Now that the holidays are over, we’re dealing with a major case of the “I wants” from our pre-schooler. He got so much for Christmas, and he’s already making his list for next year. And it’s a long one. Most of the stuff he wants, he doesn’t need or would even use.

But he still wants everything he sees — on TV, in the newspaper, in magazines, etc. He sees stuff and he wants it.  The ads target him, and he needs whatever they are shilling.

Those Pillow Pets were everywhere before Christmas, and if he saw one, then he would tell me just how much he needed and wanted one. This is from a child who does not do stuffed animals. He doesn’t need one, and it would just gather dust next to all of the other stuffed animals we’ve accumulated in our house.

How do you teach a child that he doesn’t need everything he wants?

Consumerism has come up in several different instances recently. In this month’s cover story in the National Geographic, the writer discusses how people in developing nations see the “American way of life” and want to emulate it, but the Earth can’t handle that many people producing that much waste.

We were talking about this with some friends, and we discussed how one of the biggest obstacles we face is the resistance to change. Even though we realize that our consumerism is bad for the planet, it’s comfortable and it’s easy. We are familiar with it. And it’s easy to justify — wouldn’t people lose their jobs if we stopped buying everything that we’re told we must have?

The easiest way to keep our son from wanting everything is to stop him from watching commercials. And for right now, we’re ignoring his constant dialogue of wants. Thankfully he is young enough that he forgets most of his demands shortly after he makes them.

One of our most popular blog posts details different ways to recycle old VHS tapes. All of those tips are still good, but we were contacted by a woman offering us a new way to recycle those old VHS tapes — send them to her.

Her name is Tina and she and her son have a small business called T.J.’s Recycling. They take ink cartridges, VHS tapes, cassette tapes, potato chip bags, wrappers, labels, and pull tabs from soda cans, and they make jewelry and aceessories with them.

So, if you have any extra tapes, wrappers or labels that you can’t recycle, please send them to:

T.J.’s Recycling
P.O. Box 361
Fancy Gap, VA 24328

Today marks the second annual Blog Action Day. It’s an event to unite bloggers across the world to post about the same issue on the same day.

This year’s issue is water.

Living in the United States, it’s hard to imagine that 1 billion people do not have access to clean drinking water.

It’s hard to imagine that people die just because of a lack of access to clean drinking water.

In honor of Blog Action Day 2010, I’m going to try to be extremely vigilant about not wasting water. How will you save water today?

Earlier this week I wrote about ways to recycle make-up that had been used, but not finished. But what should you do with empty cosmetic containers?

There are lots of options!

First, some can be recycled. The plastic packaging should have the recycle triangle on the bottom to let you know. The cardboard containers should also be recyclable.

If you don’t think your empty container is recyclable, then you might be able to find a use for it around your home. The small containers could be good for traveling purposes or holding smaller items like buttons. Pretty containers can be used as decorations.

I’m racking my brain to think of a creative use for an old mascara tube. There have to be lots of fun uses for the brushes (eyebrow comb, good at scrubbing tight spaces, etc.) but the actual tube itself has me stumped. Any ideas?

If being crafty with old containers isn’t something you want to do, there are several cosmetics stores that accept empty containers for recycling.

Thanks to the Return to Origins Recycling Program, you can take any brand of cosmetic container to a recycling bin inside each Origins store.

If you use M·A·C Cosmetics, you can take your empty containers back to the store for recycling through the Back to M·A·C Program. For every six containers returned, you will get a free lipstick.

Keihl’s also accepts their bottles for recycling. And they’ve been known to offer products in exchange for recycling.

 Please let us know if you have any fun suggestions for ways to re-use empty make-up containers!

Fall has certainly arrived here! Our house has been sniffly, sinus central for about two weeks! So I’ve been very behind in my posting. Now that we’re all on the mend, hopefully my posting will become more regular.

What do you do your old make-up? Do you just throw it out? Do you actually use all of yours up?

I’m a sucker for a cosmetics sale, and sometimes the colors or styles do not work when I get home. That happened with some lipstick that I got for a great price a few months ago. I’ve tried and tried to make myself wear it, but I don’t like how it feels on my lips. It’s tingly, and not in a good a way.

I finally took the lipstick out of my purse and got some colored lipgloss that said it was eco-friendly. But what should I do with the old lipstick?

If you think your make-up might be too old to keep using, check out this handy guide.

I know that you shouldn’t donate used cosmetics (concerns over germs) and worry about throwing them away.

But I found some really great uses for old cosmetics online at various message boards, and I wanted to share them.

