Jenyfer Matthews

My poor son is the victim of his birth order and my thrifty nature. If I can get a little more use out of something by handing it down to him when his sister is done with it, I will. I’ve saved untold amounts of money from the fact that until recently my daughter was the ultimate tomboy.

The Christmas my daughter was three, Santa brought her a pretty red Huffy bike with white wall tires and chrome fenders. It was a nice sturdy bike with a pedal brake, which is much easier for a child to learn to use and not all that easy to find (not that I would know since Santa brought this one) When she outgrew it and got a new bike, I handed it down to my son, in spite of the fact that it was a “girl bike” with a downward sloping bar. I figured that was only in his favor – he is a wild boy on a bike and what engineering genius thought it was a better idea for a man to have a high crossbar anyway??

Just before my summer vacation, my son’s red bike got a flat. We tried to patch it but the tube was a loss. So were the tires – and since my daughter is now ten and those tires never gave us an ounce of trouble in SEVEN YEARS I could hardly complain. I ordered a couple of thorn resistant tubes and new tires to pick up in the US and bring back.

In the meantime, my son grew taller of course. He’s almost too big for that wonderful red bike now. He rode his sister’s larger bike recently and it looked much more size appropriate. I had thought of getting him a new bike for his birthday, and I may still, but while every toy store in town has a selection of bicycles most of them are total crap – you wouldn’t believe how many of those locally available bikes I’ve seen people buy and throw away within a year. And most have hand brakes besides.

A good friend of mine who left this summer also left two bikes behind at the building where we were neighbors before I moved in February. Her son had the same kind of Huffy bike my daughter has, with a pedal brake, so I decided to go and take a look at it, with the idea that maybe it could serve as a stop-gap for my son while I look around for a good bike in the meantime.

My friend’s son is a wild man and he rode that bike hard. Extremely hard. I knew that when I went to see it, but I figured that if it could survive my friend’s son (who was also a close friend of my son) that it must be decently constructed. That other boy makes my son look almost sedate!

The bike had a torn up seat (which it turns out was a replacement that had previously been on my son’s toddler bike), was missing its hand grips and one pedal. But since it was overall in okay condition in spite of the rough treatment it received, I decided that I could make it work. The bike is black and neon green. Now it’s a Frankenstein bike. We cannibalized a few bikes destined for the junk man and replaced the seat with a red and black one and took a purple pedal off of my son’s toddler bike. I’ll have to hunt down some hand grips and also get a new tube for the flat tire and a couple of matching pedals if I can find them, but otherwise, it’s good to go.

Lucky for me, my son doesn’t care about the hodge podge of mismatched parts – he is thrilled with his “new” bike. He’ll be even happier when I get that tire fixed…

During the year, I use my father’s address as a convenient place to send the fruits of my online shopping expeditions. It’s kind of fun to see all the stuff piled up and waiting for me when I arrive in the summer, some of which I have forgotten about in the meantime so it’s a bit like opening presents to myself.

The downside of this system is that my name and his address get on a variety of mailing lists so that in addition to the goodies that have piled up, I have a substantial amount of junk mail to go through as well. You know how aggravating it is to get nothing but a bunch of junk mail when you check the mailbox at the end of the day? Multiply that times a year, minus Sundays. The amount I get could probably fill a mail tub. And unfortunately, I have to go through it all because I have no way of knowing if something that actually requires my attention might be hidden in the pile.

Because I’ve given to animal activist and environmental organizations in the past, my name is on all of the major lists of that variety now. On the upside, I usually get a couple of free calendars as a result, maybe a couple dozen note cards. But what is up with all the mailing labels? If I got one, maybe two sheets of mailing labels I’d likely be set for most of the year. I wouldn’t be able to use all of the labels that have currently accumulated if I sent five envelopes every day – especially since it isn’t technically my address anyway!

I must have gotten a dozen pre-approved offers for a gold American Express card as well. Why – because if I didn’t respond to the first eleven offers, the twelfth time is the charm? I took all of those offers and stuffed as many of their forms into their postage-paid reply envelopes with a note that said “remove me” and sent them all back. I wonder if they will finally take the hint? I could have called the toll-free 800 number listed on the bottom of their letter and requested to be removed, but the envelope stuffing was appealing in a more passive aggressive way.

