Yesterday I went to Lowes store to look for a new carpet for my bedroom. I was hopping to find a more “natural” carpet, something made from recycled fibers or bamboo or something even organic, but that was not the case. I saw hundreds of types and colors, but all the same old materials.

I am still unsure what to buy. I have a limited budget and great ambitions. I have found out that getting natural carpets is a bit confusing. First of
all what is natural?

According an article from Earth Action Network, “These carpets (natural carpets) are becoming more popular in part because there are, on average,
120 chemicals in each new piece of synthetic carpet, including the adhesive. Many of these chemicals are suspected or known carcinogens, such as
formaldehyde. According to a spokesperson for Antibody Assay Laboratories, which provides services to health care providers, “These chemicals off-gas
into the environment, polluting indoor air with volatile organic compounds (VOCs) that can create symptoms from itchy eyes to shortness of breath,
headaches and nausea.””

The natural choices include wool, jute, hemp and rubber and the installation is also very important. Adhesives are minimized or special adhesives are
used. I wish I could just go to a local shop and get it. Tomorrow I will go to Home Depot and talk to someone. I do not want to get the carpet by mail because it will take forever to get samples, ordering and get someone locally to install it.

Price-wise the natural choice is about double the regular carpets and I am not sure if they as durable and easy to clean.

I cannot believe it was not so long ago when I was a great consumer of plastic bags. They accumulated like no other thing in my house. We reused them as much as we could: for garbage in some small trash cans, to carry other things etc. But there were always tons of them to throw in the garbage; I had no use for them.

Then Whole Foods supermarket started to offer recycling for plastic bags and right after Wal-mart did the same in our area. Of course recycling is not the best solution. About 500 billion plastic bags are used every year worldwide. They cause horrible environmental pollution and take about 1,000 years to decompose.

Since Ikea started to charge $0.05 for each plastic bag, consumption when down by 98%. In my favorite shops Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods, a lot of people bring their own reusable bags. Even in the normal discount supermarkets where I buy a lot of my veggies (organic and conventional), I am noticing that people are bringing more of their bags.

The reusable bags are a lot prettier and strong. I am so happy that every day more and more people are using their own bags most of the time. There are still a lot of people who are not using reusable bags. I think the shops should charge for each bag like they do in Ikea and in Ireland. That way those of us who bring our own bags are not subsidizing the people who use bags, either paper or plastic.

Besides, to dispose the plastic bags is also expensive. Paper bags are not a good choice either. The choice is reusable, non-PVC bags or cloth bags. But reusing the bags you already have is a good alternative even if they are plastic.

With oil prices going up so quickly it is even more important now to lower our consumption of any byproduct of oil and plastics is one of them. Besides they are awful looking, they have no personality; the reusable bags can be beautiful almost an accessory.

As I wrote in my previous post How to get rid of squirrels in the attic, I now have an update. The very first night after the one-way traps were set, the noise level was incredible. It almost seemed that the squirrels were trying to tear apart the house to break in. The noise level on the second night too was loud but on the third night I did not hear any noise. I think it is is working, though, I am still keeping my fingers crossed, I am confident that the problem will go away since these guys are professionals and they have done it before.

The squirrel trap (it just a door that only opens one way to let the animals out, but they cannot come in again) will be there for about 2 weeks.
According to the pest-control guys, the squirrels can stay inside for 2 weeks at a time max, because after that they need to go out to drink water and bring more food. So after 2 weeks or so all of them will be out.

I hope that the squirrels also go out in nice weather, just like people, so they can go out faster. Then I have to see if we need to change insulation in the attic and repair the other minor damage that they have done.

This has been a nightmare and I truly regret not to have acted quickly and bringing in the experts from the beginning. We are do-it-yourself people in my home, but some time this approach does not work.

A friend of mine is selling the house and he says that he needed to pay for professional help to correct things that he had fixed himself in the past.  According to my friend it would have been cheaper and easier to have a professional from day one.

I will continue to be creative and try to fix some of our problems, but I will be more careful in the future.