Coffee heat rising

How to Make Sustainable, Ecofriendly Household Cleansers

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The conversation over how to strategize a more sustainable lifestyle kicks off still more of what passes for thinking around my household. In a comment, Frugal Scholar pointed out the irony that discussions of sustainability often entail buying things.

That certainly does seem to be the truth! Case in point: after learning that CFLs are supposed to save bundles on power bills, I went out and bought enough for every lamp in the house. That, we might add, was not cheap. Used them for a couple of years and finally had to conclude that I really dislike the quality of the light they emit; that their initial dimness, which gets longer as the bulb ages, is profoundly annoying; and that the truth is my power bills did not drop significantly as a result of this exercise because I don’t leave all the lights burning all the time. Not only an expensive buy, but a bad buy.

So, item 1 in buying sustainable: proceed with caution. Buy a small amount (or number), try the product for a substantial while, and assess whether it’s really worth replacing the old eco-unfriendly version with new stuff.

Second, look around you and see if  you already have something in the house that will substitute for both the old ecologically incorrect product and the new (expensive, not very effective) “natural,” “sustainable,” “ecofriendly” product. Household cleaning is a rich field for this kind of trade. Here are a few ideas that have been tried around my house and found true:

DIY Glass Cleaner and All-Around Disinfectant

Windex is really nothing more than alcohol, water, a dash of ammonia, and a few drops of artificial coloring. Here’s how to make glass cleaner that works every bit as well as the expensive stuff:

Rubbing alcohol
White vinegar
Ammonia
Water

Fill a good squirt bottle about 1/3 full of rubbing alcohol, available cheaply at pharmacies and grocery stores. Add enough vinegar to bring the level up to about half-full. Add a tablespoon or two of ammonia. Fill with water. Shake gently to mix.

That’s it! It even smells like Windex. If you want it blue (or whatever), add a drop or two of food coloring…but first ask yourself why. Works well on mirrors, windows, tile, not-too-dirty bathroom sinks, and other hard surfaces. It’s a decent spot remover for color-fast fabrics, too. Obviously, don’t use it on paint or finished wood.

Scouring Powder

Baking soda. That’s it. Baking soda. Substitute baking soda, which you can buy in lifetime supplies from warehouse stores, for scouring powder. It’s mildly abrasive, contains no contaminating chlorine, and does a decent job at scouring sinks, tubs, and toilets. To sanitize afterwards: spray on some of your DIY glass cleaner—both ammonia and alcohol are germicidal. Wipe sinks and brightwork dry with a soft rag. To sanitize the toilet, be sure there is no chlorine in the water and pour in a little ammonia. Remember: never combine chlorine bleach or any product containing chlorine with any other chemical, especially not ammonia!

Bleach

Hydrogen peroxide is oxygen bleach. You can treat many stains with H2O2 , also available for very cheap at your corner drugstore or market. It probably has a mild disinfectant quality, but I wouldn’t rely on it for heavy-duty disinfecting. You may have to let peroxide sit on a surface for a while to do its action.

Want a free source of bleach? It’s called sunshine. Place a stained piece of clothing in the freezer for a few hours or overnight. Then take it outside, still frozen, and place it in full sun. Let it sit there all day. Amazingly, this will fade or even remove some very tough stains. I’ve had it get bloodstains out of white garments.

Hanging sheets and white clothes to dry on a line in the midday sun will whiten them and make them smell wonderful. Conversely, if at all possible colored items should be hung in the shade. They still smell great from the fresh air, but are less likely to fade when kept out of direct sunlight.

Dishwasher Rinse Agent

Plain ordinary old white vinegar. Pour a cup of vinegar into the washer right before turning it on. Glasses come out sparkling.

Some people substitute vinegar for JetDry and competitor products in the rinse aid dispenser. I haven’t tried this; vinegar is quite acetic, and I’m concerned that having it sit there indefinitely could damage the machine. It’s not at all hard to splash a little vinegar into the washer at the last minute. The stainless steel tub in my five-year-old washer is still spotless and shiny, and I never have a problem with clogged spouts on the washer arms.

Fabric Softener

Hair conditioner contains the same chemical that’s in fabric softener. It smells a lot less obnoxious, and there’s no need to buy two products.

Get a squeeze bottle (see below). Dilute one part hair conditioner to ten parts warm water. Stir or shake well. Store the stuff in a squeeze bottle to dispense into your laundry.