• Let your kids do crafts with them. This is great if you have kids who like to play dress-up or color (liners and lipsticks can make cool coloring implements.) My oldest son is not an artist. I like to call his artwork minimalist. I’m lucky to get one line out of him. My youngest would just put them in his mouth. But I know I used to love playing my mom’s make-up drawer when I was little, and many kids are budding artists.
• Make crafts more colorful. You can use eyeshadow and blush powders to tint craft paints and polymer clay. That’s a really cool idea.
• Use on home improvement/sewing projects. You can use lipstick or liners to mark drywall, and I like to use eyeliners to mark fabric when I’m sewing. For the sewing project, make sure your marks will be sewn into a seam or use liners that aren’t waterproof. This is a much cheaper option than buying sewing chalk to mark garments.
• Use them for Halloween or stage make-up. I guess this works if the make-up you bought is way too bright. Make-up does spoil, so don’t put super-old make-up on your face — especially not near your eyes or mouth.
• Touch up shoe polish. I’ve done this with old black mascara in a pinch. If your black leather shoes are scuffed, you can cover up the scuff with black mascara. If you’ve got brown mascara, I assume it would work on brown shoes. I’ve also attempted to touch up red leather shoes with red nail polish, but that didn’t work as well because the reds weren’t the exact same shade.

I will say that I’ve seen people post on craigslist looking for used cosmetics before. The woman wanted some used make-up for her young daughter to play with. I don’t recommend accepting used make-up, especially from people you don’t know.

What about you? Do you have any cool ideas for recycling used make-up?

Here’s an easy way to go a little green and save a little money at the same time — adjust your ink and paper usage while printing.

A few months ago, The University of Wisconsin, Green Bay, found that it could save thousands of dollars switching from Arial font to Century Gothic, which uses 30 percent less ink.

But, when switching fonts, you may also want to adjust your font size. Century Gothic is wider than Arial. This means that it can use more paper.

If you really want to cut down on the ink used while printing, download Ecofont. This free program shoots tiny holes into letters during printing, and reduces ink use by 25 percent.

While switching your font and font size, you might also look into changing the printer settings on your computer. Switch to gray-scale as the default and check the lower quality resolution.

Another easy way to cut down on ink and paper usage when printing is to hit the print friendly option when printing from the internet or your inbox.

If that’s not an option, copy the text that you want to print into Notepad, then print from there. This way you don’t end up printing pictures, ads and internet addresses. It’s not pretty, but it uses a lot less paper.

If you are printing coupons and have to print in color and can’t copy the text, save the extra pages that come out with only a web address along the top. Put those pages back in your printer so you can use them again.

Do you have any other suggestions for cutting down on ink and paper usage while printing?

When I started becoming more of a health nut, I stopped drinking coffee in the morning and started drinking tea more frequently.  I am a a little emphatic about it now because I loved that they combined taste with health benefits.  I had echinacea  tea, detox tea, ginger tea, and others that I can barely remember.  At one point I had 8 different varieties (yes, I was that obsessed!) 

I usually like to buy Yogi Teas because I like their tastes and health options.  My favorite one is Skin Detox, because it helps clear up my skin.  But once I bought some Celestial Seasonings tea, and noticed the difference in packaging.  Each Yogi Tea bag had a wrapper, a string, and a tag.  Celestial seasonings only had the small pouch that carried the tea; there was no tag or string or wrapping.  Yogi Tea I have only found at natural food stores (or in the organic section of the grocery store if they have any), while Celestial seasonings seems to be widely available at any grocery store.  I read the side of their box and realized the reason there is less packaging is because the company wanted to be more sustainable.  I think it’s a bit odd that Yogi Tea, which is usually mostly organic, would be wasteful with unnecessary packaging.

Anyway, being the “GreenMinded” person that I am, I started to read into options to be more sustainable in my tea-drinking habit.  I never even flirted the thought of buying myself loose leaf tea and using my own metal “infuser”, similar to what I found here.  That uses virtually no packaging, which is the “greenest” of the options.  Of course, you can also buy teas similar to those of Celestial Seasonings: no wrapping, no strings, no tags. 

Next time you’re at the grocery store or natural food store, look in the bulk section.  Last time I visited my favorite organic store, I found that they had loose leaf tea that was way less expensive than the packaged loose leaf tea, even though it was also organic.

