More mini updates

Once again, I've got nothing big to share this week, so instead I'm bringing you an assortment of little mini updates from our ecofrugal world. It's along the same line as my quick fixes posts, but these run the gamut from successful projects to unsuccessful ones to ideas that are still at the planning stage.

Update #1: Darn, still not so tough

Remember a year ago, when I was disappointed to discover a hole in one of Brian's Darn Tough socks? And how I decided that it wasn't worth using the alleged lifetime guarantee when I could just darn the hole and be done with it? Well, I now have confirmation that this incident was more than just a fluke. Last time I hung them on the line, I discovered that a second pair of Darn Tough socks had also developed a hole, this time toward the front. Once again, I was able to darn it without difficulty, but it confirmed my decision not to bother buying this brand again, warranty or no warranty.

Update #2: A DIY lipstick case

I don't normally wear a lot of makeup. Most days, it's just a swipe of white nail pencil (or my new favorite substitute, grease pencil) under each fingernail and a spot of concealer as needed to cover any blemishes. I keep both of these in a cosmetic case in my purse, along with such other everyday carry necessities as hand sanitizer, lotion, Band-Aids, and a mini sewing kit. Unfortunately, the cap on the concealer tube isn't very secure. Occasionally, it comes off as it rattles around in there and I end up with concealer smeared all over my other necessaries. And eventually, it ends up getting cracked and won't go back on the tube at all unless I wrap it with clear tape.

To fix this problem, I decided to invest in a little lipstick case. These are easy to find for $10 or less on Amazon, but it's much harder to get one at a reasonable price secondhand. And when I searched for tutorials on how to make one from scratch, they all seemed to require skills I didn't have, like crochet or metalworking. So I decided to make up my own design: a simple envelope made of felt. I just wrapped the felt around the tube to gauge the size, leaving a little overlap to make a closure flap. Then I cut it to size, sewed the ends shut, and added snaps to hole the top flap down. It's not very elegant or very sturdy, but it should be sufficient to protect the tube or, at the very least, keep its lid on.

Update #3: An unsuccessful wallet repair

Remember the new wallet I was so pleased to find for $5 at the thrift store last July? Well, within about a month, the metal discs that support the clasp on the front flap (one on the inside, one on the outside) fell off. Now, technically, the wallet is still usable without it: the clasp on the flap can still be closed even if there's nothing but fabric behind it. But it looked kind of odd, and I feared the fabric would wear out pretty quickly.

In theory, it should have been easy to reattach the metal pieces with a couple of small screws. Unfortunately, they'd have to be very small screws, smaller than anything we have in the shop, and searches at both Home Depot and Michael's turned up nothing of the appropriate size. So I hunted around for something else I could use to secure the discs in place, and I hit on the idea of using some toothpicks. I could fit one end pretty securely into the outer metal piece, then thread it through the holes in the cloth flap and the inner metal disc, and hold it all down with hot glue.

Well, that was the theory, anyway. Unfortunately, it didn't work very well in practice. The glue leaked out around the edges of the metal, and the metal tip of the glue gun heated the discs up so much that I burned my hand while trying to press them into place. Also, I couldn't manage to clip off the ends of the toothpicks neatly, so there was still a small, jagged end poking through. And after all that, the glue only held up for a week or two before the discs started coming loose again.

So, for now, I'm just keeping the metal pieces with the wallet, with only the clasp to hold them into place. I'm hoping that someone at the next Repair Cafe, which is coming up in November, will have the right size screws to fix it properly, or at least a better way to do it improperly.

Update #4: Finally, the right ground cover?

Ever since we bought this house, I've been trying to find a suitable ground cover to replace our front lawn. I didn't want to use anything invasive, like English ivy or Japanese pachysandra, but so far, all the more sedate plants I've tried—from Dutch white clover to creeping thyme to the native barren strawberry—have been unable to compete with the crabgrass. And every time I tried searching lists of native ground covers, I found the same old recommendations I'd already considered and deemed unsuitable. None of them could stand up to all the conditions in our yard: clay soil, afternoon sun, and occasional foot traffic.

Until last month, that is, when I stumbled across a native plant directory called Planoot. I searched for plants native to our area that were perennial, low-growing, and clay-friendly, and I came across an unfamiliar plant that goes by two different colorful names: frog fruit or turkey tangle. It's suitable for clay, likes full or partial sun, and grows to just 6 inches in height, and according to the directory, it "spreads vigorously as a low, trailing groundcover." Native Backyards was even more enthusiastic, calling it "my favorite native ground cover" thanks to its fast growth, low maintenance, and appeal for humans and native pollinators alike.

After a quick consultation with Brian, I searched out and ordered five frog fruit plants from a seller on Etsy. They were supposed to arrive last weekend, but the package appears to be held up in Texas. Once it arrives, we'll put the plants in the ground and see how well they live up to the hype.

Update #5: Middle-hanging fruit, maybe

This month, New Jersey became the ninth state to officially legalize balcony solar. Unlike large-scale solar setups that can power a whole house, these are miniature arrays that plug into a wall outlet and provide a smidgen of energy for internal use. They're easy to install, and crucially, they don't require an interconnection agreement with your electric utility, since little or none of the energy they produce will ever make its way onto the grid.

During a webinar I attended about this new law, I learned about a nonprofit called Bright Saver that's supposedly selling these mini solar arrays at cost in states where they're legal. If you sign up for a $29 yearly membership, you can either get a kit with a single 180-watt panel, an inverter, and a power cord for just $285 or pay $414 for a larger two-panel version. (You can also pay $499 for the smaller kit without signing up for a membership, but it's not clear why anyone would, since you can cancel when the year is up.) 

