UsedEverywhere.com

Green Fashion on the Rise?

Green fashion is not something new, but it has definitely taken on a new persona as the socially-conscious and environmentally-aware choice for all those out there who are attaching themselves to each and every green trend. There are several different criteria for clothing to qualify as green. This includes certification as an item produced via fair/ethical trade, vegan/animal/cruelty free, made with a reduction in fabric waste, a reduction in packaging, is vintage, recycled, upcycled, or reborn, and so on. One only needs to quickly browse Ecouterre to see what’s new in green fashion. For instance, one interesting campaign is H&M’s waste collection made from material scraps upcycled from their previous collaboration with Lanvin. Eco-Fashion Week is hitting Vancouver this February following NYCs Ecofashion week last September. All of this is so reminiscent of Derelicte by Mugato, no?

Creative Commons Image courtesy of Pingu1963

Eco- or Green fashion is not just in the big times. As I have previously promoted through our Twitter account, there are lots of people taking this trend into their own hands, and saving a bundle doing so as well. One of which is Marisa who started her blog New Dress A Day last year, where she uses her creative seamstress skills to breathe new life into old dresses with three guidelines: 365 days, 365 dresses, and 365 dollars. There is also Project Restyle mentioned last week. My contribution is sitting back and being impressed; I know very well the extent of my sewing skills. Though used clothes now have a place on my shopping radar where they previously didn’t exist at all. For example even here in Victoria there are several used clothing stores, even recently established such as the expansion of Flavour, a retail clothing store, which now includes used wear. The Patch on Yates Street is another vintage/used clothing shop that is a Victoria staple.

For some reason whenever I need new clothes it never previously crossed my mind to buy used. It must be my parents’ fault. But after seeing some of the gorgeous greener outfits that are available, or can be made, I’m definitely more inclined to see what’s already out there before heading straight to the mall. Do you think used before you buy new clothes? Are you a regular clothing upcycler? Even just a quick glance over the Clothing & Accessories section of any of the UsedEverywhere.com sites have a plethora of options for restyling – and just wearing if you’re lucky enough to find your size! Next time I need clothes I will be starting my search there – green and saving money, win-win.

I Blame the Biebs

I feel old.

Why? How? I’m the eldest of three children; my brother is 15 months younger than I am and my sister… is 12 years old.

I feel it is my duty to provide guidance about things like boys (although I don’t think Justin Bieber is too much of a threat at this point), the perils of a fake tan and excessive eyeliner combination (keep it classy!) and how to negotiate with our parents. I’m young enough to understand, yet old enough to know better, so I like to think she appreciates the extra decade or so of wisdom that I can provide her.

This time though, I’m not having any of it.

For some reason, my darling little 12-year-old sibling has an iPhone 4.

creative commons image courtesy of marc.flores

My brother and I both had to wait until we were 16 before we were given cellphones, and they definitely weren’t nice cellphones. She got her first one around age 9. We didn’t agree then, but we didn’t kick too much of a fuss.

Fast forward a few years, I have my trusty BlackBerry, my brother has an HTC Dream (another smartphone that’s about a year old now). Our bills are highly scrutinized every month by our fantastic mother, who is kind enough to continue paying for them (I feel I’ll be cut off in the coming months though). Our plans were hand-picked for optimal cost effectiveness. I remember a year or so ago, a spat broke out when we were both running our bills up a little too high. Threats were made, there was a possibility we’d have to pay our own bills. Panic ensued.

Maybe a month ago, I’m sitting on Facebook chat, and sweet baby sister says hello (I don’t think she should have Facebook either, but that’s a whole other can of worms). “I got an iPhone 4″ she announces, I can almost see the tween sense of entitlement pulsing off the screen. I immediately text my brother to find out if he knows about this. He’s not amused. “We didn’t get phones – any phones – until we were 16!” I told him I knew that very well.

Apparently my step-dad went rogue and bought one for her. The rationale behind it remains unclear, and despite ringing up astronomical phone bills and demonstrating general lack of responsibility, the phone hasn’t been passed over to my brother. He’s still campaigning.

So I ask the question, when should kids get phones? What should happen if they abuse this privilege?

And my darling little Lexy? “I can pass for 14,” was her response when Rob told her that she didn’t need an iPhone at 12. The point was missed, and she chose to ignore me as I explained meticulously why looking like a 14 year old does not equal being a 14 year old.

