Free Shredding at Staples in March!

Don't kill yourself shredding all that paper!

Staples office supply store is offering to shred your documents (up to 5 lbs per person) for free in March!

Get thee to your files and start sorting and purging right now and take that stuff on down to be shredded.


Tip: Bring your bathroom scale into your office to figure out when you have 5 pounds of paper. If your scale is not sensitive enough for just 5 pounds, weigh yourself first, then weigh yourself holding the box of papers.

Find out a little more here at the Staples site: http://www.staples.com/sbd/cre/programs/copyandprint/savings_central.html?cid=PS:GS:CP:CP:B:28:10605:%2Bshredding_%2Bstaples

I am not affiliated with Staples nor do I receive any compensation from them.

25 Creative Uses for Coffee Filters

I pilfered this from the Stacks and Stacks Facebook update, but it was so great I had to pass it on. I already tried two of them today! And I added one--used one for the veggie cuttings that I put in the compost bin. (I use un-bleached filters.)

1. Cover bowls or dishes when cooking in the microwave. Coffee filters make excellent covers.
2. Clean windows, mirrors, and chrome… Coffee filters are lint-free so they'll leave windows sparkling.
3. Protect China by separating your good dishes with a coffee filter between each dish.
4. Filter broken cork from wine. If you break the cork when opening a wine bottle, filter the wine through a coffee filter.
5. Protect a cast-iron skillet. Place a coffee filter in the skillet to absorb moisture and prevent rust.
6. Apply shoe polish. Ball up a lint-free coffee filter.
7. Recycle frying oil. After frying, strain oil through a sieve lined with a coffee filter.
8. Weigh chopped foods. Place chopped ingredients in a coffee filter on a kitchen scale.
9. Hold tacos. Coffee filters make convenient wrappers for messy foods.
10. Stop the soil from leaking out of a plant pot. Line a plant pot with a coffee filter to prevent the soil from going through the drainage holes.
11. Prevent a Popsicle from dripping. Poke one or two holes as needed in a coffee filter.
12. Do you think we used expensive strips to wax eyebrows? Use strips of coffee filters..
13. Put a few in a plate and put your fried bacon, French fries, chicken fingers, etc on them. It soaks out all the grease.
14. Keep in the bathroom. They make great "razor nick fixers."
15. As a sewing backing. Use a filter as an easy-to-tear backing for embroidering or appliqueing soft fabrics.
16. Put baking soda into a coffee filter and insert into shoes or a closet to absorb or prevent odors..
17. Use them to strain soup stock and to tie fresh herbs in to put in soups and stews.
18. Use a coffee filter to prevent spilling when you add fluids to your car.
19. Use them as a spoon rest while cooking and clean up small counter spills.
20. Can use to hold dry ingredients when baking or when cutting a piece of fruit or veggies.. Saves on having extra bowls to wash.
21. Use them to wrap Christmas ornaments for storage.
22. Use them to remove fingernail polish when out of cotton balls.
23. Use them to sprout seeds. Simply dampen the coffee filter, place seeds inside, fold it and place it into a plastic baggie until they sprout.
24. Use coffee filters as blotting paper for pressed flowers. Place the flowers between two coffee filters and put the coffee filters in phone book..
25. Use as a disposable "snack bowl" for popcorn, chips, etc.

Prozac Nation?

When helping to organize a client's house, we often come across old medicines. What to do with them? The old answer used to be to flush them down the toilet or simply put them in the trash.

Please don't do either of these things!

These chemicals are finding their way into our water sources and then of course into our bodies. Municipal filtration systems do not keep them out. The result, of course is that we all have traces of drugs (ones not prescribed for us) in our systems. This means that even nursing mothers are passing this stuff onto their precious babies. It certainly gives a new meaning to the phrase "Prozac Nation!" Let's keep our children and ourselves safe and dispose of old medications properly.

In my neck of the woods, local pharmacies are participating in a pilot program collecting old pills. I've listed these in this blog, but if you don't live in Sonoma County, California, please contact your local Waste Management agency or your local pharmacy and ask about what's available for you. If there is nothing---please start bugging your local government to start doing something!

(Be sure to remove labels before you recycle the bottles. This will help protect your identity and medical information.)

Santa Rosa:
Creekside Rx
Dollar Drug
Longs-4th St., Mendocino and Stony Point
The Medicine Shoppe
Rite-Aid-Farmers Lane
Tuttle's Hoen and Doyle Park Rx's
Walgreen's --All Santa Rosa Stores

Sebastopol:
Safeway
Longs

Rohnert Park:
Longs on Commerce
Costco

Cotati:
Walgreens-Old Redwood Highway

Program guidelines:

1. No lotions or creams.
2. Some pharmacies recycle the bottles with labels removed. Others ask you to take them home and recycle them.
3. This is a pilot program running from February thru July.

You can also take meds to the Sonoma County Waste Management Facility. The Household Toxics Facility is open every week for free drop-off of toxics from Sonoma County residents.

Call 543-4200 or visit www.srcity.org/safemed for more info.