Ride a Horse

Benefits

Environmental Benefit: ★★★★★
Vehicals use air polluting energy. They pollute water with runoff of oil, dirt, brake dust, deposited vehicle exhaust, road particles, automotive fluids, and deicing chemicals from roadways and parking lots. They're the largest source of urban noise pollution. They create solid waste when they are scrapped (25% can't be recycled). They kill wildlife in collisions. The mining of resources to make them pollutes the environment. Horses produce "natural" waste that is a benefit to the landscape, and the basically operate on "solar" energy (used to grow their food).

Money Saved: ★★☆☆☆
Horses "can be" cheaper to own and operate than vehicals (depending on how you go about it, and if you have the land for them). And insurance isn't required!

Lifestyle Benefit: ★★☆☆☆
How much lifestyle benefit there is really depends on your outlook on riding horses! Well, OK it also depends on how far you have to go, what the weather is like, and how much of a hurry you're in! I have to say from experience that horses are also great when you need someone with a listening ear to talk to. They don't interrupt, and they'll look up at you every now and then with those big, dark eyes (in between mouthfulls of hay) and appear very understanding and sympathetic to your problems. And it can be very therapeutic to rub their soft noses.

What We’re "Not" Doing
Several of our girls have begged us to get a horse, donkey, and/or rideable pteranodons to replace our cars. My mom bought a pony while I was a kid, and we ended up having to move because our suburban neighbors complained about the "horse" in our backyard (imagine that!). So got to ride horses growing up, and I kind of wish our kids could more often too (other than at the annual rodeo). But I also remember what a pain it was trying to melt the ice in the horse trough during the winter. At least that wouldn't be an issue here in Texas! I have to admire the Amish for sticking to the old ways of transportation, this is a great step in reducing your harm to the environment! But for now, this is one that we're "not" doing at this point. But here's a photo of one of our girls on a horse at a ranch.

A Little Humor
Glossary of Horse Terms
Hock: Financial condition of all horse owners.
A Bit: What you have left in your pocket after you've been to your favorite tack shop.
Fence: Decorative structure built to provide your horse with something to chew on.
Horse Auction: What you think of having after your horse bucks you off.
Pinto: Green coat pattern found on freshly washed light colored horses left unattended for 2 minutes.
Well Mannered: Hasn't stepped on, bitten, or kicked anyone for a week.
Rasp: Abrasive metal tool used to remove excess skin from ones knuckles.
Lunging: Popular training method in which a horse exercises their owner by spinning them in circles until dizzy.
Gallop: Customary gait a horse chooses when returning back to the barn.
Nicely Started: Lunges, but not enough health insurance to even think about riding him.
Colic: Gastrointestinal result of eating at horse fair food stands.
Colt: What your mare gives you when you want a filly.
Easy to Load: Only takes 3 hours, 4 men, a 50lb bag of oats, and a tractor with loader.
Easy to Catch: In a 10x10 stall.
Easy Rider: Rides good in a trailer; not to be confused with "ride-able".
Endurance Ride: End result when your horse spooks and runs away with you.
Hobbles: Walking gait of a horse owner after their foot has been stepped on by their horse.
Feed: Expensive substance used to manufacture manure.
Dog House: What you are in when you spend too much money on grooming supplies and pretty halters.
Three Gaited Horse: A horse that. 1) trips, 2) stumbles, 3) falls.


Pull, Buddy
An out-of-towner drove his car into a ditch in a desolated area. Luckily, a local farmer came to help with his big strong horse, named Buddy. He hitched Buddy up to the car and yelled, "Pull, Nellie, pull!" Buddy didn't move.
Then the farmer hollered, "Pull, Buster, pull!" Buddy didn't respond.
Once more the farmer commanded, "Pull, Coco, pull!" Nothing.
Then the farmer nonchalantly said, "Pull, Buddy, pull!" And the horse easily dragged the car out of the ditch.
The motorist was most appreciative and very curious. He asked the farmer why he called his horse by the wrong name three times.
The farmer said, "Oh, Buddy is blind and if he thought he was the only one pulling, he wouldn't even try."

Plant Flowers

Benefits

Environmental Benefit: ★★★★★
Besides adding natural beauty, flowers provide sustenance to birds and insects.

Money Saved: ★★★☆☆
No money savings, but if you use naturally collected flower seeds it doesn't need to cost anything either!

Lifestyle Benefit: ★★★★★
Sure is beautiful to see Spring in Texas with all the bluebonnets and Indian paintbrush blooming. Flowers can smell nice too! I also often find flower petals in our salads, but I couldn't tell you which are the edible ones she uses!

What We’re Doing
At least with bluebonnets, I know you have to plan ahead since the seeds should be planted in the fall for Spring blooms. Shannon has several flower beds around our house, and sometimes she's not sure what's going to pop up where- sometimes they are self-propagating. Here are a few photos of our girls in Texas bluebonnets, and Shannon collecting wild flower seeds. Happy Anniversary Shannon!

A Little Humor

Q: How does a rose ride a bike ?
A: By using it's petals!

