a juice box has never passed the threshold of my house.

McMansions are fueling our economy, i can see their investment value if nothing else.
But, i have an interesting story about a McMansion neighborhood. being the queen of cheep, i was looking to buy a used swing set for the kids (the trash picked one had finally died)i responed to an add in a trader paper, the owners wouldn't be home, but feel free to look at it out back. the owner's lived in a McMansion neighborhood, large houses, neatly clipped lawns. as i drove through the neighborhood, i saw many 2-3,000 thousand dollar 'playscapes', but i neither heard or saw a single child! nor a single dog, cat or person! it was like something out of the 'twilight zone'! i'll never forget that eerie feeling.........

One thing I forgot to mention: I can't stand plastic in the garden. It seems preposterous to me that someone would pollute his/her yard on purpose. Maybe seeing yards in my neighborhood where plastic make them look like open dumps does not help. Those wire trellisses covered in vynil, or PVC... screaming dioxin poisoning. I started using bamboo for trellisses more than five years ago, and they are great. They are beautiful, decay very slowly and are cheap. After 3 or 5 years, once they are no longer usable, their remains can be left in the soil, and I may have a new plan for the garden.
Another thing that fed me up was plastic bags of top soil. I used to cleanup my yard and put all the material in the yard waste bin. But then I saw the garbage man pulling it to the refuse. I was speechless, because according to the EPA, yard waste has been banned from landfills since 1990 in Illinois. Even though people from the village and people from the waste disposal company came to apologize, my heart was already broken. I started a compost pile and stopped buying the ugly top soil bags (who know where that soil comes from anyways!). For the same amount of effort or less, instead of transporting those bags from the nursery, I sift the compost and use it in my garden and do not need fertilizers anymore. Since I also compost vegetable leftovers, and recycle, our garbage does not smell so bad, and the refuse bag is ridiculously tiny. I almost want to go thank the garbage people for making me realize I was being so wasteful !

What about the wasteful use of electricity we are using to discuss the wastefullness of others?

hi,
well I don,t type fast enough to really get going.
on a personal level bottled water was a good but hey it got folks drinking water instead of pop.
pop in general kinda treated like an addiction huh..
cut back on other things at the end of the week but buy less pop nooo, some of you might be suprised at how HUGE this is.
fast food in general huge waste of money I did a simple addittion once and had figured out my wife spent more that week on drive through than on gas/electricity/and was about equal with our household goods huh, I was taking leftovers in my lunch and microwaving..sheww.
legal lotterey ....
I,m a smoker I try not to add it up. I,m a program person with 11 yrs and would not condemn others for their vices but folks without who are still doing lottery, buying pepsi, and eating fast food I have no sympathy for .
on a real level biggest waste "our taxes" for not outright spending a certain % for a true blue dedicated answer for energy. renew /recycle/ as a way of life not just something a few oddballs do. this state finally has wind generators??? one of the most consistently windy places on earth . it is all a big waste when there is not a central directive or big brother as in manditory ..
use what ya got Rick

"Bottled water is another pet peeve, studies keep showing that people can't tell the difference between it and tap water, and that it isn't any healthier. Plus it wastes money and tons of plastic to bottle all that water which we have coming out of faucets in our house already."

This all depends. Where I used to live, we used bottled water because there was all sorts of chemicals you could smell in the tap water. I once put out an aluminum pan of water in front of a radiator to humidify the bedroom, and within a week the water had eaten holes (!) in the aluminum. The final solution to that was to buy a water softener to treat all the water coming into the house. It was expensive, but it worked.

In my current house, the piping is old and there's rust in the water. I use it for showers and washing, but refuse to drink it, cook with it, or even give it to the cats. Even after running it through a filter, it was pale brown. So bottled water for those specific uses, until I can save the money to completely redo the plumbing.

My in-laws have well water which is strongly contaminated by sulfur. Taking a shower or washing the dishes stinks like rotten eggs. So they have to get bottled water for cooking and drinking, too.

