Ecofrugal fails

I usually post here about our ecofrugal wins: successful repairs, DIY projects like our new planters, secondhand finds like Brian's new laptop. But I try to report on some of our failures too, partly to help you learn from our mistakes and partly to present a more accurate picture of the ecofrugal life, rather than a carefully curated glossy social-media version. So here's a quick midweek post to tell you about two recent problems that we could only fix in the least ecofrugal way: with a brand-new, store-bought product.

Case #1: The unsatisfactory window blinds

One of the last finishing touches we made to our guest room in 2014 was install window treatments. Rather than go out and buy some, we just hung up a set of bamboo window blinds that we'd acquired for free somewhere. We figured they'd do until we found something better, but of course, twelve years came and went and we never got around to replacing them.

These shades are just about the worst possible window treatment for this space. You have to pull the cord all the way to the right to raise them and all the way to the left to lower them, which is difficult to do with the seedling table in the way (particularly if you've got stubby little arms like mine). And even if you can manage to pull the cord across, eight times out of ten it gets caught on one of the slats, and you have to try to maneuver it loose before you can pull on it. Every time I try to open or close the blinds, I spent at least five minutes wrestling with them.

I finally decided I'd had enough and informed Brian I wanted to replace the window treatments. Since i had a meeting in Somerville last Saturday, he proposed we make a short jaunt afterwards to the Habitat ReStore to see if we could find something secondhand. And jaunt we did, but we found that the selection of window treatments was woefully limited. There was only one shade in the size we needed, and it was a Venetian blind like the ones we were trying to replace—not exactly a solution.

So we ended up making a trip up to IKEA yesterday and dropping $88 on a new set of honeycomb shades. And, of course, while there we also spent another $40 on other odds and ends: more rechargeable batteries, a few new dish towels, a couple of bowls to replace the two we've broken over the past two years, one new bed pillow for guests, and a couple of lingonberry products. Plus we spent $23 having lunch at the cafe, and while his falafel balls (a new menu item) were okay, my salmon filet was woefully overcooked and not at all satisfying.

I know it's silly to feel bad about this expense. The old blinds really were a problem, and we really did make a good-faith effort to find secondhand ones first. But I can't help feeling like a bit of an ecofrugal failure for having to resort to retail.

Case #2: The broken sink

I feel even worse about this second failure, because in a way, it was my fault.

I treat my hair every day or two with a solution of rosemary oil to reduce thinning. And, foolishly, I've been keeping this mixture in a little glass jar, allowing myself to be swayed by sustainability influencers railing against plastic use. Yesterday, as I was reaching for something else in the medicine chest, this little jar came tumbling out and landed in the sink. Fortunately, it landed top side down, so the jar didn't break and no harm was done.

Or so I thought until this morning, when I noticed a small damp spot under the sink. Brian checked it out and discovered two large chips nearby that had broken off from the porcelain of the sink itself. At first he thought he might be able to patch the hole with epoxy, but closer examination revealed that there was a huge crack running all the way up the side of the sink bowl. So he had to spend most of the morning removing the nice new sink that we just put in three years ago, heading out to Home Depot for a replacement, and installing the new one in its place. This cost us $50 and most of the morning, and we still can't use the sink until the caulk has set. And worse still, in the process of extracting the old sink, he also cracked the new laminate of the vanity top. Fortunately, he was able to stick it back down with some superglue, and the pattern of the laminate hides the crack pretty well, but still, our nice new vanity top is now permanently damaged, all because I stupidly paid more attention to anti-plastic screeds than to my own common sense. (I've now transferred the rosemary mixture to a salvaged plastic container that should prove less hazardous.)

For someone who devotes so much time and energy to looking for ways to save money, I seem to be doing an awfully good job of spending it.

In search of middle-hanging fruit

When I see an article offering advice on how to save energy or shrink your carbon footprint, I usually click on it, but without much hope or enthusiasm. I can be pretty sure that most or all of the advice in it will be about things we already do, such as:

• Replacing single-use water bottles, napkins, grocery bags, etc., with reusable ones 
• Eating less meat and dairy 
• Composting 
• Walking or biking for short trips, instead of driving
• Washing laundry in cold water and drying it outdoors
• Taking shorter showers and/or using a low-flow showerhead
• Setting the thermostat lower in winter and higher in summer
• Insulating your home and sealing up leaks
• Switching your electricity supplier to one that uses clean energy (or, better yet, community solar)
• Upgrading your old, inefficient light bulbs (honestly, is there anyone who hasn't done this yet)? 

