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Giveaway: Seventh Generation Disinfecting Cleaning Kit

by Carrie on April 6, 2010

This giveaway is now closed. The winner is Me in Millions.

Time to get a kick start on the spring cleaning season. I’m keeping things pretty simple this year on account of my illness and reduced activity level.

My spring cleaning plan this year looks like this:

  • decluttering
  • moving things I do want to keep to more efficient locations when applicable
  • disinfecting surfaces and things I touch
  • washing all my sheets and blankets (let’s not think about how long it’s been since I’ve washed my bedding)
  • washing random kitchen, bathroom, and living room stuff that doesn’t get in the regular weekly laundry (i.e. hot pads, throw pillows)
  • hopefully talking Dad into a thorough vacuuming and floor mopping (a little high intensity for me at this time, especially the dragging the vacuum up the stairs part)

This past week I’ve been testing out Seventh Generation’s multi-purpose cleaner, bathroom cleaner, and disinfecting wipes. Along with the products, I got a handy recycled plastic caddy to store them in. It’s perfect since Dad has been over to help clean a few times in the past few months and always complains that I keep all the cleaning stuff in the upstairs closet which he doesn’t thing is an efficient and convenient location. I loaded up the caddy with my new products, some rags, and some scrub brushes and it’s now living under the downstairs bathroom sink (it’s also easy to move it all to wherever he thinks is the perfect location for it when he’s here).

I’m using the multi-purpose cleaner to wipe down surfaces, knobs, handles, and switches in most rooms; the bathroom cleaner for everything in the bathroom; and the wipes are absolutely perfect for wiping down my Wii Fit balance board after using it (I don’t know about you but my feet get awfully sweaty especially when I’m doing Super Hula Hoop).

Good news on the cancer front, last week I had a PET scan and no more cancer showed up on it. But I do have a mass of scar tissue where the largest grapefruit sized tumor was in my lung cavity on the left and I have a non-cancerous abnormality going on in my right lung causing it to not fully inflate at this time (more tests on that later this week). I have to say that the best part about these products is that it’s nice to be able to use cleaning products that don’t make me worry about what’s getting in my lungs while I’m already having lung issues. I only notice my lung issues when I try to take a deep breath or I cough and traditional chemical cleaning products do have a history of making my cough so the less chemicals the better especially at this time.

Seventh Generation Disinfecting Cleaning Kit

I have one Seventh Generation Disinfecting Cleaning Kit that includes a disinfecting multi-surface cleaner, bathroom cleaner, wipes, a copy of The Conscious Kitchen, a cleaning caddy made from recycled plastic, and two rolls of 100% recycled, unbleached paper towels to giveaway to an It’s Frugal Being Green reader.

Here’s how to enter (leave a separate comment for each entry):

  1. Tell us the best thing you’ve done to reduce your impact on the environment so far this year.
  2. Subscribe to It’s Frugal Being Green via RSS or email.
  3. Become a fan of It’s Frugal Being Green on Facebook.
  4. Follow @carrieactually on Twitter.

Entries will close April 13, 2010 at 11:59pm Pacific time. Winner will be notified via email and must respond with their shipping address within 48 hours. Winner must be able to provide a US shipping address to receive their prize.

Disclosure: I received a disinfecting cleaning kit for myself along with one to giveaway from Seventh Generation and MyBlogSpark. Some links in the post are affiliate links and I will receive a small compensation if you make a purchase or sign up for a service by clicking through those links. Affiliate links are an easy way for you to support It’s Frugal Being Green at no additional cost to yourself.

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eBay Your Used and even Broken Electronics

by Carrie on March 16, 2010

Keeping up with the latest in technology is a passion of mine (it must stem from growing up in the heart of Silicon Valley). Technology can get expensive and hard on the environment fast though if you’re upgrading your gadgets often.

I like my tech to be reasonably up to date. I’ve never kept the same cell phone for two years and I budget for a new computer every three years.

ebay logo

So how do I keep my passion for up to date consumer electronics frugal and green? eBay!

When I buy a new consumer electronic item, I sell the old one on eBay. By selling it on eBay:

  • I can roll it’s remaining value into it’s replacement
  • someone else can make use of it
  • I keep it out of the dump (because lots of stuff that gets sent to electronics recycling never actually gets recycled)

Surprisingly you can sell and make good money off not only used but also broken electronics.