If I lived in a place like Long Island or even New York City, which has great tap water, I probably would get a couple of bottles and then refill them with tap water and reuse them forever. But where I am now, I can't do that.

one of them is the idiocy of lawnmowing.. in killed creatures
and trees, wasted time and gas and money

I wish the markets would charge us so much for grocery bags that we would bring our own, fabric or whatever. What a great idea!!

I read somewhere that in a lot of places in Europe (perhaps there are some Europeans here who can confirm or deny?) that's exactly what they do. The store adds a small surcharge for each paper bag, and that way it's seen as a convenience you pay for and not a basic part of the service that's taken for granted. And most people apparently carry their own cloth bags.

Kristin

That's a clever solution!

What about plastic tarps? I have a neighbor who has covered his boat with a platic tarp and left it to sit for so long the tarp is disintegrating into little strips of plastic that I find all over my yard in my flower beds and in my compost pile. Hmm the wasteful part, is it the plastic tarp or the boat that hasn't moved in years. Lots of people do the same thing with RVs.

Its not my favorite but it is the most wasteful I can think of. Dying young... warning, this is going to be a lecture.

Smokers, those of you trying to quit, don't think about what it cost a carton, think about your families sitting around the Thanksgiving table and your grandchildren asking questions about you because you are no longer there. All my aunts and uncles (smokers)died in their 60s and the remaining grandparent (smoker) is down to one lung. 90% of the people I know who are smokers didn't make it to age 70 and if they did their health is severely compromised. The money $ is the least of it.

Your families need you to be there and they cannot replace you! Pat

My pet peeve is the school curiculum. Schools should have a mandatory class in money management. Probably 80% of people who graduate either can't balance a check book or will be in serious credit card debt within a few years. Not to mention not having a clue about investments, how to buy a house, buying insurance, or any of a number of things that are real life, instead of learning what a dangling participle is!!

Lee

We take a good amount of plastic grocery bags to the library. They are glad to have them for borrowers and for the used book store.

Carol

Lee53011, you have an excellent point. I do know for a fact that the state of Pennsylvania is addressing this issue. There are so many young people that are getting into trouble with credit card debt. I believe that in the next few years schools will be required to include this area in the curriculum. Times are changing.

Some of my biggest pet peeves:

Over-packaging on products, junkmail, finding out that packaging for things I bought cannot be recycled (we have limited facilities)... the fact that we pay for garbage services through the city but also have to buy $1 per bag garbage tags in order for the city to even pick up our trash! We solve this problem by recycling everything possible, composting whatever possible, re-using what we can, and paying a friend 50c to take our garbage directly to the dump instead of $1 per tag for city services. Does anyone else have this same set-up with their garbage collection?

I don't mind getting plastic bags from the grocer because I do re-use them but it would certainly be better if I used cloth bags. I have always been kind of intimidated to do this because we typically grocery shop once a month and get a LOT of groceries so I don't know how many bags I would need and don't know how to make them.. though I COULD make them myself.

I really dislike any kind of wastefulness. My DH and I are polar opposites in this area. He could care less about what gets thrown away and often used to toss his glass bottles, metal and tins cans and pop cans into the garbage when I have told him over and over that I recycle them. He is just lazy. I finally got him to just put everything into the sink and I take care of getting it washed and out for recycling.

This will probably sound horrible but one of my biggest pet peeves about my own household is the cat litter waste! DH had three cats before we got together and if I had my way, we'd have none, even though I LOVE cats. I just get so irritated about the amount of money we need to spend on the litter, the amount of time I spend cleaning it, and the fact that it is all pure waste. Any suggestions for this would be great but so far I have come up with nothing... short of letting the cats live outside, which is not an option.

A lot of things that other people do bother me but the things that bother me the most are the ones that directly affect me but I can do nothing about.

I hear ya about the cat litter waste.

