My Mailbox is Full of... Just Advertising

This time of the year, my mailbox is extremely full. No, it's not Christmas cards quite yet. It's catalogs, and more catalogs, and some reminders to charitable organizations I've donated to in the past.

While I will likely be doing a bit of shopping and donating this holiday season, I don't need a full recycling box to remind me to do so. :)

To stop the madness, you can always call or email each company directly. However, this can take a lot of time to track down each company.

I'm loving a site called Catalog Choice to opt out of paper mailings. This is a free service. Per their FAQ, they have over 9000 companies listed. Most of them you can fill out a quick form on their own website to opt out. For some, they redirect you to the company's website to their own form or email address (they've already done the Google legwork for you!). All of your history is tracked in a personal dashboard for reference. Catalog Choice is non-profit reducing mail for environmental purposes, so they communicate their environmental wins. If this screenshot is too small for your device, a couple impressive numbers are 500K mature trees saved and 3.6B gallons of water saved.

 

Another service is DMA Choice. This service costs $2 for 10 years. DMA is the Data and Marketers Association and has about 3600 members that you can opt out of mailings from. In addition to catalogs, they also have magazine offers and other categories of mailings. A couple cool things: they allow you to opt out in bulk. If you are getting mailings from specific companies you've done business with previously, you still need to remove yourself from that business itself, but this removes you from mailing lists that these direct marketing companies purchase. Direct Choice also lets you register deceased relatives. While a bit morbid, it's nice to be able to stop receiving ironic insurance offers for someone who can no longer benefit.

If you're starting to think about New Year's resolutions and getting 2018 off to a good start, take a half hour and make junk mail a thing of the past! :)

Re-Use, Re-Cycle, Re-Creative?

We're all familiar with thrift stores, second-hand stores, and consignment shops offering a variety of goods from clothing to toys to furniture to small housewares. But have you heard of reuse shops that specialize in arts and crafts supplies? Let me introduce you to Seattle ReCreative, located in the Greenwood neighborhood of Seattle.

This store is roughly 1000 square feet of many types of creative supplies plus room for classes and workshops, kids parties, and community events. What is cool to see is the broad variety of supplies they carry. Some more traditional fine art supplies, to common paper and fabric crafts, to more obscure ideas like vinyl records (seriously look at Pinterest for all the amazing ideas to paint on, cut up, or melt records into new objects!) and empty plastic bottles (perhaps to mix paints or store beads in).

Here's a sampling of some of the great inventory today. A huge box of of rubber stamps:

Buttons - use them for their original purpose or to craft an adorable angel ornament:

Paints galore:

Scrapbooking or cardmaking paper. Full 12" sheets and smaller pieces:

Canvas stretcher bars for the serious painter:

A whole wall of yarn! Some partial balls, and some completely new skeins, along with knitting needles: 

And the reason for me going today. They carry a large selection of fabrics, and I scored about 14 yards of holiday fabric. Check out my next post for what I'm doing with it. ;)

Not shown here were stacks of postcards, greeting cards, National Geographic magazines, vintage photographs, tile, beads... great for collage, card-making, school projects, mosaics, jewelry-making. Today, I observed that most items were going for about 10-20% of what they would cost new/retail. For example, the fabric was just $2/yd, an incredible skein of fuzzy sparkly yarn was $2, and cards and postcards were just $0.10.

This store has so much potential for both shopping and donating. How many times have you tried a new craft and decided it wasn't for you? Donate the leftovers! How many times have you or your kid wanted to try a new craft but you're worried about the investment just to give it a try? Shop at a steep discount and see if you like it. Even better, you can just buy a few pieces of something without purchasing full sets. I think too about teachers who end up having limited budget for supplies or even spend some of their own money: think how far that same money would stretch here, for art supplies for their students or creative materials for bulletin boards.

Ultimately, this store allows for low-risk creative pursuits, while funding a community space and keeping many pounds of leftover arts supplies out of the landfill.

You're Funny... Looking!

We waste a ton (actually 1.3B tons or 40%) of food each year in the US. That's... insane, especially given the numbers of hungry people that could feed.

While some of this food is meal leftovers, a good portion never even makes it to our plates. It is sorted out prior to grocery sales, because it is less attractive or doesn't meet a certain standard.

There's nothing wrong with this produce besides it's a little funny looking. Some petitions are working on making governmental or corporate changes similar to the law France passed last year that fines grocery stores for throwing away food instead of donating it. They are appealing to alternative options such as using that produce in the store's deli offerings (a lumpy tomato isn't noticed when diced in a salsa), or just plain selling the produce.

Imperfect is a California-based company that is seeking to interrupt this cycle by going straight from the farm to the end consumer. They deliver customized boxes of organic fruits and/or veggies to your door on a subscription basis.

Shortly after I learned about Imperfect, they announced that they were going to start serving the Seattle area, and this week I got my first box! I was thrilled with the experience. While I didn't need to be home for delivery, they texted me when the driver was in my area and again when the box was delivered.

