Recyclable =/= sustainable

Late last year, I subscribed to the One5C newsletter, which drops tidbits of climate news and tips for lowering my carbon footprint in my email inbox twice a week. Some of this info is useful, but occasionally the editors make silly mistakes about things that would have been easy to check. One recent newsletter called "natural gas" a misleading term invented by fossil fuel companies "to confuse consumers" when it's actually been used since the 1820s to refer to methane gas that's naturally occurring, as opposed to synthetic. (Consumers may indeed be confused because they mistakenly assume "natural" means "wholesome," but that doesn't mean the term itself is inaccurate.) Another touted a proposed law it said would require schools to provide nondairy milk "for any child that wants it—no note required," when the bill in question actually would require students to provide a note identifying the "disability" that prevents them from drinking cow's milk. And a third recommended bidets on the grounds that they save water, a claim I debunked last year.

Having run across problems like these before, I was a bit wary of One5C's recommendation for Ball's new aluminum party cups. I didn't doubt the editors were technically right in claiming that these aluminum cups are "infinitely recyclable," while "Classic red Solo cups...are #6 plastic, which few facilities recycle." But I wasn't prepared to assume this automatically made the aluminum ones the more ecofrugal choice. After all, the widely demonized single-use plastic bag actually does a lot less damage to the environment than a single-use paper bag or even an organic cotton tote bag. How could I be sure these new aluminum cups were really the most sustainable choice—both economically and environmentally?

To tackle these questions, I started out by shopping around in the "disposable tableware" section on Target.com. There I found several alternatives, some marketed as green and some not. First, as a baseline, I looked at the 18-ounce red Solo cups the One5C editors alluded to. These cost $8.99 for 72, or 12.5 cents each. Target also has its own brand of plastic cups that cost only $5.89 for 72, or 8.2 cents each. Both brands are made of polystyrene (#6 plastic), which isn't typically recyclable, just as One5C claims.

One product marketed as a greener alternative is Repurpose compostable cups. These clear plastic cups hold 12.2 ounces and cost $7.99 for 20 (40 cents each). That's more than three times the cost of the Solo cup and nearly five times the cost of the store brand in exchange for a questionable environmental benefit. The bioplastic these cups are made from has a lower carbon footprint than petroleum-based plastic, but it also uses more land, produces more pollution, and depletes the ozone layer more. Even the cups' claim to be "compostable" is dubious; bioplastics will break down in a commercial composting facility, but not in a home compost bin.

Compared to the Repurpose cups, the new Ball aluminum cups seem at first glance like a more legitimately sustainable alternative. Unlike most plastics, aluminum really can be recycled indefinitely, and aluminum recycling really does save significant resources and energy. Unfortunately, the cups themselves are not recycled; they're made from virgin aluminum, which has a significantly higher environmental footprint. In fact, a life-cycle analysis by Upstream found that these single-use aluminum cups are much worse for the environment than plastic ones, using 47% more energy and producing 86% more emissions. They also have by far the largest footprint in terms of cost. At $5.29 for 10, each cup costs 52.9 cents, more than four times as much as that "classic red Solo cup" and more than six times as much as the store brand.

Clearly, there's no good reason to recommend the Ball aluminum cups over traditional plastic ones. It only took me a few minutes of research to figure that out, and I'm a bit annoyed at the editors of One5C for not doing even that minimal amount of due diligence before recommending them. But what annoys me much more is that they're recommending a single-use product at all. Surely we all know by now that the slogan "reduce, reuse, recycle" puts recycle last for a reason, and that there's almost always more environmental benefit to reducing and reusing when you can.

And in this particular case, there's a very obvious reusable alternative that doesn't cost a cent. If you're having a gathering at your home, using your own cups and glasses costs nothing and creates no waste, aside from a little bit of water and energy for washing. In fact, I went to a potluck this weekend, and the host did exactly that. She served the meal with reusable glasses, reusable plates, and metal utensils, all of which worked much better than flimsy disposable equivalents.

And if you don't have enough glasses for that many guests? Well, if you plan on throwing parties often, it could be worth investing in a dozen 16-ounce mason jars, sold elsewhere on the Target website for $13.49, or $1.12 each. They'd be a better deal than the Ball aluminum cups after just three uses. Even compared to the cheapest plastic ones, they'd pay for themselves after 14 uses. They can accommodate both hot drinks and cold ones. And while the Upstream life-cycle analysis didn't look specifically at glass cups, a separate one by the UN's Life Cycle Initiative found that they're one of the greenest alternatives in just about every situation.

The moral of the story? It's not simply that reuse trumps recycling, although that is the case more often than not. It's that it's worth doing your homework rather than just assuming a product is ecofrugal, or even eco-conscious, just because it's recyclable. If there's an existing life cycle analysis out there, it will only take you a few minutes to find it, and it could save you from a costly mistake—for you and for the earth.

Ecofrugal episodes, July 2025

Time for another exciting installment of ecofrugal episodes, in which I fill you in on all the little things that have been going well and not so well in our ecofrugal life. This past week or two has had a mix of both, so I'm doing the post in "hits and misses" style.

Hit: Our first trip to Savers

Last weekend, Brian and I went to visit my sister and her family in Boston. One of the things we did there was visit Savers, a for-profit thrift store chain we don't have in our area. (There's a store in the same family, called Thrift Superstore, in Union, but that's a good 40 minutes away.) The store has a good selection and decent prices, but no dressing rooms, so we had to either try things on as best we could in the aisles or take our best guess about the size. Brian got one pair of jeans and a new pair of Ren Faire shoes, since his current set (also thrifted) has proven insufficiently supportive for a long day of walking. I got one fairly cute top and a pair of warm tights for winter. (It's not clear how big a hit that purchase is, since I still don't know if they fit. I couldn't try them on in the store, and after we got them home it was too hot. But for only a couple of bucks, they seemed worth the risk.) 

Since my sister's family also brought along four bags' worth of used clothes to donate, they got four coupons good for 40% off on up to $100 worth of purchases and gave one to us. With that discount, our total cost was $26.87 for the four items. That's not breathtakingly cheap, but it's clearly cheaper than buying new, which isn't always the case at thrift shops nowadays.

Miss: A sustainable-living guide that doesn't

On our way back from Savers, we stopped by a farmers' market. One of the booths there was a used-book stall run by the local public library. I can't pass by a table full of books (especially cheap ones) without at least taking a look, and I always like to support libraries when I can, so I spent $2 on a paperback copy of The Self-Sufficiency Bible, by a Brit named Simon Dawson. The cover promised "100s of Ways to Live More Sustainably - Wherever You Are," so I was hoping there might be at least a handful I didn't already know about.

Unfortunately, like many books on this topic, this one proved to be a mix of things I already do and things that aren't relevant to me. The three chapters on "The Home Dairy," "Livestock," and "Meat Preparation and Basic Butchery" were of no use to us at all. The chapter "Curing and Preserving" wasn't completely irrelevant, because the instructions for preserving meat were interspersed with pointers on pickles, chutneys, sauces, jam, and dried mushrooms and herbs. But most of this was already familiar to us, as was everything in the chapter "The Home Baker." And parts of the chapter "The Kitchen Garden" were clearly aimed at a British audience and didn't apply to us, like the advice that tomatoes and peppers are "likely to disappoint you" if you try to grow them outdoors. 

There were also a few tips that didn't seem to fit the "self-sufficiency" brief. The chapter on "Natural Solutions: Health, Beauty, and the Home" contained numerous recipes for natural cleaners and beauty products made from ingredients that you clearly can't produce yourself and aren't cheap to buy, such as cocoa butter, sandalwood oil, and avocado. His homemade hair conditioner recipe ("beat an egg either with an avocado or a banana") would cost a minimum of $1.16 per application, while my Suave conditioner costs around 9 cents. 

Also, the few chapters that looked like they'd be most useful, like "Arty Crafty Bits," largely glossed over the details of the things I was most keen to learn about. The section on knitting lists all kinds of things you can make this way, but never actually talks about how to do it; the section on making your own clothes advises you to "buy a good, lightweight machine...and get sewing," as if setting the machine up and threading it and using it required no explanation. And on top of this, the book is peppered with errors, both mechanical ("it's" for "its," "forraging") and factual (saying that rhubarb leaves are unsafe to compost, describing wood as a green energy source).

