Abby Quillen

Freelance Content Marketing Writer and Editor

Health

New Urbanism: Planning healthier cities and retrofitting suburbia

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Photo courtesy of Geek Philosopher
Photo courtesy of Geek Philosopher

(The third in a series highlighting U.S. Movements to celebrate, support, and spread the word about.)

Suburban sprawl has been the dominant development pattern for the last fifty years. By 2000, more people lived in suburbs than in cities, small towns, and the countryside combined. Most of these suburbs were built after 1950 to accommodate the automobile, and they usually have the following familiar characteristics:

  • Low population density
  • Separate business and residential districts
  • Large lots
  • No sidewalks
  • Complex hierarchical street systems
  • Cul-de-sacs
  • Large parking lots
  • Shopping malls
  • Strip malls
  • Big box stores
  • Traffic congestion

These features – especially the curving dead-end streets, lack of sidewalks, massive parking lots, and the distance  between residences and businesses make it nearly impossible to walk or ride a bike in many suburbs.

The result? 41% of urban trips in the U.S. are under 2 miles, but 90% are made by car. Only 6% of trips are made on foot and 1% by bicycle (1995). Compare that with a few other countries:

  • France – 24% foot, 4% bike
  • Switzerland – 24% foot, 10% bike
  • Sweden – 29% foot, 10% bike
  • The Netherlands – 18% foot, 28% bike

The vast majority of Americans also drive to work. The average commute is 16 miles. Only 4% of Americans commute via public transportation, 2.93% walk, and .38% cycle.

cars

Sprawl is hazardous to our health.

Suburban living undeniably has good points – big backyards, good schools, friendly neighborhoods, and roomy living quarters. But sprawling cities mean more driving and lead to:

1. Physical inactivity

Researchers Barbara A. McCan and Reid Ewing studied the health effects of sprawl by comparing the “sprawl index” to the health characteristics of 200,000 people in 448 different counties. They found that people living in more sprawling counties were more likely to

  • be physically inactive
  • have higher body mass indexes
  • be obese
  • suffer from high blood pressure.

2. Road rage

With everyone relying so heavily on cars, our roadways are packed and driving is often stressful. A third of drivers can be characterized as aggressive. 62% say they occasionally get frustrated behind the wheel, 40% admit to getting angry, and 20% confess to getting road rage at times.

3. Traffic accidents

Driving is one of the most dangerous activities we do each day. 6.5 million auto accidents occur every year in the U.S, and almost 40,000 people died last year in car crashes. That’s 110 deaths every day, or one death every 13 minutes.

4. Air Pollution

Cars are the leading cause of air pollution in the U.S. Long-term exposure to dirty air is known to shorten lives and contribute to cardiovascular and lung disease.

There’s an alternative to sprawl.

sweden bikes

New Urbanism is an urban planning movement that rose up in the early 1980s in reaction to suburban development.

The ten principles of New Urbanism are:

  1. Walkability – Amenities are within a ten minute walk from home or work and streets are pedestrian-friendly.
  2. Connectivity – Cities are on a grid to make walking easier.
  3. Mixed Use and Diversity – Residential and business districts are mixed and appeal to people of all ages and walks of life.
  4. Mixed Housing – Neighborhoods have different types and prices of housing.
  5. Quality Architecture and Urban Design – Developments are beautiful, comfortable, and have a sense of place.
  6. Traditional Neighborhood Structure – The center of town is public open space.
  7. Increased Density – Everything is closer together to make walking more convenient.
  8. Green Transportation – A network of trains connects neighborhoods, towns, and cities.
  9. Sustainability – Developments encourage energy efficient living: less driving, more walking.
  10. Quality of Life – Neighborhoods, towns, and buildings uplift and enrich people’s lives.

New Urbanist developers have fought to change city codes that favor sprawl to build more walkable, livable communities. Critics have pointed out that some New Urban developments, like Plum Creek in Kyle, Texas; Kentlands, Maryland; and Seaside, Florida, are built on open space and thus add to sprawl, even if these communities are compact, mixed-use, and walkable.

