It all comes out in the end

Not having a job sucks.

Sure, it would be nice to not have a job because I'd recently won the lottery or found out that a mysterious rich uncle left me everything in his will or in some other ridiculous and miraculous way I became independently wealthy. Because of course that would be awesome. But no, this whole none of the income (except the $240/wk from unemployment which is close to nothing, and yet greatly appreciated) all of the bills and twice the guilt thing really sucks.

I'd been putting off a big shopping trip for some time as I was hoping to hear back on a job I interviewed for and a "maybe" contract gig. I figured if I got one of those it would be back to healthy foods and I might even splurge on a few extra organic veggies. Instead I was given a no on the job and a "it's all a waiting game" response from the folks in charge of the hopeful contract gig. So it became cheap food. Now I know that theoretically one can be healthy and be reasonably cheap, but since most of my meals are cooking for two, and ONE of us must have meat with every meal, wont eat eggs, beans or too many veggies it becomes a bit more difficult.

While there were many losses (A great price + Coupon on both frozen pizzas and taquitos) there were a few unexpected wins. My favorite was the toilet paper.

The reason the Toilet paper became the biggest win is because we're on roll #4, and I haven't gotten a complaint yet. And it's recycled. Last time I bought a 4 pack of a particular brand (cough...Nature's brand...cough), I was promptly told to never bring that sorry excuse for toilet paper back into the house. She was a Charmin girl and wanted to stay that way. Let me be honest - this new stuff is NO Charmin. There is a difference by a fair amount. But it's really not too bad. It's like I bought the cheap stuff vs. a name brand. But when using it one doesn't immediately know "hey, this is a green product, right?" which is a good thing. It's also good for keeping my household happy as I didn't just buy a 4 pack, I bought a 24 pack at Costco - quite the gamble.

It's called Earth First Bath Tissue. 100% recycled, 80% Post consumer and whitened without chlorine according to the package. And another cool thing about the package, it says that the plastic wrap holding it all together is "environmentally responsible" because it says "This plastic wrap has a predetermined life span and will expire in 18 months after manufactured date." And the cherry on top of this green TP sundae - it was the same price as the Costco brand (Kirkland) tissue paper so it also made it a good price!

I'm still without job. I'm still trying to straddle healthy and convenient. But I have found my new, greener, toilet paper. A happier, healthier step.

To shred or not to shred...

I have a great paper shredder. It rocks. It can shred paper or even credit cards. In a world of identity theft and constant pre-approved credit card offers, I considered it a mandatory thing.

But all that changed not long ago.

My recycling center no longer accepts shredded paper. Apparently shredded paper clogs the sorting machine. My first thought was - if ever individual who has a recycling can paid $1-3 more per month I'm sure we could afford a few workers to do a pre-sort of the recycle stuff to ensure that it wasn't an issue. But then I realized - it gets everywhere. I've gone to pull something that was accidentally tossed from the recycling can and it was a disaster. I can only imagine how awful it would be once everything was dumped in the truck. [Note, we have on trash can and one recycle can. All stuff goes in the same can and then is dumped into a "recycle truck" once a week] This isn't even the worst issue for our local recycling center. Can't tell you how many folks I've seen with bagged things (No bags allowed), tree trimmings (no nature!), soda boxes (can't be recycled due to plastic film), and more stuffed into the recycle container. I recently found out that my city pays over $250K a year to truck the "trash" from the recycle center over to the dump each year. Are you kidding me? That is insane! And with the price of gas going up - that number is only going to get higher.

Back to my original thought here. So, I called the credit associations to put myself on the list to not get pre-approved offers anymore. Some still trickle in, but I'm hoping that will end soon. But what do I do with it all?

Currently my plan is to go through each piece slowly looking for any identifiable piece of info or a special code reserved just for me - and I rip that off and shred just that chunk. If it's several times on the same piece of paper, the whole thing gets shredded. But MAN that takes SO much more time!

So here I am, spending 30-45 extra minutes of earth loving, identity protecting time reading, reviewing checking, making piles and shredding. Thinking to myself over and over - to shred or not to shred? Protect my identity, or protect the earth? But when I see the pile of shredded paper going into the trash, I can't help but think that there should be away for me to do both at the same time.