My parents are tightwads, and I love them for that. When I grew up, I continuously witnessed my mom and dad fixing things that went bad. Hole in the sock? Mended. False contact in my walkman (I date myself here)? Soldered back on. Bad haircut? Well, sometimes they went too far.

It took me a while to realize that even though I grew up that way, I diverged greatly from my parent’s guiding principle about things: buy good quality items and make them last. When I started my adult life, I did not fix anything. When something got bad, I would hide behind the lack of time and get a replacement.

One day, my dad paid me a visit and found my all dismembered trash bin. He asked me what I was going to do about it. I told him “don’t worry, the trash company will replace it”. But he couldn’t “not worry” about it. One hour later, he had the trash bin as good as new by reinforcing it with a metal cloth hanger woven into its hinges. That put me to shame.

From then on, I decided to try to fix things. I got to test my resolve when my dryer died last year. Instead of getting a new one, I took it all apart (to my wife’s dismay), identified the issue, got a $10 part from the net and put it right back to work. I was pretty proud.

Starting to fix things got me to think differently about purchases. I no longer focus on price only but on quality and maintainability. And even though I do spend more in the short term, I save quite a bit in the long run. Since my drier fix already added one year to my drier’s 5 years life, it saved me the equivalent of 20% of the cost of the dryer.

It is interesting to me how most we naturally emphasize quality during our car purchases (cf. Toyota annihilation of GM) but not when making smaller ones. I guess the high price of cars forces us to think our purchase.  At least, it shows that we can do it.

Some will say that our economy is consumption-driven and that some short-term adverse effects could be felt if we all decided to consume less but better quality products. I agree to to a certain point but in the long run, I think a change in the consumption mindset could also have positive repercussions:

• It would allow US companies to focus on quality instead of cost cutting, therefore slowing the import of low quality goods and keeping valuable jobs in the US.
• It would create a new industry to serve the people that need their things fixed but don’t have the time to do it. This would definitely create jobs. Think of all the cobblers that went out of business in the last 20 years.

When we fix things, we reduce waste,  save money, have better quality stuff and gather valuable skills. So, I believe that if we were all a bit less Walmart and a bit more Wall-E, we would make our world a better place. Don’t hesitate to disagree with me. Looking forward to hear from you.

We throw out a lot of stuff that could be of great use in the circle of life (yes, maggots are part of it). That gave me the idea of setting up a vermicomposting bin (aka. worms composting). The instructions looked simple : first, a bed of brown stuff, then green stuff, a couple hundreds worms to loosen up the guests and lots of organic trash. White trash (as in Cauliflower) and green trash preferably. Organic meat does not qualify. Add water. This is pretty simple indeed.

So, let’s meet the actors:

• The container: anything that breathes and has a lid is fine. It should be placed in a semi-shaded location and in in a well drained spot. The container can be as small as 12 inches tall (for a two layers bin). I am not sure if it is wise but some people even set this up right in their kitchen. Mine will be outside.

• The brown stuff: egg containers, toilet paper middles, dry leaves, wood clippings and chips, paper or manure. It should be moistened before being laid in the bottom of the bin.

• The green stuff: kitchen scraps, plant clippings, grass, coffee grounds, tea bags, fruits skins…

• The worms: choose them wisely, liberally and squiggly. Red worms are best. One pound worth is a good start. They can even be bought online. European nightcrawlers can also be used but tend to not do as well as the red worms because of the composting bin’s moisture and temperature. Worms cost about $30 per pound. The red worms can eat their weight every day and reproduce happily, leaving you with plenty of their nutrient-rich castings.

• The undesirables: meats, very cooked foodstuff, bones. They rot and attract flies.

The layers of green stuff and brown stuff should be alternated every 6 to 12 inches. It is a good idea to add some garden soil throughout.

From there, the microorganisms and the worms will take over. A heap that is not remixed regularly -or cool heap- can  take up to one year to compost. But if you took it upon yourself to replenish the brown layer regularly and kept the heap moist -and therefore hot-, the composting would happen in about 4 months. Note that your heap should not stink.

Harvesting can be tricky as you may not want live worms in you house plants. Shining a light on the heap makes the worms go deeper in the pile therefore letting you harvest the top layer of compost.

Your new pet worms will love you for this and you will prevent that much waste from ending in the landfill. And the best thing is: you will never buy another $10 bag of soil again.

Let me know how yours works out!

Resources:

http://lancaster.unl.edu/pest/resources/Vermicompost107.shtml

http://www.wormwoman.com

http://www.ciwmb.ca.gov/Organics/Worms/WrmSuply.htm

Reducing our water consumption is one of the most daunting challenge we will face over the next ten years, specially where I live in southern CA. I believe that lifestyle-affecting changes will be forced upon us in the near future. That said, I also believe that

widespread conservation could be achieved through basic non-life-shattering habits changes. If enough of us made a difference, we might very well avoid more drastic limitations for everybody in the coming years.

• Use low flow toilets : these are cheap and pretty nice. They use 70% less water than the pre-1994 thrones. I have them everywhere in my house and although they do require elbow grease some days, they work great. We can all use a plunger, right? Even better are the dual flush low flow toilets. Imagine the toilet asking you “number one, sir?”.

• Install a hot water recirculator:  this is a very cool invention in my opinion. The purpose of the recirculator is to circulate the water in the hot-water pipes when needed. So, instead of flushing all the cold pipe water to the drain when one takes a shower, the cooled-off water is returned to the hot water tank and the water in the pipes is kept warm. This can yield huge water savings.

