But this post isn’t about hair colors, it’s about hair cleanliness, and it comes in the form of a recommendation from my homegirl Francesca (Cessi), who always looks great and I totally trust her advice. This is what she writes:

So a friend suggested I try eliminating shampoo and conditioner, most of which aren’t so green, including a lot of organic brands. Anyways, the regime is especially good for wavy or curly hair and purported to restore a natural balance to your scalp’s oils. I discovered a plethora of stuff online about this no-poo lifestyle and have been using baking soda for cleansing and apple cider vinegar for conditioning for a few months. So far so good…probably better than before actually. And with no dirty-hippy results. Here’s a website with info./instructions and some good links at the bottom: http://babyslime.livejournal.com/174054.html

Thanks for the advice, Cessi! I plan to give it a try once I run out of my pseudo-green Nature’s Gate shampoo and conditioner.

It was really tasty. I really shouldn’t buy Oreos. From now on I’m just going to make my own cookies, or even better I’ll make Boyfriend make them for me.

So I had to take more drastic measures – with a hack saw.

Cutting a small mouth-shaped hole out of the rain gutter that runs from the roof of my building down to the sewer proved to be surprisingly easy. I bought some nice metal clippers and a bit of gutter pipe from the hardware store and fashioned a little catch thingy (just look at the photo – it’s hard to describe), and set up a very sophisticated trash bin and window screen contraption to catch the water that comes off the roof.

The trash bin was in the basement of my building and much to my delight it didn’t have any holes or cracks in it, and last winter I had the foresight to save the screens from my old windows when they were putting in new ones. A little screen goes a long way when it comes to keeping cigarette butts (which often set up small communities on my roof) out and mosquitoes in.

I fashioned a sliding door to cover up the hole (when the barrel’s full) out of another piece of gutter and a metal strap. This system works alright, although some water does leak out when it’s raining. I may have to put a more effective door on there at some point – probably when my landlord finds out what I’ve done to his gutter and freaks out.

After the first spring thunderstorm my trash can rain barrel was full and overflowing. Now my only challenge is to find another barrel and hook it up to the system so I can catch more water. As for the quality of the water (is there soot on the roof? What about dog poo or pee from partying college students?) – I’m just not thinking about that. The water’s fine.

I just wanted to point out the fact that New York State agencies will now be forgoing the purchase of bottled water (including water coolers!) and installing fountains in all of its offices. It’s part of a state-wide effort to pinch pennies and deal with our massive budget deficit, and it comes hand-in hand with a host of positive environmental consequences.

Yay for New York State, and yay for the New York Times for bringing us this news. (yay!)

The whole experience was educational, though. And I like my little greenhouse – I think I’ll rebuild him when fall rolls around and see if I can grow some kale and other hearty greens out there next winter (in the same vein as my mini greenhouse experiement at my old apartment). The windows I’m using now are double-paned, which I think will help raise the temperature during the day and insulate overnight, so hopefully we’ll get some food out of the deal.

Anyways, RIP to those poor little guys that I obliterated, and let’s cross our fingers for the seeds that I just put into the ground. Hopefully Mother Earth will take better care of them than I can.

Pine Sol, on its own, is really not that bad. Its active ingredient is pine oil, which is a natural cleaning agent that comes from distilling the needles and wood of pine trees. The cleanser also includes alkyl alcohol ethoxylates, which are toxic if you consume them and hazardous in large quantities but also totally biodegradable, as well as isopropanol, which is basically rubbing alcohol. The cleanser also has some sodium petroleum sulfonate, which is basically oil-based soap. While you wouldn’t want to drink Pine Sol, or rub it on your skin, it’s probably not the worst thing (from an environmental perspective) to clean your floors with.

But still – lemon scented Pine Sol? I can’t even remember buying this stuff. I generally clean my house with vinegar, lemon juice, and the occasional “natural” cleanser that I buy from natural foods stores when I’m feeling fancy (note: the Seventh Generation bottle pictured above is about 3 years old and currently contains a vinegar-water solution). Pine Sol is a product of the Clorox Company, which is on the cutting-edge of greenwashing after having bought out Burt’s Bees and with its “Green Works” products (CLOROX: disposable wipes will never be “green”, please stop making them!).

