Laundry Detergent

I buy cheap laundry powder at No-Frills; comes in a carton about the size of a small car. I've been decanting it into empty 4-litre water bottles that someone on my floor tosses into our floor's recycle bin. Lately I realized that it's a terrible waste of a potential food-container.

I launder by soaking my clothes in a 24-litre pail to which was poured about ½ cup of cheap powder. Water is the universal solvent, as any chemist worth his NaCl will tell you, also that any soap or detergent is merely a wetting agent.

Soaked for 20 hours, I drain the buckets, and take them to the laundry room, where what would be a normal cycle of wash followed by rinse becomes two rinse cycles, removing every trace of dirt and cheap laundry detergent from my clothes.

Dawned on me that folks buy liquid laundry detergent and toss the bottles in the waste bin. Laundry detergent bottles, rinsed and dried, would be better harbours for laundry powder than drinking-water bottles, which are idea for storing rice, sugar, and so on. (Easier pouring and measurement!).

Here's a turfed bottle "empty" of detergent, right?

So I start to rinse out a cast-off laundry bottle in the kitchen sink, and realise that water is the universal solvent, and any soap or detergent is merely a wetting agent. That's unused detergent I'm flushing down the drain.

Here's the same bottle getting worked up into a lather.

So from now on

1: I don't buy dishwashing detergent

2: I use rinse-out laundry detergent for dishes (which I always rinse in fresh water after washing anyway)

3: I drive the superintendent batty by dropping a laundry-detergent bottle, empty, into our floors recycling bin every day.

There are but six apartments on this floor ...

Vinegar Bottle

The vinegar is used up and you are faced with a chunk of plastic that has served its initial purpose as a 4-litre container.

What next?

Use the sharpest knife you can find (“Hold tightly, press lightly”) and slice the bottle into two parts.

In the photo above the left-hand part will make a convenient holder for incoming mail or receipts. Or recipe cards.

The right-hand part will serve as a scoop for potting-soil or, with the cap temporarily removed, a scoop-and-funnel for sand.

The Mobile Phones -2

Recycling, the blue recycling bin, is possibly the worst environmental blow to hit Toronto – and maybe your city – in the past thirty years. “It’s not garbage” is a perpetual cry from the environmental side. In these pages I will bring you examples of WHY this “Blue Bin” mentality should be stopped. Sadly, I’ll be competing against an entrenched multi-million dollar program of indoctrination.

Here’s is another Panasonic set, this time a base unit and a mobile unit.

An as-new Panasonic KX-TG5422 .

Scooped out of the same recycle bin as TheMobilePhones.doc .

It takes proprietary rechargeable batteries, and was charged when I plugged it in.

Looks to me to be in “new” condition.

Why is it tossed out?

So what was wrong with it?

Both units work.

Sigh.

Postage-Stamp Sheet Borders

The customized postage stamps are used up.

The sheet is near-empty.

There’s a bit of blank space on the top border of the adhesive sheet, but there’s LOTS of blank space down the sides and across the foot.

Chop up the blank pieces to make handy adhesive labels.

Here is where I will use mine: I date-stamp cartridges as I load them into my laser printer.

Or I could use them to label jars of bottled pears!

Cutting-Strip from Paper Roll

The roll of waxed-paper or foil or cling-film is finished.

The oblong cardboard container is torn up into scraps for the vermicomposter.

What to do with the serrated metal strip, about a foot long, that used to cut the paper into chunks?

Easy!

It makes a superb extra-strong long twist-tie for heavy cables!