This was a better deal than I could find anywhere else, and it seemed like a great way to dip our toes into solar panel usage without a big commitment of time or money. It wouldn't reduce our home's carbon footprint, since we already use community solar for all our electricity, but it could still save us a little something on our energy bills each month. According to my back-of-the-envelope calculations, which I needn't go into here, it looked like it could pay for itself in just a few years, much faster than a full rooftop array (which we can't get right now, anyway, because our electric usage is too small). It seemed like a perfect example of the kind of middle-hanging fruit I've been looking for to make our life more ecofrugal in modest but meaningful ways.

More intriguingly still, Bright Saver says balcony solar is just the first clean-energy project it plans to tackle. There are plans in the works to help members save on home battery systems, insurance, and crucially for us, heat pumps. By joining now, we might eventually be able to get one for much less than the $24,000 after rebates that local installers have been quoting us.

This got me excited enough to plunk down $29 on a membership, but as I was preparing to place my order for the mini solar array, I hesitated. A small, suspicious voice in the back of my head whispered, "How do I know this is for real? If it sounds too good to be true, doesn't that usually mean it is?"

Further research did nothing to ease my mind. I could not find one single review from someone who actually owned Bright Saver's solar panels and could confirm they worked well. I found positive reviews, but they were either from "professional" sources who were simply repeating the info from Bright Saver's website or from folks on Reddit who had pre-ordered them and were expecting to receive them in August, only to have the shipment delayed until September and now October. I found myself wondering if the company might just take my money, promise shipment in a month (and then another month, and then another), and eventually disappear. Or maybe they would send me something that looked to the untrained eye like a solar panel, but when plugged in it would do nothing. I have no actual evidence that Bright Saver is anything but a legitimate company—but I also have no proof that it is one.

So, for now, my policy is to watch and wait. If and when Bright Saver says they are actually ready to start shipping out the solar panels, then I'll place an order. If it arrives and we plug it in and confirm it's working as claimed, great. If it doesn't, then we'll cancel the credit card charge before the bill comes due. And if the panels never become available on the site at all, at least I'm only out $29 instead of $443.

More small solutions

Welcome to the next installment in my quick fixes series, all about the small ways we solve problems in our lives without buying new stuff. This time, I've got not three but five small solutions to talk about (though technically, one of them is still in progress). 

Quick fix #1: Earring storage

This year, Brian's birthday project for me was something I'd been needing for a while: a better way to store all my earrings. I'd been simply hanging them on the edge of a box on my dresser, which had some hair clips and other miscellaneous items stashed inside. This arrangement kept most of my earrings visible and easy to access, but it had some major downsides. For one, it could only hold earrings with shepherd's hook backs, so the few pairs I had with straight posts had to live in boxes. And more seriously, whenever I went to fish something out of the box, I'd dislodge some of the earrings and spend the next five minutes hunting for them.

Brian gave this gift to me in stages. On my birthday itself, he presented me with a sketch of his plan for a freestanding rack that could take the place of the box on my dresser. But when he found out I was actually using the box, he came up with a new design: a wall-mounted rack with several tiers. For the second stage, he built a prototype of this design out of cardboard, hung it up, and let me test it out for a few weeks to make sure it worked for me. Then, during the recent heat wave, he disappeared into the workshop (the coolest room in the house) and emerged with the final version, built out of scrap wood. The three tiers hold all my hook-back earrings, and the small tray at the bottom holds the post-back ones. And there's even a bit of room to spare in case I acquire more.

Quick fix #2: Reinforced sunglasses

About a year ago, my fit-over sunglasses cracked just above the right lens. I made two attempts to repair them with Superglue, but it didn't hold. We then tried reinforcing them with a thin strip of plastic glued across the top to bridge the gap. That repair held for several months, but last month it failed as well. So we decided to get out the big guns: plastic welding. We followed the basic procedure in this video, except we didn't remove the lens because we were afraid we wouldn't be able to get it back in. We just added a dab of glue over the break, dropped on a short length of metal snipped from a paper clip, and melted it into the plastic with the soldering gun. We also didn't go through the lengthy process of concealing the melted patch with multiple layers of glue and powdered graphite; instead, I just added a lick of black nail polish and called it good enough.

With this bit of metal shoring up the weak area, I felt pretty confident that the shades wouldn't break again—at least not in the same spot. So imagine my surprise when, last night, I pulled the sunglasses out of my pocket to find that, once again, they'd cracked right across the top over the lens. My puzzlement was short-lived, however, as I quickly realize that this time it was the left side that had broken in exactly the same way. So Brian has now repeated the entire procedure on the left side of the glasses. They don't look terribly pretty, but they should hold up, at least in this particular area.

Quick fix #3: Car windshield shade

When we bought our Honda Fit 15 years ago, one quirk we discovered was that its windscreen was too large for a standard-size windshield shade. We tried mocking up a shade out of cardboard, but it was unwieldy, so we sent away for a two-piece folding shade specially sized to fit our vehicle. That shade served us well until this spring, when we discovered that the fabric on one corner of one of the pieces had worn clean through, exposing the metal rim. I tried patching it up with duct tape, but after a couple of months in the hot sun, the adhesive melted and the tape started sloughing off.

Looking for a more permanent fix, I went hunting through my scrap bin for something to patch it with. The best candidate I could find was an old cloth face mask left over from the pandemic, which was reasonably sturdy but also flexible. I snipped off the ear loops, wrapped the mask around the corner of the shade, and applied a little hot glue to hold it in place. Then, to make sure it stayed put, I stitched all the way around it: up one side, across the top, down the other side, and across the bottom. 