Occasionally, these articles also recommend some bigger changes we haven't made yet, like getting solar panels, driving an EV, or swapping out your furnace for a heat pump. But in every case, we've already considered these ideas and concluded that they just don't work for us at this time. We can't get solar panels because our home electric usage is too small to meet the minimum size requirements for a solar array. We don't want to replace our only car with an EV until we feel confident that it will be practical for long trips. And we aren't prepared to spend $24,000 on a heat pump that would probably increase, not decrease, our winter heating bill.

At first glance, our problem appears straightforward: when it comes to living a greener lifestyle, we've already harvested all the low-hanging fruit. If it's cheap and easy to do, we've already done it. Our house and our car are about as efficient at this point as anything running on fossil fuels can possibly be. To improve any further, we need to reach for the higher-hanging fruit that involves more hassle and/or expense. And that's only to be expected.

But in fact, it's more complicated than that. It's not just that we've already done all the easy stuff; by doing so, we've actually reduced the value of doing the harder stuff.

Take the heat pump, for example. According to the EPA, the 295 therms of gas we burned for home heating last winter produced about 1.56 metric tons of CO2. An electric heat pump would cost us about $24,000 and would last around 15 years, for a cost of $1,600 per year, plus another $100 or so in increased heating bills. That works out to over $1,089 per metric ton of greenhouse gas saved—far higher than the $190 a ton that the EPA under the Biden administration estimated as the "social cost" of carbon emissions. And the reason that cost per ton is so high is precisely because our current carbon footprint for heating is so low. If we hadn't already turned down the thermostat, insulated the attic, and bought a reasonably efficient gas boiler, we'd be doing the climate a lot more good by going electric. As it is, the benefit is pretty slim.

It's the same thing with the solar panels. Unlike a heat pump, a solar array probably would save us money in the long term—but because our electric usage is so small, we can't install one. And while there's nothing to stop us from buying an electric car, the maximum we could possibly shave from our carbon footprint by doing so is 0.21 tons, the carbon cost of the 219 gallons of gas we burned last year. (This year, with Brian fully retired, it will probably be even less.) The problem isn't simply that we've harvested all the low-hanging fruit, and what remains is harder to reach; it's that the higher-up fruit isn't worth as much to us because we've already filled up on the easy stuff.

So where does this leave us? Do we simply rest on our laurels with the fruit we've collected, or do we keep struggling ever higher up the tree in search of ever fewer and smaller apples? 

What I'm hoping is that I can manage to find a middle ground—a few fruits hidden amongst the foliage in the middle branches of the tree. For example, consider the induction burner we bought in 2024. It has taken over about half our cooking, shaving about 2 therms of natural gas use from our monthly bill and about an eighth of a ton from our carbon footprint. Assuming it lasts us ten years, that works out to 1.3 metric tons of greenhouse gas for just $89, or $68 per ton. (The burner also adds about $2.40 a month to our electric bill, but that's almost exactly equal to what we're saving on gas.) A full-size induction stove with an electric oven would cut our gas use by about twice as much—2.6 tons over 10 years—but at a cost of around $1,300 (and possibly several thou more to upgrade our electric panel to accommodate it). That works out to $500 a ton, which is a lot more bucks for the carbon-reduction bang.

So my goal at this point is to take the same kind of half measures with our other fossil-fuel-using devices—starting with our gas boiler. Last summer, after learning that we'd need to spend at least $20,000 (after rebates) on a heat pump that would completely replace the boiler, I speculated that maybe we could partially replace it by installing a through-the-wall heat pump in place of our old, inefficient wall AC unit. I've since dug into this a bit more and found a $1,200 unit that appears to be the same size as our current AC unit, which would allow us to swap it in with no need to cut a new hole in the wall. We'll have to pull the old AC unit out and measure the space to make sure, but if I'm right, we could probably install it ourselves, making that $1,200 (or say $1,300 with tax) the only cost. 

According to the description of the unit, it's sized for a space between 400 and 550 square feet, which is about one-third of the conditioned space in our home. So, at a rough guess, it might be able to cut our gas use for heating by around one-third. If it lasts 13 years, that would be $100 per year for about a half-ton reduction in our carbon footprint, or about $200 per ton. That's less than one-fifth the cost per ton for a full-sized heat pump. It's still a lot more expensive than a few LED light bulbs or a low-flow showerhead (especially since we got most of those for free), but it offers much bigger energy savings, too. It's a medium-sized cost to gain a medium-sized benefit—the perfect middle-hanging fruit.

