Everything Must Go Part 3: Clothing

..., you thank the item for its service to you and “release it” to the thrift store. For KonMari, it all comes down to your emotional relationship with the item–your positive relationship, that is. Nothing is kept through guilt or false nostalgia. She doesn’t believe in following the more usual sorting advice, such as discarding anything you haven’t worn for a year, or doesn’t fit your current body shape, etc., but I also kept those ideas in my mind...

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Everything Must Go Part 5: The nitty gritty

...ral dusty old 12 oz bottles of homemade mead–a few of which were helpfully labeled, “Bad Mead?”–which have sat on a back shelf unloved and undrunk for many years, for so long the printer ink on the labels was fading. Far longer than any aging period. Erik caught me draining the bottles and just about had kittens. He’d planned on carbonating these bottles…someday…to see if that would improve the flavor and now I’d gone and ruined all of his work. H...

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Day to day, our decisions count

...unity doesn’t have a food co-op of any other sort, or a decent health food store with a good bulk bin selection, this might be a good way to buy cereals and oils and cleaning supplies at all those other sorts of things you can’t get at a farmers’ market. In the kitchen We can commit to not wasting food. We waste about 1/3 of the food calories we grow, worldwide. Not only is that a waste of our soil wealth, water, money and fuel–not to mention a hu...

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Mulch, mulch, mulch!

...n leaves. Get your neighbor’s leaves, if you can. Spread them in place, or store them in bags until you need them. Pine needles work, too. Pull weeds before they go to seed and leave them on the ground to dry up and vanish into the mulch layer. I swear, it might look strange to see them laying there at first, all green and bright, but they’ll be pretty much invisible in a few days. Practice “chop n’ drop”. When you’re pruning bushes or trees, chop...

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Practical Backyard Chicken Biosecurity

...e decided to increase the times I change out the litter. Trips to the feed store The place I get my feed from is, to put it charitably, dirty. They also sell chickens, and pet birds that don’t look healthy. Unfortunately, it’s the only place that carries the feed I like (Modesto Milling). From what I learned at the conference, you need to be careful about trips to the feed store. I should change clothes, put them in the wash and take a shower befo...

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