A real shame

About twenty years or so ago there was a house in town that was very run down. When I would drive past it on my way to work I would wonder if it was ever going to be torn down or fixed up; it was apparently abandoned. The windows had long been broken out by local vandals throwing rocks through them, and the doors were hanging off crookedly, half off of the hinges. The wooden clapboard was falling off, what was left on the house appeared to be rotting. Then one day I noticed a few vehicles in the driveway, the next day scaffolding framed the house.

Over the next several weeks a wonderful transformation was created. Brand new Pella windows were installed, new doors, new vinyl siding, and about a dozen solar panels on the roof appeared. Shortly after it appeared that someone was actually living in the place! Every day when I would drive past this now wonderful example of urban renewal at its finest I would think about how much I wished that I had the kind of money it would take to retrofit my own house with the newest technologies for climate control and energy conservation. But it wasn’t very long before the house was abandoned again and vandalized again, back to holes in the windows and the beautiful solar panels broken. Every single one of them was full of holes. I don’t know if it was a hail storm, or vandals, but every one was ruined. I never found out the story behind that poor house, but it is once again a very sad and lonely house. It’s a real shame.

Re-use Cardboard Boxes

When I get deliveries to my door of the items from Amazon, I am always impressed with the quality of the boxes that they used for shipping. Everything I have ordered from Amazon arrives in a well sized, well packed box and I have never had the contents arrive damaged.

It seems a terrible waste to take out the item and them just throw the box in the trash. So I decided to use a box cutter and slice through the packaging tape, flatten the box, and store them under the stairs for future use. Not that I can imagine what future use I might have for them, myself, but if anyone else ever needs boxes for moving I can share these and maybe save that person some money. Boxes are expensive and always hard to find when you need to pack the house up for a move.

I can’t just throw them in the trash. It seems disrespectful to our environment to do that. Hopefully these boxes will have at least one more use before they hit the landfill.

Pinch those pennies

Let’s face it; very few people want to spend any more money than they absolutely have to right now. The economy is still struggling, job security is a joke, and many of us are either unemployed, or underemployed. Dollars and pennies are precious and we need to stretch and pinch them as hard as we can. That is why we all need to take a good hard look at our houses to see if we are being as energy efficient as possible. We need to check for ways that heat is escaping out of the house in the winter, and getting in during the summer. After all, we don’t want to pay for the climate control of the great outdoors, do we?

If you are lucky enough to be serviced by an utility company that offers free energy audits, by all means make the appointment and have one of their technicians come out to your place and give it a good going over. Have him check your windows to see if they are double glazing and if they close tightly. Have him check the weather stripping around the sills. If they offer to install a water heater blanket, by all means let them do it. Some companies will do that for free; others will charge a minimal amount. The energy savings will be worth it in the long run.

Those CFL bulbs don’t last very long

One of the things that I have been concerned about lately is how quickly those CFL bulbs burn out. They are supposed to be more energy efficient, and environmentally friendly, but they are more expensive than the traditional incandescent light bulbs and don’t last as long. How is that supposed to help save money? I’m thinking that I might start looking into buying the LED lights instead in the future. I wonder how long they will last.

Two Suns

Yesterday I read some exciting news about the discovery of a planet in the Milky Way galaxy that actually orbits two suns. Just like the planets described in science fiction books and movies, such as “Star Trek,” this planet has two suns that are visible from the planet’s surface every day. However, they believe this planet is so cold and hostile that it cannot support life as we know it.

The scientists who made this discovery gave the planet the name, Tatooine after the fictional planet in the “Star Wars” films that boasts a double sunset. I hope to read more about this exciting discovery – I can only imagine what it would be like to have two suns.