Tip from the Green Housewife - Recreate Furniture

      Did you know, that according to the EPA, there are nine million tons of furniture in our nation's landfills? 9 million tons! I understand disposable diapers (to keep a mother's sanity!), but disposable furniture?! At least use it for firewood!
      For over, ummm, six year, ahem, I have been meaning to refinish our kitchen table. It is beautiful oak, given to us by a family I nannied for in Dallas, but it has always needed a new finish. The labor intensive process of sanding (and borrowing a sander!) and varnishing has intimidated me into years of procrastination. Then about a week ago, I was inspired. I was painting a wooden box with the "Solas" from the Reformation (another post), and had some gold acrylic paint left over. I decided to rub it into the table to cover up all of the flaws in the finish, and then calligraphy one of my favorite verses on top of it. It was an uncontrollable creative urge, a leftover from childhood when I would sneakily color designs on the inside of my dresser, trying not to get caught.  (I figured if I messed up the table, the finish was already bad and I always buy a table cloth). I typed out the words on Word, as I am still learning the font (Edwardian), put down some masking tape for straight lines, and started to paint!  Here is the final result (which still needs a varnish!):

    Who says frugal living has to be joyless?!!!

Invasion of the Argentine Ants - Part Two

        First thing Monday morning, after killing off at least fifty ants in the shower, I called and left a message for our landlords that we had a terrible ant invasion, and could they please send an exterminator as soon as possible. Not hearing anything back, I also sent them an email that evening. I continued killing the ants as I saw them (every few hours), and I also removed everything from the bathroom cupboards because they were pouring in them, climbing all over our towels and soap - everything. Desperate to do what I could to get rid of them in the meantime, I saw a recipe for borax and sugar and water - they drink the stuff and it poisens them - I won't explain how. I put it in the bathroom cupboards and in the kitchen where they were congregating.
        The next day they got back to us, and said they would send one of "their guys" (we rent from a nursery) to kill the ants outside! I told them our problem was inside, but they said that should prevent anymore from coming inside. It will probably just drive more inside, I thought. It was Wednes before sending someone, and as I suspected, it just made the problem worse. They came pouring in, especially the bathroom cupboards, and I even found a few on our bed!
       I was beginning to feel like Leiningen Against the Ants. I started scouring the internet, trying to figure out ways to get rid of the enemy before they overtook the house :). I figured out that the kind of ant that we were dealing with was an Argentine Ant - they have about one queen for every couple hundred ant, reproduce very quickly, and are thus extremely hard to get rid of. I learned that peppermint oil and tea tree oil are supposed to deter them, and that the best way to kill them, organically without chemicals that is, is with something called Terro. Terro is basically a mixture of syrup and borax, with just the right formula to kill them slowly. They eat the stuff, take it back to their nests, and distribute it to the larvae.


I am not this talented of a photographer! Photo credits go to "Alex Wild Photography"

        Peppermint oil made the house smell good, and tea tree oil decided did not, but they did little to deter the ants. The Terro worked well - too well - it began attracting more ants from the walls or outside! Meanwhile, we called our landlords every day, letting them know that we needed them to come spray the inside of the house, as soon as possible. They assured us they would call the exterminator, but Thursday and Friday passed with no word of when they were coming.
       Friday I reached a breaking point. My wonderful husband said we should go stay the night in a hotel, so we could figure out what we were going to do. Getting away from the little guys, we decided that if our landlords did not send someone, our options were either to call an exterminator ourselves, or threaten to move if they did not send one and be willing to follow through. We both decided that we did not want to move - we have a good rent, Pete can walk to work, and live in the beautiful countryside-  and that if we had to spend money on an exterminator from the emergency fund, that would be ok. But we decided to give it a few more days for our landlords to come through.
     We kept calling them everyday. They told us that they were having a hard time getting the exterminators to call them back. Finally they called and said they would send them on Wednesday, the day that I had to get a wisdom tooth removed! We weren't taking any chances so we told them to come out anyways. The guy from Western Exterminators told us that he would have come sooner, but the nursery had owed them money that they just payed that morning!
     After getting my wisdom tooth removed, we had to stay out all afternoon so that the poison could dissipate. I got a lot of sympathy from people at Pete's Starbucks, where we hung out and waited. But we came home and I was able to sleep off the vicadine with a house free of ants!

