The “miracle” cleaner: rubbing alcohol

The rag I was using immediately came away completely disgusting with dirt in the perfect shape my hand had been on the other side of it. I used an entire bottle of rubbing alcohol to clean the whole couch as well as 4 rags. But now that it’s clean it all looks like the first patch I did.

Results:

This one definitely works, just be sure to open all of the windows in the room you are cleaning in. Taking a brush (I used a clothes brush that takes off hair and other lint) and rubbing it over the fabric to bring the fibers back up also helps to take out any matting that occurred during the cleaning as well as make your cleaning look more even and less patchy. Overall, it’s cheap, fairly environmentally friendly, easy, and worth trying.

To put it simply, this book made me want to drop everything I was doing, grab some hiking boots and a much lighter pack than the one she carries, and get hiking. “Wild” is not a how-to guide for surviving the trail, but rather an interesting and thought provoking look at what pushed one woman, Cheryl Strayed, to hike for months on her own in the high mountains that follow the Pacific Coast.

Is your dedication to only buying organic food actually supporting large corporations? Do you really know all of the ingredients in your organic food? What does the label really mean and what are we all eating?


A recent New York Times article, “Has Organic Been Oversized,” delved into the business of organic foods and shed light on some of these questions. 

The fact is, organic food has become a wildly lucrative business for Big Food and a premium-price-means-premium-profit section of the grocery store. The industry’s image — contented cows grazing on the green hills of family-owned farms — is mostly pure fantasy. Or rather, pure marketing. Big Food, it turns out, has spawned what might be called Big Organic.

Bear Naked, Wholesome & Hearty, Kashi: all three and more actually belong to the cereals giant Kellogg. Naked Juice? That would be PepsiCo, of Pepsi and Fritos fame. And behind the pastoral-sounding Walnut Acres, Healthy Valley and Spectrum Organics is none other than Hain Celestial, once affiliated with Heinz, the grand old name in ketchup.

Over the last decade, since federal organic standards have come to the fore, giant agri-food corporations like these and others — Coca-Cola, Cargill, ConAgra, General Mills, Kraft and M&M Mars among them — have gobbled up most of the nation’s organic food industry. Pure, locally produced ingredients from small family farms? Not so much anymore.

For more food for thought, continue reading the article.

One of the most annoying things is spam email and junk mail. I can’t stand the constant influx of spam email from things I have never signed up for and sometimes even heard of. While procrastinating today I emptied my spam box, but instead of hitting delete all like I usually do, I went through and unsubscribed to each one.

I felt so good after clearing it all out that I realized it was time to do the same for our mailbox at home. Most days there is no actual real mail, just a bunch of catalogs and other junk that we take straight from the mailbox to the recycling bin. On average, people receive 41 pounds of unwanted or “junk” mail every year, and 44 percent of that goes unopened (http://www.41pounds.org/impact/).

On the back of every catalog is a number to call if you no longer wish to receive it. If you already have an online account with the company there is often a box online that you can uncheck to stop receiving their mailings.

It may take a few phone calls, but I am tired of having all the clutter and junk, not to mention the enormous amount of waste.

For tips and steps on how to get started, go to Better Paper.

As I drove to work this morning the ground was covered in fine layers of ash and large chunks of debris. Entire streets looked as if parades had come through and left trash everywhere while others were so covered in soot the white lines on the street were a dark grey that nearly blended into the street.


Even though the scene appears to be the remnants of a massive fire, in reality it is what my neighborhood looks like after the Fourth of July. My city is one of two in the area that allow “safe and sane” fireworks. What this really means is that people waste hundreds of dollars to light chemicals and plastics on fire for hours on end. Many people invest in illegal fireworks that shoot into the air and explode for the entire valley to see. 


During the peak of the night I was dragged out of the house for a short walk around the block. The air was so thick with burning smoke that I could barely see the parked cars that lined the streets. My throat and eyes burned with every inhalation, and my ears rang with every explosion. I found myself wanting to crawl under my bed and hide like my cat was.


At work this morning a few of us were talking about how loud and damaging the fireworks in our cities were. The discussion went from the environmental harm and the difficulty we had sleeping the night before to all of the waste. Such a waste of materials. Of money. What if we gave all of the money our cities spend on firework shows to schools instead? What if people didn’t waste their money on a lights worth of pyrotechnics, but instead donated resources to their local schools or a fund that would help to build a community space like a park? 


How do we move past the idea that we need to explode things and cause complete havoc to celebrate a momentous occasion? 

I have always loved the library. When I was little my mom and I used to go with a canvas bag and fill it to the brim. Within a day we would be finished with all of the books and I would be begging to go back. It was to the point where all of the librarians knew me and I could instantly recognize a new book on the shelf.

Yesterday a film I made last year won an award at the Genesis Film Festival. It was unexpected, but pretty cool. Check it out.

While packing I have come to realize just how many items I have been holding on to that don’t serve any purpose other than to remind me of something. I keep finding magazines with that one great article I want to read again or ones that I think could be a potential place for me to work in the future. I also keep finding movie tickets and little keepsakes like the beautiful empty bottle of prosecco from my 21st birthday. 


Instead of trying to find room for all of this stuff and dragging it from school to my parents’ house and back again, I am letting go… sort of. I have been cutting out those articles that I really want to keep and putting them all in a single folder, a lot like my yoga binder. As for the keepsakes, the little tickets and notes from friends I am keeping, but the bigger items like the bottle will be digitized and stored with the rest of my pictures from that event. 

Through this entire week I think everyone in my apartment has become addicted to giving things away and cutting back. It feels amazing to let all of these things go and only keep what I really need.