I used to use cheap clay litter and had to change it often as it would smell almost from it's first use.

I broke down and bought those EXPENSIVE *crystal* cat litters. You only have to use about an inch in a litter pan and it lasts a whole month. NO SMELL! Just comb out any hard deposits every so often. Hardly any litter is used and less ends up going to landfulls.

It is also much lighter to carry home from the store and easier to store since the small bags they sell them in do not take up much space.

Make sure you buy the crystal litter that looks like rock salt and not the same stuff that comes in round pellets. If the round pellets get out of the box they will roll all over the house and end up in the oddest spots. I had one cat that used to like to play by rolling the round pellets around and they were everywhere.

I just this week added a 5wk/o kitten to my household and the crystals were too rough for its tiny delicate paws so I bought some of that clumping litter that has smaller gainuels than other litters. They are making clumping better these days. The original stuff didn't hold clumps and ended up stinking.

The new stuff they have out now works much better. With clumping litter you only throw out just what litter has been "used" everyday instead of a whole pan of litter. Less waste.

I use the clumping litter but with three cats, there never seems to be an end in sight. I clean the litter about every other day (otherwise it starts to smell) and we go through about a 30lb pail or box in maybe a month. It doesn't seem like that much I guess until you think about just how much waste that is WITH the animal waste and the litter combined. I have tried that "natural" litter stuff and it was just horrible and so expensive... and it still smelled! I have never tried the crystals. I guess I am afraid to try something new. I hate to have the house smell, I don't want to waste money, and I don't want to have a lot of waste as in trash. I might have to get out an extra pan and try the crystal litter. Thanks for the tip!

My pet peeve is the relentless drive to increase profits by lowering costs without any regard to quality. Almost every manufactured good sold here in Australia seems to be made in China or Taiwan. When one manufacturer moves production overseas, the competitors have to follow in order to compete. The end result is no real choice and appalling quality, with goods that break down, tear or wear out quickly and end up in landfill.I am willing to pay more for locally made goods, if I could find any.

A few of the larger chain stores now charge for plastic bags (from 15c to 30c per bag), and the use of plastic bags in these shops has dropped by something like 95%. An increasing number of people are taking their own reusable bags to supermarkets. Problem is (another pet peeve) these bags are made of plastic ... in China!

Another pet peeve: that it's getting increasingly difficult to find goods made of natural products. Everything seems to be made of synthestics.

Finally, I am disgusted that here in this large brown land we rely so heavily on fossil fuels and invest almost nothing in developing renewable fuels. I'm sitting inside in my workroom with the fan heater running while the sun shines outside, where it's about 22 deg. C. (I can't do my work outside, alas!) It's the perfect climate for solar power, but I'd need about $20,000 to buy enough solar panels to generate electricity because they remain a niche market that only the wealthy can afford. Our psychotic economic system makes it cheaper to pollute the environment (e.g. via portable electric heaters) than to buy environmentally-friendly products. Or to have said products repaired rather than replaced. (Planned obsolescence coupled with inferior quality.) And now the govt wants to introduce nuclear reactors and to sell uranium to China and India, in a world that is already destabilished by terrorism ... call me strange, but I'd rather have solar panels on my roof than a nuclear reactor in my backyard!

1. SPOTTING!!! I cant stand spotters. Spotters are those people who drive around at night with spotlights looking for deer in fields. They creep down the road at a top speed of about 20mph in their loud trucks and when they actually SPOT some deer they stop dead in the middle of the road and just gawk until the deer leave. Its not uncommon for them to sit there for up to 15 min.! I truly cannot understand their motivation especially with the price of gas. Come Fall, from dark until 11:00 PM they parade up and down the road one after another, hanging out the window, or standing in the bed of the truck, shining their lights all over my land and occasionally at my house! I have a 70-acre farm and only allow a few hunters, usually family, every year. So of what concern are the deer on my land to all of these other people? I dont understand how it is even legal. I couldnt even imagine the stink that would be raised if I went up to the housing development and was spotting in their backyards, shining my light on their stuff.