Dryer Fabric-softener Cloths

Dedicate an old, clean washcloth to this job. Dampen and wring out the washcloth. Dribble a little of your home-made fabric softener onto the washcloth and squeeze to distribute it through the fabric. Toss it in the dryer with your clothes. If I have a large load of dog-hair-laden laundry, I sometimes put two of these in the dryer. Gets rid of dog hair like a charm.

Furniture Oil

Did you know that mineral oil will work to polish and refresh oil-rubbed finishes? It’s cheap and it’s odorless. Just wipe on a thin film with a clean, soft, slightly dampened and wrung-out cloth. Take another clean soft cloth and buff dry.

Garbage Disposal Cleaner/Deodorant

Ice
Baking soda

Place a few pieces of ice in the garbage disposal followed by a half-cup or more of baking soda. Turn on the garbage disposal. Run cold water through to rinse well.

Another strategy is to drop half a lemon into the disposal, then run and rinse the disposal thoroughly.

Detergent?

Occasionally you do need some actual commercial detergent. Some folks make their own laundry detergent, but IMHO this is more trouble and mess than it’s worth. Instead, be aware of two things:

1. You can use a lot less detergent than most of us are accustomed to using, and still get things just as clean.

2. You don’t need different cleansers for different jobs. One all-purpose cleanser will suffice.

Dish detergents are sold in squeeze bottles so that consumers will use more than necessary. The packaging is designed to help you splash the stuff around with élan and without thought. Transfer dish detergent out of its squeeze bottle into some other container that make it easier for you to measure it out. I use a heavy-duty squirt bottle, available inexpensively at places like Home Depot, Target, or Walmart. One squirt is all it takes to suds up a sinkful of water or to saturate a sponge with enough detergent to do a messy job.

Also, you can dilute dish detergent. When transferring it to its new bottle, add a little water, rubbing alcohol, or ammonia (don’t use ammonia if you’re likely to use the detergent around chlorine bleach). This will make the detergent less viscous, but the viscosity of the stuff seems only to be an illusion designed to make you think the detergent is somehow more detergenty. Think about it: the stuff gets diluted the minute you scrub it around with water in a dirty pan or pour it into a sink, anyway! Diluting detergent makes a bottle of the stuff last a lot longer.

Don’t throw out the plastic squeeze bottle. Use it to hold the home-made fabric softener described above. Washed thoroughly, these bottles are great for holding houseplant fertilizers mixed up from dry granules, and also for dispensing weed killer (don’t use the same bottle for weed killer and then later for fertilizer!).

In the laundry, you can use about half as much detergent as the maker recommends, especially on lightly soiled garments. Use spot cleaner for stains. Your clothes will come out clean, and your laundry dollar will stretch twice as far.

Elsewhere, there’s no reason to use bathroom cleanser to clean the bathroom sinks, floor cleaner to mop the tile or vinyl, and kitchen cleaner to clean the kitchen sink. The stuff is all the same!

Get yourself an all-purpose cleaner whose odor does not annoy you. I happen to be partial to Simple Green, but Mr. Clean, Lysol, Fantastik, Seventh Generation, Mrs. Meyers, Method, or any of a number of others will do the job just fine. Put some of it in a squirt bottle for use in the bathrooms and kitchen. Often these products come as concentrates, and so remember to dilute it when you dispense it into a bottle. Add a little to warm water in a bucket and use it to mop your floors or clean the walls and woodwork.

That’s about the extent of what I have. What are some of your favorite DIY and sustainable household products?

Images:

Rubbing Alcohol. Craig Spurrier. Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Generic license.
Sodium Bicarbonate (Baking Soda). Thavox. Public domain.
Ball & Stick Model of Hydrogen Peroxide. Public domain.
Detergents. Nordelch. GNU Free Documentation License.

Live-Blogging from Elm Street…

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4:00 a.m. sharp: Burglar alarm goes off.

Sumbitch. Someone’s trying to get in the westside Arcadia door.

My pistol’s not loaded, and even if it were, the ammo is so ancient it would probably blow me to Kingdom Come before it did in the burglar.

Dial 911 while re-securing the side door. Can’t see anyone out there. It’s been raining half the night. What kind of idiot goes a-burgling in a rainstorm?

Oh wait: I forgot. The Son-in-Law. Madness knows no weather. He must’ve gone off his meds. Probably one of the 280,000 folks our esteemed legislators are throwing off Arizona’s answer to Medicaid.

