Worm Composters:

I know, it seems weird having 1000 or more worms living in the kitchen but it is amazing what they produce. These little buggers eat an amazing amount of food and leave behind some very productive stuff.
First the liquid that drains to the bottom of the composter makes our house plants go crazy. If you recall the plant from Little Shop of Horrors you can almost hear them screaming FEED ME when you drain that rich dark liquid from the bottom of the composter. Who needs fish oil when you can have worm pee!
The composter is built in three tiers. You start out filling the bottom level. Once that is full, you move to the next level up. Those little buggers are smart enough to know that the food is upstairs so they crawl up through the bottom of the next level to feed. When level two is full, you start filling level three. Once you are well into level three, level one is mostly free of worms. You can remove level one and spread the most amazing looking material on your garden. Their waste is rich, moist black compost full of valuable nutrients. Once you empty level one, it becomes the new level three. So you just keep rotating the levels around.
Now, you might ask, why would you want this thing in your kitchen? Well, they need to be kept warm first and foremost. And it’s more convenient than the basement.  Second, despite what we expected the thing does not smell at all unless you make one critical mistake. Any time you put food in this thing, it needs to be covered. Wet newspaper, wet pizza delivery boxes, etc. is one way to do this, and they will consume the newspaper as well. We found that a bit cumbersome but peat moss has proven to be the perfect thing. Each time we put in some scraps we sprinkle  enough peat to cover up the food. This eliminates the smell and also prevents the only other problem we’ve had. If the food is uncovered fruit flies appear. But we have also discovered that those little buggers just can’t get enough red wine. So a small-necked bottle (pony size wine bottles are great) set around captures them all.
Again, if you keep the food covered you will have no odors, no fruit flies and amazing compost. But once you start be careful not to turn your back on those house plants. They could get pretty demanding.  We’re really looking forward to next year’s rhododendron season - they’re basking in vermiculture over winter.

Compact Fluorescent Light Bulbs

So what’s the big deal with CFLs anyway.....
In order to understand that we first need to understand what’s wrong with conventional incandescent bulbs. The light bulbs we are all accustomed to use 10% of the electricity they consume to make light and 90% to make heat. So 90% of the power you pay for to run a light bulb is wasted. Compact fluorescents on the other hand are exactly the opposite, 90% light and 10% heat.

What this means is that it takes substantially less power to generate the same amount of light. For instance a 65 watt incandescent bulb can be replaced by a 15 watt CFL and still generate the same amount of light.