Is an American middle class lifestyle sustainable environmentally speaking? Yes, no maybe so?

People have been feeling good as we move closer to a vaccinated society here in the United States. The ability to be out and about more has definitely been nice, but I am also filled with dread. It has been unusually hot here in the Twin Cities for an unusually long period of time at an unusually early time of year. Saint Paul Schools just cancelled school for half of the week - I can't remember this happening because if was too hot, too cold yes, but not too hot. Lake Mead, a man made lake, is at its lowest levels in history. The tundra is melting. Bird populations in the United States continue to decline dramatically. And over the past year or two, I have become more aware of how much my own American middle class lifestyle consumes. 

You probably know from my post on laundry from a few months ago, that we purchased solar panels last year and the real time updates on energy consumption have been eye opening. It takes a lot of energy to run a clothes dryer. It takes a lot of energy to take a hot shower. Microwaves use a lot of load for a short period of time. When this hot spell started, we went without without AC for a couple days, but we broke down and it has now been on for several days. 

Our solar panels are largely covering our electricity use this week because hot and sunny means good solar production. But we are a long ways from carbon neutral. We heat our home with natural gas and while our electric provider has made progress in using renewables (and operates a nuclear plant), our gas provider has not. We have shored up insulation and we do keep our temperatures in the moderate range (I could go lower than my housemates, but that is a separate post). Even though we try to walk or bike many places, we still drive the majority of the time. Even our decade-old Prius uses fossil fuels and we are due for a new one soon. Although arguments still continue in our family on the tags we are putting on towels and napkins and where they are and who they are still continue, we have actually become more disciplined about laundry and how many loads we do in a week. I even hung of load outside to dry this week. 

 We need to all be working toward carbon neutrality. Although there are technologies that can help like the solar panels we already own, but I don't know if we can truly "build" or way out of this. I still wonder, can we as a society continue to take a shower every day? Should we be hang drying our clothes. Should we be driving anywhere? If we don't have solar panels, should we really be running air conditioning even if we have solar panels?

What are your thoughts?  Should we be doing the things we take for granted?

Back yard foraging

Nowadays when we think of food, we think about going to the grocery store and buying something in a package or plastic bag. We don't think about what might be growing in our own backyard (that we didn't intentionally plant) as something to eat

The grocery store will remain the primary source of food for my family and me, but I can also look outside my door and see healthy things to eat even in my not terribly large city yard.  Harvesting enables me to deal with several plants that are invasive or that I don't particularly want in my flower garden. I don't have to just send them to the county yard waste site. I can eat them. These plants can also harvested before many of the other things that I intentionally plant are ready to harvest.  These edibles are often super nutritious and  I don't accumulate any clamshell packaging.  

Many people know that dandelions are edible and they were originally brought to the United States for food purposes. 

I have been sautéing greens from dandelions, hostas, wild violets and lamb quarters with olive oil, salt and lemon. Dandelions have a strong flavor and aren't actually my favorite. I don't eat dandelion greens raw, but I will make salads with the lambs quarter, which is milder and softer.  Wood sorrel also makes for a lemony addition to salad, but turns goopy when cooked. 

Edible flowers such as violets, nasturtium and marigolds make good garnishes for cakes and salads.  Last year I boiled several bunches of lilacs in a sugar syrup to make my own lilac soda (add carbonated water from a soda stream).

If you are going to forage in the back yard, you will need to ensure the area you are harvesting is not contaminated.  You also must correctly identify plants you did not cultivate so you do not poison yourself  The internet is handy and I particularly like this article for Minnesota edible weeds.  Otherwise put your weeds and garden plants that grow a little too robustly to good use. 

Making reuse "normal"

In a previous post, I shared a story in which my child tried to nudge me away from some free items on the curb I was eyeing because he knew I was violating social norms. Even with  my willingness to go against the grain, I know that my projects only make a small dent in materials that could be reused. In making my garden apron, I reused two whole pairs of jeans. True shifts toward sustainability are going to require much bigger shifts in societal thinking and behavior. 

To explore how to enable these shifts, I spoke with Emily Barker about the role of government in promoting more sustainable behavior. Emily is a solid waste specialist with the City of Saint Louis Park in Minnesota.   

Emily said that she came from a family of "fixers" and that influenced her. We also talked about how mending and reusing items had been a necessity in the past. Emily remarked that it has only taken two generations for us to lose the skills that allowed us to repair things. 