Maybe I should try making a spreadsheet or something. A PowerPoint with pie charts… Hmm.

creative commons image courtesy of oonaghs_eye

The Kitchen Party is Over: An Anecdote from the Home Front

When I was a child my mom would delegate dishwashing duty to my brother, my sister or me. This was followed by much intra-sibling squabbling, sometimes tears, sometimes emotionally-charged threats. Once it became obvious that our attempts at diversion were not going to get us out of doing the dishes, we did them in as dramatic and exasperated a manner as possible. There was a lot of loud sighing, many accusations of child abuse, and speeches declaring the obvious violation of our basic human rights. Now that I’m “grown-up” (I use this term loosely), I do all the dishes. Because they are now all my dishes. And because otherwise I would be eating only microwave meals with my hands, directly off of the table. I even make dishes somewhat enjoyable by propping my radio beside the sink and singing along. All of a sudden doing dishes is an exhilarating and dangerous game – will I get electrocuted? Can the neighbours hear me sing?

Doing dishes at the office is not nearly as fun. It has a special place in the middle of these wild tales in dishwashing. It’s more comparable to having roommates, where you can’t throw a temper tantrum like a 5-year-old because you’re supposed to be mature and professional office-worker-people, nor can you turn it into a thrilling Russian-roulette-type adventure because you’re supposed to be mature and professional office-worker-people. So you do something inbetween, you compromise and find a middle ground amongst the dirty stares and dirty plates, because that is the way of office-worker-people. We need a system, a plan, otherwise our productivity will be suffocated by filthy teacups!

Now, our office is a shared space and so is the kitchen. Like roommates, there is always one who can’t seem to clean up after themselves. Fingers are pointed, judgements are made, denial abounds. But instead of behaving like children we complain quieter. I’m not the only one who makes this connection – we were donned just this week with the official seal of disapproval: your mom came by and didn’t like what she saw:

So we tried to make a schedule detailing UsedEverywhere.com’s valiant effort towards keeping the kitchen clean – this way our signatures beside our names (mall bathroom style) would show we were doing our part. Our schedule didn’t live much longer than 2 hours before it disappeared and inexplicably reappeared by the end of the day. So what are we to do? Soon the kitchen drama will affect worker morale… soon we won’t be able to take our food upstairs to our rooms because that brings bugs and crumbs and mess… wait, that was a different flashback. Maybe we should give “cleaning up after ourselves” another go? Or spy cameras.

Fame and Fortune

There are some strange things on TV these days.

One lazy post-work evening a couple weeks back, I lounged on the couch at a friend’s place while TLC was on TV at low volume. TLC has never been a channel that I could fully wrap my head around. All of the shows seem to fit into four broad categories: [cup]cakes, weddings, babies, and people doing questionable things with their lives. I always found it baffling that a show such as Say Yes to the Dress has the ability to paralyze even the most cynical of the (female) marriage cynics for 30 some-odd minutes. All of a sudden every man, woman and child is offering stark opinions regarding dresses in debatable taste and with staggering price tags. And then there’s Toddlers and Tiaras; probably the most appalling thing on TV. Don’t believe me? A radio station in Vancouver recently played an audio clip of a five-year old getting their eyebrows waxed for a pageant.

It’s as bad as you imagine it would be.

Anyway, I’m digressing a bit here. A show called Extreme Couponing started. “How extreme could a coupon book really get?” my friend quipped. “Paper cuts?” We had no idea.

creative commons image courtesy of sdc2027

The show followed “couponers” in the US that would stock up on various coupons, head to their local grocery store, fill up seven or eight carts, spend 45 minutes waiting as the poor cashier attempted to ring everything through, and left, usually with savings in the hundreds of dollars. They lead camera crews into their basements or garages, and gloated over the 400 sticks of deodorant they had accumulated.

“What about homeless shelters? Food banks?”

“Do you need that much stuff? Will you even be able to use it before it goes bad?”

We were filled with questions, demanding answers we would never receive.

Then I stumbled upon this article in the Globe and Mail.

Hurrah for all the people who use smart couponing to save their families money and donate the excess savings to people who need it! They probably won’t end up on TV, but they have more to be proud of than the people who are consumers for the sport of it.

Notice Anything New?

Like a good haircut, we’ve added a little update to our UsedEverywhere.com sites…

I am pleased to present to you, the FREE tab:

You asked for it, so you got it! “Free” was one of the most searched for words on our site, so we made your search even easier. Now all free items posted on any UsedEverywhere.com site will be conveniently located under the Free tab.

