Funny Additions

So with all the decorating I've tried to do around the house, Kent has finally got it into his head that we really are staying ... (no more moves and job changes - finally!) at least for a good amount of time. With it has come this explosion of home improvements that have been simmering in his mind for the last while. Most of them make me laugh a little. You see, Kent use to poke fun at all tree-hugging environmentalists. You know, the ones that donate to 'Save the Diminishing Glacier Fund' and only buy organic but NEVER bring their own grocery bags to the store. Apparently he's got his own brand of environmentalism - save money while saving the earth! The first major change was to see if there was a way to bring the heat used in the electric dryer for drying clothes into the house during the winter, thus saving our heating bill. Believe or not, there is a wealth of info online on all sorts of things. Thus is born this odd attachment that we use in the winter that drys the clothes while drawing the heat back into the house and even humidifies all at once!



The garden bug still has him, but our pet rabbit has been a bit of a deterrent since the most tender of plant that sprouts quickly encounters her eager chompers. The other problem is that even when the plant makes it past her, the soil has been too poor to give it the nourishment it needs. While watching a documentary on tea from China, he decided he liked the idea of using worms for composting and who's feces provide optimum fertilizer to all things green. Thus is born his own design for a worm farm, seen here without worms which we are to receive in the mail on Monday. (who'd have thought a pound of live worms can come through the mail ....) We will have our own supply of fresh fertilizer so long as we feed the worms our trash. Which Kent was quick to point out, we'll send off less trash to the dump and give back to the earth in the long run.


The chicken wire allows the worms to move into the next layer to continue composting while leaving behind their precious 'castings' to be used in our garden.

These fancy flushers with it's 'sleek European design' are intended to use less water in your toilet. They were purchased at Costco for a small price. The claim is it will save gallons of water a year.



We even tried turning off the water heater manually everyday during peak hours to see if it save us very much money. Not significantly, but it was a fun experiment. So while I'm here teasing him about his personal additions to our home, I must say that his inquisitive ingenuity has made some significant savings that we wouldn't have found otherwise. He says I'm here to beautify and save through cooking and cleaning (and honestly he's right, my paint jobs add much more in the way of aesthetics than a worm farm does) and that must mean his job is to deal with the quirky unseen costs of living. So in reality I'm pretty proud of my man, we make a good team and I'm glad to see the habit of frugality we learned through school is sticking for good. Kent is bound and determined to go to the Home and Garden Show this weekend. I have a feeling that there will be many more projects to fuel his imagination in the weeks to come.