The End Of Our One-Car Era

After 10 years of using public transit (seven of light rail to my office, three of bus during graduate school), I am now officially a full-fledged car commuter. You see, my office relocated from the downtown core to one of those 'nice' suburban office parks. Unsurprisingly, it is not well-served by public transportation. Perhaps it was time anyway--the kids are getting older, and we're starting to see the beginnings of multiple, overlapping extracurricular schedules. It was a bit sad to break our 13-year run of being a single-car household, but there was at least one fringe benefit: We cleaned out the second car space in our garage, and threw away about six cubic yards of god-knows-why-we-were-keeping-it junk.

So the bad news is that we're now buying two tanks of gas per week. The good news is that the new mode of transportation has 300 horsepower and no less than six beautifully-proportioned, manually-selectable gear ratios.

Christmas Questions

Last week Maxie asked: "If Jesus came to make the world a better place, then why do people still litter?"

Keep asking, Max...keep asking.

The Winning Project

It's a sustainable, transit-oriented development with lots of green space, integrated bicycle access to campus, high-end residential & retail, and a 23.4% return on equity. Good job students, I am proud.

(This project was my jury's choice for 'best concept, best feasibility, best fit' for my 2009 Real Estate Development class at Kent Architecture.)

Don't Turn It Off--Kill It

All of our homes are full of electronic devices that use power when off. Estimates of so-called 'standby' or 'vampire' power use range from 10-15% of a household's total annual consumption. These devices sit there, waiting to be used, waiting for the remote control to activate them, telling us the time (do we need that many clocks?), their little red/orange standby lights glowing, waiting to jump into action.

I decided that I didn't like all those lights and clocks staring at me anymore, so I installed a 'kill-switch' on our family's living room entertainment center. Actually, what initially prompted me to do this was the surprising amount of heat I noticed when opening the doors of the armoire that contained all of our (supposedly 'off') devices: LCD TV, PS3, PS2, Wii, A/V Receiver, DVR. To accomplish the task, I simply mounted a surge protector on the back of the armoire, hidden from view but in an easily-adult/kid-accessible location, and plugged all the devices into it. Switching the surge protector off puts the devices into a true zero power consumption state--no glowing lights. (Detail: I did not connect the DVR to the kill-switch--otherwise it wouldn't be able to grab the shows it was programmed to auto-record.)

I've tracked our power consumption since installing the kill-switch in mid-September. Compared to the same 3-month (Oct-Dec) period last year, we're using 27% less electricity. That's amazing. Certainly a large portion (but not all) of this savings is attributable to the kill-switch. The remainder of the savings, I believe, simply comes from the fact that we're all paying more attention to our power use in general--turning off lights more quickly, etc. This behavior of course is a direct result of the installation of the kill-switch. It reinforces something I've learned over the years: The mere act of paying attention to something often leads to improvement of that thing.

Previously: Generating less trash.

Earth Day - Ancillary Benefits of a Recession

Aside from the gaping holes that appeared in our retirement accounts around October 2008, our family has (thus far) been fortunate to avoid much of the mayhem of the current economic crisis. That said, the pressure to “live leaner” and to carefully consider how we spend our time, money and other resources remains strong.

One ancillary positive effect of this pressure, which I’ve noticed over the past month or so, is that our family is producing about 40% less trash and recyclables per week than we did, say, six months ago. This is a reduction from about 13.4 cubic feet/week to about 8 cubic feet/week.

We’re certainly not eating less--in fact the kids keep growing and, if anything, appetites are increasing. I think it simply amounts to buying less crap that comes in packaging. Feels good. And you know what? I cannot, for the life of me, remember what that other 40% of stuff might have been--we don’t miss it.

Still seems like a lot of trash, though.