Despite these drawbacks, I did manage to glean a few useful tidbits from this book. I learned (and confirmed from reliable sources) that it's best to water seedlings before transplanting them so you lose less soil; that you can make an alcoholic "turbo cider" from store-bought juice in a couple of weeks; that you can knit with strips of fabric rather than yarn; that the comfrey plant growing next to our recycling bin can be eaten (in moderation); and that you can preserve mushrooms at home by air-drying or freezing. But having filed away those facts, I don't see any need to keep the book on my shelf for future reference. I'll either donate it to our library book sale or drop it into one of our town's many Little Free Libraries so it can go to someone who may get more use out of it.

Hit: DIY shower indicator buttons

When Brian and I bought new shower control knobs nine years back, they came with little plastic "indicator buttons" to identify the hot, cold, and direction knobs. These weren't truly necessary, since most people know which is which, but they served to cover up the mounting screws. Unfortunately, within a year, these buttons started to fall apart. They wouldn't stay in place because the little teeth that held them in the knobs had come loose and begun to fall out. This looked like an easy fix; we just bought a new set of indicator buttons for about $5 and swapped them out. But within another year or so, these buttons also began to fall apart in exactly the same way. I looked for metal indicator buttons that I thought might be more sturdy than the plastic ones, but I couldn't find any to fit our faucets.

So, with two of our faucet knobs now sitting there naked and the third button hanging on by a thread, I started brainstorming ways to rig up a DIY version of these buttons. I considered metal bottle caps, but we don't tend to buy drinks in glass bottles, and I wasn't sure how I'd get them to fit into the faucets. I also thought about gluing some decorative beads in place, but that would make it impossible to get at the screws. Finally, I concluded that the best fix would be a couple of large metal washers tucked under the screws. This would leave the heads exposed, but it would hide the dingy, mineral-stained surface underneath. And if the washers themselves got dirty, I could easily remove, clean, and replace them.

I found two washers in our collection that were just the right size and painted them with nail polish: red, which I already had, for the hot-water tap and blue, which cost me $4 at the local discount store, for the cold. It was the work of a couple of minutes to remove the screws, thread the washers on, and screw them back in. With these in place, the damaged knobs look much more presentable. And whenever that last button gives up the ghost, I can give the middle knob the same treatment.

Miss: Shaky sunglasses repair 

On sunny days, I wear special sunglasses designed to fit over my regular glasses. They're much cheaper than a pair of prescription shades, and they're easier to put on and take off because I don't need to stash my other glasses. Their weak point, it turns out, is durability. This month, the frames cracked right across the top. Brian thought maybe he could mend them with epoxy, but the difficulty would be figuring out how to clamp them while the glue dried. I decided instead to shell out $2 for some fast-drying superglue from the discount store and try to fix them that way. I laid them out on a sheet of newspaper, put on gloves so I wouldn't glue my fingers together, dabbed on a little glue, and held the joined area in place for about a minute to let it set.

At first, this simple repair seemed to be holding. Then the crack opened back up, but only partway. I glued it again, but after a week, it popped open completely. I got out my tools and glued it one more time, but this time there was a slight mishap; I got a bit of glue on my glove, which then got stuck to the inside of the nose piece. I was able to pull most of the nitrile off, but there's still a little scrap of blue there that will have to be scraped off with a utility knife. And it remains unclear whether this second repair will hold any better than the first. If it doesn't, I'll have to move on to more complicated methods: either adding a splint along with the glue, as suggested at Eyeglass Repair USA, or plastic welding.

Miss: High quotes for heat pumps 

Last month, in the wake of a brutal heat wave and the passage of a bill that will kill home electrification credits at the end of this year, Brian and I took another stab at getting quotes for a home heat pump. Three weeks ago, after talking to two contractors and getting one quote back, I was feeling doubtful. Now, after five consultations and four quotes (the fifth one never got back to me, even after a follow-up call), I'm even more pessimistic. 

The bottom line seems to be that a system that can completely replace our gas boiler will cost well over 30 grand. That doesn't include the $10,000 decarbonization credit that the first contractor mentioned, but that's because none of the other contractors I spoke to believed that this credit actually exists. More than one of them said that PSE&G has been talking about such a program for years, but nothing has ever happened, and there's no evidence that this year will be any different.

Now, if we were willing to settle for a hybrid system—one that would supplement rather than replace the boiler, reducing our gas usage—we could probably do that for between 20 and 25 grand, including the upgrades to our electrical panel. But that's still a lot of money, and the new system would probably cost as much to run as our current one, if not more. So the costs would continue to pile up every year.

What I'm starting to wonder is, if we're only going to reduce, not eliminate, our use of fossil fuel for heating, do we even need to install a whole-house system? Maybe we could just replace our old through-the-wall air conditioning unit with a heat pump that could provide supplemental heating as well as cooling. It looks like we could buy one for around $1,000, and since it would be replacing an existing unit, the installation cost shouldn't be more than another grand; we might even be able to install it ourselves. We'd still need to use the gas boiler, but the heat pump could probably cut our gas use by half, and for less than one-tenth the price of a complete system. It would be like the heating equivalent of our little induction burner: not a full replacement for a gas appliance, but one that can take over most of its duties for a fraction of the price. Am I crazy, or is this the ecofrugal way?

Recipe of the Month: Green Bean and Mushroom Curry

First, a quick apology for the late post this week. We were away for the weekend and didn't get home until Sunday evening, by which time we had no energy left for anything productive.

Now, on to the meat—or rather meatless—of the post. Brian found July's Recipe of the Month the way he often does: by searching online for a dish he can make with whatever we happen to have in the fridge. In this case, that was a half-pound of mushrooms and a roughly equal amount of green beans from the garden (our first of the season). Running a search based on those two ingredients, he hit on this Green Bean and Mushroom Curry from a site called Cooking with Mum, which bills itself as "a collection of authentic recipes from Fiji." So we can now add Fijian to the list of world cuisines we've sampled.

Well, sort of, anyway. As usual, Brian had to make a few modifications to the recipe based on our dietary needs and what we had available. He left out the optional curry leaves, the Thai chili, and cilantro, none of which we had on hand. He used only half the volume of green beans the recipe called for, since that was all we had, and he didn't bother blanching them. He reduced the amount of oil from half a cup, which seemed a bit excessive, to a quarter-cup, and substituted cheaper canola oil for olive oil.  He added half a teaspoon of salt, since the original recipe called for none at all. And lastly, he gave the dish a boost of protein by cubing up 8 ounces of firm (or at least firm-ish) tofu, sauteing it with a quarter-teaspoon of salt, and tossing that in at the end before serving the whole thing up over brown rice. After all these changes, what he finally put on the table was more like an adaptation of the original Fijian dish than a faithful translation.

In its edited form, this dish was not particularly inspiring. Despite the large variety of spices included in the recipe, it wasn't all that flavorful. Even though Brian had added salt to it, we both ended up adding more and couldn't imagine how flat it would have been with none at all. Perhaps if he'd been able to include the missing chili and curry leaves, or if he'd sprung for the half-cup of olive oil instead of a quarter-cup of canola, that would have made all the difference. But I have a little trouble believing that. 

But though this curry wasn't remarkable, it wasn't bad either. The flavor didn't knock our socks off, but the dish was still reasonably enjoyable, and, with the addition of the tofu,  substantial enough to fill us both up. And even with the reduced volume of green beans, it made enough for two dinners and two lunches. It isn't necessarily worthy of a place in our recipe collection, but it served its purpose: turning the odds and ends into our fridge into a reasonably satisfying meal.

Taming the hell strip

Ever since we bought this house, Brian and I have been trying to reduce the amount of grass on the property—particularly in the little boxed-in front yard. We added the three plum trees, each with its own little island of mulch. We created a bed of day lilies along the cinder block wall. We made several attempts to get a ground cover established in the other portions of the yard, with varying degrees of success. And last month, Brian announced that he'd like to remove the grass from an area I'd never really thought about before: the narrow slice of turf between the sidewalk and street, which is apparently even more of a nuisance to keep mowed than the rest of the yard.

He wasn't quite sure what he wanted on this little sliver of land, aside from "not grass," so I offered to do a little research. I learned, first of all, that this narrow plot is commonly known as the "hell strip," and second, that it's a tricky area to landscape. Plants need to be narrow enough that they won't impinge on the sidewalk and tough enough to survive with very little soil underfoot. And in our yard, they face the additional challenges of heavy clay soil, full afternoon sun, and hungry deer and groundhogs. After consulting several sources online to see what could stand up to this environment, I proposed a mixture of salvia and rudbeckia (Black-Eyed Susans), with maybe a few little thyme plants to fill in the gaps. We already had salvia seeds from our planter project, so we bought a packet of rudbeckia seeds (as well as one of English lavender, which happened to catch Brian's eye), and I figured we'd plant them in the spring.