Two senior couples are walking along, wives in front, husbands in back.
Herb says to Sam, "Gee, we went to a new restaurant last night and had the best meal ever. Good prices too. "
Sam says, "Well, we like to eat out too. What was the name of the restaurant? "
Herb says, "You'll going to have to help me out here a little. What's the name of that pretty flower, smells sweet, grows on a thorny bush? "
Sam says, "How about rose? "
"Yes, yes, that's it!" cries Herb, then calls ahead to his wife. "Rose. Hey, Rose. What was the name of the restaurant we ate at last night? "

While attending a Marriage Seminar dealing with communication, Tom and his wife Grace listened to the instructor.
"It is essential that husbands and wives know the things that are important to each other," he said. Addressing the man, he asked "Can you describe your wife's favourite flower?"
Tom leaned over, touched his wife's arm gently and whispered, "It's self-rising, isn't it?"
The rest of the story gets rather ugly, so I'll stop right here.

A sad-faced Doug walked into a flower shop early one morning. The clerk was ready to take his order for a funeral piece, based on the look on Doug's face, but soon realized his assumption was wrong as Doug asked for a basket of flowers sent to his wife for their anniversary. "And what day will that be? " the clerk asked. Glumly he replied, "Yesterday".

Who Needs a Pool?

Benefits

Environmental Benefit: ★★★★★
Without a pool cover, more than half of the water in your pool can evaporate each year (7,000 gallons for an 18x36' pool). Estimates are that water lost is about twice what irrigating the equivalent area of lawn would require in most areas (even with a pool cover, pool use was still nearly 1,000 gallons more per year). A tremendous amount of energy can go into heating the pool, as well as powering the filtration pumps.

Money Saved: ★★★★★
Just running a 1.5 hp filtration pump for 12 hours a day can cost you $1400 per year! If you heat your pool, you probably already know how expensive that is. Then there's the water, chemicals, and maintenance . . .

Lifestyle Benefit: ★★★☆☆
While it would admittedly be nice once in awhile to be able to just jump in the backyard pool for a lazy swim, I think the extra time it takes to run down to the neighborhood pool is probably much less than the pool maintenance time that would be required to take care of our own pool. Never mind the "working" hours lost in paying for the extra expenses too. It's nice being able to let kids play in the backyard knowing there's nothing much more dangerous than a couple of chickens (we'll leave the homemade seesaw unmentioned, shall we?)

What We’re Doing
For little kids, a small pool or tub like the horse trough or recycle bin pictured is just as much fun if not more fun than a big pool. For bigger kids, the exercise they get walking to the community pool will do them good. Running through the sprinkler is a great form of water play and watering the lawn at the same time! When we were looking for a house, those with pools were automatically crossed off the list (although it seems like you could use one for water storage? You would have to build a nice deck cover over it though . . .)

A Little Humor
Q. Why did the teacher jump into the water?
A. She wanted to test the water!

Q. Why wasn't Susan afraid when she saw a shark while she was swimming in the water?
A. Because it was a man-eating shark!

Q: Why do you keep doing the backstroke?
A: I've just had lunch and don't want to swim on a full stomach.

Q: Did you hear about the slow swimmer?
A: He could only do the crawl.

Programmable Thermostat

Benefits

Environmental Benefit: ★★★★☆
A 10 degree difference in thermostat setting could save half the energy used by your heating/cooling system or more - depending on the insulation of your house and the outside temperatures.

Money Saved: ★★★★☆
Given today's high energy costs, the small cost of a programmable thermostat and a few fans for the summer is very low compared to the money you'll save month-to-month on utility bills.

Lifestyle Benefit: ★★☆☆☆
I tend to feel warmer than Shannon, so sometimes even with the fans on I get too hot in the summer. When that happens, if there isn't something I can do about it (like a glass of icewater, or sitting under a ceiling fan, or taking off some clothes) then I go ahead and temporarily adjust the thermostat a bit. Feeling a bit warm in the summer and a bit cool in the winter is probably normal for our bodies anyway! I guess one benefit could be that there is less shock to your system when you go in and out of the house - making it more likely you'll spend time outside!

What We’re Doing
Our kids run around in their underwear half the time in the summer, except when we have visitors. Our usual thermostat setting is 81 for summer, and 67 or so for winter. What is within the comfort range for different people varies, but by pushing your limits a little you may find that you become accustomed to the change. Our girls are "real Texans". They get cold when it's 65 and seem fine with the summer heat (which saves us a lot on A/C costs). Also, be sure to program your thermostat differently for times of day you are gone, night time, etc. It is not true that heating the house back up after you were gone takes more energy than it would have to keep it warm to begin with. The amount of energy lost has to do with the temperature difference between inside and outside - with less of a difference you spend less energy. At night, when you're bundled under the covers (you've got thick blankets, right?) you should be able to turn the thermostat down a fair ways. Shannon and I once had our apartment down to about 36 degrees one night in Utah (well, OK - that wasn't on purpose, the pilot light in the furnace blew out and we thought the neighbor who controlled the house thermostat was persecuting us again).
A Little Humor
You always hear that in relationships, opposites attract. They just don't tell you that what they mean is that opposite body temperature's attract.

