1/16/09

Winter Warm-Up Week: Keep the blustery cold air outdoors by stopping drafts at windows and doors. Place a draft dodger -- a long fabric tube -- along the edges where cold seeps inside to stop it in its tracks. For smaller windows, you can make your own dodger: Just fill a large sock -- like an athletic sock -- with pebbles, tie a knot at the end, and place.

Running errands today? Try doing them back-to-back to save gas. When you start up a car that has a warm engine, it pollutes up to five times less than one that hasn't been driven recently.

Tip: If you stop at a strip mall where you need to make two stops, try parking between both stores and walking to each one, instead of driving to both stores.

No need to be too picky when donating clothes to charity. Only about 10 percent of donated clothes ever end up for resale in thrift shops; the rest are sold to textile recyclers. Ripped jeans, way-too-faded t-shirts and other worn-out clothes are recycled into cleaning cloths and other industrial items by these recyclers. They pay charitable organizations like Goodwill and the Salvation Army a fee for the old clothes, which adds up to a significant amount of money for their charitable works. So clear your closets clean and give away.

1/15/09