An Affordable Mechanical Keyboard

 

       Tired of computer keyboards that feel mushy, flimsy and imprecise?  Thinking of getting one of those mechanical gaming keyboards, but you're worried about the high price?  There are inexpensive options out there that are still built well and that still have several of the clever gaming hardware functions. The Logitech G413 Mechanical Gaming Keyboard is one of them. 

It comes in either 'Carbon' or 'Silver' models, but both have almost the same physical specifications otherwise. The Silver model has a shinier, lighter colored aircraft aluminum plate on the top of the keyboard body than the Carbon model does and the backlight on the Carbon is red while it is white on the Silver model, so which one you choose is a matter of aesthetics.  I chose the Carbon because I figured that the darker, brushed metal textured plate would show fingerprints less than the glossy, silver one would. I don't mind that the backlight is red, even though the lights in my self-built Antec Nine Hundred ATX computer tower (excellent case by the way - other than the front plate being a pain to take apart and clean, so if you come across one, it's a good one to get) are all blue.  It's too bad that you can't change the color of the backlight on the G413 model. If I could, I would probably change it to blue, though the red is growing on me. It sort of matches the purple trackball in my Perixx Permice 520 mouse which I've reviewed here.  Spoiler alert... it's an excellent mouse.

While the top plate of the keyboard body is aluminum, the rest of the body is black plastic.  It does seem to be a very durable sort of plastic at least.  It is quite rigid and doesn't bend when I place it on my lap for long typing or gaming sessions. I find that putting my keyboard on my lap is the best positon for ergonomics and keeps my wrists from getting sore.

Another reason why the G413 is good for using on your lap is because it is quite long, 17.5 inches to be exact, so it goes clear across your lap.  It's also 5.1 inches wide, giving plenty of room for all of the keys to be plenty big. They are the size of those on a standard typewriter. It has every key that a full keyboard should have, including a number pad that has plenty of space around it so that you don't accidentally hit a neighboring key while doing rapid number entry.

It's also 1.4 inches thick, which isn't as thick as keyboards used to be in the early 90's, but much thicker than some of the newest ones are.  On top of that, it's rather heavy, weighing in at 39 ounces (about twice as heavy as a typical can of green peas). This is a good thing in terms of having the keyboard stay still on your lap (or desk if you prefer) while you type very quickly.  Maybe not a good thing if you are planning on taking this with you in your laptop bag so that you can have a full sized keyboard for long typing sessions.

The keys themselves are the main reason to get a keyboard like the G413, so let's talk a bit more about them.  They are Omron 'Romer-G' mechanical keys, which are generally held in high regard among the gaming community for their durability, quietness and for being easy to replace.  Unlike membrane based keys which have a stem that presses a dome on a rubbery membrane which then touches a contact on a circuit board to complete the circuit that tells your computer that you pressed the key, mechanical keyboards have a spring-loaded stem that pushes two metal contacts within the key's body together as you press down on the key completing the circuit. This is more precise and lasts much longer. 

I can type on this keyboard for a couple of hours straight without my fingers feeling tired. That's partly because the springs in these keys do not require a lot of force to press down, but enough that you don't complete the circuit by just barely touching the key (which is a major problem for touch screen keyboards which use a capacitive technology that's far more sensitive than what is in mechanical keyboards). It's also because the keys only have to be pressed down 1.5 millimeters before they complete the circuit, as opposed to older mechanical keyboards that had actuation distances of over 3mm.  The old mechanical keyboards on manual typewriters had actuation distances that were even further, so far that your fingers would get very tired until you trained the muscles in your hands to hold up to it.

The keys last a long time, but like any mechanical thing, they can wear out. When they do, they can be removed with a little key pulling tool and can be replaced for a couple of dollars per key that you can buy on Ebay.  https://www.ebay.com/itm/174278220524?hash=item2893ca9aec:g:vJUAAOSwx5pfCitz

The key caps, rubber feet and tilt legs can be replaced direct from Logitech as well. https://support.logi.com/hc/en-us/articles/360025903194--Spare-Parts  I don't foresee having to replace parts right away as everything seems fairly durable and I don't treat my keyboards roughly.

