Have a hard time keeping houseplants alive? Going away on vacation and wanting your plants to thrive while you're away? Here's a simple way to give them a fighting chance and recycle newspaper at the same time: Give your thirsty houseplant a good drink of water, then place a layer of newspaper on top of the soil. Keep watering until the newspaper is completely saturated. This does two things: It help seal in the moisture in the soil so the roots stay moist, and over time, the newspaper will break down into a beneficial mulch for the houseplant. If you have arid-loving plants like succulents and cacti, all you have to do is remove buds and flowers and place them in a sunny spot. Removing the flowers means the plant needs less water to stay alive. In fact, they can go months without watering if you pinch the buds off.

If you have a backyard compost pile, it's obvious to many people that items like bones, meat and used cooking oil should never be tossed in, because they attract pests and can ruin a compost's moisture balance. But there are other never-add items that you may not know about: Sawdust, for example, comes from trees and seems compostable, but unless you know how the lumber was treated, you should not add it, since there may be chemical residue. Dead houseplants should also be avoided, because you could be adding disease to the compost. And finally, walnuts: They have a natural chemical called juglone that is toxic to plants. So adding walnuts to compost used in a garden could act like a herbicide over time.

Do you have a closet full of unwanted clothes and a charitable cause you care about deeply? The website fashionproject.com helps take out all the work and fuss of setting up an online site to sell these items. In just a few simple steps, the website helps you design and build your own personal fundraising campaign. It helps you tell your story, personalize it with your own photos and set up a shop where people can buy your items. You can also just fill up a donation bag and send it to the site free of charge. It will photograph, upload, sell and ship your unwanted clothes and give the money to the charitable cause of your choice. Learn more at fashionproject.com.