Update your Washer

Benefits

Environmental Benefit: ★★★★☆
The average American family does 400 loads of laundry a year. You can cut the related energy costs by about a third, and the water usage by almost a half, by going to an efficient front-loading washing machine.

Money Saved: ★★★★☆
Over the life of a front-loading washing machine you can more than pay for the matching dryer just with the energy savings alone (hopefully you'll line-dry instead!). With the water savings you could fill 3 backyard pools. Many communities also have reimbursement programs for putting in efficient appliances.

Lifestyle Benefit: ★★☆☆☆
There isn't a lot of lifestyle benefit, except that the kids like to sit in front of it and watch the clothes go round-'n-round instead of the TV. Not sure what it's doing to their minds.

What We’re Doing
We had a little top-loading washer on wheels that we got when we first were married and lived in a little apartment. It was quite reliable, but took a lot of loads with a family of 6 to do the wash as it was quite small. It is much more efficient to do large loads, and a front-loading washer is also much more efficient than a top-loader. So we gave the still-working smaller washer to someone who needed it, and purchased the item pictured. You will also note the environmentally friendly "7th Generation" laundry soap that Shannon gets for it.

A Little Humor
Sign in a launderette: Those using automatic washers should remove their clothes when the lights go out.

Recycle Everything (almost)

Benefits

Environmental Benefit: ★★★★★
Recycling materials used in all the products we buy is a great win for the environment. It greatly reduces landfill waste. It eliminates mining for metals, smelting to purify them, pumping oil for plastics and cutting trees for paper. It puts people to work sorting and re-processing the recycled materials. It is basically essential to a sustainable society that enjoys the luxury products we do.

Money Saved: ★★☆☆☆
At least here in Austin it doesn't cost extra to recycle if you are already paying for waste collection. It doesn't save you money directly either, although availability of cheaper recycled materials can mean that products cost us less to buy.

Lifestyle Benefit: ★★★★☆
It usually isn't much harder to recycle than to just throw away stuff. Some communities such as Austin have made it particularly easy! I would say that the real lifestyle benefit is for our children and children's children, who will be saddled with pollution and scarcity of resources if we don't take basic necessary steps like recycling.

What We’re Doing
The city of Austin has a goal to reduce the amount of waste Austinites send to the landfill by 90 percent by the year 2040. One of the great benefits that has come from the program is that we have a 96 gallon "single stream" recycling bin that is collected every two weeks, and which we can fill with any mix of recyclable materials (basically anything that has the recyclable triangle symbol on it and including paper and cardboard). Our trash collection service is a "pay-as-you-throw" service, with two sizes of trash bins available and weekly pickup. We have the smaller size, but I've noticed that most people in our neighborhood have the larger size and are often overflowing them when they put them out on the curb for pickup. By contrast, last week I went to check our bin on pickup day and it was completely empty! I generally put it out only every-other week and it is only lightly filled. And we have a family of 6! The main reasons for our low waste are: 1) We consume few items that require packaging, 2) We reuse a lot of things, like boxes, 3) Most of what we have to discard is recycleable, and 4) if something isn't recycleable it's probably compostable and goes in the heap! (which is also basically a recycler).

A Little Humor
During an attack of laryngitis I lost my voice completely for two days. To help me communicate with him, my husband devised a system of taps.

One tap meant "Give me a kiss."
Two taps meant "No."
Three taps meant "Yes"
—and 95 taps meant "Take out the garbage."

Go Solar!

Benefits

Environmental Benefit: ★★★★★
Solar panels are quite durable - and generally have a warranty of 25 years. Since the main ingredient of a solar cell is sand (silicon) - it's pretty low-impact to manufacture and produces polution-free energy over it's entire lifetime. It's hardware components are almost completely recyclable.

Money Saved: ★★☆☆☆
Although solar panels are expensive, if you figure them as part of the cost of your house, and build them into the mortgage, they can actually be cheaper month-to-month than the electric bill that they eliminate (depending on the climate you live in - running large A/C units on solar can be impractical).

Lifestyle Benefit: ★★☆☆☆
Electricity is electricity - there's really no lifestyle change to using solar power over utility power. There can be occasional drawbacks though. During extended cloudy weather your batteries may get depleted - if you are completely "off-the-grid". Most systems are still attached to power though, and you can actually save money by selling power back to the utility company (acting as a "generator") during times you are producing more electricity than you are using.

What We’re Doing
We've started off small and put an 80 watt panel up on the roof (see photo). We got it as an anniversary present to ourselves a few years ago. It is cabled to a black Pelican box (also pictured) that contains four sealed wheelchair batteries, a solar charge controller, and an inverter (to produce 110VAC from the batteries). It produces enough electricity to run small items like fans during the day and a floor lamp at night. The batteries have enough storage to run a large box fan for several days if electricity to the house goes out (which makes summer power failures much more bearable!) It can also power a small refrigerator for a day or two for emergency food cooling. Eventually we hope to build a small home completely "off-the-grid" and rely on solar for all electric needs.

A Little Humor

At the Electric Company: "We would be de-lighted if you send in your bill. However, if you don't you will be "

Most books now say our sun is a star. But it still knows how to change back into a sun in the daytime.