There are a couple of other rather cool things about the G413 too. One is that you can plug a USB-A device (or USB-C with an adapter) into a plug on the upper right corner of the keyboard. That could be handy if you wanted to plug your mouse, flash drive, etc. into it. Another is that this keyboard has a 'Gamer Mode' that can be activated by holding the function key (FN), and then hitting the F8 key. By default, this turns off the 'Windows' key between the left control key (CTRL) and left alternate (ALT) keys so that you don't crash your game by accidentally hitting the Windows key,bringing up the Windows Start Menu.

You can also use the Logitech G HUB from their website https://support.logi.com/hc/en-us/articles/360024689354--Downloads-G413-Carbon-Silver-Mechanical-Gaming-Keyboard, to customize the settings of your keyboard to change what keys the Gamer Mode disables. It will also let you customize the backlight settings such as brightness, whether it glows steady, fades in and out, etc., but not the color of it.  You can also adjust the brightness by holding down the FN key and hitting F7 until you get the brightness you want. I prefer it on full brightness, but you can adjust it from that to four levels of before it shuts the light off. In the G HUB, you can also customize the function keys F9 through F12 to do a wide variety of things. By default, they do special things already to control playback of videos.  I played around with this software for a while, but eventually decided that I didn't need it and uninstalled it. The keyboard's default settings are perfectly fine with me.

I really enjoy using the G413 keyboard in almost every way. There are only a couple of things that keep me from giving it full stars.  One is that the number lock on the number pad shuts off every time you turn your computer off. The next time you start your computer, you have to turn the number lock back on in order to use the number pad. This is an issue especially if you are using the PIN number system to log into your computer (which you can do with an update on Windows 8.1 and on Windows 10). The keyboard has indicator lights for Gamer Mode and Caps Lock, but not for Number Lock, so you can't tell at a glance if your Number Lock is turned on or not.

The other issue I have with this keyboard is that while the USB cable for it is nice and long, six feet long to be exact, it is so stiff and thick that it doesn't flex out of your way very well when you move the keyboard around.  This might make the cable more durable, but it's annoying nonetheless.  The USB cable has two USB-A plugs on it. One is for the actual keyboard while the other is for the USB-A port on the keyboard. It isn't clearly marked on the plugs, so if you don't want to plug both USB plugs in, you really have to look closely at these black plugs to see the tiny markings etched into them to tell the two apart. 

The G413 Carbon Mechanical Gaming Keyboard's regular price from some stores and websites is over $100, but I only paid $56 for mine at Walmart a couple of months ago as of this writing.   https://www.walmart.com/ip/Logitech-G413-Backlit-Mechanical-Gaming-Keyboard/583007950

I've also seen it go for that price on Amazon  https://www.amazon.com/Logitech-Backlit-Mechanical-Keyboard-Passthrough/dp/B06XR5MWGM/ref=sr_1_2?dchild=1&keywords=Logitech+G413+romer-g+switches&qid=1620948360&sr=8-2

as well as Ebay https://www.ebay.com/itm/373572880666?epid=12015059590&hash=item56faadc91a:g:8PcAAOSwHBNglsV8 though on Ebay, when looking at all the different sales offered for it, you need to check to see if it is new or 'refurbished'.  Maybe the person who did the refurbishing did a good job, maybe they didn't.

While $56 may seem like a lot for a wired computer keyboard, compared to other keyboards marketed for gaming, it's not bad at all.  The brands often considered the 'top of the line' keyboards on the gaming magazine websites such as Corsair, Razer, SteelSeries, and Roccat are all over $100. Some are even over $200. It's not that Logitech's gaming keyboards aren't very good either. They often score in the top ten of such '10 best' articles on gaming websites. This specific model doesn't anymore, but that's because Logitech has released several models since the G413 was released in 2017.  Logitech still supports it with drivers, so it's far from being obsolete.

If you spend a lot of time typing on your desktop or laptop computer and/or spend a lot of time playing computer games, you owe it to yourself to get a good quality keyboard like this one.  