I must say, I still do enjoy a couple of my Yogi Teas.  I haven’t been able to find certain benefits in any other brands (i.e., my Skin Detox tea).  So the way I try to make it “greener” is by using a trick my thrifty Polish grandmother taught me: reusing tea bags!  I usually drink my Skin Detox tea in the morning, and then store it in an airtight container.  I usually stick the container in the fridge because I am paranoid about bacteria growth in the “danger zone.”  Another tip I should mention is the first time you use the tea bag, make sure that you do not brew your tea for too long-maybe 3 minutes maximum.  I know that I like my tea stronger; however, if I brewed my first tea bag as long as I generally do, the next time around my tea would be very weak.  This reusing tea technique also helps save money, because my box of tea will last me 3 or 4 weeks instead of 2 (depending on how much of the tea I drink in one day).

I like to think that I am this unique and super-thrifty college student, and in some ways I am.  But sometimes I am a typical college student when it comes to food.  Exhibit A: my inclination to order Chinese take-out especially during final exam week.  Last year, I started watching The Food Network quite frequently as an attempt to get myself out of this slump. While watching, I noticed how much these chefs/tv-hosts used fresh herbs.  I bought myself some fresh parsley and noticed how much of a difference it made in my most basic pasta dish (whole rye pasta, butter, a little milk, and Parmesan).

A year later, I started making legitimate attempt to start eating healthier and cooking more for myself.  I figured it would help my waistline and my wallet.  I picked up online recipes and cookbooks of healthy dishes using fruits and veggies that were in season and attempted to cook for myself.  After I gained some confidence from watching countless cooking shows, I started making making my own recipes.  I started experimenting with herbs because I learned how one of the simplest ingredients can yield a delicious and simply dish.

But while going to my organic grocery store, I was appalled at how expensive fresh herbs were-even in the summer!  But then I realized that all of these herbs were grown from plants (duh!).  My friend Lauren had previously started a small herb garden on her windowsill and I decided that this was a much better investment than paying 2-3 bucks for every small bunch.  I had never realized before how expensive fresh herbs could be.  I bought a pot and proceeded to my favorite organic store to buy organic soil and my three favorite herbs: rosemary, thyme and parsley.

At first this was a small investment.  The good thing is that you don’t need a green thumb to maintain a herb garden.  All you need is a windowsill.  I know quite a few friends like Lauren who do the same thing, and they gave me lots of tips.  For example, if your windowsill is in your kitchen, make sure you keep your kitchen clean.  My friends who didn’t keep their kitchens clean seemed to attract bugs.  When I made my herb garden, I had to make sure that I never left out any food and kept the area extremely prestine (a minor challenge for the average college student).  Also I needed to make sure that I remembered to water the plant everyday, but it was not the most exhausting challenge I have ever encountered.  I noticed that every so often a leaf started to dry out, but if that happened I just snipped it away.

It’s a pretty decent investment.  It’s simple math: one time you buy a plant, and you have fresh herbs for the rest of the summer (and into the fall if the light is still decent).  You add some green to your wallet and your household!  I encourage other bloggers and readers to try this technique, and see how eating green can be healthier, cheaper and tastier!

When I temporarily became a vegetarian I quickly became aware of how valuable beans were to a diet.  Cheap, convenient, and nutritious.  I use to hate beans a few years back and there are quite a few people who also dislike beans. I discovered that my dislike of beans were usually because of texture, like kidney beans for example…Blech.  But as I matured, I discovered I didn’t mind the texture much if they had the right complementing flavors.  I wouldn’t even go near kidney beans until I went to the DC Chili Cook-Off a few years ago, where I realized that they tasted perfectly with a little bit of fiesty American flavor.  The right amount of cayenne pepper, tomatoes and beef creates a great balance of flavor: spicy, acidic and hearty.

It’s summer, and it’s hot. When I was little, I loved running through sprinklers. We’ve been reticent to do that with our son, because it seems like a waste of water.

There are two waterpads in our town that I believe recycle the water that shoots out, but we have to drive to those.

In an attempt to cut back on our gas usage, we decided to buy our son a slip-n-slide. I know that to many that would be a waste of water, but we aren’t driving all over town.

Also, our son loses interest after a few minutes. We’ve been repositioning our slip-n-slide around our yard in order to spread out the water wealth to our grass.

Although the slip-n-slide isn’t the greenest of items, we did find an eco-friendly water hose – the Colorite Element Pure and Simple water hose. It’s not like shower heads and faucets that insert air into the stream and cut down on water usage. But it’s lead-free and pthalate-safe. This means that the water that our son inevitably swallows isn’t full of toxins.

The hose works well and our son loves slip-slip sliding. It’s the best solution we’ve found so far.

Do you have any greener suggestions for summer water play?