1. Recycle – Yep. You know how to do it, but do you actually do it? The easiest way to recycle is to make sure you have a designated area to do so. Need ideas? Check out these nifty ideas:
   

   How to Set Up a Home Recycling Station that Works

   Martha Stewart Recycling Center

   Hidden Kitchen Recycling area

2. Upcycle – I love doing this. Seriously. And I don’t mean doing the crazy stuff, like turning a car into a refrigerator or something. I mean simple things, like reusing binder clips, or embroidery hoops, or even litter boxes. For more Upcycle ideas check out my Upcycle Pinterest page.

So the next stop on my Spring Cleaning journey is my bedroom dresser drawers. They were a mess. And it always takes me forever to find stuff anyway, so I hunted around for things to use as drawer dividers or some type of separation tools.
As I’ve mentioned before, the best thing to do is to start by shopping your home first. So I poked around my basement and the back of one of my closets, (I’ve got to put that one on the list!) until I found these spring loaded drawer divider things that I forgot that I had!

I hate parting with well-made pieces of furniture that I’ve had for years. So it should be no surprise that years ago, I decided to take the old armoire from my first apartment that held my TV and repurpose it as my “linen closet” in my larger bathroom. I removed the gliders and shelf for the TV and kept everything else. It fit perfectly, but the lack of shelves meant that towels and sheets got stacked precariously high.

I have a love/hate relationship with my two cats. They are fun and affectionate and really don’t care what I look like, or how off-key I sing or if my socks match, as long as I feed them. (I have a couple of friends like that too). But their hair gets everywhere, and although I have hardwood floors, it can be a real pain to keep the furniture clean.

I’ve had several people ask me where I get some of the knitwear that I’ve posed in on the site, and to be honest, I can’t usually find exactly what I want, so I end up making it a lot of the time. I knit and crochet and I find them both to be extremely therapeutic and calming. I learned to knit from my grandmother and to (properly) crochet from my aunt. I mostly make accessories, because I don’t really have the attention span for a sweater, (sorry Nana). So here’s the first in a series of patterns I’ll be posting this season. Enjoy!

Big Chunky Knitted Cowl Pattern by Savvy Brown

Skill Level: Easy

Wool: Brown Sheep Lamb’s Pride Bulky
(or any super chunky wool you want to try)

In my continuing quest to organize stuff in our home, I had pushed cable organization to the top of the list. Both my husband and I have a couple of laptops, not mention various video game systems each with its own set of cables. I was tired of not being able to find the correct cable when I needed it, or resorting to a dusty game of twister when something blew behind the TV and spending an hour trying to find the right cord, before I could troubleshoot the problem. These ideas helped us, and maybe they’ll help you too!

image from unpluggd

Our house is over 100 years old, and the oak hardwood floors have a clear poly finish on them. For those of you who don’t know, real wood, should never be cleaned with tons of wet soapy water, you’ll only warp the wood and ruin the grain. The best thing to use is a floor cleaner that can be poured sparingly or sprayed on then damp mopped up. My father-in-law introduced me to this stuff and I liked the ingredients so I thought I’d give it a try.

Bona Hardwood Floor Cleaner Spray (32 ounce) $8.35

Ingredients not available.

Every year I try to downsize and re-organize a bit so that we have less clutter to deal with. I have dreams of coming home to a perfectly calm, serene space where not only is everything neat and clean…but I actually remember where I put everything.

I’m still working on it.

The following is a list of a few things that have really helped make the task easier, that also happen to be earth-friendly and pretty cheap!

Receipts

Wrangle Receipts and Business Cards – I have only one solution to this problem. Shoeboxed.com They send you a few large envelopes in the mail, you stuff the envelopes with all of your receipts and then drop them back in the mail (postage is free). They scan, organize and post the receipts online for you in a password protected account, then destroy/recycle the originals. I can easily see what receipts I can use for deductions as well as what we’re actually spending our money on. They also have a nifty and free iPhone app that lets you take pictures of business cards and automatically imports them into your address book! The service we use is $9.95 a month, and since we’re independent contractors is a tax write off. (Money well spent, trust me).

There are a few ways in which you can collect your food scraps in your kitchen so that you won’t be constantly running outside to dump them in your compost bin. There are a bunch of countertop containers on the market and I even have some available for you along with compost liners in the Savvy Shop.

But here, I’m gonna show you how to make your own! (It’s really easy).

DIY Countertop Compost Caddy

What you’ll need:

• An empty container that’s at least a 3lb capacity (I recycled an old oxygen cleaner container for this, because it has a nifty handle.)
• Power drill with small drill bit to make hole in top (No drill? You can use a hammer and drywall nail instead)
• Charcoal filter (You can find these here and at pet stores )
• Hot glue gun or Crazy Glue
• Velcro (you’re only going to use the side with the “teeth”)

Directions:

I saw this over on Pinterest, (my new favorite hangout), and I couldn’t resist!

It’s originally from Martha Stewart

This laundry bag has 3 components:

• 12” embroidery hoop (she used a 14” one, but I felt it was too big.)
• Standard pillow case (you can use larger if you wish)
• OR regular sized laundry bag with drawstring
• Twine, string or ribbon to hang the whole thing up with

I made the pillowcase version, cuz, well, we’ve got a bunch of orphaned pillowcases laying around…