But this weekend, Brian decided he didn't want to wait that long. With an extra free day from the holiday weekend, he wanted to tackle a project he could see through from start to finish. He started sketching out some plans on Friday, and on Saturday morning he was out there turfing out the sod from the hell strip. He didn't do the whole thing, just a 12-foot section starting at the edge of the driveway. Then he disappeared into the shop and emerged with a small, odd-shaped bracket he'd built out of some pressure-treated 2-by-4 lumber he had leftover from the planter project. This little lopsided trapezoid was just the right size to fill in the angle formed by the driveway apron, turning the rest of the hellstrip into an even rectangle.

Next to that, he began laying out a small paved area that would serve as a landing pad for our trash and recycling bins. We didn't have any groundcloth to keep weeds out, but we had some heavy paper leaf bags that had proved equally effective at weed suppression in our garden paths. Laid flat, the bag was exactly wide enough to fill in the strip. Brian then began covering it with the last of the pavers leftover from our patio project, which had spent the last several years stashed in the shed. After filling in the cracks with fine sand (from a bag we acquired so long ago we've forgotten what it was originally for, he boxed in the remainder of the strip with more lengths of 2-by-4 and filled it up with topsoil. (He didn't nail these pieces together, so whenever he wants to expand the hellstrip planting, he can simply remove the end piece and add more boards to extend the frame.)

By the end of Saturday, he had the entire strip neatly laid out and already looking much better than it had before. However, we knew that if we simply left it like this, it wouldn't stay nice-looking for long. The "grass" (which in our yard really means a mixture of crabgrass and other lawn weeds) would re-colonize the nicely-laid-out bed in short order if we didn't get something else in there. We didn't have time to start a bunch of salvia, lavender, and Black-Eyed Susans indoors, and if we sowed the seeds directly in the midsummer heat, they might not survive. So we decided to stop by the same nursery where we'd bought the plants for our large planters last spring and grab a few deer-tolerant plants to serve as place holders for the rest of the season.

Unfortunately, the nursery was closed, presumably on account of the holiday weekend. We tried the nearby Home Depot, but the only suitable plants we found there were a few salvias, which we already had at home. So we switched to Plan B: digging up and transplanting some of the salvia from our planters, along with any other plants we could scavenge from our flowerbeds. We found one large echinacea that had somehow seeded itself in our herb bed, as well as several smaller ones scattered closer to their parent plants. We also divided off several sections from our largest yarrow plant, since multiple sources had recommended yarrow as a suitable plant for hellstrips. However, the plant was so huge and floppy that we quickly realized the pieces extracted from it would never manage to stand upright on their own. Brian planted a couple of them next to the street sign at one end of the strip with a wire cage around them for support, hoping that once they're in full sun they'll eventually take on a more upright posture. The rest of the bed got filled in with a mixture of salvia and echnicacea and covered with a layer of wood-chip mulch. (We got this free from a neighbor of ours who got a large delivery of wood chips from a tree service and generously offered up the leftovers on Freecycle.)

This newly planted area doesn't exactly look polished, but between the paved area and the layer of mulch, it's fairly neat. Come next spring, we'll start a bunch of echnicea, salvia, and maybe lavender and plant the area more fully. But for now, it's a decided improvement on the "grass" we had there before.

Heat pumps revisited

In the middle of last week's heat wave, I decided maybe it was time to take another crack at getting quotes on a home heat pump. We were getting along okay, using every trick we knew to stay cool—keeping the blinds lowered and the oven off, using fans everywhere, drinking lots of water, and retreating to the basement at night—and running our window air conditioner for just an hour or so in the hottest part of the day. But the longer we stuck to this routine, the more I realized it wouldn't be sustainable on a long-term basis. We weren't getting nearly as much sleep as usual, partly because of the cats prowling over us all night and partly because of the early morning sun shining through the thin curtains. During the day, we were sitting with desk fans pointing directly in our faces and still sweating through the bare minimum of clothing we had on. 

We bore up under this pretty well because we knew that the heat wave was only going to last a few days. However, we also knew that this heat wave wouldn't be the last. On the contrary, as the planet continues to warm faster and faster, heat waves will only become more frequent and more punishing. Sooner or later—most likely sooner—we'll reach a point where it's no longer sustainable to live through a New Jersey summer without central air conditioning. And if we know we're going to have to put ourselves to all the trouble and expense of adding central AC, it seems silly not to spend a little more on a heat pump that works in both directions, so we'll no longer need to rely on fossil fuels to heat our home.

When we looked into this last year, we had a rather frustrating experience. Most of the contractors we spoke to refused to give us a quote at all, and the one quote we managed to get was for $23,400—significantly higher than the top of the range most sources provide for a heat pump installation in New Jersey. We decided at the time that we should just repair our gas boiler and put off a decision on a heat pump for a few years, figuring that by that time there might be better options available. But now, with Congress about to vote on a budget bill that will almost certainly kill the tax credit for installing a new heat pump, it was looking like a better idea to act right away.

This time around, I searched specifically for heat pump installers in Middlesex County, rather than just HVAC companies. At first, it looked like I was having better luck with this approach: I was able to schedule three appointments with three different companies within a week. But very quickly, things started to go downhill. First, one of the three contractors called me back and said he was completely booked up for this week and had "no idea" why his secretary had scheduled him to give me a quote. I then got an appointment with a different company for that same day, only to get a call back from them saying that actually, the kind of installation we'd need was too big a job for them to do during the summer rush. I said I didn't need the work done right away, just the quote, but they said no, they couldn't even give me that until August. So I called up yet another company (number five, if you're counting) and managed to get an appointment with them for Monday.

The first contractor came on Tuesday, and right away, he started giving me the same line I'd heard from the previous HVAC contractors: listen, heat pumps are great in warmer climates, but here in New Jersey, they're just not a reasonable way to heat your home in the winter. Yes, yes, you might see sources online that say they can do it, but he knew from personal experience that in the real world, they weren't up to the job. In vain did I point out that I'd personally talked to people who use cold-climate heat pumps in New Jersey, New York, Massachusetts, and even Canada—all of which, last time I checked, were all in the real world—who were all heating their homes this way; he swore that he'd tested them for himself and they simply weren't practical. He even claimed it wasn't just a matter of electricity being more expensive than gas; at low temperatures, he insisted, a heat pump would actually use more energy, measured in Btus, than my gas boiler to produce the same degree of warming. He didn't explain how a heat pump that's over 200% efficient is supposed to use more energy than a gas boiler that's just under 90% efficient; he just knew for a fact that it would, and that was that.

For all his negative talk about heat pumps, however, he declared himself willing to give us a quote on one if that was what we really wanted. He recommended that we add ductwork to the upper level for heating and cooling, then leave the gas boiler in place to heat the basement when necessary. Bringing the ductwork down to the lower level, he claimed, wouldn't be worth the expense, since we seldom used the space and it would cool itself naturally in the summertime anyway. When I asked about ductless mini-splits, which most sources suggested would be cheaper for a house without existing ductwork, he said, "Not these days," citing price hikes (due largely to Trump's tariffs) that had significantly jacked up the price of each unit. And, after examining our electrical panel, he added that we'd definitely need to upgrade from 100 amps to 200 amps, which would be an additional expense.

The visit from the second contractor started off much better. When I told him what the first contractor had said about heat pumps falling short on winter heating, he said, "That guy must have been a real old-timer," because he'd been installing cold-climate heat pumps that did a great job in this climate for over ten years. He also mentioned something the first contractor hadn't: PSE&G's new "building decarbonization" program, which would give us a rebate of a whopping $10,000 on an electric heating system provided we got rid of the old gas boiler. (The gas water heater, dryer, and stove could stay, for the time being, as long as the heating system was disabled.) After examining our space, he said he'd recommend a cold-climate heat pump with six air handlers: one for each room in the house, not counting the bathrooms and the currently unheated laundry room. He also said that we could, in fact, do this with our existing 100-amp service, since we would no longer need the circuits devoted to the boiler pump and the upstairs air conditioner. However, he said he could give us a separate quote that would include a panel upgrade as well, in case we wanted to do it now in preparation for further electrification later.