Emily described the complexities of promoting reuse. "People can get frustrated about being told what to do," she said.  We can't implement a reuse plan like sending a recycling truck down the street. It's hard to message." 

To address these complexities, she began organizing city-wide swaps in 2017.  "It's about making reuse culturally normal. There are people willing to go to a swap over a thrift store.  There seems to a lower barrier."  

She added that clothing swaps keep things cycling and also show people how much clothing there is out there. The swaps Emily has organized have grown in attendance over the years.  The next swap that Emily is organizing is on May 20 and is a gardening swap. 

These swaps also promote neighborhood connections. Emily recounted a story about an older city resident who was downsizing  and who arrived at a gardening swap with an array of tools, eager to give them so someone who could use them.  A young couple who had just purchased a house and did not have money to purchase new items were able to fully equip themselves with what they needed. Emily talked about how satisfying it was to witness a connection like that. 

I have been thinking a lot about the incentives in our society that keep us consuming and I was curious to know more about the incentives for government to promote consumption.  I asked Emily point blank about how reducing consumption affects a government entity that is reliant on tax revenue. She pointed out there are ways to promote economic activity without promoting the needless consumption of resources. St. Louis Park has compiled a directory and she was surprised by how many repair and reuse businesses she was able to find in a town of 50,000.

Emily also acknowledged that reuse could be difficult for people. You might have to wait to get something. For those who don't find reuse practical for their lives, she recommended really thinking about what you need and buying high quality items that will last. 

Emily also provided some hope for the future by sharing a story about her six-year-old.  The child had received a gift with a number of items that were wrapped and commented how wasteful it was.  "If kids can learn, then it will only be time," she said. 

Umbrella Upcycle

As I mentioned in my post about sourcing fabric, there is so much material to work with.  And it is all around. 

I had a broken umbrella. Don't we all? 

I tried fixing it, but a couple of the metal pieces were broken. While I sew, I don't weld. I liked this umbrella quite a bit and it had actually lasted a long time. The fabric was pretty and it seemed like it was the same type of fabric used for shoe bags we have purchased  I thought I could use the broken umbrella to make shoe bags. Then the pandemic hit and we didn't have anywhere to go so I put the umbrella aside. 

About a year later a friend of mine posted on Facebook asking if people used shoe bags and whether they had recommendations. I said, I can make you a couple!  I made two and then I put out a call on Facebook for people's broken umbrellas and I made some more. 

Here is a description of what I did. 

First locate broken umbrellas. If you put out a call to your friends and you don't live in the desert, you will probably get more than you need. If you have multiple umbrellas you can coordinate colors. Using a seam ripper, detach the umbrella from the metal frame. Then use a pair of scissors to cut the fabric from the center piece.  

The fabric you take off the umbrella frame will be, well umbrella shaped, so if you are going to make it into something else like a shoe bag, then you will need to use a seam ripper to take apart the sections. The umbrellas I have deconstructed have had between 8 and 10 sections and they have all been pretty easy to pull apart. 

Take two of the triangle sections and lay them on top of each other The narrow points of the triangles will need to be on opposite ends.  It probably won't matter which is the right side and which is the wrong one. From there sew a seam. I have used both French seams and a serger for these shoe bags. You will find that your seams are likely curved a little which you can trim by hand or while you serge.

Open up your seam and cut your now larger piece into a rectangle. I made a pattern that was about 12X16 and I didn't worry too much about lining up the pattern with the grain. Repeat with another two sections of umbrella to make another rectangle. If you are using an umbrella with narrower sections, you may need to layout multiple triangles in alternating directions and cut your rectangles from bigger pieces.  

To make a drawstring bag, make a 1/4 inch fold at the top and along the very top, fold over another inch and top stich down. That will be the channel for your string. 

Take your two rectangles and pin or clip. If you are making a French seam, you will start wrong sides together, then start stitching under the string channel and go around the rectangle to the bottom of the other side of the channel.  If you are going to serge or finish the seam with a zig zag, then you can put it right sides together sew then turn inside out. 

Cut two cords that are a few more inches than needed to go around the bag start with one of the open ends and using a safety pin, feed the cord through the channels on both pieces of fabric. Tie the two ends together. Start the other cord on the opposite end and do the same.

And there you have a shoe bag!  Here is another example using fabric from two different umbrellas. 

