I'm a wife, stay-at-home mom, crafter, and blogger living in rural New England. As seen in Martha Stewart Living, Food Network Magazine, and more! | Tutorials, DIY, crafts, parenting tips, recipes, money saving tips, product reviews, local product features, New England living, intentional living, and more! |
A tradition I started back in 2016 was to donate a percentage of profits from Birch Landing Home to charity at year end, and it’s a tradition I’ve been proud to continue every year since.
2024 has been a challenging year for a lot of small businesses, including mine. This year I had 4 brick and mortar shops I wholesale to close their doors, many of my remaining wholesale accounts have been cutting back how often they reorder, regular sales on Etsy have been slow, and affiliate sales/ad revenue on the blog are down. Inflation and spending habits have impacted everyone.
Nevertheless I am still planning on making a donation at year-end even if it’s small. I think it’s important to give back when you can and I want to make sure this tradition continues. If you have a suggestion of a charity or non-profit to consider please let me know! And thank you all again for your continued support - even just views, clicks, and likes on social media and my blog or Etsy go a very long way to supporting my business and don’t cost anything. Thank you!
This year we finally jumped on the backyard composting bandwagon. We’ve been wanting to make more eco-friendly choices around our home and decided a big step we could make would be trying to eliminate as much food waste going into our household trash as possible. | This post contains affiliate links |
Composting has a lot of benefits. Some of which include reducing the amount of decomposing matter filling our landfills as well as producing nutrient-rich garden soil to benefit your own yard and garden.
Getting Set Up
When it comes to composting, you could just make a pile in the corner of your yard or make your own bin with some scrap wood or fence. However, we decided to opt for a tumbler-style bin since we were looking for something compact, self-contained, and efficient.
Once you decide on your compost set-up it's important to add some good microbes to "get the party started" and create a good environment for breaking down your food and yard waste. To do this you can add a shovel-full of garden dirt from your own garden to introduce some microbes, or you can buy some specialty compost starter to add to your composter (just follow the package directions).
Composting
Once you have it set up, just keep on adding food/yard waste and periodically turn your compost over (by hand if yours is a pile or by spinning the drum if it’s a tumbler-style). The trickiest part for me is keeping the ratios right - ideally your compost pile should be about 1 part “greens” (these would be fruit/veggie scraps, coffee grounds, etc… I like to think of them as wet items) and 2 parts “browns” (leaves, newspaper, brown paper bags, etc… I like to think of them as dry items). We personally tend to teeter from too dry to too wet in our compost bin but it seems to average out eventually.
I typically toss our kitchen scraps in a bowl on the counter as I'm cooking and promptly empty it into the compost bin outside. This has worked well for us so far since the weather has been mild. Once it turns winter here I will probably invest in a kitchen countertop compost container so I don't need to walk outside across the icy/snowy yard several times a day, and instead can just empty the kitchen container into the outside compost bin periodically as it fills up.
What to Compost
Slimy spinach in your fridge? Toss it in the composter and then recycle the container!
Here’s a short list of things you can potentially compost:
fruit
vegetables
inedible portions of fruit/veggies (i.e. - rinds/cores)
coffee grounds
egg shells
disease-free, non-invasive plants
shredded newspaper
shredded brown paper bags
shredded paper (non-glossy)
untreated sawdust (I make a lot of ornaments for my Etsy shop and compost the sawdust)
toilet paper rolls
leaves, grass clippings
small sticks
The smaller you make the items in your compost bin (cut them up or shred them), the quicker they should decompose and compost.
What NOT to Compost
Do NOT Compost:
x plastic or household trash x meat x dairy x cooked food x glass or metal x animal waste or used animal bedding/shavings x invasive or diseased plant materials - compost very strong smelling fruit/veggies with caution (i.e. citrus/bananas) if you live in an area with bears or raccoons that are an issue
Good luck in your composting adventure! I hope you enjoy the process and be proud in your efforts to be a little more eco-friendly in your home.
Disclaimer: I am sharing my experiences with what we’ve learned in the composting process so far. If you’d like expert or more detailed and specific information, I’d recommend contacting your local garden center or university cooperative for more information. Your local town or city may have composting programs to join or guidelines to follow too.
A tradition I started four years ago was to donate a percentage of profits from Birch Landing Home at year-end to Charity. I’m so happy to say that this year we were able to help support Gather NH as well as The Nature Conservancy. I chose to support Gather NH because food insecurity has become an issue for many more families this year due to the economical impact of the pandemic. I chose The Nature Conservancy because turning to nature and time outside has become such a saving grace for many during this time and it’s more important than ever to protect our natural resources.