I didn't customize this first box because I was just curious to see what I would receive. Already, from the label on the box, I'm getting excited.

This is about 7 lbs of organic produce for about $15, and hey, I needed potatoes, onions, and leeks for my Thanksgiving menu anyway. :)  And I've literally never purchased a pomegranate, so that will be fun to try out something new. Now to open the box:

That's a lovely selection! Outside of some of potatoes being a little large and lumpy, and the onions and oranges being a little small, it's all perfect quality.

A bonus: they included a little recipe book for what to try with seasonal produce.

I'm definitely excited for my next box. Organic fruits and veggies with door-to-door service at non-organic store prices? Sold.

I'm Dreaming of a Green Christmas

Well, it's officially time: the pumpkin spice lattes have been swapped for eggnog, the preview ads for Black Friday are beginning, and it's getting dark at 4pm. I guess that means we're starting to think of holiday gift shopping!

There are lots of ways to think about reducing your footprint this holiday season:

• choose quality items that will have a long life
• choose gifts with reduced packaging
• buy experiences, such as tickets to a concert or gift card to a favorite restaurant
• do a swap: each person in the gift exchange chooses a loved book or movie to pass on
• shop local

Shopping local not only stimulates the local economy, but also reduces the fuel to move goods from place to place. One of my favorite shops is The Handmade Showroom, located at Pacific Place Mall in downtown Seattle. Open 8am-9pm on Black Friday, they are right in the heart of other conventional retail that you may be visiting on Black Friday, and feature dozens of artisans and crafters from the Pacific Northwest. In addition to the shop itself being a small local business, all of the products within are from small local businesses.

They have a bit of something for everyone on your shopping list: sauces and confections for the foodie, cat beds and toys for your fur-babies, jewelry and accessories, kids dress-up costumes, screen-printed t-shirts, housewares... Want to level-up your conscious shopping? Some of the artisans use reclaimed or recycled materials! Top it all off with a letterpress greeting card.

A glimpse into the kids's section: 

Some of your local small businesses may be participating in Black Friday, but keep in mind that many of these business will taking the day to spend with their families. Small Business Saturday was started by American Express in 2010 to encourage shopping small and local and is observed on the day after Black Friday. Search social media for #‎SmallBusinessSaturday or ‪#‎SmallBizSat‬ to find participating businesses.

Finally, if you are crowd-shy and avoid shops this time of the year, consider checking out online marketplaces like Etsy and Amazon Handmade. These marketplaces feature small businesses and artisans, and highlight where the artisan is based from.

Happy holiday shopping, everyone, and may you discover a cool small business near you!

A DIY Halloween

A few weeks ago I wrote about starting my Ursula costume that I've been dreaming of DIY-ing for a while. Starting with just a black dress and a purple cape from thrift stores, it was time to get down to work.

Step 1: cut the skirt of the dress up to the thighs (however risque you want to go) into 8 strips. These will become your tentacles. Cut the cape into 8 long triangles, a few inches longer than the skirt strips, but tapering to a point.

Lay the purple fabric, back side up, on top of each strip of the skirt, pin in place, and sew such that the tentacle point and sides are sewn shut, and there is an opening at the top of each. There will be extra black fabric from each strip: don't trim this, when we flip the tentacles right side out, this will be part of the stuffing.

 

 Don't forget to have a little four-legged friend observe your work:

 

 Flip the each skirt strip right-side out. The seams will now be on the inside, and the shiny side out.

 

Now prepare some paint so we can add "suction cups" to the tentacles. I happen to have a bunch of craft paint laying around. If you don't, check out thrift stores that are focused on craft supplies like ReCreative.  I like add some fabric medium, which makes the paint a little less crunchy. An old deli container makes a perfect mixing tub.

 

To stamp on the suction cups, no special tools are needed. The top of an old shampoo bottle makes easy circles. 

 

Steps not pictured: to fill out each tentacle and also make them bendable, I stuffed them with the filling from an old pillow (free!) and some 1/8" armature wire. Once stuffed, I sewed each tentacle shut, using the couple extra inches of purple fabric to cover the filling. 

For finishing touches, I purchased a long sleeve purplish shirt ($7.99 at Goodwill), painted a shell gold and strung it from a necklace, and made myself up with bold eyes, red lips, and white hair gel. 

 

And voila! The sea witch goes on to party. :)

 

On Halloween, my co-workers wanted to dress up as Star Trek characters at work, but I couldn't let all the above crafting go to waste. One more piece, and I can be a sea-witch/alien mashup! I purchased this purple sweater (also Goodwill, $7.99), cut the collar off of it, and sewed on a purple dress belt as trim.

 

Not counting the purple tights, which wouldn't be included with other commercial costumes, here's the breakdown. 

Dress, $10, thrifted

Cape, $10, thrifted

Wire, $13.35, new (will reuse)

Purple top, $7.99, thrifted

Total: $41.24

A 50-70% savings over packaged costumes!