Home repairs

I have a sewing project that is languishing. I made a set of curtains for our office closet and I plan to make matching curtains for the office windows, but I can't make myself take the next step, which is to cut the fabric. 

However, I have been keeping up with my sustainability kick by taking on small repair projects around the house.  Shortly after I started visibly mending, I also became motivated to repair other things. Clear Gorilla Tape became one of my best friends on this quest. However, the tape did not work for everything.  Somehow I came across a product called Sugru on the internet. I then saw a package at my local Target store, which I picked up and looked at, but didn't purchase.  Then finally I decided it was time to try it out on these repairs that were piling up.  By that time, the local Target no longer carried it and I had to order it from Amazon and it arrived two days later, with too much packaging. 

On the day I received the Sugru, I took out a few things that needed repair. This included a broken tea strainer and a set of swim goggles that I now use when chopping onions. In addition, I had a sugar bowl that had no place to conveniently stow the sugar spoon. I also had a set of headphones that were in two pieces suspended by a wire. 

Sugru is a moldable silicone glue. The box I purchased had several packets of various colors.  Once you open a packet, the instructions say you have 30 minutes to mold the Sugru (I found I actually had more).  Then you have to let it cure for 12 to 24 hours.

 

The first I thing I did was to create a little holder for the sugar spoon. That worked out just as envisioned and now I have a place for the sugar spoon. 

Then I worked on the tea strainer. I left it on the counter to cure and my spouse moved it, which meant it ended up  back in two pieces again. I opened a second packet to redo the strainer. After it cured, I realized it was still not stable enough so I added more.  I haven't really put it to the test, but it looks like it will work for a while. 

I also was able to serviceably fix the headphones. I am going to add a little more Sugru to this project, but they are in much better shape than they were before I did the repair.

The goggle rims had a little tear on them. I wasn't able to get the Sugru to mold as I wanted on there, but since I am not using them in water it is ok.  

In addition to these items, I also repaired a broken umbrella. I also started to repair a cracked plastic chair. I will need to open another packet to finish that.  While my blog is generally not about buying more stuff, I did find Sugru to be useful to extending the life of several things. 

Repair again (and again)

Using patches and darning stiches to fix clothing has extended the life of several of my items.  But I get frustrated because these fixes do not last forever.  Sometimes they don't last long at all.

About a year ago, I patched the knees of my son's pants. I used material from old socks, ironed them onto lightweight interfacing and sewed them on the pants using a whip stitch around the outside and a series of running stitches down the length of the patch. 

This fix lasted a year. Last week my son fell and scraped up the knees of the pants and his own knees. Now there are new holes. I am not going to do anything further with this article of clothing because he is growing quickly and has nearly outgrown the pants.  

What happens to my own clothes has been somewhat more bothersome. Mending, especially by hand, takes time. Last summer I patched a pair of  comfortable pants using a home made patch and a series of running stitches. Just four or five months ago, I darned these socks.

When you are patching or darning, you create a strong series of fibers and stitches. The fabric you are mending may not be as strong as it used to be and often you will get more tearing along your outer stiches. 

Several weeks ago, I checked out the book Mending Life: A Handbook for Repairing Clothes and Hearts by Nina and Sonya Montenegro from the library.

Nina describes her first time mending a pair of pants. Within a month a new hole appeared.  As she sat down to mend again, she had all sorts of thoughts about whether it was worth the time and whether a new hole would appear, but she sewed on the second patch anyway. She writes:

A while late, another hole did appear, but this time I didn't hesitate to get out my mending tools and choose a new patch to add. I breathed deeply and thought of how similar the work was to collage - intuitively adding layers of color and shape to make a composition I would be wearing on my knee. In time, mending became a ritual for me, something I tucked into my backpack and took along everywhere to work on whenever I had a free moment.  Just like our grandma, I came to understand that there is always time to mend.

After reading that passage, I realized that I should not be annoyed if I had to continue to mend an item over time. I took the pants that had a second tear
and added another patch in a contrasting color. I will be able to wear them at least a little bit longer.   

Then as I was writing this, I took a break to redarn those socks. Again, they will last just a little bit longer.