I realized as I worked that I probably should have skipped the gluing step, as it was a lot of work to force the needle through four layers of fabric plus an extra layer of glue, but I got it to work in the end. The patched shade looks a little quirky, but it's secure now, and it can easily be unfolded to deploy it and folded to stash it away when not in use.

Quick fix #4: Thrift-shop wallet

This is yet another example of duct tape not proving to be a permanent solution. Last winter, after the zipper broke on my wallet, I attempted to cover the torn edges on my spare wallet with electrical tape. Unfortunately, it didn't stick very well, so I switched to black duct tape instead. That held up a little better, but eventually it also started to peel off, leaving the frayed edges not just exposed, but also covered in sticky residue. 

So I decided to give up on this flimsy plastic wallet and invest in a secondhand leather one from eBay. Unfortunately, my new-to-me "The Sak" wallet turned out to be far less sturdy than I thought. Only the outside was made from real leather; all the interior bits were fabric covered with a plastic coating, which began wearing off almost immediately. Within a matter of days, it was in even worse shape than its predecessor.

Luckily, I now have a replacement for it. Yesterday, after my monthly CCL meeting, we stopped by Goodwill, where the accessories bin yielded up this beauty:  a nifty little black quilted number big enough to hold my phone, notebook, bills, coins, and large assortment of cards. With tax, it was only $4.25 (clothes aren't taxed in New Jersey, but apparently accessories are). I was so pleased with my find that I elected to round it up and donate the change, since even at $5 it's a bargain.

Quick fix #5: Pants patching

Last month, I discovered that my pride pants—the blue jeans I'd mended with a little rainbow of embroidery floss—had a threadbare spot on the thigh. Not wanting to detract from my previous visible mending job, I tried to cover this hole as invisibly as possible with a patch on the inside secured by stitches running across both horizontally and vertically. 

Unfortunately, within just a few weeks after this patching job, the jeans developed a new, much larger threadbare area on the same thigh. I'm attempting to patch this one using the same method, but since it's a much bigger area, it's taking quite a bit longer. Because I'm hopeless with a sewing machine and I can't handle more than about half an hour of hand-sewing at a stretch, it's taken me several sessions just to get the horizontal stitches down, and I've still got all the vertical ones to add. 

Even as I'm going to all this trouble, I have to recognize that I probably won't be enough to extend the life of these pants by many months. If one thigh has already worn out, the other one probably won't be far behind, and that one will take another major effort to patch. If it were any other pair of pants, I might just give up and send them to textile recycling, but I'm so attached to my little rainbow repair that I'm willing to put in the effort to keep them alive just a little bit longer.

More quick fixes

Well, here I am again, updating the blog on a Monday after a busy weekend. After being away in Virginia last Sunday, we spent Friday in Hopewell having a delayed Mother's Day celebration with my mom, this time tidying up the patio area in the back yard. We topped that off with back-to-back dance gigs on Saturday and Sunday, each at least an hour long and at least 45 minutes away, and the latter of the two in blazing noonday sun and 90-degree heat. I'd originally planned to come home and write the blog entry after that, but all I had the energy to do was drink a quart of water and spend the rest of the afternoon playing puzzle games. 

With all this going on, we didn't have time to tackle any big projects, so instead I'm writing about three small ones we've done over the past few months. These are all the sort of quick fixes that are a mainstay of our ecofrugal lifestyle: solving problems by substituting a bit of time and creativity for new, store-bought items.

Quick Fix #1: Free wall art

Our house is a...well, I don't know what style it is, exactly. It was built around 1970, so it has neither the charm of an old-fashioned Cape Cod or bungalow nor the practicality of a modern open-concept home. Instead, it has a single narrow hallway connecting the office at one end to the bathroom at the other, with entrances leading off it into the living room, bedroom, hall closet, and kitchen. It's a pretty drab space, and until this year, we hadn't done much of anything to it. We'd hung one piece of art—actually, six small nature sketches in one long frame—but since they were all in black and white, it didn't do much to liven up the area.

But the thing that bothered me most about the hallway was the two small, rectangular bumps on the side wall. One, located about at my eye level, is the thermostat, and the other, higher up the wall (just barely visible in the photo) is our doorbell. They don't even line up neatly with each other, but since they're both wired into the wall, there's no way to move them. They're just two randomly placed horizontal rectangles sticking out of the wall like warts.

So, last year, I came up with an idea to make those two oddly placed rectangles look intentional by surrounding them with a bunch of other rectangles: an array of small art pieces hung horizontally on the wall. To this end, we picked up a set of four small picture frames (roughly 6" by 8") for 50 cents each at a thrift shop. The problem then was what to put in them. We had only one piece of art the right size, a tiny abstract oil painting done by one of our niblings as a grade-school project. Should we try to thrift some artwork to fit the other frames? Should Brian draw some pictures to fill them? Or should we perhaps make enlarged prints of some family photos?

We continued dilly-dallying until last March, when Brian had a brainwave: If all we wanted was to make those awkward rectangles on the wall look intentional, it didn't matter what was in the frames. He hung the two pieces of horizontal art we had—the little abstract oil painting and a colorful David Goodsell painting of a virus that he got as a retirement present at work—and then simply filled up the rest of the frames with sheets of origami paper in coordinating colors. They're just blocks of solid color, but seen as part of a group, they look intentional. And we can always swap them out later if we find some other art we like better.

Quick Fix #2: A hands-free phone stand

I like to do the Wordle and other New York Times puzzles on my phone each morning while I eat my breakfast. The problem is, using one hand to eat and one to type leaves none free to hold the phone. I've tried propping it up against something, but it isn't very stable that way and tends to topple down with any stray movement. 

