I hadn’t really given much thought to saving the environment or recycling or anything else. Whenever I heard about those topics my first response was that I had enough to worry about and didn’t want to be bothered. Besides I would die eventually and it wouldn’t be my problem anymore. Never mind the fact that I have three children who would be left to take care of my mess.
I will be the first to admit that I am a selfish person. I also don’t want to be bothered with anything that I find to be frivolous (which could be anything at any given time depending on my mood.) Case in point, my kids would recycle at school and beg me to recycle at home. I refused because I didn’t want to mess with it. I would have to drive down the road every once in awhile to drop off the stuff and it would be a huge inconvenience. I knew it was the right thing to do but why bother? (I’m a great mother. Really, denying my kids the chance to recycle. I’m winning the mother of year award for sure.)
Some time last February my husband was offered a job in another town. It was too good of an opportunity to pass up so he moved, found us a house, and I stayed with the kids until school let out for the summer. In the mean time it was my job to go through our crap to decide what to move and what to get rid of. Our new home would be much smaller than the one we were living in at the time therefore we had to get rid of crap.
I didn’t think I had a lot of clutter, paper clutter, yes, but not a lot of unnecessary crap. I was wrong. Oh was I wrong. I got rid of so much stuff it isn’t funny. The sad thing is that I’m not even completely unpacked and know I can get rid of so much more crap. It amazes me how we could accumulate so much useless stuff in such a short amount of time.
I’m not exactly sure at what point it was that I decided we were going to start living better. We were going to stop being so wasteful. I know one thing was reading about people who take their own shopping bags when they shop. Wal-mart sells reusable bags and I’ve thought about getting a few. I’m also making my own bags.
Some things I have been learning about going green is to take things slow. Change one thing at a time. For instance, instead of using paper towels use cloth towels. I think their called kitchen towels but I’m not sure. I had pretty much been doing that anyway. I do laundry every day so to wash a couple more towels wasn’t that big of a deal and saved us money by not buying paper towels. I also use cloth napkins instead of paper napkins.
I read somewhere that the dryer is the second biggest energy user in the house so I’ve been hanging our clothes outside to dry more often. I also have a drying rack but when I went looking for it I found it setting on the top of some shelves in the garage with tons of boxes in front of the shelves. I left the rack where it was and hung the clothes on hangers throughout my house.
I haven’t done a lot of changes but I am working towards it. I at least have an awareness and desire that I didn’t have before. I also have several blogs that I read to get ideas and tips from:
5 Minutes for Going Green
Crunchy Domestic Goddess
Natural Family Living
These blogs are filled with tons of practical information. I have been pouring over these three blogs just gleaning from them. I am in love. I also feel better knowing that from this moment on together my family is going to make a difference one step at a time. This isn’t a one time thing, this is a lifestyle change.