I know that all of these places send out free labels, cards, and calendars in order to make you feel some obligation to send them money, and taken one envelope at a time here and there it probably works. Seeing a year’s worth piled up just makes it seem like such a waste. Wouldn’t their money be better spent in other ways? It seems particularly wasteful when it comes from organizations whose mission it is to preserve the environment.

I got a smattering of new organizations asking for money as well, and I admit that I’m considering sending one of them a small donation. Who can resist an appeal for guide-dogs? The only reason I’m hesitating is because I wonder who will send me solicitations next? It seems to get worse every year, and in this economy I might well be buried in an avalanche of junk mail next year.

I’ve come to accept that as long as an indoor laundry drying rack and a mountain bike are permanent fixtures, my bedroom will never be a beautiful room. And that’s a shame because we have a couple of nice pieces of furniture and some really lovely quilts to beautify the space as well as a wall of windows to let in the sun.

My room has also been the space where all the stuff I intend to deal with “later” ends up. I’m happy to say that “later” finally happened over the weekend.

The club where my children take tennis lessons hosted a flea market so I reserved myself a table and got all the various boxes and bags of clothes, books, and toys the children have outgrown organized to sell. In truth, it didn’t look like much when I hauled it in there, and I wondered if it would be worth the effort. I’m happy to say it was – the sales were fast and furious for a little more than an hour and by the end I only had a few items unsold and $120 in my pocket.

Until I the day we buy a house where we have room enough to have spaces dedicated to hobbies versus sleeping, I guess my bedroom will never be beautiful, but at least now I can walk across the room without tripping over something. For now that’s good enough.

It’s amazing how much trash you find tucked away in the nooks and crannies, put away because it might be useful one day. Well, guess what? I’M NOT MOVING IT. Throwing. It. Out. There’s plenty more where that stuff came from…

Take the Earth Day quiz and find out what your ecological footprint is – it’s eye opening…

Thank you, Jenyfer, for allowing me to visit your blog today. As part of the “Go Green, Read e” program, I’ve been part of an effort to make people more aware of what we can do to make wise use of our resources.

Although the inspiration for the program might have been to raise awareness of e-books as an alternative (note—alternative does not mean replacement!) method of reading, the concept of “green” is much broader, and covers every aspect of our lives.

Since I live in central Florida and Jenyfer lives in Cairo, we thought it might be interesting to compare some of the ways our respective countries and communities address the serious problem that there are only so many resources on the planet. And things like carbon footprints, global warming, and conservation should be dealt with on a planetary basis—we’re all in this together, after all.

Something we can all participate in: Recycling.

Terry
Recycling. Our county provides residents with two recycling bins. One is for newspaper, and recently they’ve added catalogs and magazines (at last—a way to get rid of all those mail order catalogs that show up daily). The second is for glass, cans, and plastic. At the moment, they will only accept plastics with a recycling label of “1″ or “2″, but perhaps this will expand in the future. When the program started, they took only newspaper and only specific types of plastic containers rather than anything with the correct code. (images of codes)

Jenyfer
Unfortunately, there are no formal in-home recycling programs in Cairo. Still, I do what I can: we reuse empty glass jars and plastic containers for food storage, I wash and reuse plastic zipper sandwich bags, and unneeded print outs become scrap paper for drawing. We use reusable water bottles for school lunches and have our water delivered in five gallon bottles which we trade in when they are empty, cutting down on the waste. Even our beer bottles are returnables! (I wish they still did that in the US!)

But that isn’t to say that recycling doesn’t exist in Cairo. There is a community of people called the Zabbaleen who live in the Mokattam hills. They collect about a third of the city’s garbage, take it back to their homes, and sort it for recycling. They not only recycle things like glass, aluminum, and plastic, but they also compost or feed the wet food scraps to their pigs and take cotton scraps and make things like mattress wadding, colorful rag rugs, and even quilts to sell. All in all they manage to recycle up to 80% of what they collect. No small feat in a city of nearly 20 million inhabitants!