Thank you so much for all your support this past year, it has definitely been a strange year for Birch Landing Home too with less Etsy sales (due to me temporarily pausing my Etsy storefront) and less partnerships and projects on the blog. Nevertheless, I am thankful for my Wholesale Accounts and continued traffic on my blog to make these donations happen. I hope to continue to grow Birch Landing Home and be able to give back more each year in return. Thank you all!
This year sure has been different, including for Birch Landing Home. This year there was no New England travel guides from day trips. I worked with far, far less brands than usual. I put my Etsy shop on hold for the time being. I also didn't do nearly as many DIY projects as I would like, for the simple reason I've been avoiding shopping in-stores as much as possible. BUT instead of focusing on what I couldn't do, I tried to enjoy what we have: We are thankfully healthy. We had more time than ever at home, lots of quality time with our kids in our backyard, and time exploring local trails together. Lots of time working on our garden. Not taking for granted simple things like groceries and mail delivery. Appreciating family and friends so much more now that we can't be together, and looking forward to the day we can hug each other again.
2020 helped make us appreciate what we have, and I hope 2021 will better and brighter because of it. Wishing you all health and happiness in the New Year. Best, Sarah
Happy Giving Tuesday! Did you know I donate a percentage of profits from Birch Landing Home (blog and craft sales) to charity at year-end? So every time you visit my blog or purchase one of my crafts that donation gets the chance to grow. Last year I was able to donate to the Myasthenia Gravis Foundation of America and Susan G. Komen for the Cure.
I haven’t decided where this year’s donation is going yet so if you have a favorite charity please feel free to share it with me!
Being home 24/7 and trying to limit grocery trips and ordering really makes you evaluate how quickly you’re going through supplies in your home. With two little kids, paper products were something we were blowing through and made me wonder how we could change this for the better. | This post is not sponsored but does contain affiliate links |
Now when I say "paper products" in this post I'm talking about paper towels and paper napkins. To greatly reduce our usage of these things we made the switch to reusable "unpaper" towels and aren't looking back. (And before you ask... yes, reusable toilet paper/wipes do exist too - but that's not for us, though if the toilet paper shortage continues who knows...).
“Unpaper” towels are cloths that you can use like paper towels but wash and reuse for a long time. You could really use just about any kind of cloth - wash cloths, tea towels, cloth napkins, pieces of flannel, etc. Hopefully you have something around the house already that you can use, but if you don’t and decide to purchase some we’ve found them to be worth the investment. For the price of a large package of throw-away paper towels, you can purchase of set of reusable ones that will last you a very, very long time and will eventually pay for themselves.
We thought about just using our current dishtowels but we use them regularly already for dishes and big spills (which happen a lot with two small kids). We were primarily looking for something smaller that would function like a paper towel and also wouldn’t fill our washing machine quickly (something else to consider), which is why we settled on these modestly-sized, organic bamboo cloths.
Some people will roll them on a paper towel holder and use them in place of ALL paper towels, completely eliminating paper towels in their home. For our household we decided to fold them and place them in a basket on our counter, next to our roll of paper towels. That way we’d be constantly reminded to grab a cloth instead of a paper towel whenever we had to wipe a dirty face or sticky fingers, but we’d still have paper towels at the ready if we really needed them. I even hung a little note over the paper towel holder to remind us to use less of them.
Since starting this system we’ve cut down on our paper towel usage big time. This has saved us money on our grocery bill and we feel like we’ve made a positive long-term change that’s more eco-friendly.
Cleaning Unpaper Towels: I hung a small mesh laundry bag on the doorknob of our laundry closet, which is conveniently right off the kitchen, to toss the used unpaper towels in to be washed. Whenever I start a load of laundry, I just throw the mesh bag in with the rest of the washing. You could also easily hang a mesh bag or small basket on the inside of a cupboard door with a Command Hook too if that is a more convenient spot.
Hopefully I’ve inspired you to find a reusable, money-saving solution to something in your home like we have found unpaper towels to be for us.
This post is not sponsored but contains my personal opinion as well as affiliate links.
We’re definitely living in different times right now… and it’s becoming clearer that it looks as though we will have to co-exist with the COVID-19 virus for the foreseeable future. Because of that anything we can do that might mitigate the risk of virus transmission, like always wearing face masks or face coverings when outside our homes, have become a part of our “new normal.” Since mask-wearing should be part of your new routine whenever you leave your house, it’s a good idea to have a system in place to make sure you always have clean masks at the ready and you never leave home without one. | This post contains affiliate links |
Disclaimer: I am not giving medical advice. Make sure to always consult the CDC and local health officials for up-to-date recommendations on mask wearing, storage, and care. Cloth masks are not considered medical grade and should be washed in between each use… check with individual mask makers/companies on the best way to store/wash/care for your masks.