• Fix leaky toilets: keep in mind that most toilets leaks are undetectable to the naked… eye. However, most cities provide leak test capsules for free. They basically color the water in the tank, so that you can see it leaking in the bowl.

• Use a shower timer: I sometimes take long showers just because I am lost in thoughts. The knowledge of the actual time lapsed prevents me from loosing track of time and from taking 15 minutes showers.

• Use low-flow shower heads: I know what you are thinking… “taking 2 minutes shower on a trickle sounds great”. But really, it is pretty hard to feel the difference between the normal shower heads and the low-flow ones. The latter just spread things better.

• Get a front-loading washer: these save 70% water over the top loading washers and they have a higher capacity.

• Eat your front yard: this could change our landscape a bit… I always wondered why there are so many useless ugly grassy front yards. We could do so much with that space. There are plenty of plants that could grow on a average front yard and provide a non-trivial amount of food while using less water and fertilizer. They can look great too.

• Reuse: I must admit that this one is tough. The easiest water to reuse is the produce rinsing water. It can be used for the plants irrigation. Don’t go too far with this, though. You got to let go sometimes…

• Don’t rinse the dishwasher dishes under running water: the dishwashers are pretty good these days at unsticking even the most encroached two days old pasta (don’t ask me how I know…). If it really, really sticks, just use a moist sponge to get it out.

• Don’t let the water run while brushing your teeth: it’s OK to take your time but turn off the tap!
• Say yes to “toilet-to-tap” : don’t try this at home but I believe that this will be a key to reducing our water usage in the future. It consists in purifying the waste water and reuse it. I know it sounds gross but this is not that different than what nature already does for us (we dump waste in the ocean, the ocean evaporates, it rains and we drink). So, when a toilet-to-tap proposal comes your way, give i

• Shave your hair: this can be lifestyle affecting but man, does it save time and water…

The bottom line is that most of these changes are not that hard to implement and if we all spent some effort, we could avoid some more intensely life affecting water usage limitations in the future.

This is obviously not a comprehensive list. I am open to all your ideas. Also, I’d be pretty curious to quantify how much water can be saved without feeling much pinch, so let me know your numbers. I will post a follow-up in a couple of months.

For part 1, click here

“I’d rather be shopping at Nortstrom”. I spotted that bumper sticker on my way home one day.”That is so sad” I thought. “I can’t believe people would reduce themselves to that”. I then quickly started my MP3 player, grabbed my PDA phone, drove on and spent antoher gallon of gas promising myself to not let that happen to me…

An inch passed my self-righteousness, I realized that I was really not all that different. I have owned 3 PDA’s in the last five years, four computers in the last 10 years and quite some more electronics gadgets. In college, I literally spent every dollar I made on electronics . The news was out : I was a consumer, and a pretty darn good one at that.

Life, Liberty and The pursuit of happy moments

I can track my lust for PDAs to about 10 years ago. One of my first professional assignment was a three months stint in Paris. “First time away from home, better get organized” I thought. So I found a cool Cassiopeia E-10 to hold all my life in before taking the plunge. It even had a voice recorder! I had an amazing time there. Every night, I would leave work at 6PM and just start walking down the streets of the city. About 15 miles a day, every day for three months. I spent countless hours making up melodies and recording them. And then walking and walking and more walking. This was exhilarating and one of the most satisfying introspective experience of my life.

And that is what most my own frivolous stuff purchases are about: the thrill of the moment or the association of objects with pleasant memories. It is tough sometimes to not confuse this kind of thrill with real happiness. I know that things don’t bring happiness, that only actions and relationships do. But I still fall for it (altough way less than I used to). Sometimes, after a coveted purchase, I even feel an exaltation that usually lasts for a week or so. I love the stuff fast and then fall out of love in a whim. I can even get pretty defensive with it (”Pleeaaaase don’t break my PDA…”).

No wonder advertisers focus so much on images of happiness to push their products. They hope that we associate their product to pleasant feelings. What they fail to mention, though is that stuff-induced exaltation always goes away. Stuff does not bring real happiness. I understand that this is common sense but I need to write it again. Stuff does not bring real happiness – but it can be fun sometimes -…

It is plain to see that I am not always successful at discerning what brings long term happiness. However, I always try to remember that it is not the things that make a moment happy, it is the people – yes, you there-.

Your very delayedlama.

That was one of the best ideas of my life (I can count those on the fingers of… well, just one finger). In the last five years, my family and I have done two of these “reunion vacations” and they truly brought us closer together. That money would have been gotten, spent and forgotten in a minute had my siblings and I received it ourselves. So, we are the living proof that investing in happiness works! I still miss that TV, though… but guilt, there is none.

As a group, we humans, are surprisingly lucid about what makes us happy: a satisfying family life, deep friendships, a meaningful career and a personal feeling of usefulness and belonging are cited endlessly in the happiness polls. But when comes the time to put our money where our mouth is, all that goes out the window and the lust for a big house, two big Lexus’, a trophy career and tons of stuff seems to prevail. What is happening to us?

Can we blame our behaviour on marketing? How convenient… Maybe it is the culture! Possible. Huh, maybe it is us? Now we are getting warmer. Let’s face it, we are suckers for status. It makes us feel good. Status is our favorite measuring stick. We just love to feel like giants among midgets.

Over the next weeks, I will expose my everyday struggle between the desire for status and the longing for a happier, simpler more satisfying life. I look forward to hear from the readers about their own struggles as well.

But in the meanwhile, let us all invest in happiness first!

For part 2, click here