- refurbishing our dining room chairs instead of buying new
- giving the clothes dryer the day off
- employing integrated pest management
- celebrating the Los Angeles River
We also applied an old mindset to a new addition. We rebuilt a stairway on the side of our house with repurposed lumber. The 2x4s that we used were all leftovers from someone's building project that hadn't been used and had been set aside. Instead of adding this perfectly good lumber to a landfill, we brought home.
Yes, there were some rough edges here and there that couldn't be used, but this lumber was seasoned (thoroughly dried) making it less likely to warp or twist. We even were able to scrape down the old hand railing and reuse it. Primed and painted our new staircase should last for years.
Sustainable thinking applies to small things like reuseable shopping bags as well as big things like using wood that has already been harvested. Lumber is a precious resource. Wood shouldn't be wasted to end up in landfills and trees shouldn't be cut down without good reason.