2. HOUSING DEVELOPMENTS!!! Of all the ways to waste natural resources Id have to say that wasting land, especially productive farmland, is near the top of the list. Unfortunately growing houses is more profitable than a lifetime of growing corn and soybeans.

3. PEOPLE WHO LIVE IN HOUSING DEVELOPMENTS!!! Sure, this statement is broad but all I have to judge by are my experiences. So heres my basis for the statement. The majority of the people in the development near me are Marylanders who came to PA (although still commuting to MD for work) for the lower taxes, lower cost of living, and the American Dream of a quarter acre and a cookie cutter house on a street bearing the name of the trees which were cleared to create it. Ex.: "Oak Terrace" or "Cedar Court". Once in the "country" they buy their kids dirt bikes, four wheelers, and snowmobiles then turn um loose. I can only assume that they dont realize that "those fields" across the street are actually owned by someone. They steal the corn to decorate their porches then blow their leaves and dump their grass in the fields. Then, once more settled they start complaining. They want sidewalks, streetlights, public water and sewer. They complain that the schools are over crowded and they demand that the local roads get ridiculously low speed limits to accommodate their young unsupervised children. Then they complain about there being no local police and about the snow not being plowed the second it falls. Did they not think to ask about these things or even ask why the taxes were so low BEFORE they moved here? WHAT DID THEY EXPECT?
Well those are my "wasteful pet peeves". Ill stop ranting now.

Taxes that are wastefully spent are my pet peeve.
I'm talking about spending on projects that are pork-barrel for powerful Senators home states, pay-backs for campaign contributions (Halliburton, etc.
I worked hard for my money and don't object to paying taxes in this great free country but I watch every dollar we spend and I sure wish there was a Department of Accountability at the federal level that watched our tax coffers the way we all watch our spending.
This is the largest portion of my income that I have no control over and the biggest impact on the nation and the world.
Stop wasting my tax money! I worked hard to pay it.

Wow lots of replies to my questions.....

Here's my top ten wasteful pet peeves:

1) The Iraq War
2) The Vietnam War (I was drafted in it ! )
3) Government benefits & Hospital care to illegal aliens
4) Social Security payments to retired millionairs
5) Politcal TV Commercials
6) Divorce attorneys
7) Therapist
8) Books by Dr Phil's family members
9) Congressmens
10) TV evangelist

Just think about what all of the platic bottles are doing to our environment.

Pet Peeves:

1. Homes that are over-furnished, over decorated, or just plain overdone. This includes people who buy huge, flashy homes, then a complete team of maidhands and cooks to keep it running. What an utter, total waste of time, money and resources.

2. Companies that somehow get permission to tear down forrests to build more stores we dont need.

3. These same companies that secretly dump thier trash in poor third world countries as if we dont all live on the same planet.

4. Anyone who throws away good food. Leaving it in the fridge until it spoils is the same as throwing it away.

5. Junk mail and Junk circulars. Why dont they advertise on TV, Radio or online? its probably cheaper in the long run and it wont fill the trash.

I agree about the war in Iraq. Think of all the improvements our schools could have by now if they were given the billions of dollars spent for the war. I could rant a while about it, but I won't.

Another pet peeve of mine is disposable things. I have a toddler, and you wouldn't believe how many things she uses are considered disposable. I use the products, like sippy cups and utensils, but I reuse them. Eventually, once they have served their intended purpose and get cracks or whatever, I reuse them again for my garden. When I can't possibly reuse them any more, then I recycle them. When these products are marketed, though, they are supposed to be thrown out soon after their first use. What is it called? Take and toss, or something like that? Food storage containers are marketed the same way now. Whatever happened to Tupperware?

"Whatever happened to Tupperware?"

You can sometimes find it in antique malls.

