apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

When we looked for a house, I had three simple criteria: it had to be small, close to work, and I would not stand a lawn that needed regular mowing and watering — truly silly in soggy Portland. It was to be our first house, which meant we weren't afraid of a project. Our eager naivety resulted in what we thought would be a simple 3-month basement renovation turning into a gut renovation that's now pushing three years.

When we found the house, I knew it was the one. It sure was small: the footprint measured only 22 feet by 28 feet. There was a wedge of a front yard, measuring five feet at the narrowest point. It had not been touched since it was built as worker housing in 1937. It was a 20-minute walk through a forest preserve to downtown Portland, ten minutes' drive by car to my work, and on a bus line that went directly to my partner's office. It had a view.

And it was green. It was also cramped and crumbling...

Last night, as we spooned cold stew out of one of those semi-disposable plastic food storage containers, we felt like we had reached the height of hypocrisy. ZipWare, GladLoc, whatever it was — it didn't seal correctly any more, so we'd improvised a solution involving plastic wrap, rubber bands, and tape: hardly elegant, and on a small scale, wasteful...

Spring is here, and that means it's time to take a close look at the tile in your tub or shower. If it looks like the image above, it's time to call your landlord...

Cell phones, cordless vacuums, laptop computers, fake candles, Wii accessories...

It's remarkable how many gadgets and doodads around the house require a rechargeable battery in order to function.

It's important to recycle batteries because some contain metals that can contaminate ground water if the batteries end up in landfills.

But if your curbside recycling doesn't take batteries, it's been hard to figure out what to do with them.

Halloween is tomorrow, and we're hoping more manufacturers will take the opportunity to dress up their products in unexpected ways. These ordinary-looking skylights, for example, aren't skylights at all, but rather solar collectors for heating hot water.

We've been blown away by the volume of responses and the brilliance of the submissions to our Creative Reuse series. Now you can put that creativity and design sense to work while supporting FSC, one of the greenest certification schemes out there.

It's odd to see a big oil company touting conservation, but that's exactly what Chevron is doing. And for us, it's reaching saturation levels—we feel like the woman holding a sign reading, "I will install a programmable thermostat" is becoming an old friend...

If you are looking for a replacement for your gas-guzzling SUV, but still need to haul the occasional load, we've got the fix for you: a SUB. That's right—a sport utility bicycle.

Here's one more reason to do all you can to preserve what's left of the natural environment: simply looking at a green landscape can help refresh your brain.

A few days back, we asked about how to green Halloween. Well, the new Green, Inc. blog over at the New York Times is wondering why people would shell out more money for an organic Halloween pumpkin. Kate Galbraith wonders, "does it make sense to pay a premium for something you’re only going to carve up and put on display?"

We had some serious cabinet chaos thanks to an overabundance of tea and coffee. These simple wooden crates we picked up for less than a dollar each at the local salvage store did the trick...

We like the rough aesthetic of this dining table from CB2, made of wood reclaimed from Indian railroad cars...

Wired recently ran an article on the benefits of working from home, and it's triggered a serious conversation on several blogs. Something to reconsider: the assumption that working from home is always greener than schlepping to an office.

We're all fairly plugged in these days, so the phone book has been getting more and more dusty. Make that the phone books... with the proliferation of phone companies, we get no fewer than three sets of white and yellow pages on our doorstep every year. Here's how to stop them from coming.