The blog formerly known as   Fake Plastic Fish

Category Archives: Diy

September 16, 2010

How to Take Apart and Clean a Stinky Kenmore (Whirlpool) Top Loading Washer

Seems like this is the year for smelly appliances and DIY solutions. A few months ago, it was dishwasher funk. And then recently, we noticed a linty residue on our clothes and a moldy smell coming from the washing machine. (The residue was not laundry powder; we use soapnuts.)

So, how is fixing a washing machine related to plastic? Well, we did end up with some plastic waste during the week-long ordeal. And learning to fix things, in general, is one of my strategies for avoiding new purchases and hence, new plastic. But really, I’m just so tickled that I was able to take the whole thing apart, clean it, and put it back together again, that I have to share!

This post will be long and winding and contain a lot of pictures. Hopefully, it will be funny, too, because who doesn’t enjoy a good washing machine repair story? And since I spent a ton of time on the web looking up parts and procedures and advice, I’ve included a list of all the resources I … Read the rest

February 24, 2010

Knitted iPod Cover

Brought to you by String Caddies-R-Us & Procrastination Station

This post falls into the category of Things To Do To Procrastinate On Writing The Fake Plastic Fish Book. It also falls into the category of Too Much Time On My Hands. And also Why Sleep?

1) Clean out drawers (because book writing cannot possibly be done when drawers are messy) and find an old iPod Nano that I never use anymore because the cheap plastic cover came apart and I never replaced it.

2) Think about all the AudioBooks I could listen to with this iPod and wonder if anyone is making a plastic-free iPod cover.

3) Browse Etsy.com and Google for several hours searching for the right iPod cover. Find plenty of options online but none that meet all my criteria. Cover has to be plastic-free. Has to provide access to click wheel and screen without removing iPod from cover. Has to have openings for head phones and USB connection, also without removing from cover. Has to close to protect the … Read the rest

November 26, 2009

Thanksgiving, Buy Nothing Day, & My Travel Mug

Happy Thanksgiving everyone. This post is not really about today but tomorrow:  the day the media insists on calling “Black Friday.”  I’m choosing instead to honor “Buy Nothing Day.” And to celebrate Buy Nothing Day, I am not going to replace my lost travel mug. And I’m not just going to wait until Saturday to replace it either. Here’s a little background…

This was my travel mug. Nice, huh? Stainless steel outside and in. Yeah, some plastic, which at this point seems to be inevitable with travel mugs. I lost it a few weeks ago and have been carrying a big ceramic mug with me, which is not so practical since it has no top and could be easily broken. But this is not the first travel mug I’ve lost. I lost the previous one, which looked exactly like this, back in October of 2008.  I’d had it for about a year.

See, I lose things. A few years ago, I left an iPod in the back seat of a taxi cab. I left a camer… Read the rest

November 13, 2009

Practically Green Book Review and DIY Project

I first met Micaela Preston through the Green Moms Carnival. Her blog, Mindful Momma, is full of practical advice and Do-It-Yourself projects for living a more sustainable life. She was also my roommate at the BlogHer conference this summer, where she impressed everyone with her ingenious handmade business card holder, made from the pocket of an old blouse and sporting two compartments — one for her own cards and the other for cards she received from other people. So it’s not surprising that she has just published a new book.

Micaela sent me a copy of Practically Green: Your Guide to Ecofriendly Decision-Making.  I love it. Each chapter is divided into two sections. Buy It Green includes useful charts and lists that explain the various green standards and environmental and health hazards to watch out for when purchasing food, clothing, home furnishings, toys, etc. Do It Green includes recipes and instructions for making your o… Read the rest

November 4, 2009

Baking Soda: So Many Uses; So Little Money… and Plastic

I hear people bemoaning the high cost of “going green.”  And while organic food does cost more than its chemical-laden counterpart, I’m here to tell you that it’s easier to spend more for healthy food when you save money in other ways.  We can skip many of the green cleaners, deodorizers, and personal care products, most of which are fairly expensive.  To that end, baking soda is our friend. (Ha! I rhymed.)

What’s so great about baking soda?

1) It’s cheap. On Safeway.com, a 1 lb box is $1.40. But I save money and packaging by buying it from the bulk bin at my local natural foods store, filling up my own reusable cloth bag.  That way, it’s only 89¢/lb!

2) It’s simple. One of  the ways I try to protect my health and that of the planet is to buy products that contain the lowest number of different ingredients possible.  Baking soda is just about as simple as you can get.

