When I bought my little cutie, Rex, I felt like a new parent. He was so tiny and dependent on me. I had many questions about what food to feed Rex or how to care for his health, now that I was living a more green life style. I had some nay sayers that couldn’t believe I cared, he was an animal. Go to the pet store and get whatever. Well, yes but he deserves to be well taken care of and if I don’t take good care of him he won’t live as long. Taking care of our pets will decrease costly vet bills.
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“Shoes off please.” I am searching for a polite way to say this. It’s not that I am one of those obsessive people who insists on clean floors (okay, well maybe . . . ); it’s just that I am one of those obsessive people who says no to tracking dirt, pesticides, pet dander, lead, and other unhealthy chemicals into my home.
Admittedly, I am duped from time to time. I carry in products made by green washing companies who push so-called “eco” products on consumers like me, who hope to live green and chemical free. Despite my passion for the environment, I am guilty, now and again, of allowing strange chemical cocktails to enter our home (and I’m not talking about mixed drinks).
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One of the nicest things about the wide green Earth we live on is the plant life that kindly mops up carbon dioxide while it creates energy. If you haven’t got a green thumb, but have a love of leafy decor like I do, you can still get the leafy living greens into your home. Why do that? Well, I’m not kidding about plants improving indoor air quality. And what else are you going to do with the backwash from all your sippy cups?
Green planting 101: use organic potting soil and compost (leaf mold or compost tea) to enrich it.
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I’ve found there are several aspects of my journey towards going green that require me to slow down my usual crazy, hectic pace, and, I admit, this isn’t always easy. When you decide to do things like prepare your meals from scratch, grow a garden, make your own yogurt or dry your clothes outside on a clothesline, you have to A) plan ahead and B) allow yourself the time to accomplish these things. This doesn’t always make for an easy transition in a world where time is money and we often over-schedule our lives.
When I first started drying our laundry (everything from cloth napkins to clothes, linens to cloth diapers) on a clothesline this summer, I was frustrated with how much time it took, specifically to hang everything up.
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Before children, I used to love to curl up with a couple of favorite magazines and a Coke and laze away an afternoon. Important part of that sentence – “before children.” Now, mmm, I don’t have the time. Yeah, right, I would get an opportunity to “laze away an afternoon.” That would be nice. Now, I’m lucky if I can get through 3 pages of advertisements, let alone any substance, before some small body hurls itself at me, demanding attention, and ripping any wayward page that just happens to get in the way. Or dripping Otter Pop stickiness all over the only page I wanted to read.
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Birthday parties are all too often lavish and excessive, even when they are for small children. Sometimes it seems like it is a competition for parents. Who can throw the biggest most lavish birthday party ever?! The birthday boy or girl usually ends up with too many toys that they don’t need. They probably aren’t the best quality, and they might be hard or even impossible to recycle. The sheer amount of waste generated at these parties might be staggering with disposables for eating and drinking as well as party streamer, deflated balloons, excessive toy packaging, and wrapping paper. Add this mountain of garbage to the stress created by all day sugar highs and the inevitable sugar blues that follow and it is easy to see why many parents are making the switch to greener, lower impact birthday parties.
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Written on
August 8, 2008 by
SusanC
Let me make one thing perfectly clear. I am a LAZY green mama. That’s not to say that I don’t do my part to protect the planet. But when I do make an effort to go green, I need to know that it is not in vain. And I’m the last person on Earth who would want to make extra work for herself. So when I tell you that I have used cloth diapers for both of my daughters, I hope you’ll understand that this was not an undertaking that I accepted lightly. I looked at the facts, I talked to the experts, I tried it myself, and I concluded that cloth diapers were the best thing for both my children and the planet.
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I’ll tell you it is easy to be an organizer if you have no limits. But what about an ecochic organizer like me? My boundaries are simple. I will try at all costs to use what I have already in my home first before ever buying something. I’ll go to my recycling bin, think of how to sew something or just plain rethink a way to make it work. If I do buy something I usually try to purchase second hand. The last resort is buying local if possible, fair trade, environmentally friendly, organic materials.
Some simple thoughts on organizing:
- Since sewing has become a new obsession for me, I have taken outdated purses and filled them with supplies.
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If you happen to live in a place that has one solid outdoor growing season like I do, then the harvest is fast approaching. Here and there you’ve probably begun to pick a few things out of your garden already. Soon, though, your garden will be overflowing with produce and it will be a good idea to have your food preservation methods ready to go.
What? Preservation methods? I can’t just eat it all fresh?
You’re going find out quick that you cannot eat everything fresh out of your garden, and your friends might get tired of you popping by with baskets of offerings.
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When I had my son, four years ago I was far from green, but my husband was–kind of. He was the one that hassled me to recycle or to not go over board on purchasing and consumption. I was the wife that threw the soup can out verses cleaning it and recycling. Sorry, but I just wasn’t in to it and frankly, I didn’t get it. Now, I’ve got it. Funny thing is, it took having my second child for me to wrap my head around toxic chemicals and how bad they are and how I want to be more earth friendly.
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