I'm okay getting junk mail!

I've seen calls to 'occupying' our mailboxes by mixing up and sending response cards back to different companies to protest the waste of resources used to market by mail.  But then I think, what are those different company mail-rooms going to do with other companies' junk mail?  Probably just throw it away.  The only thing this call to action does is financially punish a company one stamp at a time.

But I'm okay getting junk mail and unsolicited magazines.  I use these to make paper bricks by combining with cardboard shipping boxes and my neighbor's newspapers to get nearly free combustibles for the fireplace.  The one thing I could do to make the paper bricks really free [after depreciating the cost of the mold] would be to use grey water in the manufacturing process.

When I bought it from Lehmans, they offered a four in one brick maker for $34.  So four times as many bricks in one pressing for only double the price . . . SOLD!

Now the only bad thing I've noted about using these bricks is I can't get a nice hot fire using only paper bricks. So this fall I went and gathered dead fall from the woods and got three truck loads of wood from a Freecycle listing.  Free, well seasoned wood in combination with a few bricks here and there is just the trick!

For some reason hubby was sure I could not safely weld our axe to split the logs and asked me not to, then grumbled about having to rent a log splitter.  So, being the resourceful Scorpio I am, I went and found a foot operated log splitter.  Here is a picture of my Fireplace Friend, there are other manufactures.  For softer woods using this is more frustrating then helpful, but it cracks open a hard wood log very easily!