Last year, I was trying really hard to buy nothing new, and while I fell short several times (more on that in a future post), I did pretty well in the shoe department.  Nearly all shoes have at least some plastic components.  Buying them secondhand or repairing the shoes you already have are great ways to […]
My poor backpack. I’ve been carrying it around for over ten years, and finally, one of the main zippers stopped zipping. Or, I should say, one of the sliders stopped working. Â Fortunately, this backpack has two sliders, so I could still close the zipper using the other slider, but I always had to remember […]
I thought this was post was going to be another one of my triumphant reports about how I avoided buying a new plastic gadget because I was able to fix the old one. Like the tale of the rice cooker, or the umbrella, or the laundry basket, or even the washing machine. I imagined how […]
I realize  Talk Like a Pirate Day is over for 2012, but there’s a certain piraty expression that’s good all year round:  Arrr! According to the official website, it means “variously, ‘yes,’ ‘I agree,’ ‘I’m happy,’ ‘I’m enjoying this beer,’ ‘My team is going to win it all,’ ‘I saw that television show, it sucked!’ and ‘That was […]
It’s frustrating when electronic gadgets break, and not just because you have to go through the hassle of fixing or replacing them but because in doing so, a lot of waste is created. So when the headphone jack on my phone stopped working intermittently, I put off doing anything about it for several months. But […]
Another day, another broken gadget. Â Plastic-free rule #1 when something breaks is to try and fix it instead of replacing it. But that’s not always easy since so many appliances are built to be tossed instead of repaired. Â Well Easy Schmeasy. Â Fixing things is fun. Â Saves money. Â Makes you feel like a Super Hero […]
What is an LCD monitor made of? And what do you do if it breaks? I learned the answers to these questions the hard way. The Stupid Thing I Did Laptop monitors break easily, as I discovered a couple of months ago after closing the lid down on a couple of earbuds I had left […]
Back in January, I posted on my Facebook profile: The foam pads (read: plastic) on my headphones are wearing out. Motivation to learn to crochet because I hate round knitting. Well, this weekend, April 23, I finally summoned up the motivation to learn enough crochet basics to fix my headphones. See, even though I use […]
One of the strategies I use to acquire less new plastic is to fix stuff that breaks instead of replacing it with new gadgets and to use resources like Craigslist, Freecycle, and thrift stores to get it secondhand. So I get really irritated when despite my best efforts, I find that my broken gadgets are […]
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 […]