After this visit, I was feeling much more optimistic. If his quote was in line with the $23,400 one we got last year, the $10,000 decarbonization credit would drop it to a much more manageable $13,400, and the $2,000 clean energy tax credit—still available up through the end of this year—would knock it down to $11,400. Even if his quote was closer to the $28,700 price the earlier contractor gave us for a ductless system, our all-in price would only be $18,700.

But my optimism evaporated when we saw the actual quote. The price for a six-zone ductless heat pump system, plus the deactivation of the old boiler, plus the upgrades to the electrical panel, would come to $38,720 before rebates, or $24,470 after. Even if we chose to skip the panel upgrade, it would be $19,630 after rebates. Moreover, hat price included only deactivating the old boiler, not actually removing it or the baseboard radiators, which would add another several thou. Oh, and it also didn't include any fees for permits. 

As if to soften the blow, a line at the bottom added that we wouldn't have to pay this all up front. Instead, we could use "utility interest-free financing," which would cost us a mere $291 per month, conveniently tacked on to our monthly utility bill, for 84 months. I know this would technically be a better deal, since we could keep the money in our account earning interest until each month's payment came due, and we'd also get to make the later payments with inflation-depreciated dollars. But to me, having that extra $300 monthly payment hanging over our head for the next seven years felt even worse than paying the 24 grand up front and being done with it.

This quote left me feeling seriously dejected and doubtful about whether a heat pump would ever make sense for us. I know we're in a better position to do it than many people, because we have the money; we can choose to take that $24K hit for the sake of the environment. But we'd only be doing it for the environment. A heat pump almost certainly wouldn't save us any money on our utility bills; most likely, it would end up costing us more every winter, perhaps significantly more. There's no chance at all that it would ever pay for itself. So we'd be paying $24,000 now (or $291 per month), plus an extra $100 or more on our heating bills every year, just to save the roughly 295 therms we'd otherwise burn to heat our home. According to the EPA, that would keep approximately 1.56 metric tons of CO2 equivalent out of the atmosphere each year at a cost of roughly $3,600—about $2,300 per ton. That's five to ten times the price per ton of most carbon dioxide removal (CDR) projects. We could do the planet a lot more good by investing $600 a year in CDR and leaving our gas boiler untouched.

I suppose I shouldn't give up hope yet. We still have one more quote scheduled for tomorrow, and it's possible we'll get better news from that one (or possibly from the first contractor's quote, which we still haven't received). But if we don't, we have to ask ourselves: how much is it really worth to us to say that we, personally, are not burning fossil fuels in our home? From a purely utilitarian standpoint, isn't it better to stick with our crummy, but cheap, heating (and occasional, expensive cooling) and pay to remove a larger volume of climate pollution somewhere else?

Dessert experiments

If you live anywhere in the eastern half of the country, you already know we're in the throes of a heat wave. Here in New Jersey, we got a bit lucky today: a heavy thunderstorm hit this morning, keeping today's heat index down to a mere 99 degrees F. But by 9 am tomorrow, we're expected to be in triple-digit territory, and we won't be back to a more normal level of summer heat until Wednesday night. All of which makes this an excellent week to enjoy ice cream and other frozen treats.

But before I get to my lighthearted dessert content, I'd like to take one minute to talk seriously about this massive heat wave. We all know, or at least nearly 80% of Americans do, that climate change is real, and that it's making dangerous weather like this much more common. And a solid majority of Americans want the government to do something about it, supporting a variety of policies that would help reduce greenhouse gas emissions. In particular, three-quarters of all Americans think we should regulate carbon dioxide as a pollutant. 

Unfortunately, EPA director Lee Zeldin is not one of them. He recently announced a plan to eliminate all greenhouse gas emissions standards for fossil fuel plants, arguing that this pollution is not "significant." He bases this claim not on how much of it there is or how much damage it does, but on the fact that, in his opinion, it's too expensive to fix. And if there is no "cost reasonable" solution, then by definition, there is no problem. To add injury to this insult to our intelligence, he's also decided this is a good time to repeal the rule that regulates power plants' emissions of mercury and other toxic substances, such as arsenic.

If you agree that this is mind-blowingly stupid, there's a way to make your voice heard. Elders Climate Action (ECA) has created two simple forms you can use to submit comments to the EPA on these proposed rules changes. All you have to do is enter your contact info, make any changes you like to the sample comment ECA has provided, and click submit. The comment form for the greenhouse gas emissions repeal is here, and the one for mercury and toxic air pollution is here.

So, desserts. I mentioned in last week's post that we'd recently tried Trader Joe's new vegan whipping cream and found that it lives up to its name, at least as far as whipping is concerned. Well, this week we got around to trying it in an ice cream base. We went with plain vanilla, since it has so many possible uses, and topped it with fresh berries from our garden. And I have to say, the result left absolutely nothing to be desired. This was the first plant-based ice cream I've ever tried that I literally couldn't tell was vegan. There was nothing about either the flavor or the mouthfeel that would make me suspect it was anything other than good old vanilla ice cream.

In short, this vegan dessert experiment was an unqualified success, and we've still got a little bit of the vegan cream left to tinker with. My idea is to try using it for a small batch of either the chocolate mousse or the raspberry mousse that goes into our anniversary cake. If it works for that—and there seems to be no reason it wouldn't—we can buy some of this stuff, rather than a pint of real cream, and make the cake dairy-free this year. It still won't be vegan, as the sponge cake itself contains eggs, but it will be one step closer to it.

But Brian and I were not content to rest on our dessert laurels. Tonight, we tried yet another new vegan ice-cream alternative, this time a healthier version made mostly from fruit. 

This one has a bit of a story behind it. Yesterday morning, we noticed that our neighbors across the street were having a yard sale. We wandered over to take a look, and the one thing on the tables that looked most intriguing to me was a Magic Bullet Dessert Bullet—a machine that claimed it could make "all natural, dairy-free, gluten-free, diabetic-friendly, low fat, low sugar, low calorie desserts everyone can enjoy." I couldn't tell whether the price sticker on top was a 6 or a 9, but when I asked my neighbor about it, he said he'd let me have it for $5. 

Well, I knew we didn't actually need this gadget, and there was a possibility it wouldn't even be able to do anything our blender couldn't. But I remembered that we'd thought the same thing about our regular Magic Bullet when we first acquired it on Freecycle, and it proved to be so useful that when it finally died, we went straight out and paid full price for a new one. There was always the chance that this $5 investment would prove just as worthwhile, and even if it didn't, I knew I'd have no trouble finding a new home for it. We'd only be out $5, and that was a price I was willing to pay just to satisfy my curiosity.

So I took the Dessert Bullet home, opened it up, and perused the recipe book that came with it. All the recipes in it appeared to be built around frozen fruit, with a few additional ingredients like yogurt, peanut butter, chocolate, or coconut thrown in here and there. They were basically smoothies, but with less liquid. The booklet provided instructions on how to prepare and freeze the fruit and how long to thaw it before putting it into the Bullet to get the right consistency.

For our first trial, we decided on a simple chocolate dessert recipe with just three ingredients: a frozen banana (broken into chunks), 2 tablespoons of "raw cacao powder" (which we figured we could swap out for cocoa powder without harming the flavor any), and a drop of vanilla extract. We popped straight out to the Superfresh for a bunch of bananas, peeled two of them, broke them into chunks, and put them in the freezer. 

The instructions said to freeze them for at least 24 hours, so we had to wait until tonight to give our new machine a literal whirl. It has several parts: the base containing the motor a chute to insert the fruit in, a pusher to shove it down with, a rotating screw attachment that grinds it up, and a couple of different orifices to extrude it from. We chose the basic oval mouth rather than the star-shaped one. Following the instructions, we let the frozen banana pieces thaw for 5 minutes and sprinkled them with the cocoa powder. We ran the vanilla extract through first to coat the screw attachment, then dumped in the bananas and pushed them down as the motor ran. After a few seconds, the banana reemerged, transformed into a wide ribbon of roughly soft-serve consistency.

The process was interesting to watch, but the finished product was far from life-changing. It did not taste at all like chocolate ice cream; it tasted, unsurprisingly, like a banana coated with cocoa powder. It wasn't bad, exactly, but it wasn't any more enjoyable than just eating a banana, which is a lot less work. If anything, it was less enjoyable, since the texture was a bit slimy. As a dessert, it wasn't nearly as satisfying as a cup of my low-sugar hot cocoa. 

