Asha Anujeeva's Attitude

My mother has always had a top loading washing machine. But I noticed that a lot of the laundromat machines are front loading machines. So I wanted to learn more about why people would use one machine rather than the other type.

Front load washers have been the dominant style of new machines sold to high end consumers for several years. All of the major brands offer both styles.

The front loaders save about $150 per year in energy and water costs as compared to top loaders. They use about 70 percent less water and energy.

Interestingly, a front load washer dissolves the laundry detergent in 5 gallons of water for each load as compared to 20 gallons of water per load used by the top loading machines.

As a young girl, I was fortunate to have a very nice home. My parents worked hard to not only earn good money to support us, but they worked hard at fixing up the house and yard so that we lived in a beautiful place. We had a large home, with a living room that opened into a family room and they were separated by a 3 sided fireplace and Fireplace Gas Logs that burned at the first hint of cool weather. When I saw this photo on the internet it reminded me of the home where we grew up.

My home also has a nice fireplace and I am considering changing from wood burning to installing vented gas logs. Besides the mess of cleaning up and disposing of ashes after each use of wood logs, the cost of gas logs is much less than the cost of burning wood.

In my preliminary research, it appears that the type of fireplace that you have in your home will determine if you can use vented or unvented logs. I found a lot of good information on the R. H. Peterson Real Fyre Gas Logs website and I was very interested in the Robert H. Peterson gas logs.

The web site has a lot of information about the different types of gas logs and their requirements. The Gas logs FAQ was especially helpful to me. I will read through all of the information before making my decision, but with autumn fast approaching I would like to have everything bought and installed so I can use my new fireplace gas logs by Halloween.

In high school, I was a member of the 4-H club for 3 years. We learned about gardening and care of livestock. One thing that I remember learning was the time we planted roses. We learned about preparing the rose bed and how to take care of the rose bushes.

Now I have put that training to good use. My roses are still blooming and they are beautiful.

With tomorrow the first day of September, our summer is about over. Actually, Labor Day weekend is the unofficial end of summer for this area.

I decided to buy some Planters and try to extend the vegetable growing season. By putting the vegetables into containers, I can move them inside the garage at night to protect the plants from frost, then move them back outside in the morning to take advantage of the sun.

Last year I tried this using one Planter and it worked very well. I had two different crop cycles of tomatoes. By planting some of the tomatoes in the containers, I was enjoying fresh, vine ripened tomatoes well into October.

I have also had great success with my Window Box Planters and am learning about raising geraniums. I especially love the bright orange red geraniums and this is my second year planting and nurturing these flowers.

My father has always been interested in conservation – even before it became “cool” to be “green.”  Part of his attempts at conservation have always included rain harvesting.  Ever since I can recall we have had rain water barrels at the corners of our house and our garage.  We would use the water collected from the rain barrels to water our gardens and wash the cars.

The only thing that worries me about doing this is the reports that I hear about acid rain.  That’s the biggest reason we don’t use it for potable water.  I don’t know if there even exists a filter system that could be purchased by a homeowner that would make it safe to drink.  That is one of the things that makes me very angry about the slowing down of environmental protection acts – the air that is being polluted hundreds of miles away from us is ruining our air and water.  I know that there are technologies available to scrub the pollutants from the factories at the source, but they aren’t being installed and maintained as fast or as well as they need to be done.

Well…. I’ll get off my soapbox now!  Conserving water is still a good thing.