Cat litter: you might try Stall Dry or Xix (Zix?), sold at the feed store for use in horse stalls & such.

It's made from fine-grained kaolin clay, & you can put the used litter in the compost heap.

You can also use the recycled newspaper litters, or the pine ones. They cost more but they're compostable. Composting nice and hot takes care of any pathogen concerns, and if you're still uneasy you can just use it on ornamentals instead of food crops.

I've read more than once that untreated wood stove pellets are cheaper than pine cat litter and just as usable. I keep bugging DH to try them (as he is the Cat Litter Chief around here), but so far he's not buying in. At least I compost what's in the rabbit's box.

Of course, you can also train them to use the toilet ... yes, seriously. I dream of doing this and someday I will.

Kristin

When the TV channels switch over to High Def in 2008, each American family will get from the US gov't 2 coupons good towards the cost of buying new TVs!!!!

1) There are hungry children and out taxes are going to buy every fat American 2 TVs?!!! I guess that's "hold the bread--give me a circus!"

2) Everyone's old TV will end up in the landfill!!

Vicky's blog!

Cat Litter Chief:

Do you have the LitterMaid? Best appliance I ever did buy.
Probably paid for itself the first year of use in saved cat liter. Even tho you have to buy the premium liter. OK, so it took two years, I don't know but I like the idea.
So do the cats we have.

This isn't really a wasteful pet peeve, but my pet peeve is:

Hypocritical celebrities who spend their time telling us to care more about these poor kids in third world countries while they buy all this diamond jewelry. Diamonds mined by enslaved and beaten children in third world countries. All for the sake of their own vanity.

My pet peeve is the way grocery stores manage their produce departments. In my area red/orange/yellow bell peppers are priced at $1.99 - $2.99 each 10 months out of the year (and of course when they're only .60 a piece I've got dozens of my own in the garden). In the winter elderly, shriveled-up cucumbers are often over a buck each; tiny, long-in-the-tooth broccoli & cauliflower over $3.00 a head!

No one buys these over-the-hill, over-priced veggies & fruits, so they sit there and rot. Worse yet, the stores won't even give them away for composting!

Thought of another wasteful pet peeve. I don't think this one was mentioned, at least in this light. I have to admit, I sometimes buy soda. I hate those 20 ounce bottles, like at gas stations. Often you can get a 2-liter bottle for less than what you would pay for a 20-ounce one. I guess my point is, I hate it when people (myself included) pay more for convenience.

war!

Kristin said: The store adds a small surcharge for each paper bag...

You are spot on. We lived in Germany for five years and we had to pay something like fifty cents a bag. I learned the hard way to remember to carry my cloth bags because the stores there did charge for platic and paper bags - if you were lucky enough to find a store that had them. I purchased an IKEA bag so that I could haul all my junk home and in France we paid twice as much for the bags. Just thought you would like to know.

As for pet peeves, I really only have two that I've not seen listed. People that are too lazy to return their grocery carts to the corral provided (in Europe we had to deposit fifty cents to get a cart out of the corral and we got the money back when we returned the cart.) The other peeve is people that don't use their turn signal. The way I see it a turn signal is a simple and common courtesy that you use to let other drivers know what your intentions are. I mean we are going 75 down a freeway and people are changing lanes left and right with no turn signals. Drives me nutters.