Mask Storage at Home
It’s a good idea to keep your clean masks in a designated area of your home, preferably in a place where you’ll be sure to grab one on your way out the door to do errands, go to work, etc. At first glance it might look like we have a lot of masks, but we really don't considering we're a household of four and it's essential to have enough masks to get through between laundry loads. We're still staying home and social-distancing very seriously, but whenever we have to do an essential errand/appointment or just go for a drive to get out of the house, we always make sure to have a clean mask for everyone that’s leaving the house.
In our home, we've designated a special basket that sits up high on our mudroom shelf, full of clean masks. We put the adult masks towards the back, and then kids masks in the front. I was unable to find a basket the same size on Amazon to link to, but I did find this
sleek bamboo box that looks to be the perfect size. If you don't have shelf space for a basket, you could alternatively use wall-mounted baskets for storage. Our masks are a mix of ones made with love for us by family members, as well as ones purchased from
Old Navy
and
Miss Harlow VT
(one of the local makers I featured in my "Masks by New England Makers" blog post).
If you don't like the idea of using a basket like we do and would rather hang your masks by the door, another option would be using
a small set of hooks
such as a set of compact coat hooks or key rack - or even just simple
Command Hooks.
Mask Storage On-The-Go
We have found a
slim wipes container
is the perfect size for holding several face masks on-the-go! In fact, we always make sure to leave our case packed with an extra mask for each family member in the car. That way we're always covered if we forget one or need to change masks while we're out of the house. I think this would be a great way to carry extra face masks in your bag for work, or your child's backpack whenever they return to school. It would probably be a good idea to also keep a ziplock bag or separate sealed container in your bag in case you have a dirty/used mask that needs to be brought home to wash.
And if you wanted to take it a step further and have an organzied mask system on-the-go to put in your work bag or child's backpack, you might want to consider having two cases - one for clean masks and one for dirty masks. I ordered these clear mask cases from Amazon and cut labels for them on my Cricut. We'll be packing one with extra clean masks, and the other will be empty for dirty masks to come home in. Since we recently invested in some better quality masks I wanted to make sure they stay in cases when not in use to keep them in good shape.
Alternatively, if you don't have any slim wipes containers hanging around you could also use
Small Craft Storage Cases
, which come in clear and a variety of colors. This might be more cost effective too if you needed multiple cases - especially if you needed one or more cases for each family member, or if you were a teacher and wanted to make a case for each student in your class.
You can also easily label any of these cases with a
label maker.
We always make sure to keep the car stocked with our plastic case of extra face masks, hand sanitizer, and disinfectant wipes to help protect ourselves when we’re out doing errands.
Mask Care
Always refer to individual mask makers/companies on the best way to care for each of your masks (hand wash only vs machine wash, line-dry vs dryer, etc.) But in general, all masks should be washed and allowed to thoroughly dry in between each use.
Since all of our masks are machine washable, we've found using a mesh lingerie laundry bag is perfect for keeping the masks from getting lost in the wash or caught on other items.
Quick Adjustment Tips
If you feel like your face mask is a little large or isn’t fitting as closely to your face as you would like, you can typically adjust it very easily by making a small knot in the ear loop elastics (as shown above) to make it smaller.
One mask accessory that we've found super helpful lately are
Mask Lanyards. We personally use them most often when we're out hiking or going for a long walk, that way the time we're out alone we can keep our masks down, however in the event we see someone coming up we can easily put them on if we need to pass others on the trail. We made a point to choose lanyards that have a breakaway safety feature, but use at your own discretion/risk.
Disclaimer: I am not giving medical advice. Make sure to always consult the CDC and local health officials for up-to-date recommendations on mask wearing, storage, and care. Cloth masks are not considered medical grade and should be washed in between each use… check with individual mask makers/companies on the best way to store/wash/care for your masks.
Vaccination Card Protector
Vaccinated? You may want to consider getting a Vaccination Card Protector for your vaccine card to help keep them protected and clean at home or while you're traveling. These are nice because you can remove your vaccine card to record updates/boosters if needed.
Happy Earth Day! Back in the ‘80’s my Dad bought these Vermont State Parks t-shirts on a camping trip for himself and baby-me... somehow they survived all these years and now me and my kids wear them. Vintage ;)
Hope you have a great Earth Day and can find a safe way to better your household or neighborhood during this Pandemic.