Invasion of the Argentine Ants - Part One

        A month ago, while I was away visiting my friend Beth and her sweet baby Samantha, Pete called me and told me, "We had an ant invasion, but don't worry, I am keeping things clean and killing them." I didn't think much of it, other than feeling a little sorry for Pete because he was so busy, but happy that I would come home to a clean house. And I came home to a very clean house - not a crumb in sight! but there...were....lots....of....ants. In the shower, in the kitchen, even a few coming in through a light socket in the bedroom. Which was weird, because like I said, the house was spotless!

       So we killed them with some Murphy's Oil Soap and cleaned them up. The next morning I woke up to  find hundreds of them swimming in our Brita water filter, and hundreds more coming in and out. The little buggers weren't after food, they were after water! We killed those. Then I went to take a shower and saw hundreds more in the shower. Pete had to go to work, so I very bravely killed them myself.

    I went about my normal routine, and a few hours later noticed more ants coming in the bedroom. So I put child safety locks in all the sockets. That should help, I thought. But then a few hours later, hundreds more ants were in the kitchen. Pete came home from work, and I was trying to not be frustrated at him for how many ants there were when he had said it wasn't that bad, but he assured me the problem was getting worse. We talked about calling our land lords to send an exterminator, but I didn't want to breathe the toxic fumes, nor did I want to pay the hundreds of dollars for an organic exterminator. So we decided to give it the weekend, and see if we could track down where the ants were coming in and plaster all of the holes they were coming in through.

     No success. Everytime we plastered an entrance, the ants found another crack or crevice. And we tracked their path back to under the kitchen and bathroom sink, and inside the kitchen and bathroom.   There were literally thousands. They must be in the walls, we figured.  When we came home from church and found hundreds swarming the refrigerator and freezer, I broke down crying. We decided to call our landlord first thing Monday morning.

(Stay tuned for Part Two)

50 Things in 201 Days

Since finding out I have adrenal fatigue two months ago, I have been forcing myself to go at a tortoise pace. (I'm not supposed to spend more energy than I actually have - HA!). So I have not done much with this blog or with the things on my "50 Things" list. In fact, I have decided that I WILL finish this list, but I am giving myself two years instead of one. I am determined to complete these goals, but I don't think I will have enough energy for all of them in 2011. Especially the exercise goals - if I walked 60 miles a month right now, I would be in bed the rest of the time, and I would have to tell Pete, "Sorry babe, no dinner, I have to reach my exercise goal!" (On a rather strange note, I have actually lost 5 pounds NOT exercising much at all, and introducing meat, and I mean at almost every meal! Best diet plan I've ever been on - loving it!)

     But I have managed to cross another goal off of my list, for which I feel like singing:

30. Have trash men pick up old broken televisions and rotting bedframe

Not only did we get rid of the broken televisions (there were actually two- loooonnng story), we took them, as my friend Stephanie suggested, to a recycling center.  And Pete used a pick ax to save the wood from the bedframe, part of which he used to build my garden bed. So I one-upped my own list for once ;).

What are your goals? Keep after them - even if at a tortoise pace- you will accomplish them eventually if you don't give up!

Thursday's Tip from the Green Housewife - Make Wedding Decorations from Recycled Dress

When I was in college, we had a "banquet" every semester. I always went with my girl friends because I was never asked by a boy I was interested in.  That is, until Pete asked me! I had little spare change at the time, so I bought the dress I wore at an estate sale for 8$. It was classy - a long, sleek, dark purplish-blue satin, not the sort of dress you would hate for your Aunt Matilda to buy you second-hand at Goodwill, and was one of my favorite dresses until it tore in one of the armpits beyond repair! I loved it so much that I couldn't bear to throw it away, even before I realized how much clothing gets thrown into our landfills. Over the years, I've used the material to wrap Christmas presents, make bows, and just recently to make rosettes for a flower girl basket and wreath for my 5 year old niece Julie for my sister Melissa's wedding.
      The basis for the wreath was an old artificial flower garland I used to hang in my kitchen when I was in my "country Victorian" decorating phase. It was very tacky, with huge fake looking pink roses, but I saved it as my style evolved because I knew it would come in handy someday ;). The light blue flowers I bought at Goodwill - about 50 of them for 2 dollars! Here is the final result, with some pearls added for flare:



The basket I also bought at Goodwill, for a dollar. Since it was such a pretty basket, I decided to just decorate the handles with the roses.

 My niece was very happy with it, and so was my sister. With all of the craziness before the wedding, I was only able to get this one shot of my niece:

     

What are your green or frugal tips for reusing cloth?

