There is a vast amount of gravel in front of our house (don’t get me wrong, I’d rather have the gravel than grass, since it doesn’t need to be watered or mowed).  It doesn’t seem as vast until you start trying to pull all the weeds out of it.  Over the years, dust has blown into the gravel and made it a great spot for weeds to sprout, and the former owners were pretty much oblivious to them.  We have been pulling weeds all summer out there (our son knows that whenever we go out to get them mail, we have to pull 20 weeds first, and he says “weeds, first” whenever we go out front).  I spent two hours doing nothing but weeding a couple days ago, and I made it through about 1/10 of the gravel.

So I went searching for another solution.  I refuse to buy any sort of commercial herbicide – our property is strictly organic and staying that way.  But I found several articles about vinegar working as an herbicide.  I use vinegar to clean our whole house, so I buy it in gallon jugs at Costco and always have several on hand.  It’s inexpensive, but most importantly, I don’t have to worry about harmful effects – to us or the environment – from using it.  Our son went out with me to help me spray it, which definitely wouldn’t have been possible if we’d been using something created in a lab at Monsanto.

We started with a small patch to see how well it would work.  That was yesterday morning, and when I checked this morning, all the weeds in that area are completely dead.  The weather here has been really hot (nearly 100), sunny, and dry, which is supposed to be the best weather for using vinegar to kill weeds.  Obviously I’m very happy with the results, and will be spraying all the gravel with vinegar over the next few days.  I’ll pull out the bigger weeds that are easy to grab, and spray the small ones.  Hopefully my vinegar herbicide will continue to be successful!

Now about that furnace…  That is our big expense of the summer.  Well, that and central air conditioning.  We decided that we wanted to have air conditioning installed after spending a good part of last summer melting.  Our number one criteria for a new system was energy efficiency.  But we soon found out that the efficiency of the air conditioning would be limited by the efficiency of our current furnace, as the two systems are linked together.  Our furnace is only 11 years old – definitely not ancient – but it’s 80% efficient, and has a single stage fan (basically, it’s always blowing at 100% capacity).  So 20% of the energy from the natural gas the furnace burns is venting to the outside, and the fan is drawing more electricity than really needed to keep the house comfortable.  Replacing the furnace with a new 95% efficient, two-stage model would increase the SEER rating on our air conditioner from 13.7 to 16 (thus qualifying it for the federal tax credit).  It would also mean that only 5% of our natural gas consumption would be wasted, as opposed to 20% with our existing furnace.  And the new furnace will use about one fifth of the electricity of the old one for the fan.  We found this website to be very helpful while we were working on our pros/cons list regarding the furnace upgrade.

In addition, there are a boatload of rebates available to help pay for the high-efficiency furnace.  We’ll have to fork over almost $4000 for the furnace and $3000 for the air conditioner, but we’ll end up getting nearly $3000 in rebates from our state, the federal government, our electricity company, our gas company, and from the furnace manufacturer.  We’ll put the old furnace on Craigs List so that someone with an older, less efficient furnace can upgrade theirs too.

Because we’re going to have to pay upfront for everything and then wait for the rebates to come in, we’ll have to skip paying extra on our mortgage in August, and basically not spend money on anything other than food for a couple months.  But we’re ok with that.  The new furnace will make our air conditioner much more efficient, and our heating will be more efficient in the winter too.  Once the rebates and tax credits show up, we’ll only have spent about a thousand dollars more to have the air conditioner and the new furnace than we would have spent to just get the air conditioner.  And if our calculations are correct, the amount we’ll save in natural gas and electricity usage will be about $250/year.  So in four years, the furnace will have paid for itself.  After that, it will start paying us back.

Anybody else made the decision to put in a new, higher efficiency furnace, even when your current furnace was still working just fine?  It wasn’t an easy decision for us, but that’s what we came up with.

Tonight, I hit the jackpot.