I’m not sure exactly what the difference is between Lemon Pine Sol and regular Pine Sol, but I have a feeling the lemon kind is probably less benign. Wikipedia tells me this much, “The new lemon scented Pine-Sol received a positive review from the public due to its pleasant scent despite losing its cleaning and disinfecting qualities.” Does it have pine oil? Who knows. The smell alone should deter us all from buying it. I used the stuff to clean my floors yesterday and the chemically odor lingered for hours – people complain about the scent of vinegar, but at least that smell clears out within a half hour or so. Yes, the Pine Sol left my floors (momentarily) clean, but the whole experience made me feel dirty.

Upon scrutinizing the cabinet under my sink, I notice that there is also some Windex and a HUGE bottle of Murphy’s Oil Soap. At this point I face the dilemma of not wanting to use these products but also feeling guilty about throwing them out. I have a hunch that over the course of the next few years I will slowly employ them in cleaning my household and then flush them down the toilet, where they will enter the sewer system and eventually wreak lemon-scented havoc on New York’s coastal ecosystems.

But I make this promise to myself, and to you, reader: I will never buy crappy mystery cleansers like lemon-scented Pine Sol again. Never!

I have never been responsible for anything so massive in my life – this was literally a ton (maybe more) of dirt. With the help of my brother and some neighbors, we hauled it, bucket-by-bucket through my railroad apartment and out into a heap in the back yard until it was clear that we weren’t going to need any more back there. The rest (about 3 yards or so) was left for the neighbors to take.

In most neighborhoods, a pile of dirt would be an unwanted eyesore, but this might as well have been a pile of gold. We have a serious soil shortage here in NYC. So the folks next door grabbed a bunch, and then throughout the day a variety of characters, including a few community garden representatives, brought trucks and buckets and picked away at the heap until it was all gone. Thanks to Craig’s List for facilitating those connections.

Now that I had my soil and my warm weather, I got to work planting my seeds. I found a nice companion planting chart online and planned out what plants would go where, and then started shoving the little guys into the soil. I put in about 20 kind of vegetables (corn, beans, tomatoes, radishes, peppers, greens, etc), and another dozen or so herbs as well as some flowers. Planting seeds is always quicker and less labor-intensive than every other part of gardening, and once I was done I felt like there must have been something I left out. Dirt? Check. Seeds? Check. Water? Yes, I watered everything. Check.

Now I can sit back and wait for them to spring to life. Soon I’ll be weeding like a madwoman, so I might as well get some rest while I’ve got the chance.

It seems that a design firm is making household furniture/robots that make their own electricity by attracting and then digesting household pests. I don’t know how it works, but it seems to involve lights, holes, and something called “microbial fuel cells”. Soooo cool.

It’s been over a month since I last wrote here, and I don’t really have an excuse. I think it’s because I keep coming up with blog topics that are kind of hard to research and/or comply with. Someone recently told me that it actually slows down your boiling water if you add salt to it first – I always have added salt in the beginning because I thought it sped up the process. Does anyone know what the truth is? I’m too lazy to look it up, but I would really like to know whether I’m wasting a ton of energy trying to heat up salty water all the time.

I’ve also been thinking about greening up my cat’s litter situation, but I’m totally hooked on Fresh Step (which is clay-based and not at all green, plus it costs about $10 a box). I’m not at all interested in potty-training my cats, and I’ve tried and rejected natural litters in the past. My only compromise thus far has been to minimize the number of plastic grocery bags that I use to throw the litter away in – we have a little trash can that all the litter is scooped into and then we throw out the whole thing once a week or so.

I shouldn’t even have plastic grocery bags in my home anyways, though! This really bothers me. I have been RELIGIOUS about using cloth grocery bags for the past couple of years. I always keep an extra bag in my purse, and if I don’t have a bag on me I just carry everything by hand. But somehow my kitchen cabinets are still overflowing with plastic bags. I blame this partially on Boyfriend, who is less diligent than I when it comes to shopping bags, but most of the blame should go to our friends, who are generous and bring gifts like beer and whiskey to our house, generally swathed in plastic.

Some brainy sciency-types say that my grocery bag obsession isn’t even helping the planet. It’s like cutting up plastic bear rings or turning off the faucet when I’m brushing my teeth. A drop in the bucket, they say. I’m doing my best to block them out, because I think we can use any environmentally-friendly act that Americans are willing to undertake.

Anyways, the month-long blog hiatus is partially due to all of the frustrations listed above, but mainly resulting from a highly distracting garden, some community food projects that I’ve been undertaking, and a new job tossing pizzas in Prospect Heights. But now I’m back, and I promise to stop being lazy – at least for a little while.