Ask Mavis: Reducing Waste, Etsy, Rug Hooking, DIY Cleaning Products and More

It’s that time again. You ask, and I pretend to know things and answer your burning questions. It really is so much fun to open my inbox and see the wide variety of questions you guys have. Reminds me that my readers are so diverse and pretty dang awesome. So keep those questions coming and I’ll keep racking my brain for answers. As always, please pipe up if you have any input or are knowledgeable when it comes to any of the following questions:

Hi! You do a fantastic job of comparing food quantities and costs for your household vs the norm. It would be interesting to know how cooking from scratch affects your trash quantities. For example, cooking 4 cups dried beans from bins vs 4 cans of beans saves you 4 cans in the recycle or trash.

I don’t have a good suggestion for easy metrics for all cooking, but think it would be fantastic to see tallies with each “what we have eaten” post. Not that you need *another* thing to do and keep track of. Maybe I should try this myself…

~Julie

Julie, I am sure cooking from scratch generates way less garbage than not.  I’ll continue to show you what we ate for the week and the amount of trash we generated.  Since I am not doing a side by side comparison, you might have to draw your own conclusions.  I am working hard to steer clear of excess packaging, for both cost and garbage generating reasons, so I guess by the end, we’ll have a pretty good idea of what “scratch cooking” and the amount of garbage it generates looks like.  

Hi Mavis, new here and love your blog! A quick question…I need to get a new laptop (old one…floor and a 16 yr old, ’nuff said). I saw somewhere on here what type you use, an Acer, I believe. Now I can’t find the post about it! Would you be so kind as to steer me in the right direction? Thank you heaps!!

~ Lisa

Ah, the neccessary evil of updating technology–they kind of have us backed into a corner sometimes {even if they’ve slowly backed you in over the past 16 years 🙂 }.  Here’s the Acer I have.  It’s been very good to me, so I have no complaints.

One of your devoted readers here. I am needing some advice. I have been watching your goals for 2016 and keeping up with most of mine almost as well as you are keeping up with yours. I am amazed at how well you are doing selling your wool creations on Etsy.

I too have a small Etsy shop where I sell little garden totems and food display totems. I make all of mine from things I have found at garage sales, thrift stores and Goodwill. I just love making whimsical things from things people have overlooked and discarded.

My problem is I do not know how to promote my shop. It costs quite a bit to pay Etsy each month for promoting items and since I do not have a lot of things posted yet, I cannot really afford to promote. How do you get the word out about your shop? My shop is called Oregonwhimsies Thanks for any advice you can give me.

~Nancy

I am lucky because I have this blog to promote my shop.  In the interest of fairness, now I am going to use this blog to push YOUR shop.  Readers, pop over and check out Oregonwhmisies on Etsy.  Support a fellow reader and artist.  {Oh, and thanks for being a devoted reader!!}

Hi Mavis… Well thanks to your inspiration I am attempting rug hooking! I watched some YouTube videos, ordered a pattern just to get started, and some precut wool yarn and a hook… And I’ve lived it! So I decided to buy a used rugby cloth stripper, bought an old wool coat at value village and began stripping .., it’s fun, but the strips are too narrow …

I’ve looked on etsy and eBay for possible connections for a “head” that cuts a wider width (about 1/4″)…. Can’t locate any. Do you have any good tips for me as to where to look? Also I notice you said you just do the joining in your lap– do you use an embroidery hoop or anything? Thanks for any help!

~Karen

Yes, you are right, I hook in my lap without a frame or hoop of any sort. This is very unusual though as most people use a rug hooking frame. Personally, I cut my wool strips myself using a rotary cutter set, but The Dorr Mill Store carries a #8 cutter head {1/4″} and it runs $60 if you are interested in buying a new cutter head.

I am really interested in all of the DIY household cleaners and I just started with laundry soap. I accidentally bought aloe ivory and it is softer but I grated it and let it sit out for a couple of days and it dried out enough to let me food process it. The recipe says one box of borax, what size box exactly would that be?

~Brenna

I use the 65 oz box of Borax for my recipe.

Hi! I just barely found your website and have been digging in a little bit, but wondered if there is a quick link to a schedule. I’m curious about what needs to be done each month in my garden. Going to switch to garden boxes this year! Looking for help 🙂

~Suzi

As it turns out, I just wrote a month-by-month gardening eBook series.  It will guide you through pretty much everything you can possibly imagine {including garden boxes AND when to start/plant in your garden}.

Have a question for me? Submit them HERE and I’ll try to answer them.

~Mavis