Riot 4 Austerity

Gasoline

If we want to get to a 90% reduction from the impact of the average American we need to know where we started. For the past six months I have been actively tracking our gasoline, electric, natural gas, and water usage.  Today I am going to cover our current gasoline usage.

Amount […]

Energy

If you’re looking to stock up on food and other grocery items, Amazon.com’s subscribe and save
program is one I’m really coming to like. You can order whatever they have and decide how often to get it.
For example, I get a case of Kleenex (we have allergies) every six months. They send an email before they […]

Water

I just ran across an interesting site called Window Farms. The idea is to use the light and space of a vertical window to raise food plants in:

Their blog is quite fun to read, and gave me some ideas about what to do with a couple of windows in my house.

Food

Last month, my “one small change” was to eat dinner every night at home. The month was quite a success–more than I could have predicted.There were a few rough spots, but not many. On one afternoon, I was craving take-out pizza as we came home from a…

Waste

Okay. I am not talking about visiting people, but rather that monthly friend that comes to visit most women. After a 5 year hiatus from my visits, I was recently reintroduced to the joys of menstruation. I was one of those lucky few who have no sign or hint of menstruation during nursing — thus […]

Cooking/Heating

Inspired by my experience with the Dark Days Eat Local challenge, I am now participating in the far easier One Local Summer — participants agree to cook at least one meal per week entirely out of local ingredients, excluding salt, spices, and cooking oil. For the purposes of this, I’m defining “local” as “from within […]

Consumer Goods

homemade entertainment: no tv and no computer games