When we went to IKEA last March to pick up a new set of window shades, Brian spotted a little phone stand that he thought could solve this problem. The design was quite elegant: just a small slab of bamboo with a slot cut into it to hold the phone at the right angle. It was compact enough that it wouldn't be in the way on the kitchen table, and the price tag was a mere $5. But then he thought, why spend even $5 on something he could probably make himself for free?

He cut a scrap of plywood to approximately the same size as the IKEA stand, then set about gouging a slot in it with his Dremel tool. It wasn't set up to make angled cuts, so he had to place a triangular block of wood on top of the plywood scrap and use that to line up the cut. This awkward arrangement made it difficult to control the tool, and he ended up making the slot too big and having to nail a little shim to the inside. The finished piece isn't exactly elegant, but it serves its purpose: allowing me to eat my toast and solve the Wordle at the same time.  

Quick Fix #3: Not-so-visible mending

One of my most successful visible mending projects to date was the rainbow of stitches I added to my lightweight blue jeans last year to cover up the wear along the thigh inseam. I later added a similar row of stitches along the inseam of the other leg and eventually, as the worn areas spread, expanded both rows by adding a row of darker red stitches to the end. But last time I washed the jeans, I discovered a new threadbare patch farther in on the thigh. I've repaired holes like this before by adding colorful patches, but I didn't want to do that here because I feared it would clash with the colorful stitching I'd already added. How could I patch the hole in a way that wouldn't distract from my rainbow repair?

To solve this problem, I adapted a method I read about on the Wonderfil blog. I patched the jeans not on the outside, but on the inside, using a small fabric scrap a little bigger than the threadbare area. Then, to reinforce the patch, I put in several rows of stitches through both layers of fabric (the denim of the jeans and the patch underneath), running all the way across the hole. Not being proficient with a sewing machine, I couldn't do as thorough a job of this as the Wonderfil blogger did, but I ran multiple rows of stitches across the patch horizontally, then multiple rows vertically. When I was done, I trimmed away all the excess fabric from the patch, leaving a piece just big enough to cover the hole.

The finished repair is far from perfect. My hand-stitching is nowhere near as neat or precise as stitches put in by machine, and the navy thread I used isn't an exact match for the fabric of the jeans. But it should keep the hole from expanding, and it blends in well enough that a casual observer probably wouldn't spot it. And even if someone happens to notice the repair, it blends into the background well enough to let my rainbow stitching stand out as the real star of the show.

Our first Repair Cafe

Highland Park's first Repair Cafe, which was postponed last February due to a massive blizzard, finally took place this weekend. I signed up to work in the sewing section, while Brian worked at the "miscellaneous" table. Never having attended, much less worked at, one of these events before, we had little idea what to expect. Would anyone even show up? And if they did, would any of them need repairs that were within our (particularly my) modest capabilities? 

The answers to both questions turned out to be, "And how."

The night before, Brian and I both spent some time deciding what tools and supplies to take with us. Having no clue what we'd need, we ended up packing everything we could reasonably carry to cover all the basics. Brian stuffed his backpack with roughly 30 pounds of tools, including a hammer, an adjustable wrench, screwdrivers, pliers, a set of nut drivers, wood glue, epoxy, a multimeter, assorted hardware, a staple gun, a hacksaw, and probably several other things he can't currently recall. I took only my main sewing kit, but crammed it to the limit with extras I thought might come in handy: a few fabric scraps, my big darning needles, a small spool of yarn, some hooks and eyes, extra buttons, and my entire collection of embroidery floss, because you never know what color you'll need. (Brian made me stick a padlock on the overstuffed box to ensure it wouldn't pop open en route and spill all that stuff out onto the sidewalk.)

A little before noon, we arrived at the site with all our tools in tow. Sustainable Highland Park, which was organizing the event, was in the process of setting up tables and chairs and had put out some maps to show what was supposed to go on each one. I was mildly surprised to see that there were three entire tables for the sewing crew, the same as for electrical repairs, while "miscellaneous" had only one largish table in the opposite corner. There were also stations for bicycle, jewelry, woodwork, and guitar repair, and one table specifically for knife sharpening. We got set up, introduced ourselves to the other folks at our respective tables, and partook of some pizza provided by Sustainable Highland Park for the volunteers, and at 1pm, the doors opened. Or perhaps I should say, the floodgates. 

I meant to get more pictures of the event itself, but I never got a chance. I was working more or less nonstop for the next three hours, as a steady stream of "customers" presented their items for repair. I'd assumed that the work in the sewing section would be fairly light, but it turned out to be probably the busiest in the whole place. The folks with bigger jobs, like hemming pants or replacing zippers, got sent to the two ladies who'd brought sewing machines, while I and the two other hand-sewers devoted ourselves to a wide array of smaller repairs. I replaced buttons, stitched up torn seams, mended holes in pockets, reattached the band on a baseball cap, darned the worn-out bottom of a vinyl backpack, and patched up stuffed animals belonging to both a small child and a large dog. The supplies we'd all brought quickly turned into a communal pool as we passed buttons, seam rippers, fabric swatches, and thread of various colors along the table. Our section was so busy that one of the volunteers from the jewelry table, who also had some sewing skills, came over to join us, and even with her help, I suspect we didn't quite manage to serve everyone.