Out of curiosity, I tried topping the banana mixture with a spoonful of the vegan vanilla ice cream we'd made the night before. As you might expect, this combination was vastly superior to the banana alone, but it wasn't nearly as good as the vanilla ice cream with raspberries. And I think adding more than that one little dollop of the vanilla stuff would have nullified any claim this banana dessert has to being healthful. 

So far, the Dessert Bullet doesn't look like a game changer, but we're not giving up on it yet. There are a couple of recipes in the booklet that don't depend primarily on banana, like Creamy Berry Sorbet (a blend of frozen strawberries, blueberries, and blackberries with unsweetened coconut) and Coconut Colada (a misleadingly named blend of frozen coconut-milk yogurt, frozen pineapple chunks, and unsweetened coconut). We'll try at least one of these, as well as a few other combinations of fruit, before deciding whether this gadget deserves a spot in our crowded kitchen cabinets.

[Edit, 7/2/25: Nooooo! We just tried to buy another carton of the vegan whipping cream at Trader Joe's, only to learn that it's been discontinued. The only plant-based alternative to cream we've ever found that was really satisfactory, and it's gone forever. I guess at least we know now a true vegan cream substitute is possible, but that's cold comfort if we can never find one again.]

Even more ecofrugal episodes

Nothing happened this week that seemed big enough to warrant an entire blog post on its own, so instead I'm doing another of my ecofrugal episodes posts—a roundup of the small successes and failures in our ecofrugal life. Fortunately, this time the successes outnumber the failures. 

Item #1: A grout makeover  

My birthday request this year was for Brian to replace the grout in our upstairs tub-shower, which had developed stains that no amount of scrubbing could remove. (This photo—taken after the grout had just been cleaned—doesn't really do it justice, but it should give you an inkling of how bad it was.) It wasn't until this month that we finally had a free weekend to tackle the project, and we ran into a couple of setbacks while carrying it out. 

First, after he'd already scraped out as much as he reasonably could of the old grout, Brian discovered that the pre-mixed grout he'd bought to replace it was was actually sanded grout, which isn't recommended for narrow gaps like this. (It would have been nice if the package had said this on the front, rather than in small print on the back.) So we had to make a hasty trip to Home Depot to replace it. We also grabbed an extra tube of caulk, just in case we needed extra. At first, Brian thought this purchase had been a waste of money, since the old tube ended up having enough in it to fill all the joints. But he learned otherwise the next morning, when he discovered that the caulk he'd just applied, which was supposed to set up within two hours, was still liquid. Clearly it was no longer good, so he had to spend part of that morning laboriously removing all the goo and replacing it with fresh caulk from the new tube. 

So this birthday request proved to be more of a hassle than we expected, but it turned out well in the end. Every time I've stepped into the shower this past week, I've been delighted at how fresh and clean the grout looks now. Brian even took the extra step of repainting the grungy-looking trim on the tub window, so the whole enclosure now looks sparkling and new. Once the new grout has had a couple of weeks to cure fully, we're going to follow up by applying a sealant, which will allegedly keep it fresh and stain-free  for the next few years. And even when it wears off, we can just apply a new coat, rather than going through this entire messy job again.

Item #2: Pride pants 

Recently, I noticed that my older pair of blue jeans was starting to wear out in the thigh area. This is a common occurrence for me, but this time the pattern was a bit unusual: instead of spreading across the whole inner thigh area, the threadbare sections were confined to a line right along the inseam. I thought this would be a good spot for a little visible mending, but wasn't sure whether it made more sense to darn these tiny holes individually or try to cover all of them with a patch. 

I went hunting for suggestions online and came across this image: a long row of stitches in different colors of embroidery floss running down the length of the seam. I decided to try a similar idea, but with a rainbow color scheme. The whole worn area was about 12 centimeters long, so I divided it up into sections of roughly 2 centimeters for each color. I started at one end putting in parallel stitches in red embroidery floss, then about 2 centimeters down I tied off the red thread and started on orange, and so on down the spectrum to purple.

I've only done one seam so far, since the wear on the other isn't quite as bad, but eventually I intend to do the other one to match. The stitching is far from perfect, but it's colorful and cute and gives me a little boost of happiness every time I wear these jeans now. And it's just in time for Pride Month!

Item #3: Repair, then replace 

About a year ago, our old toilet seat broke. Rather than buy the cheapest model to replace it, we decided to spring for one with "soft close" hinges. I quite enjoyed this feature, but unfortunately, these slow-closing hinges weren't very durable. A couple of days ago, I noticed that the lid was askew, and when I examined it, I discovered that one of the hinges had snapped clean through. I managed to wiggle it through so that the lid could close fully, if no longer softly, but this clearly wasn't going to be a long-term solution.

Rather than run out to buy a whole new toilet seat, Brian decided to try repairing the hinge with epoxy. He applied the glue to both broken edges, then clamped the lid in the open position overnight to give it plenty of time to set. But sadly, as soon as he unclamped it in the morning and tried lowering the lid, it snapped straight apart again. 

Although this repair wasn't a success, I still think it was worth making the attempt. It didn't cost us anything except a little extra time, and we had no way of knowing it wouldn't work unless we tried it. And now that we know, we feel no guilt about discarding the broken toilet seat and spending $40 on a replacement. (This time around, we spent $10 more for one with metal hinges, which we're assuming will hold up better. Paying the extra $10 now seems like a better deal than spending $30 to replace the whole thing again in another year.)

Item #4: Whipping it good 

Ever since we first started cutting back on dairy products back in 2018, we've been looking for a decent substitute for whipped cream. We tried numerous homemade versions using various combinations of coconut cream, aquafaba, and plant milk, with results ranging from near success (but not quite) to colossal failure. We tried a commercial product called Coco Whip that worked reasonably well in a raspberry fool, but the store where we found it has since stopped carrying it. And we tried one or two commercial plant-based cream substitutes that were so unimpressive I didn't even bother blogging about them.

But on a couple of recent trips to Trader Joe's, we've noticed a product in their dairy case called "Vegan Heavy Whipping Cream Alternative." We couldn't remember if we'd tried this one before, but at only $4 a pint—about the same price as regular cream—we didn't have much to lose by giving it another go. So we grabbed a pint, and last weekend Brian took a crack at using some in a honeyberry fool (a phrase I love having the opportunity to say). And right away, we noticed that this stuff actually was whipping up like real cream. It formed genuine stiff peaks that held their shape and didn't collapse even when we folded in the berry mixture. And if the flavor and mouthfeel weren't exactly identical to real cream, you could hardly tell by the time it was combined with the berries.

We only used about half the pint for this experiment, so we're going to try tinkering with it further, seeing if it can make a plant-based ice cream that works better than our iced coconut cream (which didn't turn out so well the second time we tried it). If it works for that too, we'll probably stop messing around with DIY versions and make this our go-to substitute for any recipe that calls for cream—possibly even our anniversary cake.

Item #5: Extension cord life extension

One of the items we picked up at last year's yard sales (or, to be exact, from the piles of discards after the sales) was an electric hedge trimmer. It's just a light-duty plug-in model, but since our property only has one hedge and we only trim it a couple of times a year, it's been perfectly adequate for our needs. But last Friday, Brian discovered its biggest drawback: make one false move with it and you cut right through your extension cord. To add insult to injury, he had noticed that the cord was in harm's way and was just attempting to move it out of the way when it happened. 

Naturally, he was quite annoyed that this one brief slip had, as he thought, totally destroyed an extension cord that would cost around $17 to replace. But then he discovered that it's actually possible to cut off the damaged portion and attach a replacement connector, which only costs about $3. You just end up with a slightly shorter cord—in this case, 47 feet instead of 50, which is still plenty for our small yard. Less cost, less waste, and less frustration about having damaged the old one. (Of course, if this keeps happening, the cord will gradually get shorter each time until it's too short to be of much use. But I suspect after this incident, he'll take extra care to keep the cord out of danger in future.)