The advanced search features on the right-side of the page are set to “Show only free items”. You can check off any additional boxes to refine your search even more!

We hope you enjoy the new Free tab!

Hot and Cold

It’s been cold here in Ottawa lately. How cold? Well, check this out:

I had to see for myself if this worked. And it did!

So, yes, it’s been cold. And when it gets this cold we find ourselves drinking a lot of hot beverages, especially hot chocolate. 

Awhile back I discovered an easy way to make it. It’s so easy in fact that we don’t even buy prepared hot chocolate mix anymore. Better yet, the girls are old enough to make it themselves, so I’m not actually the one making it anymore! (Well, most of the time.)

Here’s how:

• Take one heaping teaspoon of cacao powder and mix with one or two heaping teaspoonfuls of sugar in a mug.
• Add a couple of teaspoons of boiling water and stir until you get a smooth paste.
• While you’re doing stirring, microwave a cup of milk for a couple of minutes until it’s really hot.
• Add the hot milk to your chocolate paste and mix well.
• Optional step: add a ½ teaspoon of vanilla extract, marshmallows, or milk foam.

That’s it! Can you believe how easy it is? And it’s probably better for you than the storebought stuff anyway.

As for me, I’m more of a Hot Vanilla kind of gal. I prefer a cup of superheated milk with a dash of really good quality vanilla extract. Yum.

What about you? What’s your hot beverage of choice when the weather gets cold?

Laptop Shopping for Those Who Know Nothing About Laptops

So last week my laptop died. Just “pew” and then black. When I took it to the computer store, the computer guy plugged it in and it started smoking. Gone. Goodbye. But today I got the official call from the computer people offering their condolences as they relayed the bad news – my laptop was toast, and “oh, by the way, your warranty is no good”. Thanks computer tech-support lady.

Exploratory Laptop Surgery Reveals Katie's Motherboard is Fried

So I took to Facebook and ask all of our friends on the UsedEverywhere.com page if they could help me in my search for a new laptop. I thought I would be flooded with Mac recommendations, but not so – Toshiba, Sony and Lenovo seemed to be fan favourites. So with my new recommendations (thanks facebook friends!), I headed to the infobahn to find out more.

My only requirements were “lightweight” and “longevity”, the latter of which is unfortunately not a specification I can just look-up. For my purposes, (broadly, “school” and “the internet”) I also needed to consider memory and storage space, speed, and ports. Depending on what you need a laptop for, in addition to these basics there will be other specifications you might want to consider.

Like many who know nothing about computers beyond turning them on and opening up Word, the laptop “specs” mean very little to me – they are but a series of numbers and letters arranged in uninteresting ways. But now that I’m in desperate need of a new computer and very conscious about spending my money wisely, I needed to learn what all of these “specs” are – even just at a very basic, superficial level. So let me break down for you what I have learned.

RAM: Random-Access Memory is a type of computer data storage. When buying a new laptop, I have been advised, one should look at how much RAM is already in the computer and ask how much it can handle if you choose to upgrade it. The minimum amount of RAM a laptop should have is 2GB (GB = gigabyte. A byte is, roughly defined, a unit of digital information storage). For better performance, 4GB is ideal, and 8GB is even better. For my purposes, I’ll aim for somewhere between 2-4GB. Basically, the higher the RAM the higher the performance.

Memory Speed: This goes hand in hand with RAM. There are two ways memory speed are designated, both involving series of letters and numbers. For my purposes, all I need to know is which are faster and which are slower and aim for something recommended or average. This list from the Laptop Memory Buyer’s Guide on About.com is helpful in this regard, and if you too are buying a laptop and don’t know where to start, give it a gander.

HDD: The Hard Disk Drive is another form of computer memory. Speed and size are considered here. Speed in a laptop is typically 5,400 revolutions per minute (rpm). Why is this relevant? This number is important for battery life and performance. In terms of size, most systems are between 250 and 640 GB, which is sufficient for a standard laptop.

CPU: The Central Processing Unit is the part of the computer that is in charge of the execution of computer programs and function. Different types of processors are recommended depending on what type of laptop you want to buy. This breakdown of CPU specs is helpful for reference.

Speaking of different types of laptops, the type of laptop you want to buy is also important to what specifications you need to know. Laptops are differentiated by size:

• Tablet PC, the smallest size, usually less than 3 pounds
• Ultra Portable (small), <11″ x <10″ Less than 1.3 inches thick, less than 4 pounds.
• Thin and Light (mid-size), 11-14″ x <11″, 1 to 1.4 inches thick, from 5-7 pounds.
• Desktop Replacement (largest) >13″ x >11″, more than 1.5 inches thick, more than 7 pounds and up.