Meanwhile, over at his table, Brian was working on an even more mixed assortment of items. Over the course of the afternoon, he tackled multiple lamps, a space heater, a doll with a broken leg, a toaster oven with a broken door, an electric shaver, a robot vacuum, and a white noise machine, among other things. Some of these were fairly easy to fix, like the electric shaver (which showed up in pieces but worked perfectly once he managed to get it put back together) and the robot vacuum (which, after being cleaned and charged up, started cruising around the floor on its own). Others needed to be more fully disassembled to get at their inner workings. Some things got fixed, but a bit inelegantly (like the doll, which he simply reassembled with a dollop of hot glue). There were a few items he couldn't fix because no one at the table had the right tools, such as the lamp with the sagging head that would have required a longer bolt than Brian had in his collection, but he was at least able to advise the owners on how to repair them at home. And there were a few, such as the white noise machine, that completely stumped everyone at the table and ended up in the trash.

All in all, it was a hectic day, but a highly satisfying one. Ever since my paid work essentially dried up last year, I've often found myself wondering at the end of a day whether I've actually accomplished anything useful. Today, I was in no doubt whatsoever. I got to help not just one, but dozens of my neighbors live a little more ecofrugally, saving money and keeping their stuff out of the landfill. And as a group, we got to raise our collective middle finger to the disposable consumer culture that wants to keep us stuck on the buy-and-discard treadmill. It was a deeply fulfilling experience that brought our community together—one I hope will be repeated soon and often.

[EDIT, 4/22/26: Though I didn't get many photos, the organizers did. You can see them on Facebook.] 

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 tried 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.

Ring out the old, ring in the older

To my great relief, the pile of stuff we hauled home from our trip to Indiana has by and large integrated itself neatly into our home. The camp chair and the various tools have all found new homes in the reorganized workshop. The table lamp now graces an end table in the big downstairs room. The automated cat feeders haven't been put to use yet, but we found space for them on the shelves in the workshop, so at least they're not in the way.

In fact, many of these new acquisitions have actually helped us fix minor but annoying problems. For instance, in the office, the power strip next to Brian's computer used to keep tipping over because it was so lightweight that the heavy cord plugged into the outlet would pull it sideways. Brian glued a couple of the powerful hard-drive magnets acquired from his dad to the bottom, and now the power strip is firmly secured to the metal filing cabinet it sits on. 

Likewise, most of the glass Ball jars we brought home are now on the top shelf of our pantry, holding various staples that used to be in plastic bags. Actually, most of them were double-bagged, with the bags the products came in tucked inside zip-top bags to protect them from both spillage and spoilage. This resulted in an unsightly jumble of identical-looking bags that made it hard to find anything because they all looked alike. The row of neatly labeled glass jars is a decided improvement. (We still have a few things in bags, but three zip-top bags look much better than a dozen.)

But the biggest transformation has taken place in our media cabinet. We spent the better part of a day hauling out all our old A/V components, testing them and the ones from Indiana, and putting back only the ones that worked best. As it turned out, it was a good thing we were forced to do this, as some of the components—like my 25-year-old VCR and even older cassette player—proved to be entirely kaput. We replaced these with a working VCR from Brian's folks and an old workhorse of a tape deck, and Brian hauled the broken ones down to the recycling shed. (This turned out to be unnecessary, since they were so old that they didn't contain any computer chips and could safely have gone into the regular trash, but the Department of Public Works graciously agreed to dispose of them for us.)

A couple of other pieces were technically still usable, but not really useful for us. The centerpiece of our old stereo system was Brian's old Marantz receiver—older than him, in fact—which we'd hauled all the way across the country when he moved here in 2003. But it had become increasingly cranky over the years, and it had pretty much reached the limits of Brian's ability to repair it. He reluctantly concluded that it should go to someone who had both the time and the skill to bring it back to its full glory, so we listed it on Freecycle as a project "for the audiophile and do-it-yourselfer." The posting immediately got multiple responses from people fitting that description, and we sent it off to a good home. In its place, we hooked up an equally ancient, but still working Dynaco receiver and a smaller, separate amplifier. This addition gave us more plugs than our power strip could accommodate, so we daisy-chained it with the small, square power strip we'd gotten from his folks to fit everything in. We also Freecycled an old set of Pioneer speakers we'd been storing in the back of the cabinet as a just-in-case backup.

One thing our new setup doesn't currently include is a record player. We own two of them—my old one and another we got from Brian's parents—but neither one is working properly. We've stowed them both in the basement until Brian has time to tinker with them a bit more. If he can't fix either of them on his own, perhaps someone at our town's repair cafe event next month will be able to help. (Watch this space for details about that.) In the meantime, we've got all the rest of the components—TV, receiver, tape player, disc player—hooked up to Brian's nice Polk Audio speakers, and everything sounds lovely. Brian also added his Iron Giant figure to stand guard on top of the amplifier and prevent cats from sitting on it, which would definitely create a fire hazard.

So, contrary to my fears, the big pile of junk we brought back from Indiana has not turned into another big pile of junk in New Jersey. In fact, hauling it all home turned out to be quite helpful. It gave us the kick in the pants we needed to test all that stuff in the cabinet we hadn't been using and get rid of the actual junk that wasn't usable at all. If we hadn't had this pile of stuff to deal with, we might not have learned our VCR didn't work until we actually wanted to play one of our old tapes, and then we'd have had to hunt down and spend money on a replacement for it. This way, we have a fully functioning stereo setup (minus phonograph), Brian's parents have less stuff in their garage, and two happy Freecyclers have new toys to play with. Win-win-win.

A quick fix for a damaged wallet

This afternoon, after running a couple of errands, Brian and I decided to unwind with a quick visit to Starbucks. The trip started off on the right ecofrugal foot: I paid for my drink with my store card, which was loaded up with credits from online surveys, and handed over my reusable cup, which the barista pronounced "cool." But things went downhill when I tried to zip up my wallet. The zipper separated, leaving the zipper pull sliding along one edge.