Christina

Well I USED to be one of those fat poor people. ;) Actually since I cut back on the amount I eat I can buy less meats because we don't eat as much now. So I take that and buy fresh fruits and veggies. ;) Lost almost 100 pounds and have 50 more to go to be at my goal weight. :) My DD has lost nearly 100 as well just cutting back and eating less junk.OH ALSO BOTH of us was taking high blood pressure pills, me, since I was 21 years old and am almost 50 now and got to stop taking them! YIPEEEE she doesn't have to take hers anymore either. SO LOOK at the money we're saving there not having to buy those! :) :) SOOOOOOO Excited we don't have to take them now!!!
My pet peeve is the paper over EACH TEA BAG! That drives me INSANE! WHAT A WASTE! You buy 100 tea bag box and you have 100 of these things to take off the tea! heck the stupid tea box is already wrapped in plastic, WHY wrap EACH AND EVERY TEA BAG???????????? That drives me nutz! A WASTE OF my valuable time must less ALL THE TREES they're cutting down to make all that paper TO WRAP A TEA BAG IN!!!!! UGHHHHHHHH!! Stresses me out to the hilt!!!! AND LOOK how MANY boxes is out there!!! OH DEAR! DH and my DD just hates it when I complain about it so they take them off for me and put the tea bags into the cansiter. SOOOOOOOOOO SWEET OF THEM!

Anything bought in the name of vanity/snobbery. There is no jusitification for a $50 t-shirt - not even with 'Such&Such' written on the front (just an example, there are a million more). [....And while I'm at it, it bugs me to see women wearing anything stupid written on their butts. If you're that 'Juicy', I'll be able to tell for myself - without the label.]

LOL@ Foosacub! You had me chuckling on that last line!!!!

Okay, this has ticked me off for a long time now! plastic scoops in laundry powder, tiny scoops in drink mixes, plant food and just about anything else that is powder. I have cups and teaspoons and I can figure out how to measure my powder without the plastic scoops. I reuse and recycle but I DON'T WANT ANY MORE SCOOPS!!!!!!!!!

This is my first post to this forum, I normally lurk in the Tennessee Gardening Forum more than anywhere else.

My biggest pet peeve in terms of wastefulness is paper towels. In the bathroom of businesses they're so damn thin you have to use four or five of them each to dry your hands ... **AND** if that wasn't enough, the cleaning crews love to show how diligent they are at their jobs by stuffing the containers so full that when you pull one, ten come out, all torn and fall straight into the trash anyways.

I cured my wife of the paper towel habit at home however. When we first lived together she would use them to wipe up every spill, dry her hands, clean up water, didn't matter, if it was wet, a stack of paper towels were going on it. KILLS ME.

What I've turned her on to is the 48 pack of cheapo white "shop" towels from Costco/Sams Club and we use those until they're too stained to be considered "kitchen" towels and then they're dyed and used in my shop or gardening projects instead. A single 48 pack of those towels will last me at least three or four years before they become completely unusable - and even then I save them to make cloth paper with. ;-p

And, in regards to the weight loss mentioned above, congratulations. I lost over 75lbs. over the last two years and I'll tell you a good deal of it came from processed foods and high fructose corn syrup. Doc still wants me on high blood pressure meds but I'm fighting her tooth and nail on that one. They're too expensive and I'd much rather explore more homeopathic options.

High Fructose corn syrup ought to be banned It just might cure obesity and dental disease.

I also agree with the tea bag covers, and disposable plastic food storage containers. I think that they were designed to allow a person to give food away with out expecting their dish back. I was taught that if you gave someone a treat in a tupperware dish, you were supposed to refill their tupperware when you returned it! Same for borrowing someones truck/car ~ return it with a full tank. The world would be a nicer place.

Dont get me onto how wasteful schools are.

As for grocery bags and shopping carts, Aldi's charges 25c for you to rent their cart, which is returned when you park the cart in the corral. Then charges 10c for heavy duty large plastic grocery bags that can be reused. The products in the store are also still in thieir boxes on the shelf so that empty boxes can also be used to package your groceries. The stores and lots are very tidy.
Why not do that with all grocery stores?

Jackie

First pet peeve - Huge, wasteful gas guzzlers like Ford Expeditions and most other SUV's. There is NO reason to drive a vehicle this big. A larger 4dr sedan does the same job, uses far less gas, and has less of an environmental impact. The excuse "I need room for my kids" doesnt do it for me either. A woman I work with 'upgraded' to a Suburban because "her two kids fought so much while they were in the car that they need their own separate benches". Grrr! I shared a safari van with 5 siblings, we all had our own seatbelts, and had to ACTUALLY develop social skills on how to get along because we sat so close.