 

Going back to the old fashioned handkerchief

Whenever I see giant packages of disposable products, I can't help but think of the John Muir quote: 

This is creation. All this is going on today, only men are blind to see it. They think only of food. They are not content to provide three meals a day; they must have enough for a thousand meals. And so they build ships to carry the food that they call commerce, and they build houses to store food in, and other houses to buy and sell it in, and houses to eat it in, and load themselves down with the care of it so that they cannot get away. They can not pause long enough to go out into the wilderness where God has provided every sparrow enough to eat and to spare, and contemplate for even an hour the wonderful world that they live in.

Over the past 70 years, the size of the American house has doubled.  While more serious thinkers may have other theories about why this is, one of mine is that we need more space to store giant packages of stuff that we are going to use once and throw away. Then, bigger houses lead to more land use, more energy use and more driving because of the lower density of neighborhoods.

One of the most important reasons for reuse and repurposing is to use resources in a sustainable way. However, it does also have the advantage of taking less space (as long as you don't hang on to things you truly don't use).  Because we cut up old clothes and fabric scraps into rags that can be washed, we only store one extra roll of paper towel at at time.  We use cloth napkins so we don't store a lot of those either. 

Last year, I also started using old fashioned handkerchiefs for use at home (we are in the  middle of a pandemic so I get why we use paper products in public spaces). Tissue paper has been the mode of choice for blowing one's nose for most of my life, but we always brought handkerchiefs as gifts when we went to India in the 1970s and 1980s.   

I made some out of an old bed sheet.  Besides taking less space than boxes of tissue, one of biggest advantages of handkerchief is that they don't make a complete mess in the wash when you accidentally leave one in your pocket!

 

Garden trellis made of sticks

We had a week of unseasonably warm weather here in Minnesota, with temperatures topping 80 degrees Fahrenheit last Monday. While I moderated a conference session on the impacts of climate change last week and I know that this weather part of warming trends, I enjoyed it thoroughly. In preparation for growing season, I moved my upcycling outside.

As you know from my previous post on winter sowing, I am hoping to soon be planting peas. I could have purchased trellises, but I decided to make mine with found objects, namely sticks. I made one branch trellis last year so I had some experience under my belt.

In the weeks before, I had been collecting sticks during my daily walks.  During these walks, a few dogs looked at me longingly as I walked by with a stick. I felt bad in one instance and gave up my finds to the neighbor's dog. 

When I constructed last year's trellis, I tried various ways of attaching the sticks - nails, screws and rope. I landed on lashing as the most effective method and decided to use that exclusively on this trellis. I used a mixture of fabric strips and string to lash.

I started by trimming the smaller branches from the sticks that were going to be my vertical posts and laid them down. I then used fabric strips to tie together the first two sticks. I then attached the horizontal stick to a few more vertical ones. I used a garden stake to line up the ends of the sticks to ensure a level bottom. 

I kept adding sticks to crosswise until the trellis was stable enough to lean up against the wall of the house.  It is easier to work on the structure when it is upright.  

I continued to add sticks until the trellis was the size I wanted. Then I moved it to where I was going to plant the peas. I  tied the trellis to the fence so it wouldn't flop over onto an unsuspecting pedestrian.  Can't wait until the peas are ready to plant!

Behavior change is hard - trying to consume less electricity

Last year we had solar panels installed on our garage. They started producing energy in August. The solar company estimated the panels would cover 80% of our electricity needs. 

Over the course of a year, we would like the panels to cover all of our electricity needs. We don't have batteries so for us this means simply using as much as we generate.  We only have so much room on the roof so we couldn't install more panels. Our challenge is to reduce the amount we consume. 

With our solar panels, comes a system that provides minute-by-minute updates on electricity consumption and generation. If you don't have solar panels, there are devices you can purchase to monitor consumption in real time. It has been interesting to watch what takes up the most energy. So far, the winner of that contest is our clothes dryer. We assume later in the summer the air conditioner will take up a significant amount of  energy, but we haven't really used it since the panels started operating.  This is a screen shot of our energy consumption today. After noon and around 8 p.m. you can see high rates of consumption.  We were running the clothes dryer at these two times (plus at the later time, my kid took a shower so our electric hot water heater was going too).  

We live in a place that is quite cold in the winter.  I have seasonal allergies to so I am reluctant to hang things like sheets outside to dry during the warmer months.  We will probably continue to use the dryer, but we have started to make a concerted effort to do less laundry.  We noticed that we have been washing a lot of bath towels. Three people should not be sending 11 towels to the laundry in a week.  In order to help us, I made little badges from denim leftover from my garden apron project  with the initials of our first names on them. I binder clipped them on to each of our towels. I did this with our table napkins too, but that was less about laundry than about the fact that the napkins were getting mixed up and we were losing them. 