Tiny House Living? The Tiny Apartment Came First :)

The Tiny Apartment Patio

So, you've finally found an apartment that has it all: close to where you need to be, has a pool, lawns with 'gasp' actual grass under the trees (something hard to find today in the Desert Southwest), a private patio, all the features you need inside and you can actually afford the rent without having to get a second job.  There's only one catch: it isn't very big. I'm talking about the patio.  For a gardener who can't really afford to own their own house, that's a big deal.  We were glad to find one that even had a patio at our price range. Even found an apartment in the complex that had the coveted North facing patio (sun exposure and shade is critical here - especially in the furnace of the summertime).  But, it's not much bigger than a large shower.  What to do?

After shuffling the stuff around a bit, this is what we've come up with for now. 

Welcome to my new personal garden!

The chairs are the bungee cord suspended 'low-g' style which are much more comfortable than the old vinyl weave lawn chairs. The only problem is, the foot rests are so long that, while two chairs will fit, only one person can have the foot rest up at a time. The red one is Joani's as it's a little smaller and shorter than the brown one so it fits her short legs better.  One great thing about this patio is that the patio above forms a roof so we can fold up the chairs and leave them out there without them being fully exposed to the elements.

The cart is an all metal, power coated one from Ikea. The shelves are vented so water flows through. It was the sturdiest yet most portable cart I've seen in a while that I could actually afford. It's narrow enough that it doesn't take up too much width which is the biggest limiting factor on this patio. It holds this asparagus fern quite well with storage below. The other plant holder/storage units are actually milk crates - stacked two high with the tops facing outwards to the side to form shelves. I wired them together so that they can't fall over or come apart if they get jostled about.

Ikea cart and real milk crates get the job done.

Each plant has its accompanying 'hardscape' element. The asparagus fern has an all metal, candle holding lantern also from Ikea which I like because the plastic ones fall apart in this heat and dry air. The society garlic has a tall, narrow terra cotta pot that I found at a thrift store. It doesn't have any drainage, so I fill it with water to create an evaporation pool which is handy for raising the humidity around plants.  The aloe has a ceramic dragon with a secret compartment inside which I got from Z-Castle, a cool little store that has the stuff you find at Renaissance fairs - even real swords that you can use for practice dueling - only year round.

The plants were carefully chosen for their ability to tolerate shade as well as a few hours of intense sunlight; heat and occasionally dry soil.  I rescued the society garlic from the clearance shelf at a Lowes.  It is planted in a shallow yet very wide terra cotta pot so that there is room for broadcast seed planting other herbs around it.  It had cilantro in it this Spring. Currently, it has a few flowers from a wildflower mix.  There is another pot below the asparagus fern with more wildflowers. They didn't seem to be doing well with the amount of sun they were getting, so I'm using the shelf as even more shade for them. Eventually, the society garlic may overtake the pot unless I pull the new bulbs out and transplant them elsewhere.  The asparagus fern was on sale at a Home Depot.  The aloe is from a KMart also on sale.

Yes, I do prefer planting stuff by seed but sometimes, you want something perennial with some size to it and that's often best achieved (without having to wait for years for seedlings to grow) by getting a potted plant.  I usually don't do that unless I can get them at less than full price though.  By seed is always the way to go for getting annual plants as they grow much faster.  I'll be replacing the wildflowers with herbs seeded herbs this fall.  I'm using the wildflowers as  living mulch for now.

Ceramic Dragon lurks behind the aloe.

I've yet to see any of the wildflowers attempt to bloom. Perhaps they are getting enough light to grow but not enough to stimulate blooming.  For now, the society garlic adds a touch of pink to the green pallet.  But there is variety in texture with the spotted and toothed aloe and the cloud of tiny almost spike like leaves of the asparagus fern.  By the by, if you have ever wondered why they call it asparagus fern, its because the edible asparagus plant we have in the kitchen is just a young sprout that grows into a plant that looks a lot like this if you don't pick it. 

In this picture above, you can see the evaporation pool formed by the terra cotta pot better. There is another, short and shallow drainless pot below the metal cart full of water for another evaporation pool.  I got the idea for evaporation pools from the observation that there is a wider variety of plants in the desert near open water like wetlands and ephemeral streams - partly due to the somewhat higher humidity in those places.  These evaporation pool pots are deep enough that they don't need filled every day, I usually just add a bit to them when I water the other plants.

