush up on biology.

Or, if I am caught up on my studies and have some free time and my guitar with me, I could play a jazz standard.

If I'm super bored I can play this little U.S. history trivia challenge on the back of the notebook, which coincidentally enough (well, not really coincidentally) came from the back of the cereal box. I figured it was fitting since some of my course work will involve political strategy.

Have You Got Anything Without Spam?

“It is not the quantity of the meat, but the cheerfulness of the guests, which makes the feast” - Edward Hyde

I realized a couple of days ago that I was remiss in not including a link to Meatless Monday in my post of links, so I have corrected this. I also figured now would be a great time to talk about some of our pursuits to cut down on meat.

We like to eat meat. Unfortunately we like to eat too much meat, which is pretty much typical of the average American's diet. This is one area of our unsustainable eating habits that we identified a while back and decided to work on by finding ways to have meatless meals and meatless days. That's not to say we want to go vegetarian or even vegan, but we recognize that meat production has a substantial negative impact on our environment so we want to decrease how much we eat and work toward quality (local farms that practice safe, sanitary, humane, eco-friendly meat production) over quantity (hey, the supermarket has a family pack of factory produced steaks on sale! let's get that for dinner!).

We have a lot of beans in various forms: dry, canned (not by choice, but we get a lot of them from the food pantry and WIC right now during these hard economic times), refried. The thing to be mindful of is whether our source of protein is complete, meaning it contains all of the essential amino acids. Meat by default is complete, but we can also find some plant sources for complete protein (soy, buckwheat, quinoa) or combine foods (beans and rice, beans and grains, beans and corn, beans and nuts, beans and pasta, etc.) to get a complete protein source. Hummus is a great complete protein so we've started experimenting with making our own hummus. We've also been eating casseroles made with beans and rice, and adding beans to pasta dishes.

For lunches we use cheese in place of meats, especially with salads. We have also added nuts to salads or made bean dishes for lunch if we're doing something different for dinner. We've learned through experience not to do everything bean because it burns you out on them real quick. I enjoy eggs, so I eat eggs for breakfast just about every day anyway (usually an omelet with veggies and maybe some cheese). Kathy can't do eggs because they make her sick, so we usually try to find something for her that is meatless and eggless. We don't have as much problem with eggs and cheese because you don't have to raise a bunch of cows or chickens and slaughter them to get these things. You can get by on fewer animals and go back to them again and again to get the food.

The key is to make sure we find a variety of ways to find complete proteins and not overdo one particular food. In addition, we're looking at meat as a "sprinkling" additive with our food instead of the main portion of our meal. This reduces our meat consumption but still keeps us healthy and getting some meat which we enjoy, thus reducing our carbon footprint. We could go vegetarian, and perhaps someday we will, but even finding a balance is much more sustainable than our habitual overconsumption of meat.

Goals and Rules and Needs, Oh My!

“First, have a definite, clear practical ideal; a goal, an objective. Second, have the necessary means to achieve your ends; wisdom, money, materials, and methods. Third, adjust all your means to that end.” - Aristotle

We've done some short and long term goal setting, as well as come up with some rules for our 100 Thing Challenge which are pretty much modified from David Bruno's original rules for himself. We also did some needs/wants listing for our eventual tiny/small house. Here's what we came up with...

Goals: We came up with some short-term and long-term goals for living more sustainable so we have intermediate steps we can take to get us toward the bigger goals. Admittedly some of these are wishy-washy and need to be more definite, especially the goals that say "set this goal."

Short Term Goals

• Develop rules for our 100 Thing Challenge and follow through. Reduce to 100 things each by January 1, 2011 and live with 100 things until January 1, 2012.
• Get bikes with bike trailer(s).
• Reuse as much as possible (use the waste stream as a resource).
• Buy or make a composter.
• Set specific weight loss goals for the winter and determine the dietary and fitness means to accomplish them.
• Pay off the truck.
• Reduce our dishes and cookware to as minimal as possible.

Long Term Goal

• Live in a small house or apartment (250 - 350 square feet).
• Live within bike/walk distance of work, school, food, etc.
• Become locavores: shop locally for locally grown/made food, clothing, shoes, etc.
• Lose weight and get in shape. Goal weight 150-180 pounds.
• Get a very fuel efficient vehicle or have no car at all.

 100 Thing Challenge: We decided for the most part to each follow David Bruno's original 100TC rules with some modifications.

• We would also count one library of books as one item, but we would be specific in deciding on one bookcase to keep and that is the library for books, magazines, photo albums, and physical media of music and movies.
• Memorabilia would count as one item if it could fit into one small bin.
• Certain items for hygiene and/or convenience sake must be grouped into single items. Underwear and bras are one item. Socks and hosiery are one item. I will allow myself to use my travel makeup kit to hold enough makeup for regular use and count it as one item. A set of regularly used personal hygiene items will count as one item (toothbrush, hair brush, nail clippers, etc). I will reduce my tools to the bare essentials and what I can fit into a small or moderate sized tool box is one item.

We decided that handling gifts and new items would work as in David Bruno's original rules.

Tiny Home Wants/Needs: This is still distant thinking, but if we're going to start planning for a long-term goal of living in a tiny/small home, we have to figure out what we want and need from our home. These lists are still in the works, but what we have so far...

Wants

• Composting toilet
• Greywater recycling system
• Solar and/or wind power
• Solar hot water

Needs

• Ian's own private space
• Kitchen
• Bathroom
• Sleeping space
• Common living space

Tiny Houses and Small Houses

“Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius – and a lot of courage – to move in the opposite direction.” – E.F. Schumacker

We've been really getting into trying to design a tiny house or small house for our family and determining just how small we can go. While our son's privacy concerns will increase our space needs as he gets older, for now we feel we can get down to a very small size, for example around 172 square feet. We were inspired by the Popomo design at Tumbleweed Tiny House Company.

The Popomo layout, which has a bedroom for two people.

This design is for two people, but what if we got creative with sleeping arrangements? What if we took some inspiration from the Romani vardo as suggested by Kathy, where we combine a bunk with storage space? This led us to view the single bedroom that occupied the space from floor to ceiling as wasted vertical space that could more efficiently sleep three people in a bunk-and-cubbies configuration that also gave us some built-in storage for clothes.

An example of a vardo bunk.

What I came up with for a design isn't quite as ornate or old world, but still very functional and fitting for the modern and right-angled design of the Popomo. The design below incorporates a top bunk that would give Kathy and me essentially a full bed with a window. Ian would have the bottom bunk, which isn't as deep but also gives him a set of shelves and cubbies for his clothes and toys. We're contemplating adding a set of cubbies and shelves along the head of the upper bunk for us since it's much longer than needed for sleeping and would give us storage options, too. This way we economize on the sleeping space and fit three of us comfortably in the space originally designed for two people.

On the left is a view facing the bunks. The right is a top-down view, which has a dotted line showing where the lower cubbies and shelves are in the back of the lower bunk.

When Ian gets older and needs his own space, we're looking at upgrading to a small house design like the Harbinger. I'm also a fan of shipping container houses (check out specifically the Ecopod, the Port-A-Bach, and the All Terrain Cabin), but Kathy is having a harder time getting into them. I see them as having great potential for a greenhouse or living roof stacked on top. The greenhouse gets us a sloped roof essential for New England but also gives us a living roof that we both want to use for extended growing seasons or year-round growing of some foods.