Happy Earth Day!

Earth is our home. We grow our food here. Build dwellings and have families. I thank God for our planet. I was bothered by the amount of waste us earthlings produce. I started GumdropSwap as my contribution to conserving and reusing resources. I saw a need and created a solution. You would be amazed at the amount of children's clothing, shoes, books and "stuff" that ends up in our landfills. Just sitting there wasting when someone could be using it. That broke my heart. It wasn't easy to launch a new business. It's such a new way of living, I find myself explaining it over and over. People just aren't used to something "green" and good for you to save you money too. It sounds to good to be true I guess. But it took me over a year to try to solve the problems I saw with existing consignment/resale options. I approached my business model as a customer. People aren't used to that either. Big business tends to forget about customer satisfaction and focus on the bottom line in their financial report. I urge you to make small changes. Recycling more, reusing  more and encouraging your children to see value in things by using them in a new way (making a change jar or barrette holder out of an empty food container for instance). My boutique in Bridgeport, CT also serves as a collection point for empty CapriSun juice pouches. TerraCycle turns these and other product waste into new items for sale. Visit their site to see if they collect the wrappers or containers for the snacks your children love. They pay $0.02 for every recycled pouch which gets donated to the charity of your choice. I chose an Elementary School in my home state of Georgia.

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Switching Utility Providers Was Surprisingly Easy!

We just bought our first home. I am used to having gas heat. Everything runs on electricity in our condo. The first month we were here was November and the bill was $223+ and that was about the max bill we ever got in the old place when we were running window AC units in the worst of summer. I meant to do research then about switching to another provider. My UI bill even mentions a website to do comparisons (http://www.ctenergyinfo.org) Then, we got the next bill, a whopping $384!  We've been running the heat a LOT. It's been freezing lately. We just replaced our blower in our heating unit and supposedly had an energy efficient thermostat installed. So, I can't imagine how high it would be if we hadn't made those changes. After getting this bill I finally went to the website and after plugging in my zip code and specifying that it was a residence instead of business I was able to compare the prices of other providers. I chose the 3rd best rate because they use 20% renewable energy as opposed to 12% which was what my UI's rate is and most of the other providers. I then went to that provider's website (www.veridian.com) and was able to switch by filling out a simple form with info form my UI bill. I was expecting lots of paperwork and having to print and mail forms. That was all I had to do? WHEW! What a relief. I should save about 20% and I can't wait to see the difference. I am proud of myself for paying a slightly higher rate to know I am using more renewable energy sources! Yay me!