Now, on most articles of clothing, this problem would be pretty easy to fix. I'd just slide the zipper pull down all the way to the bottom, feed the tooth from the separated strand back in, and pull it up to lock the two strands back together. But this zipper was wrapped all the way around the bottom of the wallet and hidden by the outer cover. The only way to get at it would be to cut the whole thing open, which would kind of defeat the purpose.

Fortunately, back when I bought this wallet a couple of years ago (for $3 at Goodwill), I saved my old one in case of just such an emergency. It was still in perfectly usable condition; the only thing obviously wrong with it was that the material on the edge of the flap had worn away and was unsightly. I could have just lived with it, but I figured, why not just do a quick fix with a little black electrical tape?

This fix took all of five minutes, including going downstairs to fetch the roll of tape. First, I cut a length of tape the length of the flap and folded it over. Then I cut two shorter pieces to wrap partway up the edges. At a casual glance, you'd never even notice the repair. Of course, I know it's there, but for me it's a badge of honor—proof that I'm living up to my ecofrugal principles.

I'll still keep my eye out for a replacement wallet, since this one is a bit bulky and doesn't have an outside coin pouch. (Also, as this experience shows, it's a good idea to have a backup.) But thanks to this simple repair, I needn't be in any hurry to replace it. Instead of running to Etsy and shelling out $30 for a new one, I can bide my time until something suitable pops up on another thrift shop trip.

Three quick fixes

A big part of living ecofrugally is finding ways to fix problems without throwing a lot of money at them. Just in the past week, we've had three problems that most people probably would have solved by purchasing something—possibly something quite expensive. Instead, we fixed them with minimal expense, plus a little ingenuity.

Problem #1: The Unkindest Cut

During one of our afternoon walks, Brian and I decided to pop into the supermarket and see what kind of Hanukkah candles they had available. (Answer: the cheap kind that drip all over the place.) On the way back out, Brian bumped his arm against the railing that runs along the pedestrian pathway leading up to the store—right at the spot where there was a small gap in the railing. And apparently that little, innocuous-looking break was pretty sharp, because it slashed right through the sleeve of his winter coat, leaving a right-angled gash a couple of inches long.

If this had happened to any other garment, I'd just have whipped out my trusty sewing kit and stitched it up as soon as we got home. But because it was his winter coat, I had some doubts about whether I could sew up the tear securely enough to make it watertight. Brian thought maybe the best fix would be to darn it first, then add a patch to protect the stitches, and then, as a final layer of protection, give it a coat of waterproofing spray. But as it turned out, once I'd finished darning it—going over the entire length of the rip twice, first with a back stitch to fasten the torn pieces together, then with a whip stitch to tack down the raw edges—Brian thought it looked secure enough to wear as is. If it turns out not to be, we can still go over it with the waterproofing spray, but it seems to be good enough for now.

Obvious fix: a new winter coat for around $200. Ecofrugal fix: a few cents' worth of thread and about 20 minutes of work.

Problem #2: The Dark Room

In order to stitch up Brian's coat, I had to take it into the bedroom, which is the only place I can reasonably sew without being interrupted by cats. (This is not only a hassle but a hazard, since eating a length of thread—something they would definitely do if they got the chance—could literally tear up their insides.) Unfortunately, this room isn't really ideal for the purpose. The only place to sit is the bed, which is also the only surface to work on, but the worst problem is the light level. Like most of the rooms in our house, the bedroom has no built-in lighting, and there's no spot in the room that could accommodate a floor lamp like we use in the office. So for the past 18 years, it's been lit solely by a table lamp on Brian's dresser with a single 1600-lumen bulb. This might be enough to light up the whole room if it were more centrally placed, but as is, it leaves the bed largely in shadow. Several times while working, I had to haul the bulky coat over to the dresser and maneuver the sleeve up next to the light to see my work, then take it back to the bed to continue sewing.

From time to time over the years, Brian and I had discussed ways to get more light into that room, but we'd never settled on anything. But this time, I decided I'd had enough. I told Brian I really, really needed more light in there, and he proposed a trip up to the Habitat for Humanity ReStore in Manville. I was hoping to find a table lamp there that could accommodate two bulbs, like the one we currently have in the guest room, but their limited lamp selection didn't include any. What we did find was a little desk lamp with a flexible neck that we could set up on my dresser as a secondary light source. It was marked at $5.49, but because it had a half-price orange tag, the final price was only $2.74.

Since the lamp didn't come with a bulb, and since we didn't have any spares at home that were bright enough, we made a side trip over to the nearest Home Depot. There we discovered that LED light bulb prices, after falling steeply for years, had apparently shot back up. A four-pack of soft white, 1,600-lumen LED bulbs would set us back a minimum of $16, or $4 per bulb—twice as much as we'd paid in 2016. Fortunately, there was a Target right next door, so we checked there and found a 4-pack of soft white, 1,340-lumen bulbs—not quite as bright, but probably bright enough—for only $10. With one of these installed, our new lamp provides perfectly good task lighting on the bed surface. It can also be angled up to splash light against the ceiling for more general illumination. And with three bulbs left over, we were able to upgrade the two-bulb fixture in the guest room to get a bit more light in there too.

Obvious fix: a brand-new two-bulb lamp for around $107 plus $16 for new bulbs, for $123 total. Ecofrugal fix: Around $13 for the lamp and bulbs together.