But not all New Urbanist settlements are on open space. Many are suburban retrofits. Stapleton in Denver, Colorado was an old airport; and Belmar in Lakewood, Colorado and Mizner Park in Boca Raton, Florida were abandoned shopping malls.

walkable

Suburbia needs a rehab

Time Magazine reports that “the American suburb as we know it is dying” because of the housing bust, and Christopher B. Leinberger asks if suburban McMansion developments will be “the next slum” in the Atlantic Monthly. 148,000 shopping malls and big box stores closed last year, including Circuit City, Gottshalks, and many Home Depots and Mervyns. When big retailers desert neighborhoods, they don’t just leave giant, windowless, vacant buildings. They also leave lost tax revenue, fewer jobs and the potential for increased vandalism, more crime, and lower property values.

The residential districts of suburbs were also vastly overbuilt during the housing bubble. Arthur C. Nelson of the Metropolitan Institute at Virginia Tech, forecasts a surplus of 22 million large-lot homes by 2025, which is about 40% of those in existence today.

bike lightRemaking the abandoned miles of sprawl resulting from the unsustainable development patterns of the last fifty years will be a major challenge in the next few decades, and New Urbanist theorists, planners, and architects will undoubtedly be on the front lines.

If reshaping American cities to be healthier and less car-centric seems hopeless, look at Bogota, Colombia. In 1998, to fight severe traffic congestion and pollution problems, Enrique Peñalosa, the new mayor of Bogota, built 70 miles of bike paths; converted many streets into pedestrian malls; and built a relatively inexpensive rapid transit bus system. The results were quick and dramatic. The average commute time decreased 21 minutes and the air got significantly cleaner. The citizens of Bogota were so pleased that they voted to ban cars entirely from downtown during rush hour starting in 2015.

Read more about New Urbanism at Congress for the New Urbanism. Or grab a copy of Retrofitting Suburbia: Urban Design Solutions for Redesigning Suburbs by Ellen Dunham-Jones and June Williamson.

Are you a fan or member of a movement fighting for social, cultural, or environmental change? Leave a comment! Your movement could be highlighted in a future New Urban Habitat article.

The Art of Walking

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My baby pulls himself up now, teeters on a knee and one foot, and then plunks down. He’ll take his first steps soon, sway and totter across the living room floor, and join me in one of my favorite activities – walking.

I’ve loved to walk for as long as I can remember. My parents walked me and my sister to and from school each day until we were old enough to walk alone. We hiked in the Rocky Mountains most summer weekends. We strolled around our neighborhood after dinner. We did errands on foot, stopping at the bank, the hardware store, and the grocery store. My dad even wrote notes to get us out of school on crisp fall afternoons so we could amble along as a family, talk, and gaze at the streaks of red and orange aspen trees on the hillsides. Perhaps this is why walking feels like eating and breathing to me, like I’m not really living unless I’m doing it often.

Walking has factored into many of my big life decisions, like where I’ve lived and worked. I’ve been able to get to work or school on foot most days for my entire life. My commute has ranged from a few blocks to a few miles. I walked four miles a day throughout my pregnancy, right up until the day before my son’s birth. I even walked a couple of miles when I was in labor. I’ve walked up mountains, across beaches, through cities, and up and down a hallway countless times with a sleepy baby in my arms.

I love to walk without purpose, to set my own pace, to have nowhere to go, no time frame, nobody to meet, no one to talk to, and nothing in particular to think about. I love to walk to sort through something I’m writing; or reflect on a bad day; or listen to a podcast; or just meditate on my surroundings. I love to walk with my husband, a good friend, my mom, or my sister and let our conversations drift from topic to topic. I love to lull my baby to sleep on my back as I weave through neighborhoods, across parks, up hills, and down bike paths.

I hate that the word pedestrian also means dull, uninspired, unexciting, or humdrum. I’m convinced the world would be a better place if everyone who was able walked, strode, clomped, jaunted, sauntered, tramped, meandered, shuffled, plodded, and wandered a lot more. We used to. In On Foot: A History of Walking, Joseph A. Amato points out that it’s only very recently that humans have sat and ridden “first on horses and in carriages, then on trains and bicycles, and finally in cars, trucks, buses, and airplanes.” He argues this revolution in the way we live has changed not only our bodies but our minds. It’s altered, “conceptions of space, distance, motion, movement, and the amount of energy necessary to invest in travel.” Amato’s book, as well as Rebecca Solnit’s magnificent Wanderlust: A History of Walking, and Henry David Thoreau’s essay “Walking,” exemplify that walking is anything but pedestrian. It inspires passion, magic, creativity – art.