While a huge back yard would be nice, it would also be too expensive for us at this current time.  For that matter, it would also demand more of my time, cutting back on how much time I have to work on other's landscapes.  So, this little patio of potted plants makes a nice little private oasis for sitting outside reading and relaxing.  I like walking our dog, Tigger, on the grass lawn under the pine trees in the common area and feel lucky to have that rather than a pile of crushed rocks, but this little patio gets me away from the occasional chaotic play of the neighbor kids.  While those kids can be a bit annoying at times when I want quiet contemplation, I am glad to be living somewhere where the kids feel safe enough to play outside for hours at a time.

Do you have a tiny garden space? What are you doing with it?  If you have any questions or have neat ideas that you've come up with, feel free to contact me here.

The sun: both an ally and an enemy, especially here in the Desert Southwest. 

We've been talking about the importance of afternoon shade and morning sun quite a bit on this blog. That's because here in the Desert Southwest (and everywhere that has very low humidity, high temperatures and salty soils and water), sunlight has a profound impact on plant health.  Not enough sunlight is a problem everywhere and only a short list of commonly grown plants tolerate low light levels on a daily basis.  But here, excessive sunlight is an even bigger problem.  Our humidity (usually below 20% unless it is trying to rain somewhere nearby) makes the negative effects of the sun, especially drying things out and damaging plant tissue (people aren't the only things that can sunburn) even more intense.

We've recently moved to a new place. this apartment was carefully chosen with the sun in mind.  We chose an apartment that doesn't have an outside wall that faces the West and that has its South facing wall shaded by large trees and other buildings.  Here, it is the long hot afternoons in the summer that make growing so many plants a real challenge.  We managed to find one that had its patio facing the North and with shade from overhead sun thanks to the patio above it.  The only direct sunlight it receives is in the morning from the East. 



Here it is at 7 AM in the middle of May. The sliding glass door opens into the master bedroom.  It's just big enough for a couple of folding lawn chairs and a few potted plants.

You can see in the photo that the sun shines very nicely into the patio in the morning from the East, but from the West, the design of the building makes it so we have full shade in the afternoon from the West and South.


This is the current layout for the left corner of the patio.  The great thing about using crates and carts is that we can move things around easily if we find this set up no longer works as the alignment between the sun and earth changes over time. In this position, each of these pots gets bathed in direct morning light for about 2 hours each morning and has diffuse light all day.  The metal cart has holes in the shelves so that excess water can drip out of the pots and eventually to the ground.  The plastic crates double as both plant stands and storage for gardening supplies. 

Currently in the garden, we have from left to right: garlic, a mix of annual shade loving wildflowers, a pot that is half radishes and half carrots, oregano (still sprouting). On the cart on the top shelf we have: aloe vera, cilantro and on the bottom: chives which are looking a bit poorly because they sort of survived being outside over the winter.  Most of the chives have already been harvested from the pot, but I am leaving some of them in there to see if they'll snap out of it and maybe bloom for me later on. 





Then, in the middle of the patio, we have this lovely young asparagus fern.  I didn't grow this one from seed, but I carefully chose it for its healthy vigor and signs that it is ready to start spreading.  It came in a tiny little pot that was too small for it, so I transplanted it to this larger terracotta pot.  Someday, I'll transplant it again to a pot about twice this size in diameter. The pot that the radishes are in might be the type I'll use. It's the first time I've used a pot of that type and I really like how wide, yet short it is, giving more room for the plants while being less top heavy than most pots I've used are.  I just love asparagus ferns! They look so delicate, yet they are quite hardy and can handle our weather very well. Most plants in my current potted garden are practical being either edible or useful in herbal remedies, but this one is purely ornamental. One might say that it is still beneficial though as having its bright cheery shade of light green year round has a pleasant effect on one's mood.  Mental health is just as important as physical health as one affects the other.




