Compost

Looking for a practical, inexpensive, and ecologically sound way to grow your best garden ever? With compost you can improve the soil, deter disease, mulch, prevent weeds, conserve water, and fertilize plants. Compost happens when the right ratio of nitrogen- and carbon-rich organic waste is mixed with soil, water, and air. How it gets from garbage to gold might seem like magic, but the breakdown of organic waste is due to billions of soil-dwelling critters and good microbes that include bacteria, fungi, earthworms, and other beneficial creatures. Here's the proper recipe to follow. Read More »

Yesterday, Apartment Therapy blogged Sunset magazine's story "7 organizing tips that really work," and although a lot of the advice, while wonderful and sound, is stuff you can more or less figure out with common sense, I did stop short at the instructions for organizing/cleaning out the pantry. Wait, what? I'll admit, fridge-clean-out day happens with some frequency at my house, as I have a nasty habit of not managing to eat all my perishables before they, um, perish, but it's possible that I have never in my life (save when moving apartments, which actually used to happen pretty often, too) cleaned out my "pantry"—or whatever served as a pantry at the time. Am I alone here? Does anyone else have years-old packages of Minute Rice (or the last forgotten packets of ramen from your undergrad days) tucked in the back corners of the cabinet? If so, set aside 15 minutes of your day and let's do this together.

1. First, pull all the food out onto the counter where you can see it. (This also means you get to see all the little left-behind stuff at the back of the pantry shelves and clean it out.)

2. Then, take Sunset's advice and sort the food into 3 piles: Read More »