Overripe fruits and vegetables can make you feel wasteful if you don't get around to eating them in time. But just because something is a little too mushy doesn't mean it's no longer edible. Overripe berries can be frozen and saved to be used in smoothies or pureed into a berry sauce for dessert toppings. Vegetables like carrots, celery, mushrooms and corn (on the cob) can be simmered into delicious broth. And squishy tomatoes are the perfect candidate to be made into homemade sauces that can be canned or frozen. You can even freeze overripe tomatoes and grate them on a box grater to cook when you want to add "fresh" tomatoes to a dish.

ANDREWS MCMEEL SYNDICATION

When mineral deposits and stains build up in the toilet, it can be tempting to reach for caustic household bleach or chemical toilet bowl cleaners. But many cleaners are full of chemicals that not only create an unhealthy air environment in the bathroom, but can also pollute our waterways. Instead, before going to sleep, generously sprinkle baking soda all over the inside of the toilet. Throughout the night, the baking soda will eat away at the deposits and stains. In the morning, scrub and flush twice to reveal a sparkling-clean toilet.

ANDREWS MCMEEL SYNDICATION

There have been stories circulating that single-use Styrofoam cups are actually better for the environment than paper cups because foam cups are recyclable. While technically this is true (the coating on paper cups makes them hard to recycle), this does not make foam cups better for the environment. Styrofoam is recyclable, but it's also hard to recycle, with very few facilities that can turn it into new plastic products. And at the end of the day, it's still a single-use product that could easily be replaced with a much kinder alternative: reusable containers.

ANDREWS MCMEEL SYNDICATION