Must remember to buy some new ammo and make a few runs on the range for some target practice.

Dispatcher: “Do you see or hear anyone outside?”

Homeowner: “No. But there’s no way this door could move unless someone tried to open it.” Homeowner privately thinks it’s a damn good thing she dropped a stick in the runner of the thing; otherwise the guy would’ve been in the bedroom by now. Dog slept through this episode and didn’t bark even when the alarm went off.

Dispatcher: “Well, we’ll send an officer over. If your alarm goes off again, call us back and we’ll up the priority.”

Homeowner: “Thank you.”

Up the priority? So it’ll be 45 minutes or an hour before a cop shows up here? Gaaaaaaahhhhhhh!

Taking a shillelagh in hand, I sit down to write this by way of passing the time. Nothing like a computer screen to make time fly.

Speaking of upping priorities, I have got to get some new ammo for that gun! Come to think of it, what I’ve gotta get is a shotgun. Maybe I can buy or borrow one of SDXB’s. Shotguns are far more effective against burglars: your aim doesn’t have to be good to do some serious damage. Also, burglars are allergic to the mere sound of a pump action.

Apparently my burglar was allergic to the sound of small plastic battery-operated window alarms, too.

These little contact alarms are great. Small and unobtrusive (especially if you have white window frames), they emit an ear-piercing shriek when a window or door is opened. I bought a passel of them after I realized a) I couldn’t afford to keep paying the burglar alarm company a monthly fee; b) I couldn’t afford the city fines for false alarms, which are frequent and random; c) I highly resented having to pay the city an annual license fee for the damn thing; and d) I was running out of patience with the sleazeball who ran the alarm company. Canceled the service, turned off the system and alarmed each door and window separately. Alarmed the security doors and some of the screen doors, too.

They’re a bit of a pain because you have to remember to set them when you close the door, but after a few times it becomes automatic: when you lock the door or window, you flip the switch to “on.” That is a lot less of a pain than false alarms, dodging around a system every time you come home from the grocery store, hurried calls to the cops and the alarm company to assure them the latest episode is not a real burglar, and dealing with a jerk of a company owner. And they do not do false alarms. The only way to set it off is to open the switch, and the only way you can do that is to move the door or window about an eighth to a quarter of an inch. Rain, wind, thunder, and passing F-16s do not set them off.

A good-sized earthquake might cause one to go off, if it moved the door or window. But I believe the dog and I would’ve noticed an earthquake.

The cops show up. They walk around. They don’t see a burglar. They leave.

Welp. Five hours till I have to show up for choir. Rain has started to pour again. The adrenalin high is beginning to wear off, so now I’m starting to feel hungry. Guess I’ll get some breakfast. Maybe there’ll still be some time to go back to bed…

Another Rainy Day Roundup

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This weekend another wet storm is drifting in from California. We’re supposed to get rain tomorrow, though it looks suspiciously like we could see that today. And once again the hysterical talking heads on the Play-Nooz tell us to expect cold…ohhhhh! even SNOW IN PHOENIX! Eek.

{gronk} I suppose this means I’ll have to haul all the potted plants back inside the house. Again. Speaking of things meteorological, you see last night’s Need to Know on PBS? Check it out. And do you realize the ideologues in the Montana legislature have proposed, with straight faces, to repeal science? No joke: read it and weep. LOL! Who would’ve thunk a legislator could be even dumber than the specimens in Arizona?

Sorta like repealing the Ten Commandments because we don’t agree with them. I love it! If this kind of stupidity weren’t merrily leading to the destruction of our republic, it would be hilarious!

Oh well. At least I won’t be here to see much of it. You young pups and your children will be the ones at the barricades. While we’re breaking out the fiddles, though, let’s see what’s going on in the blogosphere.

Ran across a new-to-me site called 101 Centavos, whose proprietor has a nice narrative voice and a propensity for posting entertaining copy. This piece on the joys of buying new furniture struck a nerve with his readers, eliciting a ton of commentary.

Speaking of your kids, Money Beagle came up with three good ways to save on disposable diapers. Another new dad, Evan at My Journey to Millions, contemplates the hidden and not-so-hidden costs of homeownership.

Meanwhile, Revanche, having agonized at A Gai Shan Life about whether, when, and how to move the aged parents in with herself and PiC, posts a moving story about her mother and her mother’s influence on her.