Second pet peeve - I worked at a grocery store for a few years and was always disgusted at the moms that came in with food stamps and bought expensive frozen pizzas and tv dinners, sugary cereal, hostess cupcakes, chips, cookies, etc. Meanwhile their overweight children were blubbering about the candy bar their mom wasn't buying them. My mom was so poor she was only able to afford to buy potatoes, on sale chicken and beef, the 'plain' cereals, and her and my dad toiled in the garden for veggies. Im grateful for it now too!

OK!
I've read each and every response here,, which took about an 1 1/2 hours!! I hate that people throw cigarette butts out the window! Here in Fl. we're once again in a terrible drought.. listen to the news fires all over the world our country is on FIRE! I drive with 2 signs in the windows of my truck that read please help stop fires! don't throw cigs butts and I'm a smoker! but I use my ashtray!! some of the new cars don't have ash tray.. don't buy them!
Litter really bugs me, ppl on SSI that can work.. if they'd lose some weight or stop drugs/alcohol..I have a family member that is on SSI, he CAN work doing SOMETHING and to me he just takes up space
Karen

supermarkets who everyday throw away good food! and im not mad at the ones with open dumpsters. i hate the ones with compactors or locks! THEY WOULD ACTUALLY RATHER SEE GOOD FOOD BE SENT TO THE LAND FILL THAN BE EATIN BY SOMEONE WHO CAN USE IT .the same goes for just about any other sort of consumer goods stores. remember folks whatever they don't sell goes somewhere and trust me its not to the needy. at least not that i have seen.

You want to see waste? Work at a box store! I see brand new strollers, clothing, shoes, food, drapes, pet food, furniture and everything you can think of go into the trash compactor everyday. Discusting!
A few items are donated but most isn't "because if people bought them at the thrift shop they could return them to the store for a full credit." Rubbish. I bet we could have sent most of it to the hurricane victims and they would have gone to good use.

The following story illustrates one of my worst pet peeves.

My parents came to visit me and stayed in a decent if not luxurious hotel. For dinner, they wanted to go to the Boston Market across the street from the hotel. Okay, if we wanted to jaywalk it would have taken us two minutes to get there. Doing the right thing and crossing at the corner light would have taken us maybe six minutes to get there.

But no, my parents insisted that we had to take the car and drive ACROSS THE STREET! We had to go into the parking lot, find the car, start it up, drive to the street, wait for traffic, turn right, wait at the light, turn right again, get into the left lane, wait for traffic to clear, then turn left into the parking lot and pull into a space.

It took us 20 minutes to drive a 2 minute walk.

Me, I don't even own a car.

It also makes me clench my teeth to see people drive six blocks to the gym to spend 20 minutes on the treadmill. Take a walk to the grocery store, for pete's sake.

Another pet peeve: antibacterial disposable kitchen wipes. If you're worried about germs, wash your hands frequently. Keep the kitchen clean with a compostable paper towel. Use a sponge and microwave it. I've been using Bon-Ami for 30 years. Works fine.

I was one of those fat poor people. Now I'm a fat middle-class person. LOL! But bad food, that's full of sugar and carbs, is cheap. Good food, like whole grains, organic produce, etc. is expensive. If you only have X amount to spend on food a month, you do what you can to quiet the growling in your belly and those of your kids. Nutrition often goes by the wayside.

I also had to be on welfare for a brief time after my husband ran off. They were going to put me on workfare so I'd do the right thing and earn my welfare check. I got $65 in welfare each month and $35 in foodstamps. For that, I was supposed to work a 40 hour week doing whatever they told me and wherever they told me. If they wanted me to work in the worst part of town in the middle of the night cleaning out toxic waste, I had to do it or lose my $65. And I wasn't allowed ANY time off. If I was sick, I lost my welfare. If I had an interview for a real job, I wasn't allowed to take off time for it. I'd lose my welfare.

