home green home (house cleaning)

The Seventh Generation newsletter recently shared this news about a new healthy house-cleaning service:
We recently launched a new and innovative partnership to help you maintain a clean and healthy home called Home Green Home. We are working with our good friends at Women’s Action to Gain Economic Security (WAGES) to launch an environmentally-friendly residential cleaning [...]

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when was the last time you vacuumed your refrigerator?

NEVER, probably.
At least that was true for me until recently, when I cleaned the heat-exchange condenser coils, which are what cool your refrigerator by releasing heat. If the coils are covered in a blanket of dust, the refrigerator has to work harder. You’ll hear the motor kicking on often and for a long time.
Refrigerators [...]

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line drying: good for the earth, good for your clothes

90-degree April days, a perfect time to inaugurate my new clothesline.

Did you know your clothes dryer accounts for about 10-15% of your house’s energy consumption?
Do you know where all that lint comes from? YOUR CLOTHES!
Have you noticed how nice sun and air-dried clothes and sheets smell?

For all these reasons, I love to line dry my [...]

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suburbia spotlight: Safeway

I felt like a tourist, wheeling my shopping cart through the rows and rows of aisles filled sky high with stuff at the local Safeway. This was not the same Safeway where I shopped over 15 years ago. Literally; it had been rebuilt one year ago on the other side of the parking lot.
This new [...]

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Things you should NEVER buy again

I’m not a big fan of lists of MUSTs or MUST NOTs, since I think that it’s difficult to come up with a list that is relevant for everyone.  That said, those little lists that are printed on wallet-size paper are pretty convenient.  I think of them as guides, rather than a definitive list.
So, from [...]

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Elephant Pharmacy birthday sale

Yesterday I wrote about the accessibility of green products. Well here’s something that helps. 

It’s Elephant Pharmacy’s birthday!!!  It’s a store (a small local chain of stores in this case) that specializes in stocking green and sustainable products, and if you haven’t been yet, this is a great chance to check it out. 
They’re having a fabulous sale this [...]

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ESP Day 7: Laundry

I don’t do laundry every day, but many households do.  So we’ll break this down into Washing, Drying, Dry Cleaning, and related Recycling.

WASHING. For Everyday Sustainable clothes washing, I do the following:

Wash in cold water.  According to the US Dept of Energy, “About 90% of the energy used for washing clothes is for heating the [...]

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