The art of walking

In honor of one of my favorite activities: here are six reasons to lace on some comfortable shoes and hit the pavement, path, or trail today (and every other day too!):

1. Your health

Moderate daily exercise is essential for good health, and walking is a great exercise. The Honolulu Heart Study followed retired non-smoking men over the age of sixty for twelve years and found that men who walked just two miles a day cut their risk of premature death nearly in half. Of course most people know exercise is great for the heart. It may surprise you that the walkers were also two-and-a-half times less likely to die of cancer than their sedentary peers.  (New England Journal of Medicine, Jan 9, 1998)

2. The Environment

I’ve written about how much I love bikes . And walking is even easier on the earth than cycling. No one has to mine molybdenum, titanium, aluminum, or smelt steel for you to hit the pavement.  All you need is a comfortable pair of shoes (which you probably own anyway). The more trips we make on foot, the cleaner our air, water, and planet will be.

To make walking an even greener option, check out this Runner’s World article on the environmental “footprint” of running shoes, and consider supporting companies striving to make greener shoes. You can also drop off your used running shoes at a recycling center. Find one near you here.

3. Fresh Air

Richard Louv coined the term “nature deficit disorder” in his 2005 book Last Child in the Woods referring to the trend of children spending less time outdoors. Louv believes a lack of outdoors time leads to all sorts of behavioral problems in kids. Spending time in nature is undoubtedly good for children and adults alike. A daily walk allows you to note the gradual shifts in the seasons, watch the sun rise or set, keep track of the moon’s cycles, breathe in fresh air, explore the vast variety of plants and animals, and just be part of the natural world.

4. Problem solving

As Solnit writes in Wanderlust: A History of Walking, “the rhythm of walking generates a kind of rhythm of thinking.” It’s probably not a coincidence that so many of our great thinkers and writers were also great fans of walking – Thoreau, William Shakespeare, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, William Wordsworth, John Adams, Soren Keirkegaard, Robert Louis Stevenson, Jane Austen, and more.

5. Family and Neighborhood Connections

A daily after-dinner stroll is not only good for digestion. It’s also a great time to catch up with your spouse or kids and get to know your neighbors. Check out your neighborhood’s “walk score” here.

6. It’s easy

My favorite thing about walking is how easy it is to incorporate into daily life. Just lace on some shoes, set a comfortable pace, and enjoy the scenery. That’s all it takes.

I think that I cannot preserve my health and spirits, unless I spend four hours a day at least..._ Henry David Thoreau #walking #health #mentalhealth

If you liked this post, you may enjoy these popular posts:

What’s your favorite thing about walking? I’d love to hear your thoughts!

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Herbs Made Easy

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My mom was no stranger to home remedies. She treated my sore throats with hydrogen peroxide and salt-water rinses, soothed my burns with ice packs, and she had a PhD in when to pop an acetaminophen or decongestant. But slathering aloe vera on my sunburns was about the extent of her herbal know-how. Likewise, in all my years of going to doctors, exactly one of them advised I take an herb. Dr. Dave wrote me a “prescription” for slippery elm tea for a sore throat when I was nineteen. At that point, I had no idea what a rarity Dr. Dave was. If herbs weren’t part of your mom or physician’s medicine cabinets either, dabbling with botanicals can be intimidating.

When you turn to herbal reference books or encyclopedias, herbs can be even more daunting. There are all those Latin names – urtica dioica, lippia citriodora, valeriana officinalis, scutellaria laterifolia. And they look so much alike. It’s hard to fathom you’d be able to tell licorice from indigo in the wild, let alone skullcap from its toxic look-alike germander or wild parsley from its poisonous doppelganger hemlock. Plus, there are so many of them – expectorants and demulcents, antibiotics and antiseptics, relaxants and stimulants, adaptogens and alteratives. Then there are all the scary warnings, like these from The New Age Herbalist by Richard Mabey:

  • Pasque flower: “CAUTION: This plant should only be used as prescribed by a qualified herbal practitioner.”
  • Black Cohosh: “CAUTION: A powerful remedy only to be used by those experienced in herbal medicine.”
  • Peony: “CAUTION: This plant is poisonous.”

It may be tempting to write medicinal herbs off as too complex and scary, or imagine that if medicinal herbs really worked, doctors would prescribe them instead of synthetic pills, some of which barely outperform placebos or have lists of known side effects.

But here’s the bottom line:

  • Medicinal herbs have been powerful allies for health and healing for as long as humans have lived.
  • Even the gentlest herbs can be extremely effective remedies, as anyone who has drunk a glass of ginger or peppermint tea for a stomachache can attest.
  • Herbs are often inexpensive, safe alternatives to drugs.
  • Adding medicinal herbs to your health arsenal – along with good nutrition, exercise, relaxation, and conventional medicine and pharmaceutical drugs when necessary – just makes good sense.