Luckily I got some temp work before that happened, so I went off welfare on my own. But it was a nightmare.

Another pet peeve: smokers who deeply resent the asthmatics whose lungs close up from their cigarette smoke. I have COPD and asthma, and I've had that happen more than once. No, I've never smoked.

I don't like the use of plastic bottles for cleaning supplies and all the packaging that goes into our products. I started making my own clothes washing detergent (some good recipes on the web), and I love that I don't have tons of detergent bottles to recycle anymore.
I can see where bottled water or distilled water is a necessary thing for some folks with bad water (although, I think the majority of people in our country probably have good drinking water). I know of a person who drank well water on a property of his and is now seeing specialists in a large major hospital, because it made him sick due to some bacteria, parasite or chemical in the water. The last I heard they had yet to identify what was in the water that made him sick. They are doing testing, and despite different treatment approaches, he was still sick, unable to eat and losing weight quickly. We drank well water growing up and are fine, but it would not hurt to get well water tested. I think our local water companies and/or health departments will do these tests for free.
One of my largest pet peaves is people getting their lawns sprayed with herbicides/fertilizers. They make claims that they are "all natural", but lots of things occur naturally that you would'nt want on your lawn. I guess some of it is ignorance (and I don't mean as in stupid; I mean as in "lack of knowledge"). Those products (chemicals) seep into the ground, into underground streams and eventually make it into our drinking water. We don't "eat" off our lawns, why put that amount of money into it, where it could be better used. Too many are concerned about appearances, which leads to another pet peeve: restrictions in neighborhoods. We are not supposed to put up clothes lines. ARE you kidding me!!! I've heard that dryers use up to fourty per cent of our energy usage in the home! I feel as though we bought this property, we should have some rights to do with as we please, as long as we are not hurting anyone.
I also think steps should be taken to do away with "urban sprawl". Whatever happened to tearing down old buildings or using land that has already been developed, instead of tearing down trees and taking up valuable farm land for more houses and shopping strips? It makes me sick to watch a show on television where they pull out perfectly good appliances, cabinets, fixtures, countertops, just because they are not granite, stainless steel or the newest fashion. It does'nt bother me if they carefully remove them and make sure they get reused, but I have my doubts. When did it become necessary for everything to be perfect? I think if it is working, and you are satisfied with it, it does'nt matter what the newest trend is. I agree with the previous poster about all the t.v.s that are going to end up in landfills.

didn't read everything, apologize if I'm repeating anyone:

customer goes to store,
buys cardboard box of trash bags.
cashier puts box into plastic grocery bag.
customer goes home,
removes box from grocery bag,
removes trash bags from box,
puts all trash bags except one under sink,
opens one trash bag,
puts grocery bag & cardboard box in trash bag.

Fiji bottled water, the one with the square bottle and hibiscus on the front, it's overly priced and taste just like any other bottled water.

They still sell cloth diapers and those diapers still come clean in the wash. >> I used cloth diapers with my youngest dd who is 5. Actually I made all her diapers and covers.

my biggest pet peeve is plastic grocery bags (the kind they give you) well even the paper ones. I have reusable bags.

not recycling. How can anyone in this day and age NOT do it.

wasting food.

I have to agree with most the all the PP posted.

Kristen

People or commercial businesses who water their yards DURING or just after a heavy rain!!

i have three:#1 wasting food;there is something alive that would love to eat what you are throwing away.if possible,feed it. #2 wasting water;save all you can.you don't need to leave water running when you brush your teeth.i'm not a dirty person but when at home you don't need to flush every single time you pee,maybe every 2 or 3 time.#3 the government;i wish i had the power to change the programs,if idid ,i think i'd wipe the whole thing out and start from scratch.it is so f**ked up.
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