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Posts By Rachel Wray

The Green Cure: Lightening Up The Living Room
Week 4 - Tips & Tricks

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jennnc brought all her plants inside for the season and is looking for new places the put them - she's off to a great start with ideas from her style tray!


mini-banner-green.gif• Cure Clock: 3.5 weeks to go!
• Assignment: Read Week Four, pp. 129-153
  • Pare down your book and media collection.
  • Declutter your living room.
  • When shopping, focus on quality furniture that will last a long time.

• Members: 1,735

For many of us our living room is our foyer, dining room, office and even kitchen – with all that activity going on it can be really hard to keep things clean and clear of clutter. Full disclosure: my house has not always been clutter-free and pared-down, but after nearly a decade of moving every year I looked forward to the purging that came along packing up moving all my possessions to a new home. I started to really hold on to the idea that unless an item was something I really loved or had special meaning to me, it was not worth the effort of moving, keeping and finding room for it in my new place. Once I finally settled down a couple of years ago, my place was broken into – full on ransacked! Much of what my boyfriend and I had decided to keep was gone whether we liked it or not…

Zip-A-Way: Removable Window Sealant

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Just the other day we were starting to think about winterizing our home for the season, when we got a great tip from one of our favorite home improvement gurus, Lou Manfredini. Lou suggested that as an alternative to covering drafty windows with plastic, caulk them with a temporary and removable sealant such as Zip-A-Way. A removable sealant is a better alternative to unsightly plastic and is great for oversized or irregular windows…

PUYL: Pump Your Light

Check out this cook green gadget: the PUYL is a combination bicycle pump and portable light. But the simply clever part is that the light’s battery is charged as you pump…

The Diaper Debate, Revisited
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Ahh, the great diaper debate: cloth or plastic? Ease or ecology? Well, this Slate article compared a 1992 study with a more recent 2005 study to figure out which type of diaper was the most eco-friendly choice. Curious about the results? Click through to read their conclusions...

A Ribbon Apartment in Manhattan

Young designer Alan YL Chan took on the difficult task of personally renovating his 400 square feet dark, cramped and deteriorating Manhattan apartment – all while living in it and only 3 years out of architecture school. His brilliant renovation was not only achieved through hard work but also with multi-purpose spaces and best of all – a continuous ribbon of concrete that acts as sink, countertop, desk, seat and floor…

Low Flow Guide: US EPA WaterSense

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11-02-09watersenselogo.jpgOne of the LEED for Homes requirements is to reduce water use with water-efficient fixtures. Regardless of whether you’re working on a LEED project, a good guideline to follow is to use products certified under US EPA WaterSense. The WaterSense seal makes choosing high-efficiency shower heads, toilets and faucets easy…

How To: Make Almond Milk

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Last week we discussed the pros and cons of all the different varieties of commercially available milk. In general, milk's not really our favorite beverage, but we could be down with making our own all natural milk...

Thermeleon: Color Changing Tile

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Remember how awesome HyperColor clothing was? Just imagine the same concept, but this time it’s covering buildings instead of bodies. By now we all know how important light colored roofs are for keeping buildings cool – but what should we do in climates with 4 seasons? A team of MIT graduates has developed a tile that can go from light to dark as the temperature changes for the best of both worlds…

RainTube: Perforated Gutter Protection

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There is nothing more frustrating than gutters that are clogged during the fall and then ice-damaged during the winter. It's bad for your house and a nuisance to repair. RainTube, one of Sustainable Industries top green building products of the year, will not only alleviate these problems, but also assist in a rainwater collection system...

Inspiration: Beer Bottle Partitions

Beer bottles – what can’t they be used for? During the renovation the historic and now defunct Milwaukee Blatz Brewery, salvaged and original Blatz bottles were turned into warm amber pivoting partitions…

StillTasty: The Ultimate Shelf Life Guide

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Milk, peanut butter, oil, tomatoes, beans – when do they go bad and what can we do with them before they expire? How should they be stored? Can they be frozen or microwaved? Not knowing the answers to these questions can lead to overflowing cupboards and refrigerators and even worse spoiled food…

5 Green Home Repair Projects Under $50

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It’s Fall Cure time on Apartment Therapy and Re-Nest, and one of this week's tasks is to fix something yourself. This morning Cambria provided a How-To Home Repair list from Apartment Therapy's archives. Another one of our favorite resources, The Green Home Guide, can also help with five inexpensive and green projects that are so easy, there’s no excuse not to do them…

Hot or Not? Cassette Tape Skeletons by Brian Dettmer

We never really gotten into the whole taxidermy trend – real or not it always seemed a little creepy. However, these cassette tape skeletons might change our mind. Read more below the jump...

Filtercrete by Ozinga: Pervious Concrete

Concrete is often thought of as a great green material, but one thing it’s not great as is a paved surface. It's almost entirely impermeable and contributes to unwanted water runoff. Filtercrete is on the scene to solve that problem – it’s a unique porous material that allows air and water to pass through…

How To: Turn Salvaged Drawers into Modular Storage
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Just in case SchubLaden’s drawer front furniture is too pricey for your wallet, we’ve found a good-looking and easy way to make your own drawer storage. Salvaged drawers are cheap and easy to find —often free on sites like Craigslist or Freecycle. We found this great project on Craftynest, and think it’d be easy for anyone to try...