Herbs Made Easy #health #alternativemedicine

Herbs should not be treated simply as replacements for drugs.

Even when drugs are developed from plants, one ingredient is isolated to make the effect and dosage predictable. However, herbalists believe it’s better to take plants whole in most cases, because the herb’s different phytochemicals interact to enhance the therapeutic effects and dilute toxicity.

Consider the case of the herb meadowsweet and Aspirin. Aspirin was originally made by isolating the salicylates from meadowsweet. But while Aspirin can cause stomach irritation and gastric bleeding, meadowsweet does not. The tannins and mucilages in the herb buffer against the adverse effects of the salicylates. The effects of meadowsweet might not be as predictable, but the herb is effective and much safer.

So why isn’t my doctor recommending herbs?

Most American doctors don’t learn much about botanical medicine in their university training. Moreover, medical research is funded by big pharmaceutical companies, and large studies don’t tend to be done on herbal remedies. Pharmaceutical companies also have big bucks to market their products to physicians and directly to patients. But it’s hard for anyone to make big profits off the fragrant, healing plants in our backyard – some of which, like dandelions, grow whether we want them to or not – and the medical system in the U.S. is profit-driven.

In Europe, where medical systems are socialized, herbal medicine is more mainstream. The German government formed Commission E, a body of scientists, toxicologists, doctors, and pharmacists, to study herbs for safety and effectiveness in 1978. The result? German doctors regularly prescribe herbs like Valerian for anxiety, St. John’s Wort for depression, Vitex (chasteberry) for menstrual irregularities, and saw palmetto for enlarged prostrates.

Are medicinal herbs safe?

Ingesting herbs, like any food or medication, is not risk-free. It’s always a good idea to be cautious about what you’re putting in your body, especially when it comes to over-the-counter herbal supplements, because vitamin and herbal supplement manufacturers aren’t well-regulated in the U.S. Here are some good rules of thumb:

  • Read widely about the herbs you want to take. Seek out books or websites written by reputable herbalists. I have a library of herbal reference books, and I consult all of them before I ingest anything.
  • Buy herbs (in any form) only from trusted sources.
  • If you’re taking any pharmaceutical medicines, consult with your physician before taking an herb to make sure its not contraindicated. Keep in mind that your doctor might not know much about herbs, and bring along some of your own research to discuss.
  • Stop taking an herb if you’re not getting results.
  • Periodically stop a treatment once your condition has improved to make sure you need to continue taking it.
  • Don’t self-treat complex conditions.
  • Take a small amount of a new herb, and be alert to undesired side-effects or allergic reactions. (In the very rare event that you experience trouble breathing within 30 minutes of taking anything – herb, drug, or food – call 911.)

While caution is a good idea, don’t overestimate the dangers from taking medicinal herbs. According to Dr. James A. Duke, a leading botanist and expert on medicinal plants, “herbs (usually through abuse or exceeding recommended dosage) are killing fewer than 100” people a year. (That’s less than one in a million of the people taking herbs regularly in the U.S.) Compare that with the Archive of Internal Medicine’s estimate of 90,000 serious injuries and deaths caused by prescription drugs in the U.S. each year. And a study conducted at the University of Toronto and reported in the Journal of American Medicine in April of 1998 estimated the number of deaths from pharmaceutical medications even higher at 106,000 a year.

Medicinal herbs don’t have to be complicated.

Where’s a beginner to start?

Many herbalists, including Susan Weed and Michael Tierra, recommend that you get to know plants one at a time. Pick one and use it in teas, salves, tinctures, and poultices. Build a basic foundation of knowledge about it, then move on to another. Herbalism used to be called “the art of simpling,” because  most herbs are so versatile that any herb can heal you if you follow some basic principles.

In one of my favorite books about herbs, The Herbal Home Remedy Book, Joyce Wardwell lays out the four elements of simpling as follows:

  1. Use mild herbs. These plants are commonly used as foods. They’re safe for small children and the elderly, and they enhance the body’s capacity for healing.
  2. Use these mild herbs in large doses. Brew strong infusions, and drink them several times a day for days, weeks, and sometimes months.
  3. Use the herbs that grow near you. The herbs that grown in your climate are the best adapted for the stresses the climate puts on your body.
  4. Be patient. You’ll probably see some effects within three days or so, but sometimes it takes longer. If you use an herb for more than a week, take a rest one or two days a week to give your body a chance to restore equilibrium.