The wildflower mix has Siberian wallflower (Cherianthus allonii) a biennial that will be just leaves this year and will bloom next year; Shasta daisy (Chrysanthemum maxium) one of my favorites; Garland flower (Clarkia elegans) a native flower discovered by Lewis and Clark on their famous expidition across the then, mostly unsettled Louisiana Purchase; Lanceleaf ticksseed (Coreopsis lanceloata) one of the most beautiful and delicate looking yet toughest desert flowers I've seen, grows wild all over the Mojave Desert; Larkspur (Delphinum consolida); Sweet William (Dianthus barbatus) a perennial that will attract bees and hummingbirds; Echinacea purpurea the plant famous for being a natural antibiotic; Baby's Breath (Gypsophila elegans) a must for floral bouquets; Candytuft (Iberis umbellata) a member of the mustard family that I've seen growing among tickseed plants in the desert; Perennial flax (Linum perenne) which will hopefully persist for me; Forget-me-not (Myosotis aplestris); Baby blueeyes (Nemophila maculata) which will work with the Forget-me-nots to add a splash of blue to the mix; and Common poppy (Papaver rhoeas) another deceptively delicate desert flower.   I look forward to seeing which of these grow well in my patio.  I may need to transplant them to a bigger pot or a group of small pots if all of these species sprout. ;)






I transplanted this aloe to a larger pot after the wide shot picture was taken as I noticed that it was already starting to get too big for that little pot. I love aloe but it can be tricky to avoid overwatering it without having it dry out with our low humidity.  Hopefully, the soil mix which is high in perlite will help it drain enough to prevent waterlogging.



I'll keep you posted on how this experiment in taking the concept of morning sun and afternoon shade to this extreme turns out.  It's going well so far, but as in all gardening, time will tell. 

Strong Winds Need Not Uproot Your Trees!

Tomato cage protecting Catclaw Acacia from being broken by wind but letting it move.

Horrible Winds Ravage Las Vegas! Trees ripped from the ground! 

To watch the news the last couple of days, you'd think this has never happened before. It happens every year. Strong winds whipping through mountain valleys, especially in the Spring is quite common and normal phenomena.  It's what we do to prepare for them, or the lack thereof, that makes the difference between a Spring breeze and a disaster.

There are four things we can do (applies anywhere really) here in the Desert Southwest to keep our trees and the things around them, from becoming a statistic, and possible headline in the news - in a bad way.  Wouldn't it be great if they did a story about a tree that weathered the storm brilliantly and talked to someone who knew about why that was so?

1) Remove all stakes from recently planted trees. Let the tree grow strong by being blown about by the wind. Movement stimulates the plant (all plants) to grow thicker cell walls and to lay down more lignin cells in their trunks and stems. There are ways to make cages that let the trunk move quite a bit, but keep the root ball from rotating or pivoting in the hole. I've successfully used tomato cages that were anchored down on small trees and there are larger ones for larger trees.

If you remove the stakes from a tree and it falls over, it was planted wrong to start with. Dig the tree the rest of the way up, re-dig the hole right and plant the tree right. Before re-planting the tree in the same spot, check to see if it was a good spot to begin with - see #4 below.

2) Water the entire root zone! Do not just put a couple emitters at the base of the trunk. Roots will not grow in dry soil, so you have to apply water at least as far as from the trunk out to the drip line or furthest extent of the tree's branch canopy. If the tree has been butchered and many of the branches have been removed or shortened (probably because it was planted too close to a building, walkway, etc. in the first place), then you need to extend the irrigation out to where the drip line should be for that species of tree or shrub. You can look this up in many books and websites that give details about different plant species. Sunset magazine, your area's university extension service (ours in Las Vegas is University of Nevada), the USDA's NRCS, and some nurseries have excellent information about this.

3) Feed your plants. Leave dead leaves and the smallest branches (twigs) around the bases of the plants so they can decompose and return nutrients and organic matter to the soil in the root zone. Or, if you can't bring yourself to do that, get a leaf vacuum (many are blowers that can be converted with a kit that you buy separately or that comes with them) that sucks the leaves and twigs up, grinds them up and puts them in a bag. Then, spread this ground up mulch (free mulch!) around the tree. Purchased tree bark isn't as good as it doesn't decompose very well especially in the desert, but it's better than rocks. You can also use commercial fertilizer (but please use it with mulch, not instead of it)- read up from the above mentioned sources, especially the university extension services and the NRCS about what different needs different species have. For example, palms need very little nitrogen, but need a lot of potassium and micronutrients.