Now armed with at least some basic knowledge about what all the numbers and letters mean, I can start some serious shopping and so can you! And you can even throw around some fancy computer acronyms in everyday conversation to impress your friends!

Pump It Up

Sometimes you just need a little power-up. However this can be difficult when you’ve already had so much caffeine that you can hear yourself buzzing, your motivational poster doesn’t inspire quite like it used to, and you’re drawn to Facebook like an over-caffeinated moth to a flame on a motivational poster.

What to do, what to do?

We feel your pain here at the UsedEverywhere.com offices. That’s why when the situation becomes dire, we crank a Pump Up Song (or nine) to re-energize. Laughing at the discrepancies in music preference is also fun.

Here’s what we’ve been listening to while working hard:

Black Sheep – Metric

Elephant Gun – Beirut

Barbra Streisand – Duck Sauce

Jungle Drum – Emiliana Torrini

Coming Home – Diddy ft. Skylar Grey

Cold Shoulder – Adele

So whether you’re at work, at the gym or feeling exhausted on your drive, we hope this helps! Happy Friday and have an awesome weekend!

creative commons image courtesy of mel_rowling

Recycled Stories from the Interwebs!

I have recently come across quite a few stories about two of our three favourite R’s: Recycle and Reuse. These also encompass a couple more R’s: Restyle and Repurpose. I wanted to share with you somewhat of a compilation of neat things people are doing with, well, junk. To keep things simple I have narrowed it down to three, in honor of the three R’s of course.

The first are these crafts made from recycled magazines. I only wish I had seen this before Christmas! I decided to only wrap presents with recycled material, like newspapers and old gift wrap and tissue paper. They looked horrible, but I didn’t mind until my boyfriend showed up with his gifts for me looking straight out of a Martha Stewart magazine! If only I had made some colourful recycled-magazine bows to put on top of my gifts for him – that would have made a huge difference! Next year… But I have to say, my absolute favourite is the National Geographic Magazine Shelf – amazing!

Designed by Sean Miller. Image from InHabitat. May 23, 2010.

Numero dos: “Upcycling” or Project Restyle from A Beautiful Mess. It is all about reusing, repurposing, and adapting unwanted, damaged, or otherwise unusable items that you already have in your home, instead of sending them to the landfill. This project is also meant to inspire, motivate, and bring together a large online community, who have been busy posting their creations on Flickr.

Finally, and probably one of the most amazing stories about recycling to the max! is that of Don Justo Martinez. Don Justo has been quietly collecting the junk of his neighbours in Madrid, Spain for the past 50 years. What has Don Justo been doing with all of this stuff? Oh, he just built a cathedral over 130 feet high. No big deal.

Don Justo's Cathedral. Image from The Huffington Post and InHabitat. January 17, 2011.

I hope some of these stories have inspired you like they have me! I will definitely be looking at some of the items in my home differently now! It’s amazing how a little creativity can bring so much life back into the things we’ve written off. If you have any creative and interesting Reuse or Recycle stories, please share them with us in the comments section below!

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It's all in the strategy…

You might be surprised to learn that I hate budgets… and I’m a business student. Or maybe that’s not a surprise, given I’m a converted English major and my specialization is Entrepreneurship. Regardless, it is now the year of the overhaul in my books, and it’s time to get strategic. Marketing strategies I can handle, ditto with presentations and group work, but what about every day things?

I’m a big fan of lists, huge fan you might even say. My planner is filled with Post-Its detailing tasks to accomplish this week, books to read, songs to download, writing topics, everything you can imagine finds its way onto a list somewhere in there. Strategy though? Not so much.

I run into this problem every time I have to pack a suitcase as well – I’m a notorious over-packer. I’ve been charged for extra bags more times than I’d like to admit (hint: this gets really expensive on international flights. Beware!). I frequently get in trouble at airports for having bags that are too heavy or at customs for losing track of how much I actually bought.

I’ve decided that my days of extra bag charges are over, and I have a new strategy:

1. Pack a bag.
2. Find a bag that will only fit half of what the first bag can hold.
3. Re-pack the second bag, leaving half of the items from the first bag at home

I’m looking for feedback for more helpful strategies – which activities require them? What is the best way to implement them?

creative commons image courtesy of rich115