3)  It’s non-toxic. Need I say mo… Read the rest

June 30, 2009

Fixing my Blue Plastic Umbrella

Plastic is good for some things, right? Like keeping us dry in the rain. A few months ago, Treehugger posted an article about eco-friendly umbrellas ranging from those made from recycled plastic to one touted as the first biodegradable umbrella. So when my little blue umbrella broke, I considered replacing it with one of those — until I remembered that the most eco-friendly choice would be to repair the one I have!

The problem: One of the umbrella’s ribs was broken. (I now know it’s called a rib after Googling “parts of an umbrella.”)

Upon close inspection, I could see that a Springy Part A needed to go back into Straight Part B.

But how to hold them together? Michael came up with the brilliant idea of using a straightened paperclip. And voilà !

I twisted the paperclip with pliers to hold it in place and bent it in a circle to keep it from puncturing the umbrella.

And here’s the finished product, complete with a fe… Read the rest

February 24, 2009

Fixing my Fake Plastic Pillow

As part of the spring cleaning that happened in our house last week, and to rid our space of the germs that have been plaguing us, I decided to wash my pillow. In the washing machine. And then dry it in the dryer. Which turned out to be not such a great idea, actually. The (fake plastic) stuffing did a little dance and ended up completely discombobulated.

Unable to bear the thought of tossing the pillow (which of course means adding it to my plastic collection), I slept on it like this for several nights and ended up with a sore neck. It was like laying my head down on a cinder block.

Not being the DIY queen that many of you are, sometimes I am oblivious to the obvious. Thankfully, there are other bloggers who can help. So, searching the Internet, I found instructions for using a fresh pillow case to create a newish pillow from the old stuffing. My pillow’s cotton case was in fine shape, so I was able to reuse it after fixing the stuffing inside.

I realize the f… Read the rest

January 9, 2009

Plastic, Glass, Egg Salad, & Global Warming

My lunch today… it illustrates some of the choices (or false choices) we sometimes find ourselves making where the environment is concerned.

I wanted an egg salad sandwich, but I didn’t have any mayonnaise in the house. I could have walked down to the corner store to buy some more, but there I’d be confronted with the choice of plastic or glass jars. I could have simply opted for the glass jar and been done with it, but lately, I’ve been hearing from a lot of companies about how their plastic containers are better for the environment because they weigh less and therefore require less fuel to ship.

This is true.

Plastic does weigh less than glass, and it does require less fuel to ship. Perhaps, as far as global warming is concerned, it’s the better choice. But global warming is not our only environmental concern. Plastic, as I’ve written here often, carries with it a whole host of toxicity and pollution issues. And… Read the rest

December 18, 2008

Liquid Soap Fail – What am I doin’ wrong?

This is a 1000 gram block of olive oil soap I bought from Body Time (a shop in my neighborhood) a while back. It was completely unpackaged. I thought I would use it to make liquid soap — to replace the Dr. Bronner’s we have been using for dishwashing once it’s gone. I figured all I’d need to do is dissolve the bar in a pot of water and voila! Liquid soap. Did I check any recipes or instructions? No way, man. It just seemed way too obvious.

So, I put the entire block of soap in a stock pot on the stove, filled it up with water, and started stirring. And stirring. And stirring. Thinking I’d save time, I didn’t bother grating the soap beforehand. So yes, this process took hours. Hours of gas stove energy. Hours of occasional stirring.

After the whole thing was dissolved, I let the pot cool. When I checked it the next day, I found a huge stock pot of solid soap!

Okay, I guess an entire kilogram of soap (2.2 pounds) requires more water… Read the rest

November 14, 2008

Beth Geeks Out – Reformatting hard drives and installing Windows Upgrades

I’m tired. I was up very late last night doing a job I love: working on the computers at my office. And as an added bonus, I was doing something great for the environment and saving plastic.

We had five old computers running Windows 2000. We bought a new Filemaker Pro upgrade which will not install on Windows 2000. And even Microsoft will not support that version of Windows anymore. In the past, the company would have tossed the old computers and bought new ones. But this is a new, fierce economy, baby. People can’t afford to be wasteful, and I’m freakin’ glad.

So instead of tossing perfectly good machines, we bought 5 Windows XP Pro licenses (actually, they are Windows VISTA licenses that allow us to downgrade to XP because we don’t really want VISTA at this time) and the only plastic involved was the one CD-Rom I used to burn the downloaded software. I needed a bootable disk, otherwise I wouldn’t have burned a CD at … Read the rest