Thursday's Tip from the Green Housewife - Use Scrap Wood to Build a Raised Bed

This year I've started my first ever vegetable garden. My husband's Aunt Jill was dropping off some extra seeds at our house, and after seeing how many gopher's we have, recommended that we build a raised bed. I am determined at some point to try to get rid of the little buggers in some humanitarian way, but for this Spring, a raised bed was the only reasonable solution.
       The first step was to clear a level area for the raised bed to be put on.

       Then my wonderful husband Pete built me the bed. We went to Home Depot and spent 20$ on chicken wire and nails, and our gardening budget was 20$. Then we looked at wood and saw that it was going to be 60$ for good pine wood for a 4'by 8' bed.  The cheaper wood would have been at least 25$, which was still more than we wanted to spend. We decided to ask the nursery which owns the property we rent if we could use wood from their scrap pile, and they said it would be fine. Pete had  to go to a lot of work to nail some boards together in random ways, but the finished result was great! He saved us at least 25$, and saved some trees at the same time. I am in love :). 

 

These are all the plants I have planted so far - I have some growing inside in Dixie cups that are too fragile to plant just yet. I also need to put in more dirt, which I am going to do next week when I get some horse manure from our friends the Werners. So far we have onions, zucchini, cucumbers, tomatoes, and oregano, with some carrots, cantaloupe, basil, and more tomatoes and cucumbers to come!

Here's a close up of the zucchini:

And the onions:



What are your green or frugal gardening tips?

Tip from the Green Housewife - Repel Pests So You Don't Have to Kill Them

        I think of myself as a relatively tender-hearted person. I don't like to see people or animals suffering, and will do what I can to defend the underdog.  If a ladybug or honeybee flies into our house, as they often do since we live in the country, I open our window which is missing the screen until they fly out. Pete laughs, and is sometimes annoyed, at my attempts to save animals lives, especially the ones that involve him. When we were camping in the Ozarks several years ago, I made him get multiple turtles off this highway we were hiking past - it was a very backwoods highway with few cars so Pete wasn't at any danger of getting killed, but the turtles, being turtles, were :).
            But there are some creatures that disgust me. I would shock my college philosophy professor Fred Blackburn if he knew how I "shut up my bowels of compassion" against certain of God's creation.  One of those creatures are rats. Living in the country, and with some next door neighbors who are not willing or able to take care of their yard, we have had some major trouble with rats this year. Before we knew we even had rats, they had ruined our car battery and pooped all over stuff in our garage. Our neighbors (not the ones with the yard) have even seen two rats as big as cats out at night! Disgusting and frightening at the same time.


Thankfully, the rats are not prolific enough that I could get a close-up.
This rat is a google image ;)

          It seemed that there was nothing else to do but put out some traps and poison. While I was gone visiting my sister Erica for a week, Pete got rid of the box spring which I discovered them to be sleeping in right before I left. (What wonderful timing! I thoroughly enjoyed spending time with my niece and nephew, but in the back of my mind was always, "I have to go home to clean up rat poop!") He also caught a rather large rat in one of the traps and disposed of it. I was so glad I did not have to see that rat - I would have felt so guilty and sad, even though we had to get rid of them somehow! He also found one hole they were getting in through, and blocked it up with cement blocks, but we are unsure if there is another way they can get in (we share a garage with the neighbors who rent the house in front of us.)

         When I got back from seeing my sis, I knew it was time for war with the rats, but in my heart of hearts I wanted to come up with a truce to prevent any further casualties. The garage had to be cleaned of any remaining rat droppings, and I had heard that the smell of ammonia repells rodents because it smells like their predators pee. So I put on hiking boots to prevent being bitten, long pants, gloves, and filled a bucket with ammonia water. I swept up all the remaining evidence of the rats (and thankfully didn't see any!), moved stuff out of the way, threw stuff out that they had damaged, and then mopped the garage floor with ammonia water. I felt like taking a two hour shower after this two hour ordeal, but I think it worked because I have not seen anymore droppings, and no more rats have been caught in traps. Fred, you would be proud of my pacifistic approach :).

What are your green tips to repel pests? 

Thursday's Tip from the Green Housewife - Entertain Kids in the Kitchen

Welcome to my two new readers, Philip and banctecj. I hope you find many interesting and helpful things to read here! 