When you approach herbs as healing food-like beverages full of vitamins, minerals, and other nutrients, they are also excellent additions to a healthy diet and lifestyle.[clickToTweet tweet=”Herbal medicine can be overwhelming. Here’s a safe, easy way to benefit from herbs. #health” quote=”Herbal medicine can be overwhelming. Here’s a safe, easy way to benefit from herbs.” theme=”style1″]

Ready to make a simple herbal remedy? Check out my article Simple Herbal Tonics: Brews for Beginners.

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Do you already use medicinal herbs? Leave a comment. I’d love to hear what you sip on and why.

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An Ode to Baking Soda

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home 064

If you’re trying to simplify and go green, you have a magic helper – baking soda. It’s almost too good to be true – cheap, natural, non-toxic, with a legion of uses. If you’re not using baking soda daily, you may be surprised at how many expensive products you can replace with this one simple substance. You could almost imagine it capable of any feat.

What exactly is baking soda?

Baking soda is a salt that goes by many names: NaHCO3, sodium bicarbonate, bread soda, cooking soda, sodium hydrogen carbonate, sodium acid carbonate, bicarbonate of soda, sodium bicarb, bicarb soda, or just bicarb. In its natural mineral form it’s called nahcolite, and it’s found in large quantities in Searles Lake, California and the oil-shale deposits of Green River Formation in Colorado.

However, most of the baking soda in the United States comes from a natural mineral ore called trona mined near Green River, Wyoming. Trona is mineral residue from Lake Gosiute, an ancient freshwater lake that once covered 15,000 miles of Southwestern Wyoming. When Lake Gosuite evaporated, minerals settled in the bed, creating the trona deposit, which is now 1500 feet below the ground. There’s so much of it there that it could meet the world’s needs for baking soda for thousands of years. Many companies mine the trona deposit, including FMC Corporation, General Chemical, and Solvay Chemicals. After trona is extracted, it must be refined to make baking soda – a multi-step process you can read about here.

In other parts of the world, baking soda is made in laboratories from brine and limestone using the Solvay Process. This method creates environmentally damaging byproducts like calcium chloride that increase the salinity of inland waterways when released.

So, is baking soda really “green”?

Baking soda production requires either mining or creates hazardous bi-products. However, it is a versatile, non-toxic product that replaces far more hazardous chemicals in most people’s homes. As cleaning products go, it’s fairly Earth-friendly.

Is there anything baking soda can’t do?

You probably know that baking soda helps quick breads and cookies rise and that a box in the fridge removes excess moisture and absorbs odor. Here are some lesser-known things you can do with it:

  • Smother grease and household fires.
  • Add it to bath water. It softens skin; relieves itching from chicken pox, measles, or bug bites; soothes a sunburn; or helps clear up a baby’s diaper rash.
  • Wash your face, body, and hair with it.
  • Dust it on in place of underarm deoderant.
  • Sprinkle it in garbage cans, diaper pails, cat litter boxes, and stinky shoes to neutralize odor.
  • Sprinkle it where needed to repel ants and roaches.
  • Clean with it – shower curtains, coffee pots, dentures, thermoses, refrigerators, garage floors, burned pans, marble, bathtubs, and drains.
  • Add a half-teaspoon to a glass of water to relieve heartburn.
  • Brush your teeth with it. Mix it with water to make a mouthwash to freshen breath and relieve canker sores.
  • Add it to the water when soaking beans to make them more digestible.
  • Clean the corrosion from car batteries with it.

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The Creative Life: Buy less, create more, and transform your life

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When you type the phrase “American consumers” into Google, you get 976,000 results. That two-word phrase is mentioned 1,494 times in Google News stories just today. I don’t know about you, but I’m a little tired of hearing about American consumers. I’m all for supporting farmers, booksellers, manufacturers, craftsmen, bakers, and artisans with my dollars – especially those doing business in a fair, sustainable way. I’m just convinced that this meme that Americans are essentially consumers is destructive, not just to the environment, but to our psyches.

Consumption is passive, bland, and boring. Consumption requires little of us. We humans are creative and innovative creatures. Our minds churn with thoughts, impressions, and opinions. We erupt with ideas. We produce symphonies, skyscrapers, bridges, frescoes, novels, poems, quilts, ocean liners, and airplanes. We’re not mindless buyers, purchasers, or consumers. We are producers, inventors … creators.