Recipe of the Month: Roasted Cauliflower and Chick Peas (plus bonus dessert)

On the last Thursday in May, during our weekly grocery run to Lidl, Brian made an impulse purchase of a cheap cauliflower. Having bought it, he then had to figure out what to do with it. We'd already had aloo gobi recently, and he didn't have any leeks to make his roasted leek and cauliflower pasta. So he went hunting online for ideas and dug up a recipe at a site called Last Ingredient for a dish made from roasted cauliflower and chick peas, topped with an "herby tahini" spiked with fresh parsley, cilantro, garlic, green onion, and lemon juice. We had all of that except the cilantro, so he just substituted additional parsley, which the garden is producing plenty of, and left the rest of the recipe unchanged.  

This dish isn't at all complicated. All he had to do was divide the cauliflower into florets, toss them and the chick peas with olive oil and spices, spread them out on a baking sheet, and roast them for half an hour. While it was cooking, he whipped up the tahini sauce and a batch of quinoa to accompany the dish. (The recipe didn't call for this, but it noted that "Leftovers can be stirred into cooked pasta, quinoa, farro or barley," so Brian figured there was no need to wait for it to be left over.) 

He served the dish with the herbed tahini on the side, along with some extra parsley for sprinkling. I tried it first without the sauce and found it quite enjoyable on its own: with its blend of onion and garlic powder, cumin, smoked paprika, black pepper, and salt, it wasn't at all lacking in flavor. But when I added a dollop of the sauce, that extra punch of lemon, garlic, and sesame flavors livened it up still more. It didn't need a lot, just a little sprinkle in each bite to give it that extra brightness and piquancy.

In short, I expect this recipe to become a part of our regular rotation. So long as cauliflower remains cheap at Lidl, we can alternate back and forth between it and aloo gobi so we don't get tired of either one.

This was not the only new recipe Brian tried last week. Late in May, the New York Times climate column ran a story (gift link here) about a vegan chocolate cake that was so good, it convinced the author to go vegan herself. She'd long been concerned about the climate and the impact our food choices have on it, but she also couldn't see a life without animal foods as worth living. Tasting this "sumptuous" cake at a backyard wedding, she reports, opened her eyes to the idea that "plant-based eating could be delicious."

Of course, this did not come as news to Brian or me. We already had many delicious vegan recipes in our repertoire, including a pretty good chocolate cake. That recipe, known in my family as "wacky cake," depends on a vinegar-and-baking-soda reaction to leaven it with no need for eggs. It's incredibly simple to make; I first learned to do it at the age of 7 or 8. But Brian found the swooning description of the cake in the New York Times piece so intriguing that he decided he had to try it for himself. 

The recipe, from the site Nora Cooks, isn't particularly complicated. In fact, the ingredient list is pretty similar to our basic wacky cake, with the addition of a cup of soymilk and some applesauce. The main feature this recipe has that mine doesn't is a chocolate buttercream frosting to go with it. The recipe calls for vegan butter to make this frosting—specifically, the kind that comes in sticks rather than in a tub. Brian and I used to buy this kind of plant butter for pie crusts, but lately it's become harder to find in stores. So, rather than go hunting all over for plant butter in stick form, Brian decided to try using our homemade plant butter in the frosting and see if that worked okay.

The answer turned out to be "sort of." The problem is, the oils it's made from (canola and coconut) have a significantly lower melting point than the palm oil used in the plant butter sticks. Brian had to put the cake layers into the freezer to keep the frosting from melting as he applied it, and the iced cake had to go immediately into the fridge and stay there to keep it from melting just in the warmth of the kitchen. When we wanted to share some slices with our friends at Morris dance practice, we had to pack them into a cooler to keep them from turning into puddles.

That bit of hassle aside, this was definitely a good chocolate cake, with a moist, rich texture and a strong chocolate flavor. But to be honest, it wasn't that much better than our usual wacky cake. It was mainly the rich frosting that made it feel much more lavish and decadent—almost too much so for my taste. I had to carefully manage the balance between cake and frosting as I ate to keep the sweetness from being overpowering.

So, while it was interesting to try this cake of legend, I honestly don't know that it lives up to the hype. Personally, I didn't find it that much better than the wacky-cake cupcakes with coconut frosting Brian made for my birthday ten years ago, and it certainly can't hold a candle to our wedding cake with its layers of chocolate and raspberry mousse. If we could figure out how to make that cake vegan, now, that would be a cake truly worth converting to a plant-based diet for. But this one, while good, is hardly a life-changing experience.

Sumer is icumen in

It's been an unusually cold spring here in New Jersey. During a stream cleanup we did in early April, it was actually snowing. Last weekend, we were guests at an outdoor wedding, and I kept my coat on pretty much the entire time. And just last night, we opted to skip the local outdoor film series because the temperature was already down in the 50s by showtime.

But as soon as the calendar page flipped over to June, the weather seemed to get the memo that it's supposed to be summertime. The temperature forecast for this week is heading steadily upward, from a high of around 70F today up to 92F by Thursday. And our garden is likewise getting with the program, swinging into full production mode. Yesterday, Brian gathered a big bunch of lettuce and arugula for a salad and a pound of rhubarb for a strawberry-rhubarb compote; today, we went out and filled up two pint containers with our honeyberries and alpine strawberries. And, in a preview of things to come, we gathered six snap pea pods and our first raspberry of the season.

To celebrate all this bounty, Brian fired up the grill and cooked a batch of his mushroom seitan burgers. To accompany them, he also grilled a batch of zucchini spears, some onion and potato slices, and a couple of ears of corn in their husks. He upped the veggie content of the meal with a salad of home-grown lettuce and arugula, livened up with a few white strawberries, snap peas, and chopped walnuts (the only component we didn't grow ourselves). 

By many folks' standards, this is a pretty humble home-cooked meal. There's no meat, and the ingredients—including the store-bought buns and a batch of our favorite balsamic vinaigrette dressing—cost us less than $12 for at least two or three meals' worth of food. But as I admired the spread laid out on our table, I exclaimed to Brian, "We're so rich!" and meant it. A satisfying supper featuring fresh-picked organic produce, a beautiful June day to cook it on, and my favorite person to eat it with: if that's not wealth, what is?

Recipe of the Month: Butternut Squash Mac & Cheese

When Brian asked me to look for new recipes to use up our plentiful supply of butternut squash, I recalled one I'd seen a while ago on It Doesn't Taste Like Chicken: Vegan Butternut Squash Mac & Cheese. We'd previously tried the Vegan Mac & Cheese Powder from the same site, and it hadn't at all successful, but I thought this squash-based "cheese" might be more successful. Most of the ingredients in it—onion, garlic, butternut squash, veggie broth, nutritional yeast—were things we liked and already knew would go well together, so it didn't seem like it could go too wrong.

However, there was one ingredient the recipe called for that we didn't have: white miso paste. We assumed this would be easy to find at our local H-Mart, which carries all kinds of Asian foods at affordable prices, but Brian couldn't find it there—nor at the Ranch 99, another Asian grocery store a little way down the street. Our local SuperFresh had some, but it was $9.99 for a 14-ounce package, which seemed a bit much to spend on an ingredient we'd never used before and might never want to use again. We finally managed to locate a smaller package for $2.99 at Trader Joe's—a 5-ounce resealable tube that we hope will help the stuff keep long enough for us to use it up.

Making the "cheese" sauce was simple enough: just saute the onion and garlic, then add the cubed squash and broth and cook it until tender, and then puree the lot in a blender with the nooch, miso paste, and a little salt. However, the volume the recipe produced seemed like far too much for the three cups of cooked macaroni it was supposed to cover. Fortunately, Brian had decided to cook a whole half-pound of elbows, which came out to about four cups cooked, because even this larger volume of noodles was more or less swimming in the sauce. It was more like a soup than a pasta dish. 

As far as I was concerned, these messed-up proportions more or less ruined the dish. There was nothing really wrong with the flavor of the squash sauce (although, like the other mac & cheese recipe from the same site, it tasted nothing at all like cheese), but there was just too much of it. I tried to eat it carefully so that the noodles were distributed as evenly through the sauce as possible, but I still ended up with a significant volume of cheese-sauce soup in the bottom of my bowl that I had to spoon up by itself. This wasn't at all agreeable and left me with no appetite for the leftovers. 

Fortunately, Brian didn't mind it as much, so he was able to finish it off over the course of the next few days. But neither of us feels much inclination to try it again. In theory, this dish might be okay if we just made a smaller volume of sauce. But why bother making a squash-based pasta dish that's only okay when our Brown Butter Butternut Squash Pasta recipe (and the new vegan variation we've created) is already delicious without any tinkering?