One of our plans for the basement is a workout room.  For now, my husband and I both do our workouts in our bedroom, and our weights are stored under our bed.  It works, but since we have all that space downstairs, a workout room makes sense.  One of the things I wanted for it was big mirrors, as we both feel that mirrors help us maintain our form when we exercise.  But mirrors – especially big ones – are not cheap.  Tonight I found a free listing on Craigs List for two wall mirrors; each one is 3 feet by 8 feet.  I have no idea how much those would cost if we were to buy them new, but I’m sure the price tag would give me shivers.  Happily, all we have to do to get these is drive ten miles into town.  I was the first response the lady had, so they’re ours.

For the last few days, I’ve kept the local Craigs List free page open as a tab on my computer, and I just refresh it every few hours.  As long as you can resist a whole lot of stuff that you might like but don’t really need (since that equals clutter!), it’s a great way to find awesome deals as soon as they get listed.

In addition, I’ve been going through the house and really looking at our stuff.  Asking myself if we’ve used it lately, or if we could do without it.  The back of my car is full again with stuff to drop off at the thrift store next time I go to town, and it feels great.

Yesterday, I tackled a set of kitchen cabinets.  The cabinets where we store tea, coffee, some spices, baking stuff, random kitchen gadgets that rarely get used… sort of the catch-all cabinets.  I took everything out, and tossed the stuff that I never use.  There were spices that were more preservatives than spice – and that I knew I would never use again – but were somehow still lurking in the back of my cabinet.  There was a beautiful glass pitcher that we got as a wedding gift from friends of my in-laws and have used one time.  One time, and we’ve been married since 2003.  Regardless of how pretty the pitcher was, in our kitchen, it was taking up space.  Now it’s in my car to donate, and will hopefully end up in a home where it gets used often.  By the time I had finished, I had a large stack for the thrift store, and an equally large stack for the trash.  And my cabinet looks and feels SO much better.  I can find everything.  I know that everything in there is stuff that we regularly use.

A while ago, I started saving plain glass jars when they were empty, instead of putting them in the recycle bin.  Yesterday I cleaned off all of the labels, and transferred all of the stuff that was in plastic bags in my cabinet to the jars.  Cocoa, dried coconut, spices… all of the stuff that our health food store sells in bulk bags.  Now it’s all in pretty jars instead.  I made labels out of scrap paper and black ink and glued them to the jars.  I love how it looks with all the different jars, and it’s easy to tell if I’m running low on something.  And with the cabinet all cleaned out, I can see all of the jars at a glance.

Ah, kitchen decluttering.  Perfect activity for a cold, snowy weekend.  And it’s free, which is always a bonus in my book.

While I was browsing Kristina’s blog, I found this recipe that she shared for spinach burgers.  I didn’t have any cheese (we’re mostly vegan these days) so I made cashew cheese by blending cashews, water, garlic salt, apple cider vinegar, and some spices.  It turned out creamy and wonderful, and I added it to the spinach mixture in place of cheese.  The dish was fantastic, and smelled great while it was baking.  I didn’t have bread either, so I whipped up a batch of tortillas, and we had spinach burritos.  Very yummy – thanks for the inspiration Kristina!

I also came across this article last week, with 100 ways to recycle a t-shirt.  My favorite?  The diaper, of course!

My husband is hard at work in the backyard right now, building two more mini-greenhouses to put over our other garden beds.  We’ve had to cover them with tarps for the last couple nights, as it’s been below freezing.  So it will be nice to have them covered now as we head into the cold season.  He’s using a lot of scrap lumber that we got for free from a lumber yard (check around, if there’s one in your area, they might let you come in and pick up offcuts).  We had to buy several long 2x4s, but all of the shorter pieces were free.