At A Digerati Life, SVB kindly offers an array of ideas for box lunches that don’t involve sandwiches. Much appreciated…I’ve never been fond of sandwiches. These sound great.

Did you know Google offers a service that lets you make and receive phone calls for free? Yes, even over a phone, not a computer. Bargain Babe explains how.

Money Crush asks what is the strangest thing you’ve ever done for money. Heh heh…reminds me of some of SDXB’s antics.

The recession ain’t over yet at the Accountability household. Mrs. Accountability reflects on the present spate of hard times at Out of Debt Again.

At the Ultimate Money Blog, Mrs. Money finds she and Mr. Money have different philosophies when it comes to stocking in food. She calculates ways to build a grocery budget that will work for them both.

Donna Freedman has another one of her amazing giveaways at Surviving and Thriving. Hurry to sign up: deadline is Monday!

Meanwhile, Donna’s daughter Abby, over at I Pick Up Pennies, has been wrestling with the many headaches occasioned by the insurance company’s totalling their car after an encounter with one of Arizona’s famed homicidal drivers.

At Bargaineering, Jim wonders what readers think about retailers’ asking customers to divulge their zip codes.

March Madness continues at Free Money Finance. About this time is when things heat up. Be sure to go over there and vote for your favorites.

At Get Rich Slowly, guest blogger Gary Arndt has a very interesting post on maximizing the value of your cost-of-living dollar by moving overseas. This is a strategy I’ve considered more than once, and as costs here start to rise with little or no hope of fixed-income sources increasing, it begins to look more appealing.

Over Forty and Loving It reflects on the overmedicating of Americans, to which one can only say amen, sister!

At Brip Blap, Steve reflects on what, for lack of a better word, might best be called blogger’s block. Is there one among us who does not know whereof he speaks?

Speaking of blogger’s block, Steve’s piece reminds me that it’s 9:30, I’ve been sitting here since 6:00 a.m., I’m hungry, and the sun is finally coming out. Bye, all!

Annual Windfall Arrives

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The state direct-deposited the $4450 it owes me for this year’s installment on my RASL (retiree unpaid sick-leave). Very nice…but what to do with it?

I’d figured to put $2500 of it in the Roth IRA and invest the rest in the brokerage account. This would plump up my retirement savings by another few thousand bucks. On the other hand…

I’m already in retirement. What we have here is a chunk of post-tax money in an era when income from Social Security and teaching doesn’t cover all my expenses. Right now I’m drawing down post-tax savings at the rate of $1093 a month to ensure that ends will be met, come what may. This left me, at the end of February when utility costs were nil, with a surplus of a grandiose $181, after all the bills were paid and transfers made to the savings accounts that hold funds for taxes, insurance, and extravagances like clothing and shoes.

Since I’m already having to draw down de facto savings (just not out of investment accounts—yet), does it make sense to invest this money only to have to start drawing it back out of the investment accounts in another few months? Just now, my projections show I’ll run out of after-tax savings in September, assuming I use my summer-school pay to cover utility bills and then spend the remainder on trash like a new washer and dryer or a new crown to replace the broken one. Videlicet:

Suppose, though, I were to fold the RASL into the survival fund and do the same with the post-utility bill net summer pay? Let’s imagine, too, that a miracle happens and I get another two courses  next summer, netting three grand after the high-season utilities are paid:

This has a sterling advantage: it allows me to live on post-tax savings, minimizing 2011 and 2012 tax bills while my IRAs and brokerage accounts continue to grow (assuming any growth is left after the Libya unrest settles down—a big assumption, for you can be sure whoever takes control will not be our friends). This year, I do need to roll the pre-tax money out of the defunct whole life policy into the brokerage account; so far only post-tax funds have been withdrawn from that. It’s earning all of 1 percent (at best) at Northwestern, and so needs to be transferred to investment accounts, which have been averaging 5 to 7 percent the past few months. That need grows urgent, as inflation is about to spike, big-time. Living on money in savings will reduce my tax liability for that rollover.

The second strategy will require me to defer the dental crown indefinitely, and also to try to fix the ancient washer or to replace the washer only, not the dryer. I will not be able to use summer earnings to cover those needs, nor could I start stashing summer pay to save toward a new car, which I’ll be needing one of these days. Soon.

