Photo: Thinkstock

Whether your conservation efforts are superstar-level (hello, composters) or minimal (someone's got to save those brown bananas from the trash and turn them into banana bread), we all can probably do a little more for the environment. In honor of Earth Day this Sunday, here are four small things to rethink when it comes to your own kitchen.

Paper towels. You can reuse and wash Bambooee towels up to 20 times in the washing machine. It'll take you as long to use up one roll ($12.99) as it would go to through 60 rolls of regular paper towels. You can use them for everything from drying fruits and vegetables to mopping up spills.

Leftover food storage. If you're uncertain about microwaving your lunch in a plastic container, switch to Fridgex Silicone, which is free of PVC and BPA (a recent study found plastic food packaging is a major source of these potentially harmful chemicals). Fridgex's products are heat-resistant up to 430 degrees, and the 8-piece mini storage set ($24.99) is so eye-catching, it'll make yesterday's dinner look even better than it did last night.

Men! What are they thinking? We can't always answer that, but we'll be posting our favorite glimpses into their world in this space every Thursday.

Photo: Edward Gochman/Racked

* Mike Devine was a first responder on 9/11, and something in the air caused him to lose his sense of smell for two years. "When it came back," he says, "I became so appreciative that I just wanted to smell good things." He's one of a growing number of regular guys who just happen to be fragrance fanatics. (Racked)

* Watch Kyle, a 13-year-old Mariners fan and son of a soldier serving in Afghanistan, as he steals second base at a game last week—just be prepared to get a little choked up when you see the surprise waiting for him there. (MLB)

* America's oldest teenager, Dick Clark, passed away this week at the age of 82. Here he is with Prince when the Artist made his national television debut on American Bandstand. (Vimeo)

* "I just sat in there for a moment and pondered the courage and tenacity that is part of our very recent history, but is also part of that long line of folks who sometimes are nameless, oftentimes didn't make the history books, but who constantly insisted on their dignity, their share of the American dream."—President Obama on his experience sitting on the Rosa Parks bus. Check out this great photo as well. (AFP)

Photo: Thinkstock

Chris Guillebeau always has something interesting to say over at The Art of Non-Conformity, and I'm loving his post "Thelonious Monk and the Search for Value."  Guillebeau writes about being an aspiring jazz musician and how he strove to copy the virtuoso pianist Thelonious Monk. Guillebeau admits, "I got the feeling that even if the imitation was perfect—mine certainly wasn’t—something would be missing."

As anyone who's ever tried to do anything knows, this business of trying to emulate your heroes can be as soul-crushing as it is self-defeating. Guillebeau goes on to hypothesize that while very few people have one thing that they excel at as excellently as, say, Thelonious Monk excelled at playing jazz, most people have unique combinations of skills that they are fairly decent at, and that it's this unique combination that gives you your very own value. (Read the whole post to learn what Dilbert has to do with all this!)

Which made me think of—stay with me here—last week's episode of Mad Men, in which office sniveller Pete Campbell tries to channel Don Draper, to disastrous effect. Why would you be a second-rate Thelonious Monk or Don Draper, when you're the only you there is? What is your own unique combination of talents, interests, and experiences? Just sitting down to make a list of these things might help you to uncover a value you never realized you had.

Read More:
Trust Your Intuition for a More Meaningful Life
Martha Beck's Guide to Self-Acceptance

Photo: Thinkstock

Sometimes I miss being a kid — the hours with nothing to do but pretend and play, the excitement of having everything ahead of you, the snacks. I even liked school, all except for that appalling hour of the day called — just the word still induces a shudder — Math. I can palpably recall the dry-mouth, sweaty-palmed feeling of staring at a geometry test and seeing only a jumble of nonsense squiggles. Math anxiety is a real condition, and oh, what a dreadful one. The worst part of all the suffering was that it seemed so pointless, just an exercise in educational torture. "When am I ever going to use this?" I'd moan into my algebra. "WHEN?"

So I was very relieved to learn that as an adult in possession of a calculator and tax accountant, as long as I'm not too picky about things like grocery bills, math actually can be largely avoided. Hooray! Then I read this post on Dim Sum Thinking on the beauty of math and the facile question "When Will I Use This?"  It seems this whole time I've been asking the wrong question.

The post argues that looking at math's practical applications is not the best way to get students interested in the horrible torture beautiful elegance that numbers have to offer: "The hard part is that math is so darned useful. There is math everywhere. It’s easy for us to think about learning the math we need to do science or economics." But to this math teacher, math is every bit as enjoyable for its sake as the more beloved activities of playing band and football, disciplines kids enjoy without asking how they use the skills they hone later in life.

It's Stress Awareness Month, but don't let that stress you out. Dr. Oz's 7 ways to reduce that anxious feeling.

From the futuristic to the gloriously old-word, the 25 most beautiful public libraries in the world.

It's part cute pet pictures, part The Onion, and it's all quite amusing. Yes, it's The Fluffington Post.

They're hungry NOW. How to be a faster home cook (without resorting to microwaved nuggets every night).

Orson Whales! Moby Dick meets Orson Wells meets Led Zeppelin. Of course.

The Life-Lifter: How college students are using their dining hall swipes to feed the hungry. (No, not hungover sophomores, the really hungry.)

Photo: Thinkstock

It's a proven fact that we spend 1/3 of our lives looking for our phones. Okay, fine, maybe that's not really a proven fact, but it sure feels true for me. I have absent-mindedly stowed my phone in a dresser drawer, the medicine cabinet, and once, in the beer cooler at my local bodega. After these episodes I walk around in a daze for a couple minutes or hours, going from one room to another, forgetting what I'm looking for, then standing in that room staring at a corner like a broken robot, then going back into the room I came from, at which point the cycle begins anew.

I know some people who walk through a doorway only to completely forget what they were doing and blame it on old age or being tired or sheer airheadedness. Turns out -- thanks, science! -- there is an actual explanation for this phenomenon. According to University of Notre Dame Psychology Professor Gabriel Radvansky, passing through doorways makes our brains hit reset.

As Radvansky told The University of Notre Dame School of Arts and Letters news blog, “Entering or exiting through a doorway serves as an ‘event boundary’ in the mind, which separates episodes of activity and files them away...Recalling the decision or activity that was made in a different room is difficult because it has been compartmentalized.” Read the whole article for descriptions of the experiments that led to this analysis. Aren't brains interesting? I wonder if this is why sometimes, when blocked at work, taking a walk even just to the other room can help rev your brain again. But also, I'm just relieved to discover that I'm not completely losing my mind. At least, not because of this.

Read More:
15 Ways to Remember Everything
The Surprising Reason You May Be Losing Your Memory

Photo: Marko Metzinger/Studio D

Out of nowhere I've developed a sensitivity to fragrance: I get madly itchy (and unpretty) hives wherever I anoint myself. Fragrance, it turns out, is one of the leading causes of this kind of dermatitis, says New York CIty dermatologist Francesca Fusco, MD. So you can imagine my thrill at discovering Lisa Hoffman's collection of bracelets and earrings, each with a filigreed charm (plated with antiqued silver, bronze, or yellow or rose gold) that holds a few little wood beads saturated with one of five transporting scents (fig, neroli, agarwood, sage, and orchid). The beads' fragrance is supposed to last up to two weeks, but the ones I've been wearing still smell divine after two months. And no itch, ever. ($65 for bracelet or earrings and one jar of refill beads; lisahoffmanbeauty.com)

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