4) Plant trees smart. Avoid planting them where they will be in the way once they are full grown. The less you 'have' to prune them, the better off they'll be. The above sources talk about the expected height and width of the plant once mature. Sunset is good about adjusting these figures for the desert southwest as many species tend to grow less here, but maybe not as much less as one may think. Plant them also where they will have as much shelter from the prevailing winds as possible. In Las Vegas, the winds swirl a bit, but tend to come from the Southwest in Summer and North in Winter. If there isn't any or much shelter from wind yet, plant several trees - spaced far enough apart so they won't tangle with each other much once full grown - in a windbreak (NRCS has excellent info about this) so that they will create wind protection for other plants in future.

Good sources for further information:

https://www.unce.unr.edu/

http://www.sunset.com/

https://www.nrcs.usda.gov/wps/portal/nrcs/site/national/home/
 

http://forestry.nv.gov/ndf-state-forest-nurseries/planting-information-resources/

In Praise of Papier De Toilette Alternatives

When we started this blog, we said we'd be talking about more than 'just' gardening and landscaping, and we have done a blog article or two on other topics.  We think it's time for another to continue to show how holistic, or all encompassing, our view of environs enhancement can be. 

Today, the topic is something near and maybe, or maybe not, dear to all of us: the bathroom.  Not decorating, in this case, but using it.  To be more specific, finding alternatives for that product we all buy and use, but few are comfortable talking about: toilette paper.  First of all, what is it?  We all use it, but what do we really know about it?

Your basic roll of 2-ply, quilted toilette paper or 'TP' (Brandon Blinkenberg, Wikimedia Commons)

Toilette paper in the United States, at any rate, is made (regardless of what brand is largely printed on the package) by five companies: Kimberly Clark, Georgia Pacific, Fort James, Marcal, and Proctor & Gamble.  It primarily comes from trees that are grown in orchards or man-planted plantations that are carefully managed just like any other crop.  I have personally been to such a plantation in Southeast Oklahoma and saw those pine trees growing in rows with trees of different ages growing in different sections of the place.  As soon as they cut down a portion of a section that has trees of the age they need, they plant new tree seedlings in the place of the cut trees.  Those trees were being used mostly for printing paper, cardboard and particle-board products, but they told us that this technique is how almost all of the wood for products made in America is grown these days. 

Pine Trees planted specifically for timber harvest. The sort of place TP ultimately comes from. (Wikimedia Commons)

The farmed trees are taken to a mill where the branches are removed and the needles are removed from the branches to make pine oil for soaps and scented products.  The branches and smallest trunks are ground into a fine sawdust that is almost as fine as chalk dust. That's why paper products such as typing paper and toilette paper are so smooth and you don't see chunks of wood or fibers in them.  They mix the dust with water, usually grey water (that isn't potable or drinkable and is reused from some other process) and bleach most of the resulting plup so that it all looks uniformly white.  Increasingly, people are buying 'natural' paper which isn't bleached, so they don't bleach all of it anymore. 

The paper that is made for toilette paper is very, very thin so that it feels 'soft' to the touch.  To keep it from just wadding up the instant it gets damp, they add stuff to the slurry, kind of like they do for paper money, like cotton fibers and chemical additives to make it tougher without making it rougher. 

When they are pressing out most of the water and forming the pulp into sheets, some companies put patterns on the presses so that the sheets will be 'quilted' which we are told will make them clean our bums better. Well, that's what the red bears say on TV, anyway.  Some brands also press two or more sheets together to give us the 'stronger' 2-ply or even 3-ply paper.

There's more to it, of course, but let's get on to the main topic at hand.  There are three reasons why we suggest using something other than the usual roll of dry toilette paper: cleanliness, economy of effort and environmental concerns. 