Problem #3: The Face Monster

For about five years now, Brian has been using a CPAP machine for sleep apnea. And hating it. He hates being tethered to it while he sleeps. He hates the way the mask feels on his face. He hates having air literally forced down his throat. He hates having to haul it with him whenever we travel. After a lot of effort, he's trained himself to fall asleep while wearing it, but if he wakes up at any point during the night, he can't get back to sleep with it on. So he ends up unplugging for the rest of the night, which means he's often just teetering on the edge of the minimum four hours a night required to be a "compliant" patient (a loathsome term that strips the patient of any agency in their own care and replaces it with a duty to obey orders without question).

But perhaps the most annoying thing about it is that it was kind of forced on him. When he was first diagnosed with sleep apnea, his doctor told him that he "needed" a CPAP, without so much as mentioning other options like positional therapy (side sleeping). True, positional therapy doesn't work for everyone, but neither does CPAP; as many as 50 percent of patients give up on the machine because it's more unbearable than the symptoms that sent them to the doctor in the first place. Wouldn't it make sense to let patients at least try the cheaper, less intrusive method first?

Brian has tried a couple of DIY solutions to force him to sleep on his side, like attaching a tennis ball to the back of his T-shirt and wearing a backpack to bed, but neither one worked very well. The tennis ball didn't stay put, so he'd wake up on his back with the ball twisted around to the side of his body. The backpack did a better job of keeping him in place, but it was too uncomfortable to wear all night.

Still, in light of how much he dislikes the CPAP, I thought it was worth another try. I was going to suggest he try a commercial device like the Rematee "bumper belt," which is basically a mini backpack filled with inflatable air pillows. But then it occurred to me that we actually had something that might serve the same purpose: a mini backpack Brian picked up years ago as conference swag. I fished it out of the box where we'd stowed it and experimented stuffing it with different things. First, I tried some old T-shirts from the pile bound for textile recycling, but Brian said those were too soft; if he had that squishy pack on his back, he'd just roll right on top of it. Then I tried filling it with books, which offered more resistance but tended to slide around a bit. Finally I went to the stash of old boxes we keep for wrapping gifts and found a couple that filled the bag snugly: one large flat one and one smaller one in front, shimmed up by an old pair of sandals (also from the textile recycling pile) on either side. When Brian tested the pack with these in, he found that it fit on his back without sliding around and was rigid enough to prevent him from rolling over.

So far, this is just an untested prototype. We still have to see how it performs in an actual sleep situation: whether it can manage to keep him on his side, and if so, whether that's enough to keep him from snoring and sputtering. But if it does, it may allow him to finally free himself from the face monster.

Obvious fix: a $125 commercial device. Ecofrugal fix: a makeshift gadget that took only a few minutes to assemble and cost nothing at all.

Return of the Master Tinkerer

Way back in 2011, I dubbed Brian the Master Tinkerer after he successfully fixed up three items around our house using mostly materials we already had. In the 14 years since, apparently, his skill has not deserted him. Just in the past month, he's repaired three items that were so badly broken any normal person would just have thrown them away—all using only the materials we had on hand.

Repair #1: Toilet brush handle

The toilet brushes from IKEA seem, in principle, like such a good idea. They come in three pieces: a sturdy metal handle, a separate brush attachment, and a nice-looking metal container to hold it. That way, when the brush part wears out, you can just remove it and swap in a new one, rather than having to replace the whole thing. 

But in practice, this system tends to break down—literally. The first IKEA toilet brush we had, the LILLHOLMEN, became unusable when the store stopped carrying the inserts for it. When we tried replacing ours with the store's newer brush model, it worked for only a few uses before snapping off. Our attempt to repair it with Sugru (a moldable adhesive) didn't hold up, and we ended up springing for one of IKEA's newer toiler brush systems that would work with the new inserts. And that worked okay until a couple of months ago, when the handle of the newer one came off too.

In this case, though, it wasn't the plastic piece that had broken. The problem was with the handle, which was designed to snap into place over the brush insert and hold it in place by friction. See that tiny dimple there in the photo? That's the part that was supposed to hold the brush, and over time it had simply lost its grippiness. We could put a new brush insert into the handle, but it wouldn't stay put. Both the brush and the metal collar that fits over it would simply slip out.

Brian initially tried to solve this problem by wrapping the end of the brush insert in plumber's tape. He hoped that little bit of extra volume would be enough to keep it wedged into place. This sort of worked for one use, after which the brush came loose again. So he tried a new tack: He took the handle down to his workbench, lined up his center punch over the metal dimples, and banged on it with a hammer. This expanded them just enough to keep them snapped in place on the metal collar. The brush assembly now feels slightly wobbly, but it's usable. And if it comes loose again, he can simply apply the same fix at no cost.

Repair #2: Toaster oven door

Our toaster oven is an old trooper. We don't know exactly how old it is because Brian inherited it from his grandfather, and we don't know how long it had belonged to him before his death. But it's clearly old enough to qualify as "vintage." 

Despite its advanced age, this toaster oven never gave us a single problem until this month, when the door hinge stopped working. The door would still open and close, but it wouldn't stay closed. Brian assumed the spring had given out, but to replace it he'd have to take the whole toaster apart, a time-consuming job that would have to wait for a free weekend. So for a couple of weeks, we made our toast by propping the door shut—first with a heavy pot, then with a long-handled wooden spoon jammed through the door handle.

When Brian finally got the sides off the toaster and took a look at it, he was pleased to discover that the spring itself was actually fine. What had broken was a thin piece of bent metal that connected the spring to the door. Unlike the actual spring, this was something he figured he could easily cobble together from scratch. After a little trial and error with different types of wire, he found that a heavy-duty paper clip made the perfect substitute: flexible enough to bend into just the right shape, thin enough to fit through the holes, and strong enough to hold the door open. With this new part in place, the toaster oven is just as good as new—or perhaps I should say just as good as old.