Recipe of the Month: (Not Really) Sticky Eggplant and Tofu

Quite often, when I choose a new Recipe of the Month, Brian has to modify it a bit. He might replace an ingredient we don't have available, adjust the level of spice, or swap out animal products for plant-based alternatives. But this month, I found a dish that didn't look like it would require any alterations at all. The recipe, called Sticky Eggplant and Tofu, came from a site called Plant Based on a Budget, so it was fully vegan, and all the ingredients it called for were already in our fridge. And based on a quick scan of the ingredient list, it looked like it would taste great with no modifications.

But as soon as Brian started the actual cooking, it became clear there were some problems with the recipe. First, it called for him to cut the eggplant and tofu into 1-inch cubes, which he knew from prior experience would take far too long to cook. So he went with half-inch cubes (one-eighth of the size by volume). But once he'd prepared the cubes, it wasn't clear how long they were actually supposed to cook. The recipe, rather confusingly, said to spread the cubed eggplant on a baking sheet, then toss the cubed tofu in oil and coat it with cornstarch, and then "bake for 10 minutes." Bake what? The tofu or the eggplant? Based on the next instruction, "remove the eggplant to a plate...[and] continue baking the tofu," Brian concluded that it must mean both together, so he threw everything onto the sheet and popped it in the oven. And when the requisite 10 minutes were up, the eggplant was nowhere near done. Parts of it had started to soften a bit, but most of it was basically raw.

To correct this problem, he added another step to the recipe. After assembling the sauce ingredients in the pan, rather than just "stir until it begins to thicken" (which he knew wouldn't actually happen, since it didn't contain any sort of thickener), he added the eggplant to the pan and let it simmer, covered, in the sauce for 10 minutes. Then he added the tofu and proceeded with the recipe as written. Unfortunately, this meant that we ended up with no sauce at all, since the eggplant simply soaked up all the juice like a sponge. 

The completed dish was nothing at all like the promised "crispy tofu and melt-in-the-mouth eggplant in a super flavorful, sweet, tangy, savory soy garlic sauce." The tofu, after 20 minutes of baking, was not at all crispy; the eggplant, despite its extra 10 minutes of simmering time, did not come close to melting in the mouth; and there was no sauce whatsoever. Instead, it had squishy tofu and spongy eggplant chunks so saturated with vinegar, lime juice, and soy sauce that they were mouth-puckeringly tart. It was edible, but it was so completely different from the picture on the website that I find it hard to believe the chef actually followed her own recipe.

So, clearly, this recipe was not a success. And yet, looking again at that ingredient list, it still seems like it should be possible to make a good-tasting dish from those components. If Brian had started with those ingredients and no instructions, he'd have roasted the eggplant until it was truly tender, pan-fried the tofu until it was truly crispy, added a thickener to the sauce, and ended up with something much closer to that appetizing description and photo. But the fact is, this combination of flavors is so basic that he probably wouldn't have needed the recipe in the first place to come up with it. If he ever gets a hankering for something similar, he can probably create it from scratch, with no need to refer to this recipe at all.

In short, this was a total flop, and we have no reason ever to make it again. And in future, if I'm ever tempted to try another recipe from this website, I'll make sure both Brian and I take a good hard look at the instructions first.

Signing up is hard to do

Thirteen years ago, when we paid off our mortgage, I was surprised to find at how hard it was to make that final payment—not financially or emotionally, but technically. We had the money, and we were ready and eager to hand it over, but getting the bank to accept that final payment was way more complicated than I expected. It took a whole series of transactions online, by phone, and in person at our local branch to get the job done.

Right now, we're having similar problems with another big life transition: Brian's retirement. Specifically, the process of switching over to a new health care plan.

The problems started in January, when Brian chose February 11 as his official retirement date. I got straight to work trying to sign us up for new coverage on Get Covered NJ, only to run into a snag: because it was January, the state was still in the middle of "open enrollment." If I signed up for a new plan during that period, it would automatically start on February 1, while Brian was still employed—and double-dipping on coverage is a big legal no-no. So I had to wait until February 1 to sign up for a new plan that would start on March 1.

Once I'd done that, I still had to take care of all the other details associated with changing coverage, like choosing a new primary care doctor and transferring our prescriptions. To do that, I needed to set up an online account with the insurer. And here I ran into my second snag: Because our new insurance plan was with the same provider as our old plan, I already had an account on their website. I could find no obvious way to add my new plan to that account, so I struggled through the maze of customer support and eventually learned that I'd have to wait until the new plan took effect on March 1 (today) to create an account for it.

