DIY Life

Most people recycle plastics and other materials to help take care of the earth. In some areas, such as rural neighborhoods, recycling programs are not yet in place and it is hard to recycle all of your bottles, newspapers, and other materials. If this is the case where you live and recycling is near impossible, you can still help reduce landfill waste (a little) and conserve space in your trash can without having to buy a hulking trash compactor to install in your house.

All you need is a pair of scissors to make this world a better place. When you throw away any milk cartons, cereal boxes or other similar items that generally take up a lot of trash bag space, simply cut from one end to the other with scissors. You may want to buy a pair of scissors to dedicate to this task so your good scissors aren't always full of garbage juice, and affix them to the side of a cabinet with velcro, or put them in a nearby drawer.

This deconstruction of trash is an easy way to be sure you maximize the space in your trash bag and it doesn't take more than a minute. In general the bulky items that take up too much space are the ones that aren't gross, like milk jugs, cereal boxes, and other food containers.

Another quick tip to reduce wasted space in your trash bag is to simply fill up the empty space with other trash. Put paper plates, and other trash into an empty cereal box. Easy as pie, but not pie you would want to eat, more like pie past its prime. All it takes is a conscious effort on your part to put smaller things inside bigger things as you throw things away. Perhaps you don't want to be that intimate with your refuse, but doing so will keep things flattened and maybe even help the environment, just a tiny bit!

Last night as I lay in the savasana pose sweating and wanting to die on my yoga mat during class, I looked at my soaked mat and wondered just how much abuse the poor thing could take.

One thought lead to another, as tends to happen when you think you might expire from the camel pose, and I began to wonder just when do you throw in the towel, or mat in this case, and start fresh.

That lead me to wondering what I would actually do with my old yoga mat. Not a soul in my family would deign to set foot upon it, it is ugly and they all know I do nothing but sweat and groan on it.