Last week I was visiting my sister Erica who has Adrenal Fatigue and has been having fainting spells. Her husband was out of town, and she has two little ones at home and a teenager in school, so she needed someone with her. She has three of the most adorable kids (not that I am biased), and they LOVE to help with the cooking and cleaning - I've really never seen anything like it! Julie, who is five, begged everyday to help me with the dishes, and Timmy who is two was always wanting to "Spray, spray" Murphy's Oil Soap on the wooden floors for mopping.  Erica is doing a great job raising them.

          They love, love, love to cook! I was helping my sister rescue some old beans that wouldn't cook right (I had read just recently that the American Test Kitchen says to soak them in salt over night to soften them, and then to rinse them very thoroughly before cooking them in the slow cooker the next day.) Julie especially was fascinated by the entire process. She helped me soak them, rinse them,  cook them in the crock pot, blend them in the blender, and finally add the seasonings (Timmy joined in on this process).

Here they are stirring.

                                                      The pink zebra is also helping

Timmy kept trying to eat the "choclat"

My sis makes gluten free chocolate cake from beans, which tastes truly amazing

But that is another post

                                                                Look at that mug!!

I feel like now I know one clue to how I will manage as a Mom - involve my kids in whatever I am doing, if they are interested. That way they will get the attention they need, and I will be able to get done the cooking and cleaning without feeling bad about not playing with them, and then we will have plenty of time left over to "play"!

What are your green or frugal tips for entertaining young children?

Thursday's Tip from the Green Housewife - Ways to Use Up Bread

Thank you last week's readers for all of your suggestions and support about my bird problem! I have tried the rubber snake and silver to scare away the birds, and I think it is helping, so thank you!

Lately I have been trying to get in the routine of making homemade bread (even though I can't eat it!) because it is more healthy and less expensive, and I'm sure tastes much better - I am assuming! - than store bought bread. I enjoy the feel of kneading bread - it is one of my favorite things to do, but with all the work that goes into it, I do not want one morsel wasted! So I try to find ways to use up homemade bread that is going stale.
            One dish I have discovered to do this with is savory bread pudding. I take about 8 cups worth of bread, dry it out in the oven for about 10 minutes or so, and then beat together 3 eggs and 3 cups of milk. Then I add whatever I have on hand - this time I added thyme from my garden, some bits of bacon, some pieces of onion, and some bits of blue cheese that had been in the fridge for, ahem, a very long time.  Here is the result:

Pete loved it, and so did some picky teenagers at youth group last week!      
         I have also been experimenting with sourdough - my first experience was a flop as the bread did not rise at all! I didn't want to just throw away the loaf, so I made french onion soup and used it as a bread bowl.



How do you use up stale or not risen bread?

Question from the Green Housewife - How Do You Keep Birds from Ruining Your Garden?

I have always been a bird lover, since I was a little girl when I would look at pictures of birds in "Audobon's North American Bird's Guide".  Even Alfred Hitcock's movie "Birds" didn't weaken my love for my feathered friends - when I was a teenager, we went camping by the Northern California seaside, and I was so excited to recognize the call of Hitchcocks birds. One of the reasons I love living where we live now, out in the country, is in the Spring you can hear birds singing all day long.
      But lately, these avian creatures have been taking over our yard - they are eating the seeds from my garden, and I had to stop hanging clothes on the line because they keep pooping on our clothes! I caught a beautiful bluebird eating my newly planted squash seeds the other morning:

I do not want to develop the same disdain for birds that Wodehouse's Freddie Widgeon developed for cats, so I am trying to find humane solutions to scaring them away from my garden and my clothesline. So I am going to try moving a scarecrow around the yard (at night so they don't catch on) and see what that does. I sort of expect them to roost on it after a few days, but we shall see.
      How do you keep birds from your garden and clothesline? Any tips would be appreciated!

Tip from the Green Housewife - Make Meat Pie from Freezer Leftovers

The more I hear about the world-wide food crisis, about how many millions of children go hungry each day, the more I am convicted to try to put a stop to food waste in my own kitchen at least.  Jesus Himself, who created all things (John 1, Colossians 1), and who after multiplying 5 loafs of bread and two fish to feed 5000 people, had His disciples gather together the leftovers (John 6:12). His words were, "Gather together the broken pieces that are left over, so that nothing is wasted."  I intend to follow better in the steps of my Creator, Redeemor, and Lord, and be a better steward of what He has given me.  Food not wasted can translate not only into less toxic gases in our landfills, but less money wasted on groceries which can be used for paying down debt, or saving for emergencies, or actually feeding hungry children in Africa!
     Cleaning out our freezer, I found the dough for half a pie, leftover from last Christmas or Thanksgiving. I defrosted the dough and added the needed flour and butter to make it enough for a whole pie :). Then I put it in a pie pan and let it sit while deciding what to fill it with. I decided to make meat pie with leftovers from the middles of about 4 sandwiches Pete brought home from his job - last week I used the bread from those same sandwiches to make bruschetta. I cut the lunch meat and cheese into one inch pieces, and mixed in three eggs, half a cup of milk, a quarter cup of chopped onion, a quarter cup of chopped mushrooms, and some salt and pepper. I baked it on 350 for twenty five minutes. Here is the result:

Pete was in heaven, and I didn't have to cook dinner for two nights! Apart from the freezer leftovers that I could have tossed, I spent less than a dollar on this pie, and that includes using free-range eggs :).

What are your green or frugal tips?

Thursday's Tip from the Green Housewife - Make Bruschetta from Old, Stale Bread

Pete used to bring home a lot of sandwiches from work which otherwise would have been thrown out. But as our freezer is full of them at this point, and he is tired of eating them after three plus years, he stopped rescuing very many from being sentenced to the landfills. (Enough food is wasted in the United States to fill the Rose Bowl every three days!) I decided that something should be done about that this week, and am trying to come up with creative recipes with the leftover sandwiches in our freezer, to motivate him to rescue more food from becoming poisonous gases in our landfills.
            So yesterday I made Bruschetta out of the sandwich bread. I removed the meat in the middle of the about 4 sandwiches, let the bread defrost, and then cut the bread into 4 inch pieces, and dipped the pieces in a mix of olive oil, salt, pepper, rosemary, and thyme. I cooked them at 350 degrees for about 6 minutes, flipped them over, and put them back in the oven for another 7-8 minutes. Pete ate them so quickly almost half were gone before I could take this picture; I didn't even have time to make the tomato sauce to go with them!

       

    What are your green or frugal tips?

Thursday's Tip from the Green Housewife - Pick Your Neighbors' Fruit for the Homeless

         In San Diego, there are at least 8,500 homeless people, and 2,200 of them are children. Most of them, obviously enough, do not get adequate nutrition. Meanwhile, many people in San Diego have gorgeous citrus and avocado trees which do not get fully, or even partially, harvested! Within walking distance of my house, I have counted 20 plus citrus trees which are full of fruit falling and rotting on the ground.

         Here are four bags of grapefruit, 1 bag of avocado, and 1 bag of oranges and tangerines "gleaned" from our friends Jennifer's and Heather's trees:

Thanks guys! Pete and I are going to take them tonight to a homeless shelter downtown where a homeless women and children often stay. Hopefully all that vitamin C will help strengthen their immunities during this very difficult cold and flu season.

What are your green or frugal tips?       

Thursday's Tip from the Green Housewife - Make Pancakes With Juicer Pulp

       In an attempt to conquer bronchitis, this week I decided to go on a "raw food feast" (not fast, because I can eat as much raw food as I like!) and have been using my 30$ Walmart juicer up a storm. The only problem with my 30$ Walmart juicer is that unlike 300$ juicers, it produces so much pulp that I don't know what to do with it all. Last year, I made yards of organic soil with juicer pulp, using a technique called "trench composting" (but that is another post!). I am not up to digging a trench right now, so I am trying to come up with other uses for all this good pulp.
        So tonight, with leftover grapefruit and orange pulp, I made citrus pancakes for my husband Pete. First I cooked bacon, so I could use the leftover grease to cook the pancakes in and conserve on butter. (I know that sounds incredibly unhealthy, but Pete loves it when I go on these "raw food feasts" because I can cook him whatever he wants as we are eating two different menus).

 Then I came up with the following recipe:
        3 cups of white flour
        2 Tbsp sugar (grapefruit is tart!)
        2 Tbsp baking powder
Mix together dry ingredients and add:

        3 cups of grapefruit and orange pulp
        1 cup milk
        2 eggs

Then I cooked about a 3rd of the batter in the bacon grease (I ended up having to use a little butter), which made 7 large pancakes, enough for Pete's dinner and breakfast tomorrow. Tomorrow I will make the rest of the pancakes and freeze them for later. I topped the pancakes with butter and homemade marmalade. Pete said they tasted fluffy and citrusy. I tried not to envy him.

Here is Pete's dinner on the left, and mine on the right:

Between us, we had a full-balanced meal.

Which dinner would you choose? 

