Time Banking

November 12, 2008

...of our hard earned capital away from the Wall Street types? Get ready for time banking. With time banking, you get together with your local community members, friends and family and exchange hours rather than currency. Time Bank USA describes the concept succinctly: “For every hour you spend doing something for someone in your community, you earn one Time Dollar. Then you have a Time Dollar to spend on having someone do something for you.” Time b...

Read…

Non-Toxic Cleaning for the Home

Mrs. Homegrown

May 20, 2019

Cleaning, Domesticus, Miscellaneous, Tidying up

11 Comments

...ing a variety of household and garden pests, see UC Davis’ Integrated Pest Management Guide: http://ipm.ucanr.edu/PMG/menu.homegarden.html Bugs are usually a management problem. An ounce of prevention spares a pound of poison! Use window screens. Keep counters and floors clear of food, put away pet food after feeding time. Don’t let garbage sit. Insect sprays and bombs are toxic and unnecessary—literally overkill. If you are bothered by ants, for...

Read…

Deep Work

Mr. Homegrown

April 11, 2016

Reviews, Thoughtstylings

3 Comments

...even when you’re waiting in line at the post office. Rather than schedule time away from distraction Newport suggests scheduling time to give into temptation. Go ahead and surf the web, just do it in a scheduled block of time. We are, after all, human and need to view the occasional cat video (or catch up on Root Simple blog posts!). But we can’t let those cat videos define our schedules and inhibit our ability to focus on a single task. Newport...

Read…

We are all gardeners

Mrs. Homegrown

April 2, 2015

Back to the Garden, Gardening, Thoughtstylings

13 Comments

...them. Second, remember that we are all influencers. As I said above, every time we vote, every time we buy something, each time we take a trip or choose a place to live, we are influencing the landscape and we are influencing people who have more power over the land than we do. (An aside: At this point I suspect permaculture folks are going to say what I’m talking about when I say gardening is permaculture, and I won’t disagree. But I’ll also say...

Read…

Making It

Mr. Homegrown

April 26, 2011

Publications

12 Comments

...ctions for a wide range of projects, from building a 99-cent solar oven to making your own laundry soap to instructions for brewing beer. Making It is the go-to source for post-consumer living activities that are fun, inexpensive and eminently doable. Our goal in this book was to provide really stripped down, simple projects that use only inexpensive, easy to source materials. We also tried to use the same materials and ingredients over and over a...

Read…