We’re starting to wrap up our list of outdoor chores.  I’ve been moving gravel in the front yard for the last few weeks, and finally finished this week.  We have a huge front yard, and it was all grass when we got here (well, sort of – it hadn’t been watered or mowed in a very long time… but it was supposed to be grass).  We didn’t want to be watering and maintaining all of that grass, and decided to xeriscape a chunk of the yard instead.  The previous owners had purchased gravel to go along the driveway and between the street and the sidewalk.  They had also put gravel back by the fence, and had apparently over-ordered.  The excess was in the area by the fence, which was over a foot deep in places.  So I got out the wheelbarrow and shovel, and started moving gravel.  We bought weedblocker to put down under the gravel, and I’ve filled in roughly 400 square feet of yard with xeriscaping.  We planted a few low-water plants and grasses, and I put in a wavy edge along the gravel using some old bricks that the previous owners left.  Even the plants were mostly free – a neighbor didn’t want them any more, and offered them to us if we’d come over and dig them out of her yard.  I love our new front yard.  It’s still mostly grass, but not as much as it was before, and we paid almost nothing for the new landscaping.  I also got lots of good workouts by shoveling gravel, which was an extra bonus.

Hope you’re all having a good weekend!

A couple weeks after we moved in, a neighbor mentioned that she and her husband were remodeling their whole house, and were replacing all of their blinds with plantation shutters.  She asked if we needed any, and we told her about our kitchen window.  She offered us the entire stack of blinds, most of which we’ve since given to my parents for a house they are remodeling.  But one of the blinds was a perfect fit for our kitchen window.  It even matches the paint on the walls.  And it was free. 

He spent $58 on the grating (enough to make covers for both windows), and about $10 on the angle iron.  He ran out of angle iron on the second cover, so he’s been using scrap metal that we found in a dumpster behind a welding shop here in town.  He talked with the owners a few weeks ago, and they said that he’s welcome to dig through their scrap metal dumpster any time he wants.  So for the last couple weeks, he’s taken me over there on Friday nights, for a “dumpster date.”  He gets in and pulls out the good metal, and hands it out to me so that I can load it up in our wagon.  And he gets a kick out of telling all the neighbors what a romantic guy he is, taking his wife dumpster diving on Friday nights

He made his first project last week.  We had bought an umbrella for our patio, but had skipped the $50 umbrella stand, because my husband decided that would be a good place to try out his welding skills.  He welded together a chunk of old I-beam and a metal pipe, and they make a great umbrella stand:

I love it.  It’s unique, very effective, a great example of recycling, and very frugal.

The next project is window well covers.  Our basement windows don’t have well covers, and with a toddler, those are a must.  We were shocked to discover how expensive they are if you hire someone else to weld them for you.  We were finding prices of $300 – $400 per window (we have two).  My husband went to a metal supply shop last week and got all the supplies he needs to make both well covers for about $70 (angle iron and heavy duty grating).  By the time he’s finished with the window well covers, the welder and all its accessories will have more than paid for themselves.  And there are many more projects to come…

We also built new compost bins from recycled pallets and wood.  My husband found a place where they were giving away all sorts of good quality pallets, and he snagged a bunch.  He built two good sized compost bins, and we’re working away at building up a supply of compost again.  It will take a while to get back to what we had before we moved, but we’re on our way.

I’ve been scrubbing the basement floor, and have pretty much rid the house of the cat smell that was here when we arrived.  Luckily the cat smell was really only in the basement, and the floors down there are all concrete, which is easy to clean.  The stairs leading to the basement are carpeted, and the cat smell had made its way into the stairwell a bit.  For several days, I used a spray bottle to spray white vinegar onto the stairs, and then just let it dry.  This weekend we had a friend over and she said that she couldn’t smell anything at all (and she doesn’t have cats, so she’s a good judge).  Is there anything vinegar can’t do? 

I’ll leave you with a picture of our garden at the moment.  It’s a bit on the small side for mid-July.  We have cucumbers, watermelon, cilantro and lettuce in this tray, and we have another tray with equally small swiss chard.  They better do some growing to make up for our late start!  I worked the soil in two garden bed areas this weekend, and we’ll be adding compost (purchased, unfortunately) and getting our seedlings in the ground this week.  We still have about three months left in the regular growing season, and by fall we should have a greenhouse set up so that we can extend the season.