The gift of less stuff

We're in the middle of a busy couple of months. Between events with Citizens' Climate Lobby (CCL), Morris dance performances, and stuff we're doing with family and friends, we don't have a single free weekend until June. And some weekends, including this one, are crammed full of events on both days. Today, I was "tabling" (staffing a table at a street fair) for CCL in the afternoon, and we're going to the opening of our local outdoor movie series tonight; tomorrow, we have a Morris performance down in South Jersey during the day and a CCL get-together in exactly the opposite direction in the evening. With all that going on, this hour before dinner is about the only time I've got to update my blog, so you're only getting a quickie post this week.

One of the things that kept us busy last weekend was Mother's Day. My mom is a difficult person to buy gifts for, because her house is so full already that she doesn't need any more stuff. On the contrary, she's always saying she wants to get rid of the stuff she has. So, last year, I had a brainwave: I offered, as my Mother's Day gift to her, to come to her house and spend the day helping her clean out one room of her choice. I didn't suggest this because she had any heavy boxes to move, nor because I thought I could do a better job than she could deciding what to throw away, what to keep, and where to put it. The main advantage of having me there all day was that it would force her to sit down and do the work of going through things, instead of wanting to do it and never finding the time. And it seemed to work pretty well. She chose her office, and by the end of the day we'd cleared away all the piles of paper in there, removed some old things of mine that had been sitting in that room since it was my bedroom, and put all her computer equipment in places where she could easily find it.

Since that was such a success, I decided to give her the same "gift" this year. This time around, she decided to get a bit more ambitious and tackle the sun porch, which is a repository of all kinds of miscellany: decades-old toys, plants and garden supplies, old sporting equipment, a big bookshelf full of board games and puzzles, and a huge stack of my old notebooks from high school and college. Mom seemed to think we could go through this stuff quickly and maybe have time to move on to another room, but I suspected we wouldn't even make a dent in the contents of the the porch itself. 

It turns out the answer was somewhere in the middle. We didn't clean out the whole porch, but we did get through a lot more of it than I expected. I spent a large portion of the day going through my old notebooks, pulling out the few things I wanted to keep (mostly stories and poems that I didn't have digital copies of), then breaking down the notebooks themselves so the contents could be recycled. I discarded so much paper that I had to split it between two separate bins so they wouldn't be too heavy for my dad to haul to the curb. But I also found time to review the contents of several bins and shelves with my mom. She opted to keep a lot more of the games and puzzles than I would have in her place, but we still set aside quite a lot of them to give away. We also cleared out things from the bins I'd had no idea were in there: a couple of giant "magic bubble wands," several old tennis rackets, a baseball bat and a few balls, multiple Frisbees, an old model airplane kit, and even an old jump rope of mine that I hadn't seen in decades.

All that stuff went downstairs into the storage room, where it will sit until Hopewell holds its next town-wide yard sale. My parents aren't planning to host an official sale, but they'll haul out a folding table, set it up on the lawn, and put out all their unwanted items with a big sign saying that everything (barring the table itself) is free. They hope that the yard-sale shoppers, always eager for a bargain, will snap up most of it, leaving them with only a few items to either Freecycle or discard.

All in all, I'd say this was a pretty ecofrugal present. It was something my mom actually wanted, and it cost nothing and used no natural resources to produce. Better still, it helped get all this unwanted stuff out of the house and, hopefully, into the homes of people who can use it—people who might otherwise have spent their own money, and the planet's resources, on new products. In fact, it worked so well I'm thinking of offering the same gift to my dad for Father's Day next month. (That will result in one more rather full weekend in June, but at least it will be only one weekend out of an otherwise quiet month.)

A Big Fat Cheap Wedding in the 2020s

One of my favorite areas to browse on Reddit is the Weddings Under 10K subreddit. I think planning my own wedding, nearly 21 years ago, was the starting point for my ecofrugal journey, and I'm always happy to help other brides-to-be (and the occasional bridegroom) try to plan weddings in similar style. So when I saw a post there last month asking about wedding venues in New Jersey, I cheerfully chimed in to mention the state park where we got married. Back then, it cost only $50 to reserve the picnic grove we used (though we also spent $130 to cover our guests' parking fees); today, according to the NJ State Park Service, it costs $100 for New Jersey residents or $150 for out-of-state guests. Better still, you can pay an extra $25 to reserve the site "with no parking fee," meaning that the total cost would actually be less than we paid back in 2004.

This got me wondering: If the site was still so cheap, how much would it cost to recreate our entire wedding today? Back in 2004, we spent a total of $2,685 on the ceremony and reception—about 12% of the $22,360 CNN reports as the average wedding cost for that year. Punching that number into an inflation calculator, it looks the cost in today's dollars should be roughly $4,545. Given that the Weddings Under 10K sub itself has expanded its mission (though not its name) to cover weddings costing up to $20,000 on account of inflation, is it really possible to have a wedding like ours—a Quaker-style ceremony and a lunch reception for 80 guests in a beautiful outdoor setting—for that amount? 

Well, being me, I naturally couldn't let that idea go. I dived down a rabbit hole of price-checking, trying to work out the 2025 cost of every item on our 2004 wedding budget. Luckily, I still had the Excel spreadsheet in which I had (again, being me) recorded all our wedding expenses, so I knew exactly what prices to check. And after a day or two of immersing myself in online research, I've come up with a reasonable ballpark estimate—one that you might find surprising.

Here's the item-by-item breakdown. (All prices have been adjusted to account for 7% New Jersey sales tax.)

Invitations

2004 cost: $50. We printed our own invitations using a $20 set of blank cards and envelopes from Staples and spent about $30 on the postage. 

2025 cost: $49. We only used cards and envelopes in 2004 because that's what we could find a kit for; if we were getting married today, we could buy a set of 100 printable postcards for about $15.30, saving both money and paper. This would also allow us to use cheaper postcard stamps, reducing the postage cost to $33.60.

Rings

2004 cost: $95. I bought a secondhand set of his-and-hers wedding bands on eBay for $73 and we spent $22 to have them resized. I didn't have an engagement ring, though I did wear my great-grandmother's ring as my "something old."

2025 cost: $50 to $155. Returning to eBay, I found rings in many materials besides gold. There was one set in tungsten for $50, but they're probably impractical because this hard metal is so difficult to resize. There was also a $31 set in sterling, a material that's quite easy to resize (a job that costs around $20 per ring). It would also be possible to avoid resizing by buying new bands in a non-gold material, such as this basic set in stainless steel ($117) or, my favorite, this very nifty pair in recycled silver ($155).

Clothing

2004 cost: $128. I was the only person who needed a wedding outfit, as we had no wedding party and Brian just wore his one good suit. However, I had to make several attempts at finding a dress and shoes, and a couple of the gambles I made on eBay ($15.50 for a dress, $16.84 for a pair of ballet flats) didn't pay off. I eventually ended up in a Renaissance-style bodice I bought from an eBay shop for $34.24, paired with a skirt my mother-in-law-to-be made for me with $24.95 of fabric from Joann (may she rest in peace). I paired that with a pair of white fabric Mary Janes that cost $26.75 on eBay, plus $5 for a set of insoles to make them more comfortable. My headpiece was a wreath of ivy gathered from my parents' house, put together with $4 worth of baby's breath, $1 worth of floral wire, and some of the dollar-store ribbon.

2025: $63 to $143. Although secondhand clothing would be the most ecofrugal, it's also generally impossible to return if it doesn't fit, as I discovered in 2004. So, instead of combing eBay for outfit ideas, I turned to some of the sellers I discovered in my 2023 post on where to find ecofrugal wedding wear. I found several promising choices, including the $95 Danu Maxi ($110 with shipping) from Holy Clothing; a bodice and chemise from Etsy seller Echoes of Time ($93.50 with shipping); and the $44 Vanilla Cream Summer Dress or $41 Short Renaissance Dress from The Little Bazaar ($6.30 for shipping). Shoes are always a challenge for me, but there's a $25 strappy sandal from Costco that might work, and I could at least try that one on before buying. And if those didn't fit, I could always fall back on $9 foldable ballet flats ($13 with shipping) from Etsy. A wreath like the one I wore in 2004 would cost about $8.30 today: $4 for a bunch of baby's breath from Lidl and $1.25 per spool for floral wire and ribbon at Dollar Tree.

Wedding venue

2004 cost: $180. As I said above, we spent $50 to reserve a picnic grove with a covered pavilion at Washington Crossing State Park and paid $5 per car to cover our guests' parking fees.