Thursday's Tip from the Green Housewife - Make Your Own Spray Starch

Call me old-fashioned, but I love the feel and smell of freshly starched clothes (especially clothes that have been dried on a clothesline).  However, I do not like paying 3$ a can for spray starch, nor do I like the idea of filling our landfills with aerosal cans which, if a fire breaks out, can easily explode and injure landfill workers and firefighters. And finding a way to recycle them is just plain difficult.

My solution is to make my own spray starch using water, corn starch, and an old bottle which originally contained "linen water" that I have been reusing for years.

I simply fill the bottle with hot water, add a teaspoon of corn starch, and shake hard! In less than a minute and for pennies, I have enviromentaly safe spray starch.  I may try a recipe which calls for boiling the water on the stove first - it is supposed to prevent clumping. I may also experiment with adding drops of different types of essential oils for fragrance.

What are your green or frugal tips? 

Tuesdays Tip from the Green Housewife - Harvest Your Fruit Before It Rots

One of the things that I love most about our carriage house in the country (my Anne Shirley-esqe way of describing our rented-one-bedroom-flat-on-top-of-a-garage) is the orange tree planted next to our front porch. In the spring it provides us with beautiful white blossoms and their distinctively sweet, citrusy fragrance. In the winter it provides us with oranges so juicy they have ruined supermarket oranges for Pete and I forever.

So why are these oranges rotting on the ground?

I haven’t been quick enough this year to pick the oranges - last year when money was tighter, we barely had a single one wasted!  Today I picked about 30 oranges - Pete and I will eat about half of that this week, and the other half will be given away. I plan on picking some of the really ripe ones every day, and giving them away to coworkers, neighbors, and  our "Take it Or Leave It" box at church. I may drop some off at the food bank at Shadow Mountain Community Church, near where Pete and I work.

If you have a fruit tree, harvest the fruit this week before it spoils and use it instead of buying fruit at the grocery store. Whatever is left, give it away! I'm sure that a friend or coworker who is struggling financially,  or a homeless shelter or food bank, would be thrilled to receive it!

What are your green or frugal tips?

Tuesdays Tip from the Green Housewife - Be Your Own Tailor

Last year, my sister-in-law Gina went from a respectable size 14 (at least I hope this size is respectable) to a svelte size 4. She gave me a pair of designer jeans that no longer fit her, and they fit me perfectly except for being 6 inches too long! Not wanting to spend the money on a tailor, and not owning a sewing machine yet, I decided to be adventurous and tailor them myself by hand.

           So I measured them according to a pair of jeans I had tailored a few years ago, and double checked that length by trying them on. Then I cut off several inches of extra fabric which was in the way, and pinned where I wanted the hem. Over the next several months, I slowly hand stiched the hem while relaxing and watching movies at night with Pete. I finally finished them this week while recovering from a nasty bug, which means I can cross one more thing off  my "50 things" list and I have the satisfaction of wearing something I tailored by hand! In this day of fast fashion, where Chinese workers are paid as little as 12-15 cents an hour to churn out cheap clothing for Western buyers who discard this slave labor in landfills for next season's fashion, it feels good to "mend and make do".

Here is the final result:

What are your green or frugal tips?

Frugal Tip from the Green Housewife - Make Do While you Wait

(Got to have a sense of humor)

When Pete and I got married, we had no dresser for our clothes, so Pete's mom gave us this beautiful oak chest made by Pete's grandfather. 

I hate to admit it, but for years we have just piled our clothes in it in a huge mound and would dig through it when we wanted to wear something. I have dreams of someday buying a beautiful "Wardrobe" like from "The Lion, Witch, and The Wardrobe" which could be a heirloom passed down to our grandchildren. And in the meantime, I don't want to buy some cheap dresser which would eventually be put in a landfill somewhere. (Did you know that "the amount of upholstered furniture we are throwing away into landfills has increased six times from the 1960 figures to those of 2008" ?"http://hollybarbo.wordpress.com/2009/06/03/landfill-furniture-part-2/ 
       Well, I finally got sick of our clothes mound while "New Year's Cleaning" this year, and not having it in the budget to buy my dream "Wardrobe", I decided to get creative.  I spent 15$ of a 25$ gift card I got for Christmas from one of my preschool kids, and I bought a 12" by 10" shelf.  Then I laid it horizontally on the bottom of the chest to create dividers. To make everything fit, I rolled up Pete's T-shirts like you would a towel and put them in the dividers.
Here is the finished result:

So now while we wait to afford my dream "wardrobe", we can have some semblance of functionality!


What are your "green" or "frugal" tips?