Sunday, August 24, 2008
Goin' Green
So I'm still sitting on the fence on this one. I'm all about helping the environment and doing my part to "save the world" but I find some aspects of this trend......unsettling. I've been travelling a little bit more as of late and in every hotel I've been in there is this fun little card that encourages me to "go green." I can do my part to help the environment, the card says, by helping the hotel cut down on its laundry services. The housekeepers will only change the sheets every 2nd or 3rd day, which is totally fine with me since I tend to wait just a tad longer than that to wash my own sheets at home anyway. Check one for me! Okay, so another way I can do my part is to re-use the towels in the bathroom. Not a prob. Seriously, I've always thought it was a little unnecessary to wash the towels everyday anyway. The card recommends hanging up the towels that one is going to re-use, and dropping the towels on the floor if they are to be washed. Easy, right? Wrong. The vital piece of information that the little "green" hotel card fails to include is that the housekeeping service will fold your towels right back on the rod, as if they had been laundered and never been used in the first place. No problem if you are the only one using the towels. Add another person in the mix and those towels just get all jumbled up to the point that no one knows whose towel is whose. Ew, ew, ew. Wouldn't it make sense to just leave the towels in the exact location that they were when the room was serviced? That way it's a win, win (win) situation. The hotel saves energy by not having to launder the towels. The customer gets that warm and fuzzy feeling knowing that they are doing all they can to "go green." They also win the piece of mind knowing that they are re-using their OWN bath towel. Genius, right? So I'm still trying to figure out who I can write to about this because it seems like the ENTIRE travel and entertainment industry is dead set on encouraging me to be unhygienic. I just can't stomach "going green" at that price. I'm going to Alaska this next week so although I'd love to do all that I can to keep those icebergs frozen, I'm going to have to do all I can to make sure those towels get washed everyday.
Thursday, August 7, 2008
My Secret Obsession With Kitchenware
It all started with a spoon.
Growing up at my house there was one spoon that didn't fit in with the normal pattern of my mom's silverware set. The head of the spoon was round, instead of oval. The round spoon quickly became my utensil of choice and I tried to use it whenever I could. It just made eating cereal (or soup, or ice cream, etc, etc, etc) that much more enjoyable.
Then came the cup.
I don't even remember the day the red Coke cup came into my life but it has never been the same since. It's the perfect size for your beverage AND your hand. My mom can always tell when I've been to her house because there is a red Coke cup on the counter (interestingly enough, I don't have my own set of red Coke cups, go figure). But just think about it...why would I want to drink out of a glass when there is a perfectly good red Coke cup available?
Now it's the plate.
I have a random plate at my house that I always choose to use whenever I get up enough courage to cook for myself (and just to clarify, when I say cook, I mean put a frozen burrito in the microwave). It's a great plate. It doesn't match any of my other plates. It doesn't really match anything in my kitchen because it was passed on to me by a neighbor. It's a "neighborhood" plate. I've had it in my kitchen for approximately two years, which means that it was delivered to me soon after I moved here. This is what it says on the plate:
This is our traveling N-E-I-G-H-B-R-H-O-O-D P-L-A-T-E to say "We love you! We think you're great!" Enjoy these goodies we have for you, then here is what you have to do... fill it with treats and pass it along, share love with your neighbor - and don't wait too long!
Do you think my neighbors would classify two years as being too long? I feel guilty whenever I use this plate, but obviously not guilty enough to stop using it and pass it along. But don't you think the whole spirit of the plate has passed? If I started it up again people might start to talk. I've considered making treats and passing them along several times....but I never feel like I can part with the plate so I just put it in the dishwasher so that it will be clean for the next time I'll need it. My other plates are really cute, they're just so BIG and all your food collects in the middle because the edges are so curvy. Great for aesthetic purposes, bad for burritos. I guess I could go buy a set of cheap plates and just use those but old habits die hard. I just don't know if I'm ready for that kind of change.
Long story short, I'm revealing this all too true secret obsession in hopes that you'll all reassure me that I'm not the worst neighbor on the block and that I shouldn't feel guilty about not "paying it forward" so to speak. After all, it's just a plate.
Growing up at my house there was one spoon that didn't fit in with the normal pattern of my mom's silverware set. The head of the spoon was round, instead of oval. The round spoon quickly became my utensil of choice and I tried to use it whenever I could. It just made eating cereal (or soup, or ice cream, etc, etc, etc) that much more enjoyable.
Then came the cup.
I don't even remember the day the red Coke cup came into my life but it has never been the same since. It's the perfect size for your beverage AND your hand. My mom can always tell when I've been to her house because there is a red Coke cup on the counter (interestingly enough, I don't have my own set of red Coke cups, go figure). But just think about it...why would I want to drink out of a glass when there is a perfectly good red Coke cup available?
Now it's the plate.
I have a random plate at my house that I always choose to use whenever I get up enough courage to cook for myself (and just to clarify, when I say cook, I mean put a frozen burrito in the microwave). It's a great plate. It doesn't match any of my other plates. It doesn't really match anything in my kitchen because it was passed on to me by a neighbor. It's a "neighborhood" plate. I've had it in my kitchen for approximately two years, which means that it was delivered to me soon after I moved here. This is what it says on the plate:
This is our traveling N-E-I-G-H-B-R-H-O-O-D P-L-A-T-E to say "We love you! We think you're great!" Enjoy these goodies we have for you, then here is what you have to do... fill it with treats and pass it along, share love with your neighbor - and don't wait too long!
Do you think my neighbors would classify two years as being too long? I feel guilty whenever I use this plate, but obviously not guilty enough to stop using it and pass it along. But don't you think the whole spirit of the plate has passed? If I started it up again people might start to talk. I've considered making treats and passing them along several times....but I never feel like I can part with the plate so I just put it in the dishwasher so that it will be clean for the next time I'll need it. My other plates are really cute, they're just so BIG and all your food collects in the middle because the edges are so curvy. Great for aesthetic purposes, bad for burritos. I guess I could go buy a set of cheap plates and just use those but old habits die hard. I just don't know if I'm ready for that kind of change.
Long story short, I'm revealing this all too true secret obsession in hopes that you'll all reassure me that I'm not the worst neighbor on the block and that I shouldn't feel guilty about not "paying it forward" so to speak. After all, it's just a plate.
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