2025 cost: It now costs only $125 for NJ residents to reserve a picnic facility at this park "with no parking fee in effect." Bargain!

Flowers

2004 cost: $53. I bought all our wedding flowers at our local farmers' market: 35 pots of double impatiens for only $1 a pot. We repotted some of these small plants into larger pots ($9.38) to flank the entrances of the park pavilion and dressed up all the pots with $9 worth of ribbon from Michael's & Dollar Tree. I used some of that same ribbon for my own bouquet—two blossoms snipped off my parents' hydrangea bushes on the morning of the wedding.

2025 cost: $96. I couldn't count on scoring a $1-a-pot bargain today, but Lowe's has small pots of flowering annuals for only $1.98 each; 35 of those, with tax, would come to $74.53. I could buy the four large planters at Dollar Tree, as well as 12 spools of ribbon to decorate them, for $1.25 a pop, or $21.40 total after tax.

Rehearsal dinner

2004 cost: $388. Since we didn't have an actual rehearsal, we reserved a meeting room at the hotel where most of our out-of-town guests were staying and threw a game party for about 50 people. It cost $150 to rent the room, around $200 for pizzas, and $37.50 for drinks, snacks, and disposable tableware from Dollar Tree.

2025 cost: $758. It's almost impossible to find the actual cost of a meeting room if you're not actually planning to book it, but Peerspace says its prices for conference rooms range from $25 to $185 per hour. So, assuming ours was somewhere in the middle of that price range, it would be around $105 per hour, or $420 for 4 hours. I estimated that we'd need 17 pizzas for 50 guests at around $16 per pie, for a total of $291 after tax. Then I took a little shortcut: Everything that cost a dollar at Dollar Tree in 2004 is now $1.25, so I just added 25% to the amount we spent for supplies, drinks, and snacks and came up with $47 for the lot.

Ceremony

2004 cost: $141. We paid $28 for our marriage license, $4.54 for postage to send it, and $108.89, including shipping, to have a calligrapher create a handmade Quaker wedding certificate for us and our guests to sign. (This was one of our few splurges, but it's now a treasured keepsake, bearing the signatures of all our friends and loved ones, including several who are no longer with us.)

2025: $49 to $100. A New Jersey marriage license still costs only $28, and nowadays you can get it directly from the local registrar, with no need for shipping. As for wedding certificates, there are loads of sellers on Etsy offering customizable certificates that can be delivered in digital form. This means you need to pay for printing, but you don't need to pay for shipping—and you don't risk having your certificate held up for over a week because it was sent to the wrong state, as ours was. Sellers include UnmeasuredEvents (just $13 for an editable template), ImagineDigiCreations (several beautifully illustrated designs for around $25, but most can't be customized), and KatiraDesigns ($60 for a lovely illustrated design with customizable text). If we were marrying today, we could order any of these and use Rutgers printing services to print it as a poster for $7.79. Or we could create our own design from scratch in Canva and have it printed and shipped to us for $28.

Photos

2004 cost: $229. We scored a bargain on our wedding photos because the two friends who introduced us had a side gig doing wedding photography, and their gift to us was to provide all our photos at cost. They charged us $207 for the shoot, including a CD and a full set of prints, and $22 for reprints of our favorite shots. 

2025 cost: $113 to $137. I couldn't figure out what "at cost" would mean today, when photography is fully digital. But I know that before our friends offered to do our photos for cheap, we weren't planning to hire a photographer at all; we were just going to ask all our guests to bring their cameras and send us copies of their favorite candids. Nowadays, that would be even easier, since everyone has a phone to shoot with and there are services like GuestPix ($97 for a one-year subscription) and Flickr Pro ($73 per year) for sharing the photos. We could select the 100 photos we liked the best and print them off at 32 cents each, plus one 8x10 portrait for $4.79; the total cost for prints, after tax, would be about $40.

Music

2004 cost: $0. We had no band and no DJ, just our many talented musician friends jamming.

2025 cost: $0. Homemade music is still free.

Food

2004 cost: $1,136. We found a caterer in Blawenburg that put on a lunch spread with sandwiches, fruit, cheese, punch, water, coffee, tea, and a truly amazing cake for only $11 a head. We also paid $45 per hour for two servers and gave them each a $20 tip.

2025 cost: $1,778. Our former caterer is no longer in business, and other caterers in our area generally don't provide their prices unless you call for a quote. The only place I could find price info was on a couple of supermarket sites. One of them, Wegman's, has a lunch package similar to our reception menu for $12.95 a person, or $1,036 for 80 people. Add on $13 for plates, $69 for utensils and napkins, $32 for water and juice, and $72 for coffee and tea, and 7% for tax, and that brings it up to $1,308. This doesn't include the cake, but the exact one we had is still available at Chez Alice in Princeton. They don't sell full sheets like we had, but they do half sheets for $100. Two of those, with tax, would come to $214, bringing the total to $1,522 for the food. For wait staff, I checked Thumbtack and found hourly rates in the $40-$50 range—amazingly, around the same as what we paid in 2004. So the total cost for service, including tips, would be about the same $256.

Rentals and supplies

2004 cost: $162. Our caterer took care of the rentals for us: $126.14 for 80 folding chairs and 2 tables. We also spent $16 on dollar-store plastic tablecloths and $20 on drop cloths and bricks to cover the sides of pavilion in case of rain.  

2025 cost: $362. Miller's Rentals, the contractor our caterer used in 2004, is still in business. At $3.25 per chair and $15 per table, the total would come to $310.30 with tax, and based on their contract, it looks like delivery is included. Dollar Tree has picnic table covers for $1.25 each, which comes to $21.40 after tax for 16. I don't remember exactly how many drop cloths and bricks we bought in 2004, but I'd guess it was around 6 drop cloths ($11.78 at Home Depot) and 24 bricks (68 cents each at Home Depot). After tax, the total for that lot would come to $30.07.

Attendants'  gifts

2004 cost: $40. Technically, we didn't have any attendants, but we ordered a couple of $20 decorative prints from the calligrapher who did our certificate and gave one to Brian's brother-in-law, who signed the marriage license as the officiant, and one to the friends who shot our photos.

2025 cost: $10 to $60. Just like the wedding certificate, art is readily available and quite cheap in digital form on Etsy. But since digital art is so easy to find these days, it doesn't feel like much of a gift. I think I'd rather go with something else cool and unique from an Etsy seller, like this 3D-printed dragon planter ($10 to $38 depending on size). The seller has lots of other interesting designs as well. Two of them, with tax and shipping, would be around $60.

Favors

2004 cost: $12. We considered skipping the favors entirely, but instead we opted for something cheap and simple: homemade packets of forget-me-not seeds. We spent $2.79 on bulk seeds, about $6.71 on printer paper and ink, and $2 on glue sticks to put them together. 

2025 cost: About $31. I couldn't find forget-me-not seeds in bulk, but I found a four-ounce bag of wildflower seed mix for $18.99. Rutgers print service could run off the envelopes at 25 cents per color sheet, or $6.75 for 27 sheets, and the glue sticks would cost about $3.50.

Incidentals

2004 cost: $60. Most of this is supplies for the scavenger hunt activity we did at our reception. (It was designed to help guests get to know each other by asking them to find other guests with different characteristics.) We spent $6.77 on copying, $5.70 on pens, and $10 on prizes for the winners (a pair of Cheapass Games). We also spent $2 on a dozen or so small bottles of bubbles from Dollar Tree and $36 on various wedding planning books.

2025: $59. Once again, Rutgers print services could provide the necessary printing at 4 cents per black-and-white sheet, or $3.20 total. Two bulk packs of pens at $14.39 would come to $30.80 after tax. Cheapass Games are only available in digital form now, so the prizes could be a couple Pack O Games ($7.99 each, $17.10 with tax for both). Six packs of bubbles from Dollar Tree would cost $8.02, and the books wouldn't be necessary because you can find pretty much anything online nowadays.

TOTAL

Adding this all up, the grand total for a 2025 version of our wedding comes to somewhere around $3,800. That's a little lower than what the inflation calculator predicted, but as it turns out, still around 12% of the 33 grand The Knot reports as the average cost of a wedding in 2025.

In short, even in today's economy, an ecofrugal wedding is still possible. I hope this post is helpful, or at least heartening, to anyone currently planning a wedding, and an interesting exercise for everyone else.