About a year and a half ago, half of the touch screen of my first iPhone stopped accepting touches. It was a year and a half old at that point so my basic one year warranty was up so a repair would’ve run me about $100. A new model was already out and it had some features that my current phone didn’t have that I thought were worthwhile so I upgraded.

After upgrading I restored my old iPhone to it’s original factory settings and gathered all of it’s original accessories (I didn’t include the headphones since they’d been in my ears and I thought someone else using them would be a bit gross, I mentioned that in the auction description) and listed it on eBay.

As with all items on eBay, it’s very important to be very specific, detailed, and honest about the condition. Even with half the touch screen not working, it sold for over $100.

There is a huge market on eBay for broken electronics. Certain people will use those broken items for parts to repair other broken items.

I’ve had great success over the years selling used (and sometimes even broken) cell phones, digital cameras, iPods and other mp3 players, PDAs, laptops, and even my old iMac.

Some eBay tips to help maximize your success:

  • The better your feedback the more successful you will be. My account is 8 years old with almost 800 feedback at 100% positive, my other family members don’t have as much feedback as I do so when they want to sell their old electronics I list them on my account.
  • Keep the original packaging if you expect you’ll sell the item later. My iMac would’ve been almost impossible to ship safely if I didn’t have it’s custom cut foam that it was originally shipped in to me.
  • Take lots of pictures, especially of any damage or problems and describe any damage or problems in as much detail as you can. eBay now lets you post up to 12 pictures per item at no additional cost.
  • Check completed auctions for similar items so you know what to expect before listing. If similar items aren’t going for a price you’d accept don’t waste your time and money listing your item.

Disclosure: Some links in the post are affiliate links and I will receive a small compensation if you make a purchase or sign up for a service by clicking through those links. Affiliate links are an easy way for you to support It’s Frugal Being Green at no additional cost to yourself.

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What I’m Reading 3/12

by Carrie on March 12, 2010

Disclosure: Some links in the post are affiliate links and I will receive a small compensation if you make a purchase or sign up for a service by clicking through those links. Affiliate links are an easy way for you to support It’s Frugal Being Green at no additional cost to yourself.

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The Grocery List on my Fridge

by Carrie on February 17, 2010

In the office supply/stationary section at Target, you can find these pads of grocery lists from Real Simple. Meal planning helps me figure out what ingredients I need for my main dishes each week, but by using this preset list I’m reminded to fill in with extra fresh produce, breakfasts and snacks, and pantry staples. And the pads last forever, I shop almost weekly and the pad on my fridge right now is going on almost two years now.

The Real Simple version I use is currently only available at Target. For others that you can order on Amazon right now, here are some cute options:

I also keep a magnetic pen cup like kids would use in their lockers on my fridge to keep pens, Sharpies, and scissors for clipping coupons handy.

Grocery Lists from Real Simple

Disclosure: Some links in the post are affiliate links and I will receive a small compensation if you make a purchase or sign up for a service by clicking through those links. Affiliate links are an easy way for you to support It’s Frugal Being Green at no additional cost to yourself.

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Digital Recipe Box

by Carrie on February 11, 2010

Early last year, I got it into my head that I wanted all the recipes from all my cookbooks and magazine tear outs indexed in one place on my computer so that it was easy to pull together a meal plan. At that time, I decided to start by listing them all out by dish type in a basic text editor.

More recently, I was browsing around the blogosphere and came across Mommy Snack’s Menu Planning Recipe Box and I loved the spreadsheet idea but it needed a little tweaking to work for me.

Here’s what I came up with (click the image to enlarge):

Digital Recipe Box

Download the .xls file so you can play around with it yourself.

I’ve got several columns for sorting the data in various ways, left to right they are:

  • a place to mark which recipes I’d like to use on my next meal plan
  • name
  • type of dish (main, side, salad, dessert, etc)
  • protein
  • produce
  • starch
  • tried/favorite
  • notes (seasonal info or cooking notes if I want to make changes to the recipe in the future)
  • source

Rather than using Google Docs (which I love because I can access my files easily from multiple computers), I decided to go with Microsoft Excel. Excel does a couple things that made my digital recipe box easier than it would have been in Google Docs: 1) it remembers what you typed in the same field in rows above so that you don’t need to type the same cookbook name over and over again, 2) it has filters so that once all my recipes are in, I can easily narrow it down to just chicken dishes, just desserts, just recipes I’ve marked as favorites, or even search for recipes with the word chocolate in the title.

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