So, this morning, right after breakfast, I settled down for what I figured would be a busy day of paperwork (or, since it was all going to be online, pixelwork). I punched in all my details—name, date of birth, member ID—and tried to create an account. And ran straight into snag three: I couldn't create an account using my email address because I already had one linked to my old account. I could still log into that old account, but it only had information about the old plan that had just expired. And because it was Sunday, I couldn't call or chat with customer service to fix the problem. Until the customer service lines open tomorrow morning, I'm stuck in limbo.

Annoying as that situation is, it seems positively straightforward compared to the problem I'm having with the website for our new dental savings plan. I registered on that insurer's site as soon as I bought the policy—or at least, I thought I had. But when I tried logging in today, using my email address and the password I'd selected, it told me either my username or my password was wrong. Okay, no big deal: I just clicked on "find my username" and entered my member ID, name, and date of birth to get my official username. Then I entered that username and the password I'd selected...and once again, the site told me that one of the two was wrong. So I took a different tack and asked to sign in without a password, using my username and date of birth to receive a login code. And I got the same error again. It told me that either the username it had just given me or the date of birth I gave it to get that username was wrong. I must have gone through the same cycle four or five times—check the username, enter the username and password, enter the username without the password—before I gave up. So that's yet another customer service call I need to make tomorrow.

Naturally, all this left me feeling a bit disgruntled. But as I was about to make some snarky remark to Brian about how much technology has "simplified our lives," I thought, well, wait a minute: would this actually have been any simpler before the Internet? And as it happened, I already knew the answer, because the last time I'd signed up for private health insurance was in 1995, before any of this stuff could be done online. To get my policy back then, I had to make an appointment to meet in person with an insurance agent, drive to his office, look at a list of plan options he presented to me, flip through a bunch of paper books to compare them, fill ou the enrollment forms for my chosen plan by hand, and pay my first monthly premium by check. The whole process was a much bigger hassle than this year's online enrollment, even with all the glitches. It just didn't feel like a big hassle back then because there was no simpler alternative. 

This little glimpse back down memory lane has helped me put my #firstworldproblems in perspective. Yes, it's annoying that these websites are so hard to use. But it's also kind of amazing that they exist at all. Looking at the situation through 1995-era Amy's eyes, having to wait until Monday to call customer service—from my own home, most likely in my pajamas—doesn't seem like such a big deal.

[EDIT, 3/2/26: After a frustrating half hour on the phone with the insurer, I'm no longer convinced doing things the old-fashioned way was harder. After working my way through the maze of the automated phone line and spending about 15 minutes on hold, I was informed that it was not possible to set up a new online account with my current email and my only option was to create a new email for this purpose. I gently (okay, maybe not so gently) pointed out that it can't be too uncommon for people to change plans, and it seems unlikely that the system simply doesn't allow for this possibility. The agent then put me on hold again while she presented this argument to the "e-services department," which eventually conceded that it would be possible to unlink my email from the existing online account so I could use it to create a new account. (Doing this would cut off my access to the old plan info, but that wasn't a problem because Brian still had an account linked to his email, so we could use that to deal with any lingering problems.) However, it apparently takes three to five business days to perform this apparently simple operation, so I'm now stuck in a holding pattern until Friday. The call then redirected me to a customer satisfaction survey, which I used to register my customer dissatisfaction. I even pressed the button to add an extra comment, gently (again, not that gently) suggesting that it would have been helpful to warn me about this "feature" when I first signed up for the new plan, so I could have dealt with it ahead of time.

On the plus side, one quick call to the dental plan provider was enough to unlock my account, so that shows competent customer service still exists somewhere in the modern world.]

[EDIT, 3/5/26: Well, there's good news and bad news. The good news: It didn't actually take 3 to 5 business days to uncouple my email from my old account. I got a call back within one day to say it was done, and I took the precaution of keeping the customer service agent on the line until I'd confirmed I was able to sign up for a new account. The bad news: Even with that account set up, I wasn't able to select a new Primary Care Provider online. I went through all the steps to do it and got a message saying, "Your PCP request could not be processed." So I got in touch with customer service again and they made the PCP selection for me—or at least, they said they had. It's now been two days and no PCP is showing up on my account. 

What's odd is that Brian made his PCP selection shortly after I did, using the phone system rather than chat, and his selection has already been processed. I just called Member Services again to sort this out, and as best I could make out from the agent's somewhat incoherent explanation, Brian's request somehow superseded mine. So this agent made the PCP selection for me again, and once again told me it would take 3 to 5 business days to go through.

So I'm now back in limbo, unable to transfer my medical records, see my new doctor, or get new prescriptions for any of my meds until this is resolved. In my ongoing battle with bureaucratic B.S., it's easy to see who's winning.]