Early Spring

What a beautiful morning it is! fresh crisp air, sunny blue sky and blooming flowers .... This is especially welcoming due to extended gloomy sky past several weeks. I took my regular camera with me for my jogging to capture the lively morning.

Many trees are still bare, but start budding - the buds are mostly light green, some are brownish. Grass are coming out dormancy ....

Birds are chirping  .... mocking birds in front yards,  sparrows, finches scurrying around, robins can be seen in the neighborhood, but more frequently in the open field, blue jays are easily located by their loud noise and blue/white body..... 

My favorite birds around our neighborhood are cardinals and egrets. As I was approaching Russel creek park, I heard this familiar and pleasing cardinal's chirping, looking up, the bright red male cardinal was perching at the top of a big tree. Walking around the pound, I spotted a puffy white body in the dark branches of a big tree by the creek.  A grand egret was standing  on a branch near the top of the tree - lazily looking around, and enjoying the sunshine. 

The prevailing colors this morning are pear white, peach red, evergreen and of course sky blue.....and the spring green of the buds. 

The start of the spring  .... hope, promise and endless potentials! 

Reduce Reuse Recycle

Reduce Reuse Recycle, or 3R is the new paradigm for waste management and environmental conservation. One can find tips from this website for 3R. Here I will focus on the first R - reduce.

Reduce is to reduce consumption. I am big believer of reduce consumption for conservation. Reduce consumption does not mean one doesn't consume - consume as needed.

Among the 1st R - extend the life of big item appliances - AC, refrigerator, washer, dryer, computer, ....has most impact.

About 7 years ago, I found a way to extend the life of the AC unit for my second floor by properly "Setting Thermostat for Central AC in a Two Story House". This practice nearly doubled the life of the AC unit from 7 years to 13 years.

We have our refrigerator for over 15 years. Last year we had issue with its ice dispenser. We could not find a replacement part for it - we were thinking about dump this refrigerator and buy a new one. What bothered me was that it worked perfectly fine except the ice dispenser. I made crude fixes to the dispenser, and it has been dispensing ice normally. It looks like it will continue to work for us for a few more years!

Our dryer stopped drying one day about 9 years ago. We found the cause, and fixed it,  spending ~ $70 on a replacement part. In the process we also cleaned the dryer, significantly improved its efficiency.

Our washer malfunctioned about 8 years ago, we were thinking about replacing it. Before we went on shopping, we found the root cause of the malfunction was due to the washer lid safety device failure - but we had to replace the whole lid switch assembly - which was a bit too much. Instead of replacing the lid switch assembly, I fixed it - see "Kenmore Washing Machine Lid Switch Failure Analysis". The bottom line is that the washer has worked 8 more years and continues to work for us.

The list can go on and on, we use our first family desktop computer until it was obsolete and could not be fixed, we drove our cars until they required too many repairs....

Some thinking, a few dollars can help solve most problems we encounter with our appliances and significantly increase their useful life - along the way we  reduce waste,  save thousands of dollars, and reduce our carbon footprint by 10s of thousands of tons of CO2.