Repair #3: Headphone cable

Brian owns two pairs of over-the-ear headphones, and until this week, neither of them was usable. The culprit in both cases was the same: the wire that connects the earpieces to the main cable, which had lost its outer insulation. Without it, the wire kept kinking and sound wouldn't come through clearly. He'd tried wrapping the wire in electrical tape, but it always slipped off. He wasn't too bothered about losing the use of the cheaper set of headphones, but the other pair was a nice Sennheiser model that he hated to discard over such a trivial problem. 

I did a little research and found that there's an inexpensive fix for this problem called heat-shrink tubing. You slip it over the wire, then heat it up with a lighter, heat gun, or blow dryer, causing the plastic to shrink until it fits snugly in place. Brian thought this sounded like the simplest solution, so he picked up a small package of this stuff for $3 at Lowe's. However, when he attempted to use it, he quickly realized there was a problem: the place where the cord was stripped was above the point where it split into two separate ear wires. He couldn't feed the wire into the tubing without detaching it from the earpiece, and he wasn't confident of his ability to reattach it.

So, instead, he decided to try the electrical wire again, but with a twist: instead of wrapping it around the wire horizontally, he'd do it vertically. He cut a piece long enough to cover the bare section, laid the wire down on top of it, carefully folded it over to enclose the wire, and trimmed off the excess. Then he reinforced the seam with a line of hot glue to keep it from unfolding. This jury-rigged solution isn't exactly pretty, but it seems to be secure. When you plug in the headphones now, you get clear sound in both ears, rather than fuzzy crackling.  

One thing that definitely is secure, though: Brian's Master Tinkerer status. With these three low-cost fixes, he's proven yet again that he is worthy of the title. 

Darn, not so tough

See this picture? What you are looking at is something that, in theory, you should never see: a darned Darn Tough sock. To understand how this came about, I'll have to start at the beginning and explain how Brian and I became aficionados of Darn Tough in the first place, and why we aren't any longer. 

For several years, Brian and I were big fans of Smartwool socks. We both relied on them throughout the winter because they were warm, non-itchy, and machine washable. True, after a couple of winters they would start to grow threadbare and eventually develop holes that required darning, but we assumed the same would be true of any brand.

Then, a few years ago, we learned about Darn Tough. This brand also offers washable, itch-free wool socks, and folks in the Reddit Buy It for Life forum consistently claimed theirs were far superior. Some Redditors said they'd been wearing the same pair of Darn Tough socks for five, six, even ten years with no sign of the thinning and holes that had plagued our Smartwool ones. The company even backs up all its socks with a lifetime guarantee: if they don't live up to your expectations, it will replace them, no questions asked.

So, rather than buying Brian more Smartwool socks for Christmas in 2022, I decided to spend a few extra dollars per pair on Darn Tough socks. And for the first couple of years, they seemed to live up entirely to the hype. They were warm, comfortable, and as far as we could tell, super sturdy. We were both so impressed with them that I invested another $30 in a third pair for him last year and was planning to spring for a couple of pairs for myself as soon as my old socks wore out.

And then, last week, while hanging up a load of laundry, I discovered a tiny hole in the foot of one of Brian's two-and-a-half-year-old Darn Tough socks. If it had been any other sock, I'd just have whipped out the old sewing kit and darned it in a minute or two. But in a sock that I'd paid $13.50 for (half of a $27 pair) less than three years ago, and that I'd been assured would last at least five, it seemed like an insult.

Small as the hole was, it shook my confidence in the brand. I began to wonder if it was worth buying any more of them in future, or even keeping them on my list of holiday gift ideas for Brian. Going back to Reddit to look into the matter, I discovered numerous posts suggesting that Darn Tough's quality had been slipping in recent years. One thread from six months ago argued that, while they're good socks, they're not really $30 socks, and the lifetime warranty is simply a "marketing strategy" to get away with selling them at that price. The author linked to a YouTube video testing Darn Tough's wool hiking socks against several less expensive brands, and the reviewer found that their overall performance was "pretty average." Darn Tough was in the top half of the pack, but four less expensive brands did better—and one of the absolute top performers was Costco's Kirkland Signature, which costs only one-eighth as much. Many Redditors responded by defending the brand, but others agreed that it's overrated, and a few piped up to say they prefer the Costco socks.

This answered one question. If we could get socks of equal or better quality for $3.75 a pair, clearly there was no point in spending $30 on Darn Tough anymore. But it left the question of what to do with the old pair. Should we attempt to take advantage of the unconditional warranty and see how good the brand really was about honoring it? Or should we just darn them and be done with it?

After some consideration, Brian suggested we should give the warranty a go. It would be more work and it would mean being without the socks for a few weeks, but he felt like the company ought to be held to account for its lapse in quality. So I went online and filled out the paperwork to do an exchange. The process was quite easy, but the last step pulled me up short: The site informed me that to get a new pair, we'd have to return the old ones at our own expense. So the "free" replacement wouldn't truly be free; it would cost at least $3 for shipping, almost as much as a whole new pair from Costco. Given that we could simply darn them and carry on using them for the cost of only a few cents' worth of thread, it didn't seem worth it.

So our plan now is to treat these Darn Tough socks the same way as all our other socks. We'll keep them in service until they wear out, darning up the holes as long as it's reasonably possible to do so, and when that stops working, send them off to textile recycling. But we see no reason ever to invest $30 in another pair. Instead, we've shelled out $15 for four pairs of the Kirkland socks. We hope they'll prove at least as durable as their predecessors, but even if they start to develop holes after just one year instead of two and a half, they'll still be a better value.