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Bleach Bottle - Shutterstock

Is Bleach Superbad For The Environment? You?

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Is common household bleach a threat to the environment? Can it kill you?

Bleach Bottle - Shutterstock

 

BACK TO BASICS | Call me a freak, but putting on rubber gloves and plunging my hands into my own toilet bowls to clean them with a scrubbing sponge doesn’t bother me at all. What does bother me is that no matter what cleaning products I use, the bowls of my newish toilets look dirty again in days. Frustrated by the ineffectiveness of Vim, Ajax, Lysol et al., I turned to cheap, common household bleach. Read more

Terracotta Pots - Casey Phaisalakani

Clever Ways To Use Ordinary Flower Pots

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Here’s how to create instant impact in the garden by using the same ordinary element over and over again.

Terracotta Pots - Casey Phaisalakani

 

CHEAP & CHIC | It takes a certain kind of fearlessness to believe that you can make a cliché look fresh. The cliché I’m referring to here is the wide-rimmed dime-a-dozen terracotta pot found in every nursery and hardware store from there to China. You know the (inexpensive) kind I’m talking about, pictured here empty. If you’re like me, you cannot wait to replace yours with their more curvaceous Italian cousins, or some skinny Long Toms from England, or something stunning in Asian stoneware.  Read more

Marble Quad Tray 18Karat - Doris Cheung

Go, Go {Kitchen} Gadget: 2 Top Products

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Sweet solutions for ripening and peeling your favourite fruits and veggies.

Marble Quad Tray 18Karat - Doris CheungMONEY WELL SPENT | With so many kitchen gizmos out there, you’d have thought that someone, somewhere would have long ago designed an attractive receptacle for ripening market-hard fruit on a windowsill. You can find clear plastic fruit ripening bowls, of course, dome-lidded containers that sweeten up a pile of fruits simultaneously (doubly quick when you add a banana to the mix), but I find these products cumbersome counter hogs. What I want is something that will tuck up out of the way on my windowsill and ripen just a few fruits—pears, tomatoes, avocados, the occasional cantaloupe or pineapple—in natural sunlight; something that looks attractive empty. Read more

Barbara Barry & Peter Block Architects

Stage Craft: How To Sell Your House Quick

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If you want to cash in on the current real estate boom by selling your house, here’s what you can do to sell it quick.

Barbara Barry & Peter Block ArchitectsTIPS & TRICKS | The real estate market is so white hot across Metro Vancouver right now that I wouldn’t be surprised if you told me you were  thinking about selling your place—or knew at least six other people who are contemplating selling their homes, too. But when there’s a plethora of properties to choose from, how do you make your home the one shoppers need to buy? Read more

Win Two Heritage House Tour Tickets

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Subscribe or Invite a friend to receive Frugalbits FREE daily email by MAY 27, and be entered to win 2 tickets to Vancouver’s 2011 Heritage House Tour (value $80).

(23.05.11) Vancouver Heritage Foundation’s 2011 Heritage House Tour is a one-day, self guided tour of a selection of historic buildings in Vancouver. Now in its 9th year, this event has brought over 15,000 people into over 100 privately owned, unique heritage buildings in our city. Each year, a different selection of homes is opened, showcasing a wide variety of traditional house styles and interesting historic neighbourhoods.

Your ticket is a 28 page guidebook with a map in the centre showing you where the homes are located, a full page write-up about each house, lunch suggestions and guest essays by local authors such as Michael Kluckner, Bruce Macdonald and James Johnstone.

Visit any or all of the participating homes on June 5th between 10 am to 5 pm in any order you prefer. Your guidebook is a numbered passport that will gain you access into the homes.

SUBSCRIBE or INVITE a friend to receive Frugalbits’ FREE daily email by May 27, 2011, and you will be automatically entered for a chance to win two tickets to Vancouver’s  2011 Heritage house Tour, and so will your friend, if they subscribe.

CLICK HERE TO SUBSCRIBE; CLICK HERE TO INVITE

Photo: courtesy Vancouver Heritage Foundation

Blue Trees - Konstantin Dimopoulos

Shocking Colour Will Make Your Garden Pop

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A jolt of crazy colour is an unexpected and inexpensive way to make your garden pop.

Blue Trees - Konstantin DimopoulosCHEAP TRICK | A Vancouver architect friend of mine has a sideline as a garden photographer, and not long ago he grumbled to me that one of the magazines he works for in the U.S. never puts his photographs on their cover. “I take great plant portraits,” he said, “but unless I am willing to include a brightly coloured chair in my shots, not one of them will ever make it.” That’s because art directors know the swiftest way to catch the attention of gardeners cruising the magazine racks is to hit them with a jolt of unexpected colour. Read more

Fiam Caadre Mirror

Luxury Lovers Will Heart This Moving Sale

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Livingspace Interiors is having the mother of all moving sales, and the prices for high-end merchandise are surprisingly low.

Fiam Caadre MirrorSALES WE LOVE (11.05.11) | It’s rare to read the words “deep discount” and “luxury brand European furnishings” in the same sentence. That’s because retailers that sell furniture by recognizable high-style manufacturers, like Minotti and Paola Lenti for example, are more interested in showcasing sublime design at a warranted price than they are in unloading merchandise at bargain basement prices. High-end furniture retailers do put their products on sale but seldom at the blowout prices of the Livingspace Interiors everything-must-go moving sale. Read more

Nepeta, 'Walker's Low'

This Variety Of Nepeta Is A Bulletproof Plant

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A gorgeous, indestructible, low-maintenance, high-performance, cost-effective garden: Is that too much to ask?

Nepeta, 'Walker's Low'

 

MONEY WELL SPENT | There are people who derive tremendous satisfaction from garden chores, but I’m not one of them. I love garden design and history, and enjoyed researching and planning our own garden with my husband, who is a garden designer. I loved choosing the plants and installing them, and I don’t mind occasional watering or weeding. But after that, I want to spend my time doing other things. I need my garden to be bulletproof: a gorgeous, indestructible, low-maintenance, high-performance environment—and of course I expect my investment in plants to be cost-effective. Read more

Beautiful Ming Vase

Ming Got A Ding? Where To Get It Fixed

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Antique china is irreplaceable—but if it {or any glass or pottery item} breaks, here’s where to fix it locally.

Beautiful Ming VaseDARE TO REPAIR | My grandmother passed on to me not only a love of beautiful things but some of the beautiful things she loved—like a set of delicate Czech glass goblets. I carefully packed them in a box and brought them home on the plane from Winnipeg as carry-on. At least that was the plan. As I watched the box go through the airport security x-ray, I realized to my horror that I’d carried on the wrong box and the goblets were taking their chances as regular luggage. Read more

Garden Hose

Never Buy A Cheap Garden Hose—Ever!

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In which our writer experiences the horror and torment of buying an inferior product.

Garden HoseBUYER BEWARE | Sometimes a bargain is a terrible deal. Case in point: the 100-foot hose I bought on sale at Canadian Tire for $29. The Yardworks hose was advertised as “anti-kink” and “heavy-duty” and since it was only 29 bucks, I figured I had myself a winner. That is until I tried to use it. Read more