Be more green

We have been making an effort to reduce the amount of water we use. This is the first year our city has had landscape water restrictions so we aren’t using as much water since we can’t water often enough to keep the grass green.

Our local water district just updated their website and offers comparisons for our area. Our water usage is currently 52% of the average on our street and 35% of the average of the entire city. We used 66% less water than the same billing cycle in 2008.

We still need to make a few changes to use a little less water in the future.

I haven’t used the clothes dryer in almost 6 months. Hanging laundry outside was so easy because it dried in just an hour or two. Now that the weather is cooling off and there’s less sun, the clothes takes much longer to dry. I need to only do one load of laundry a day now that the drying time has slowed down.

My plan is to avoid using the dryer as much as possible and will start hanging clothes up in the bathrooms during the cooler days. I want to buy an indoor clothes drying rack. The shower rod is fine for shirts, but I need something else for the the small items. I will probably still hang towels and sheets outside and can wait a few days until the weather warms up again.

... I started using a 12-line outdoor clothes line to hang laundry. The clothes dried more quickly outside than using my dryer. So far, the only time I have used the dryer in the past month is to air fluff towels to get rid of the stiffness.

I bought a Hybrid Solar Charger that can charge our cell phones, an ear bud and my iPod touch. We are using it more than the regular chargers. I’d like to buy a solar charger to use for the notebook computers.

My mailbox seems to be overflowing with catalogs and junk mail this time of year.

I found a few websites helpful:

Green Dimes The free basic service provides do-it-yourself instructions to remove your address from select catalogs and other direct mailings.

OptOutPreScreen.com Opt out of offers for credit and insurance

Direct Marketing Association Opt out of marketing mail for catalogs, and offers for magazines, credit, bank, retail, donations,cable/phone and mail addressed to current resident.

Contacting the companies online seems a lot faster than my old way of calling them directly. I have already requested to be removed from the mailing lists of over 20 companies. I am too late to stop the holiday catalogs but will receive fewer catalogs in about 90 days.