How can we buck this oppressive notion that our most important role in life is consuming? Easy. We can buy less and get creative. I’m all for art. Draw, paint, sew, knit, crochet, sing, and dance! But what I’m talking about is more accessible. It doesn’t require a paint brush, knitting needles, a sewing machine … or talent. All you have to do is bring imagination to the day-to-day.

Look at your shopping list; think outside the box, bottle, or container; and ask yourself, Can I make this? Sometimes the answer will be no … or the learning curve, labor, or time you’d spend make it a bad candidate for your efforts. But often you can make things.

It may be hard to shift your consciousness from buying to creating at first. Most of us have watched and listened to literally years of commercials selling everything from boxed rice, to jarred baby food, to taco seasoning, to deodorant. Corporations have convinced us we need loads of products. And the government and media have even conflated consuming with civic responsibility. So it may seem strange that a lot of the products and packaged food we buy are unnecessary. Some don’t even save us time; many are inferior to what we can make ourselves; and worse, many (and their packages) are destructive to our health and to the planet.

When you start thinking about what you can make and start practicing that first (and most ignored) part of the recycling mantra – reduce, reuse, recycle, your grocery bills will inevitably shrink. You’ll probably experience an incomparable glow of satisfaction when your creations taste fabulous or nail the job they’re intended for. You might also notice positive changes in your health. But the best part is you’ll begin to see yourself as the imaginative, resourceful, amazing creator that you are.

Four easy ways to start buying less and getting creative:

1. Grow food
Turn your lawn into an edible landscape, put a few containers of tomatoes on your balcony, plant a fruit tree, or just grow some herbs in your kitchen window. When you garden, you and nature become co-creators in a grand project. And fruit, veggies, and herbs are never again something you mindlessly buy at the supermarket year-round.

2. Cook from scratch
You can easily afford some good cookbooks with all the money you’ll save by ditching expensive, nutritionally-deficient, processed food. Cooking is easy. If you’re a newby, just follow the recipes closely. Of course, cooking with whole foods takes more time than heating up processed food or spinning through the drive through. But you’ll save buckets of cash, eat healthier, and the taste difference is nothing short of astounding. Some of my favorite cookbooks: Cooking for the Whole Family by Cynthia Lair, Laurel’s Kitchen by Laurel Robertson, and America’s Test Kitchen Family Cookbook.

3. Make bread

The authors of Laurel’s Kitchen Bread Book insist there are “subtle, far-reaching, and distinctly positive changes that can take place when you begin to bake (bread) regularly.” They claim the process is therapeutic, creative, calming, and can transform a house into a home. I agree. I’ve been making my family’s bread for much of the past year, and I’m amazed by how much I look forward to bread-making day, not just because the house smells delectable and I get to eat slices of steaming hot bread fresh from the oven. There’s also something about the process. It leaves a lot of room for learning and growing. Bread-making undeniably takes time, but you can use a bread machine, stand-up mixer, or food processor to help with the kneading, and for most of the rest of the process, the dough simply rests and rises on the counter, leaving you free to kick back or attend to some other chore. Start with a basic loaf, and you might find yourself moving onto more complicated recipes, like desem or sourdough, before you know it.

4. Mix up green cleaners
Years ago my friend Beth told me she started looking forward to cleaning when she started making her own cleaners, but it took me years to heed her advice. It seemed complicated. It’s not. Trust me, you do not need to be a chemist for this. All you need is distilled white vinegar, baking soda, and liquid castile soap (Think: Dr. Bronner’s). And Beth’s right – homemade cleaners make housework more fun. You can mix up an all-purpose bathroom cleaner with 50/50 vinegar and water. Find more recipes for everything from furniture polish to mildew remover in The Urban Homestead: Your Guide to Self-Sufficient Living in the Heart of the City by Kelly Coyne and Erik Knutzen or Organic Housekeeping by Ellen Sandbeck.

You don’t have to stop there. You can make herbal teas, tonics, tinctures, cosmetics, lotions, salves, yogurt, butter, ice cream, beer, wine, kimchi, sauerkraut, kombucha, pickles, jams, and so much more. And for the more crafty – of course, you can sew clothes; crochet blankets; knit sweaters; create art for your walls; or build furniture. You may find that the more you create, the more creative you become.

Are you already buying less and getting creative? I’d love to hear what you’re doing!