On the day last week when we started the new system, I gathered up all the towels in the bathroom and put them in the laundry. Then I took out a clean towel for each of us and hung them up.  A few hours later my spouse informed me he kept two towels on the back of his door because he needed a second towel for his hair (he has much shorter hair them me).  On the first night of the new system, my kid told me had used the new system and used the towel with his initial on it.  On the second and third nights, he forgot and took out new towels from the basket.  So I put this sign on  our towel basket. 

We put the two extra towels he used aside to use the next week. We managed to do only

 three loads of laundry this weekend including bed sheets, but we are still struggling with the towels. I just went into the bathroom and found a fourth towel that had no tag on it and that was wet. There are two possible culprits and since I haven't yet taken my shower today, it wasn't me. Let's hope it works better next week.

Garden Apron from Old Jeans

I belong to a few international Facebook groups for sewists who make upcycled creations. A few weeks ago, a fellow sewist posted a picture of a garden apron with pockets she made. I immediately thought, "I need something like that."  I am always setting tools down while gardening and then losing them. I still haven't found a pair of pruners I set down in our strawberry patch several months ago.  My spouse went out and purchased a replacement pair, which is not very eco-friendly. 

The first thing I needed was a pattern or model. I looked at a couple kitchen aprons we owned and didn't love their shape. Then I went online. I found some patterns that used flowery quilting fabric. I wanted something a little more durable. Then happened upon this apron pattern from Sew4Home. I liked the idea of durable and the split skirt.  Sew4Home has a more detailed pattern and instructions if you want to make yourself the more traditional way. What I will do is to tell you more about how to make an upcycled version of this apron.  

I started with two pairs of jeans offcast by my neighbors. One was darker blue and had more useable fabric and the other pair was lighter and a little more worn.

The pattern called for starting with a big 20 X 31 inch rectangle. I didn't have a piece of denim that large so I had to piece it together. On the darker pair, I cut the pant legs off just below the ripped area.  I used the seam ripper to take apart the flat felled seams. I could have cut the seams but I was in a seam ripper mood. I kept the inside serged seams intact. I also used the seam ripper to detach a couple of the pockets and belt loops.

I was left with two pieces of flat fabric that were not square. I pressed the two pieces then pinned them together right sides together and serged them together on the diagonals with what was the bottom of the jeans facing in opposite directions. After serging I unfolded the fabric and pressed the fabric so it laid relatively flat

From there, I cut the 20 X 31 rectangle, then used a printed pattern to cut the armholes.  I was able to cut out the two smaller rectangles for the split skirt from the other pair of jeans without piecing anything together. 

I wanted moderate cutesiness with this apron so I cut flower, carrot and leaf shapes from the denim to form applique. I used a fine zig zag stich to attach them to the pocket or the apron it self. I stitched the applique onto the base in a random order (some before I started sewing on the skirt, some after) because it was the fun part and I was alternately wrestling with my serger and sewing machine so sometimes I would be frustrated and switch to a task that I could do on the other device. 

I deviated from the pattern and did my own thing with the pockets, topstitching two of the existing pockets on and also adding a few beltloops to hang sharper tools, I put a small piece of denim on the back to add some stabilization to the belt loop areas. For the bottom pockets  I used the bottom of the pantleg and and part of the seam on another leg and another piece of fabric. 

In order to sew the bottom rectangles onto the top ones, I used a four thread serged stitch instead of the flat felled seam called for in the pattern.  

To hem the apron, I serged to finish the edges and folded over once and topstiched.  The pattern calls for folding twice and my machines are just not industrial enough for too many layers of denim. For a more fitted item of clothing, you might have to do some calculations on how this will affect the size, but this was an apron so I didn't really care, I wasn't in the mood to piece together the fabric for the ties because my denim wasn't long enough so I went into my stash and found  bias tape that would work.  I sewed that on using a box pattern. 

You can see a picture of me using the garden apron. This project was a family breakthrough because my spouse said he wanted one too, but in a more masculine pattern. 

P.S. After I used the apron I decided I am going to add some belt loops toward the sides of the apron to better accommodate longer tools.