Cleanliness: The regular toilette paper brands advertising today tell us that their product will get our bums amazingly clean, but can they really? Have you ever gotten a little (or maybe a lot) of poo on your fingers while changing a baby's diaper? Or, perhaps when you yourself are having a 'loose stool'?  What luck did you have getting it off with dry toilette paper?  Not much. Did you leave it at that? No. If a sink wasn't right there, you grabbed a pre-moistened wipe to get it off.  So, we say, why not just use a pre-moistened flushable wipe to begin with each time you need TP?  If you can't get it off your fingers with dry paper, what makes you think you are getting it off your bum with that stuff, even if it is 3-ply with the latest quilt design?

TP Versus The Pre-Moistened Flushable Wipe

Another aspect of cleanliness with dry toilette paper that we think about even less is lint.  In the course of our work in cleaning and decorating homes, we spend a fair amount of time dusting, with lint and dust attracting cloths these days, but that's another blog.  One of the dustiest rooms in any home, we've found, is the bathroom.  Why?  Out of curiosity, I've used different colors of dusting cloths to see what I'm picking up better.  I've noticed in bathrooms, that much of it is white, fluffy stuff of which the thickest layers are always near the......toilette paper dispenser.  It's lint and dust that flies off that soft stuff each time we pull sheets off the roll.  Using an alternative to the usual toilette paper, we've found, really cuts down on the amount of dust in a bathroom, and thus the amount of time and effort needed to clean the room.  Not to mention the fact that the people spending time in those rooms are breathing that stuff in. Talk about indoor air quality issues.  If you use pre-moistened flushable wipes, there's no white fluffy dust at all.

Economy of Effort:  According to studies by Charmin, the average person uses 8.6 sheets per trip to the bathroom (that they need TP for). They also found that a roll of their TP lasts an average of 5 days.  No wonder we have to buy new rolls of TP so often.  Here at Enfield Enhanced Environs headquarters, we find that we only need one or two sheets, three at the most, of the pre-moistened flushable wipes per trip.  A 144 sheet-pack of them usually lasts us around two weeks. 

If you want to pay less than $1 or $2 per roll of dry TP, you have to go to the big box membership only stores and buy 'off-branded' massive 30 roll packs, which then use up storage space in your home or office. Even then, you'll only get the price down to $0.80 or so per roll.  And that's for a 400 sheets-roll that the studies say you'll use up in less than a week.  Or, you can go to any regular store, that doesn't require a membership, and get a 144 sheet pack of premoistened flushable wipes for around $4.00.  It's $0.03 per sheet.  500 sheets of it would be about $15.  But, it only takes one or two sheets of the flushable wipes to do what 8 (often quite a bit more, if things get messy) sheets of dry TP kind of does.

So, maybe the flushable wipes aren't cheaper according to the math, but they are a lot cheaper when you think about things that there aren't exactly hard figures for, but that nevertheless matter a lot to us in our daily lives.  I call this Economy of Effort and it is part of the Enfield Enhanced Environs philosophy: Make achieving the desired goal take as little time and effort as possible. Our time is the most precious commodity we have and is ultimately the only non-renewable one. Barring the unlikely, however alluring, invention of time travel, we'll never be able to get back the time we have already spent. How we spend that time matters too.  The less of a perceived ordeal or effort the activity we are spending our time on is, the more we tend to enjoy it (sports enthusiasts such as marathon runners and such are an exception to this, but you know what I mean).  It takes far less time  and effort (and gas and wear and tear on cars, etc) to go to the nearest grocery or department store and pick up two packs of the flushable wipes than it does to go through the above mentioned extreme to get enough dry TP to last as long as the flushable wipes do. 

Space is precious too.  Even if you haven't joined the minimalist or tiny house movements, I'm sure you can think of better uses for the space that those giant packs of dry TP take up.  Meanwhile, a couple packs of flushable wipes can sit comfortably on a little shelf mounted on the wall next to the toilette. 

And, yes, they are flushable if you follow the recommended use and keep your plumbing working properly.  We've had plenty of problems with plugged toilets in the past, but not since we switched to the flushable wipes. The plumbers I've talked to say the main causes of plumbing clogs are faulty toilets that don't flush with enough water pressure and people cramming too many things in the bowl per flush. The wipes, they say, only cause clogs when too many are used at a time and the toilet isn't set to use enough pressure per flush.