Terry
Grocery stores have collection containers for plastic bags. More and more are encouraging customers to bring their own bags, and some even give modest rebates for doing so. So, when the bagger says, “Paper or Plastic?” your answer can be, “No, thanks” as you hand them your collection of canvas bags.

Jenyfer
If I am doing a small shop, I will tuck my purchases into my large canvas carry all. Often when I do a larger shop and request home delivery, my items arrive loose in a large cardboard box. Otherwise, I take the plastic bags that I am given and then reuse them as can liners for my small trash cans.

Terry
It used to be, any food product listed the ingredients. As we became more health conscious, the labels expanded to show nutritional analyses so we know how many calories, grams of fats, carbs, proteins, as well as sodium content and more. With more green awareness, we have another thing to consider when we look at packaging. Does it have the recycling symbol? It probably tells what percentage of the product is made of recycled materials.

Jenyfer
I prefer to buy food products with sensible packaging. Why buy something in a plastic or metal container when a simple cardboard box will do?

Terry
Some companies are getting creative. I was shopping recently, and found doormats made from recycled flip-flops.

Jenyfer
I bought a purse recently, entirely made from plastic fibers created from recycled materials! The Zabbaleen also make handmade paper for notebooks and tablets from a portion of the paper they collect.

Terry
What about electricity? Here, fluorescent light bulbs are touted as energy savers, and they’re becoming easier to find, and available in more varieties so we can replace the older incandescents in more fixtures. Remember when they were only available as long tubes, and pretty much relegated to the kitchen or garage? And now, LED is offering another alternative.

Jenyfer
I was pretty excited to see long life light bulbs available in my local grocery last time I looked. In addition, I use rechargeable batteries as much as possible, turn off lights when leaving a room, and always turn off my computers over night – an idle computer still uses a tremendous amount of energy.

Terry
Cars? Here in my neighborhood, gas is hovering around $2 a gallon. I park my little Honda Fit at the Y and it disappears amid all the bigger minivans and SUVs. It’s not unusual to see the occasional Hummer. And everyone drives. We have very limited mass transit, so rush hour traffic is inevitable. Unfortunately, the attitude seems to be, ‘if I can afford it, it’s might right to drive it.” I never saw gas-guzzlers when I visited my daughter in England, or on my trip to South Africa.

Jenyfer
Cairo is a tremendously large city and nearly everyone drive, making traffic a nightmare not to mention contributing to high levels of air pollution. My family does not currently own a car. I walk nearly everywhere I want to go. For trips further than I want to walk, taxis are plentiful and inexpensive – most trips across my section of town cost me about $1. There is also a mass transit train called the Metro with a stop near my home. I can take the train into downtown Cairo for about $0.20, arriving in less than half an hour (taking a taxi would not only cost more but I’d be stuck in traffic breathing exhaust for at least an hour)

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Those are just a few of the comparisons. Thanks again to Jenyfer for sharing this blog with me.

Terry Odell is a romance author and avid eBook reader, blogging this month for All Romance eBooks’ Go Green/Read e Campaign. Learn more about the Go Green/Read e Campaign, and to learn more about Terry, visit her website at . You can find Terry Odell’s ebooks and thousands of other eBooks on-line at All Romance Ebooks.

I definitely wasn’t looking for a new blog to follow, but this one was just too good to pass up. I ran across the link on the Paperback Writer blog this week. Called Less is More, it’s the blog of a SAHM who is pledging not to buy anything new (retail) for an entire year. It’s early days yet, but by her report, so far so good.

I suppose one of the reasons that I am interested in this blog is because I myself love to make due with what’s at hand rather than go out and spend money all the time – and not only because I’m in Egypt and my options are somewhat limited! Using something that you already have or making something new out of something old is (for me) a satisfying process.

As a result of reading this blog, I learned about another really cool sounding thing called The Freecycle Network – a nonprofit organization dedicated to “reuse and keeping good stuff out of landfills”. I really love this idea! I do this on a very informal basis every time I pass along my children’s clothes to someone with young children. Imagine having an entire community with whom to do trades.

In our crunched economy, being a bit more circumspect about spending money isn’t a bad thing. No matter what the economy is like, recycling just makes sense.