Of course, there’s no guarantee that I’ll get two sections to teach in the summer of 2012. But even if that doesn’t happen, I could in theory hang on until the end of July without having to draw down from investment savings.

In theory.

Thinking about Sustainability

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On the way home from yesterday’s interminable visit to the Mayo, I dropped by a friend’s shop in mid-town Phoenix, a serendipitous little brainchild that morphed from a nonprofit thrift store to a wonderful design, clothing, art, and gift store featuring nothing but sustainable crafts and products. More about my friend Loral later: I’d like to feature her in Funny’s “Entrepreneurs” series.

Meanwhile, check out what she sold me!

This gorgeous purse is made of a 1970s leather skirt. Remember how we used to make purses out of jeans and denim skirts? Well, the crafter who designed this, Shannon Wallace, came across a buttery-soft purple (♥love!♥) leather skirt and used it to build this wonderful, incredibly lightweight bag. It has a silken lining, and the skirt’s pockets morph into handy exterior pouches for the bag. It’s actually reversible—you can turn it inside out and have the wild fabric lining on the outside. But being a sucker for purple, I’ll probably keep it this way. The gaudy flower is detachable; I’m thinking I may move it to one of the handles.

KJG and I came across it while we were doing the Willo Neighborhood Tour–my friend’s shop is in darkest Willo, and so of course she had a booth for the tour. I was going to pick it up when we finished the tour, but we both pooped out a distance from the booths. Hence, the visit to retrieve the purse, not quite on the way home from the Mayo, which from downtown Phoenix is halfway to Payson.

So while I was exploring Loral’s shop, she showed me this amazing patch of wood cellulose and cotton, called a Skoy cloth.

It is said to substitute for not one, not two, but 15 rolls of paper towels! You get it wet and use it as a kitchen rag/sponge, and supposedly you’ll never have to use another paper towel as long as you live. Loral said she tried one and was convinced. Well…nothing would do, of course, but what I had to have one of those.

Amazingly, the thing actually works as advertised! Maybe better than advertised. I just tried it on the kitchen counter, which once again had acquired a fine haze of olive oil and dirt, and by golly, the tiles are shining. It also cleaned the brightwork around the sink better than I’ve managed in many a moon—with no special products.

Visiting Loral’s shop and imbibing her enthusiasm for sustainability left me thinking about ways that I might waste less paper, use less gasoline, spread fewer chemicals around, live a little lighter on the asphalt-covered land.

Pretty soon the City is going to stop picking up the garbage in the alleys, instead inflicting yet another barrel on residents to roll out to the front curb and requiring everyone to dump their bulk trash in their front yards. My plan is to get rid of the blue recycling barrel at that time, since I don’t have room to store two big barrels in the garage and there’s noplace in the yard I wish to grace with an extra garbage bin.

To accomplish that, I hope to start producing a lot less recyclable trash than I’ve been doing. So…have begun thinking about how to live a less trash-intensive lifestyle. The trick would be to avoid bringing stuff into the house that has to be thrown out or recycled. Among the strategies that come to mind:

• Use cloth bags or reuse plastic bags for grocery shopping and small sundries from hardware stores, drugstores, and the like.

• Buy products in bulk. Even if something comes in plastic and cardboard, obviously if you can buy a larger store of the product, one package is better than a half-dozen.

• Get off mailing lists.

• Buy food at farmer’s markets and other local merchants who use minimal packaging.

• Cancel newspapers; read news online instead.

• Read books on a Kindle or similar hardware.

• Substitute ordinary household products such as vinegar and baking soda, often available in bulk, for commercial chemicals. Package them in your own reusable squirt bottles.

• Use steam, not a mop and harsh chemicals, to clean.

That’s just a few ideas. Many folks have made an art of low-impact living and can offer more and better strategies. But it’s a start.

With Trader Joe’s and now even Safeway peddling “green” reusable shopping bags, it’s surprising that Americans haven’t discovered the wonderful string bags we used to see in England. I had a couple of them, which would roll up and hide in a tiny corner of a bag, briefcase, or pocket. None of the shopkeepers up and down the streets, to whom one repaired every day or two because one’s flat didn’t have a refrigerator large enough to hold a week’s worth of groceries (nor did one have a car to carry that much stuff in, anyway), ever imagined handing out paper or plastic bags to customers. That you would bring your own bags was a given.

The beauty of the string bag is that it expands almost indefinitely. I could easily fit two or three days’ worth of goods in just one of them. Two would hold a lot of food.