Environmental Concerns: Our primary concern with traditional toilet paper is that it just takes far too much of it per use per person for it to even come close to doing what the companies claim it does.  As we mentioned above, and as you've not doubt observed yourself, it does take a lot of sheets of TP, even the quilted multi-ply stuff, to do the job.  Simply switching to an alternative that uses less paper to make and that takes less of the product to get the job done, is one way to cut down on waste. There are other, even more environmentally friendly alternatives out there, of course. We'll discuss some of them below.

We've focused on the pre-moistened flushable wipes in this article, but there are other alternatives to consider too.  None of them appeal to me, necessarily, but they are worth considering if one is desiring to stop using the TP we've been talking about but also don't want to use the flushable wipes.

"Family Cloths": These are essentially squares of flannel cloth (usually cotton).  You spray your bum with a mister or moisten the cloth with a little water and alcohol before you sit down; wipe your bum with it; then put the used cloth in a bucket of water mixed with alcohol or some plant oil such as teatree; then later on, wash all the used cloths. You can wash them by hand if you are really into it, or put them in a pillow case and wash them in the washing machine.  My grandmother said that the best invention of the modern age was the disposable diaper. She remembered all too well, and none too fondly, the days of having to wash cloth baby diapers before there was an alternative.


Plant Leaves: This is what some call the 'original TP'. It's certainly the most natural of options, if green, soft leaves are available.  You have to be careful, though, to make sure the leaves you are picking are from plants that don't have irritating or even toxic sap, spines, irritating 'stiff hairs' (fine waxy scales on the leaves that stick to your skin and then make you itch), etc.  If you can find and identify them, some good choices are: Verbascum thapsus or Common mullein; Stachys byzantina or Lamb's Ear; Artemesia ludoviciana or Woolly sagewort; or Plantago patigonica or Woolly plantain. The last two are quite prevalent here in the Desert Southwest in the spring.  As you might imagine, you'll be quite tempted to 'cheat' on this method by also washing your hands, and possibly even your bum, with something else when you are done.  If you should find yourself in the urban jungle where most of such wild plants aren't readily available, you could try your luck in the produce department of your local grocery store.  Some of the species or varieties of lettuce and cabbage might do the trick, though they'll lack the 'soft fine hairs' that make the above wild plants a bit more comfy on the skin. Check out the pictures below to aid in identification of these plants. 


Smooth River Stone: Yes, apparently, according to my research, some cultures use, or have used, smooth stones that were large enough to hold comfortably in the hand. They would get them wet and then basically scrub their bum clean, often having to rinse the stone off a few times during the process.  A fine alternative, is suppose, if you find yourself near a fast moving stream that is relatively clean and you remember to do this process downstream from where you collect your drinking water. 


Sponge or Brush on a Stick: This method is, as you might guess from the name, attaching a sponge or brush to a stick or handle.  It's a technique we are already familiar with when it comes to cleaning our toilet bowls.  What they say, is that you can get or make something similar, only with a shorter handle and much softer end material to do the same thing to your bum.  My wife tried it when she had shoulder surgery and had trouble reaching down and behind her far enough to use the wipes.  Apparently, the flushable wipe method is better, because as soon as she was healed enough from surgery to be able to reach as far as before, she abandoned the brush on the stick and went back to the wipes.  The key challenge that I can see to this method, besides getting used to carefully getting this contraption in position and using it without hurting yourself, would be keeping the thing itself clean.  About as much trouble as the 'family cloths', except you might not get any poo on your hand with the stick method. 

Verbascum thapsus or Common mullein (Wikimedia Commons)

Soft, fine 'hairs' on leaves that make them feel soft. They are actually wax projections on the leaf surface that reduce water loss from wind and help the plant be drought tolerant.

Artemesia ludoviciana or Woolly sagewort (Wikimedia Commons)

Plantago patigonica or Woolly plantain

Stachys byzantina or Lamb's Ear

While the other alternatives are interesting, and would probably work okay if regular TP were not available, but our own family would rather stay with the flushable wipes when we can.

We would include  more pictures of the other methods, but all of the pictures we found were either copy-write protected or were of branded products. We never recommend and try to avoid appearing to recommend one brand over another on this blog.