Amazon offers a couple that resemble the version the English carried around: This one from EuroSac…

And one from Simple Ecology that comes in colors and costs two and a half bucks less.

And there’s a variant designed with a shoulder sling, also from Eurosac…

Any of these will hold a lot of stuff and take up hardly any space in your purse, briefcase, or car trunk.

Costco, my primary source of groceries, household products, and casual clothing, already eschews bags. But they pack your stuff in cardboard boxes, which take up a lot of space in the trash bin and are a nuisance. They’re too heavy to lift out of the cart, so I have to unpack each one, repack it into the plastic bins in the back of the van, and then once home unpack and carry the stuff indoors one, two, or three pieces at a time. My plan, then, is to get a bunch of string or fabric shopping bags, ask the Costco staff to pack the junk in those, and let Costco keep the cardboard. Maybe if enough of us do that, Costco will ask their suppliers to ship in less wasteful containers.

Maybe we can all use less wasteful containers!

Gasoline Costs Putting a Crimp on Life

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{sigh} I had to turn down an invite to meet SDXB and NG in the West Valley on Friday. They want to go to some goofy event at the Ben Avery Range where enthusiasts of antique guns get dressed up in Wild West clothes. I’m sure it’ll be fun, but I just can’t afford the gasoline to drive out there.

Gas is now over $3.25 a gallon here. I paid $3.29 for an emergency purchase, shelling out $15 to get to where I needed to go before I could afford to fill up the tank. When this month’s budget cycle restarted, on Monday, Costco was charging just $3.11 at the outlet where I filled up; that racked up $40.

I’ve budgeted $100 a month for gasoline, but that would normally cover only trips to and from the college and the four trips to Scottsdale I have to make each month. But this week I’ve had an extraordinary number of schleps to the East Valley: Earlier this week to Scottsdale Fashion Square to pick up a little ottoman I’d ordered months ago from Crate & Barrel; then today to the Mayo at 140th Street and Shea, an unholy long drive that will be stretched because I have to come back by way of McDowell Road, many many miles south of Shea Boulevard; then out to Scottsdale again tomorrow to give a dog & pony show to my business group, then race to the client’s to pick up some work, then fly back up to the campus at 32nd Street and Union Hills.

Ugh. Most of today and tomorrow will be spent driving, and I’m guessing all those junkets will burn half to three-quarters of a tank of gas.

This morning’s journey to the Mayo will take place during the darkest rush hour (driving into the sun, naturally), and so hypermiling will be pretty much out of the question. In a culture where normal people charge up to signals at 45 mph and then jam on the brakes at the red light, drifting toward a light with your foot off the gas freaking drives your fellow homicidal roadhogs screaming insane.

Some of our fellow citizens around here are literally homicidal, so one has to be careful.

You’ll recall “hypermiling” from the 2008 run-up in gas prices, right? The idea is to get around using as little gas as possible by applying an array of conservation techniques to your car and driving habits:

• Try to avoid applying the brakes any more than absolutely necessary. Watch the traffic flow ahead and, when red lights start to glow, coast to decelerate. Try to reach traffic stopped at the light as it’s beginning to move, so you don’t have to start up from a dead stop.

• Accelerate from a stop slowly. It’s a car, not a jackrabbit.

• When starting from a dead stop, allow the car to idle forward for a second before stepping on the gas.

• Use the cruise control to maintain speed on the freeway and on steadily moving surface streets, and use it to accelerate and decelerate. Use the “coast” and “acc” functions to slow and speed gently. Try to keep your foot off the gas pedal as much as possible. But n.b.: don’t use cruise control on an uphill grade.

• When approaching a grade, speed up a little (stay sane about this) to build momentum; then allow the car to slow as it climbs. Use the downhill grade to get back up to your cruising speed before resuming the cruise control.

• Never drive faster than 60 mph on an urban freeway. Try to keep your speed at around 55 mph. Stay in the slow lane and take it easy.

• If it looks like you will have to stand for more than 30 seconds (for example, at a long stoplight, in a gas station line, at a railroad crossing), turn off the engine.

Using these techniques, I’ve managed to extract about 25 mpg from my aged Toyota Sienna. That’s not bad, since it normally makes about 16 mpg in the city, and maybe 20 on the open road. But it’s still expensive to drive to Hell and back every day.

The real trick to hypermiling? Stay out of your car!

😉