Going Green(ish)

I watched a news story about a family that only had 1 bag of trash for their household in a year. They recycled everything, had a compost heap, hand washed dishes, used cloth napkins and never used paper products (except for TP). I was totally inspired by them. We fill a trash bag every other day with just 2 people (and a half). That seems like a lot to me. Surely there is something we could do to lessen our carbon footprint and be good stewards of the earth.

We aren't exactly "green." We don't recycle (I totally would if I knew where to take it in our town), we don't compost, and we don't grow our own food. I grew a pretty decent sized garden before I got married and vowed to live off of it for the whole summer. I made it 3 months then gave up on it when I found worms in my cabbage. But we are making a conscience effort to do our part, even if it is a small effort.

We have a water filter and no longer buy plastic water bottles. This saves us money and we aren't contributing to the unnecessary waste of throwing out 24+ empty bottles a week. We use energy efficient bulbs and turn out the lights when we leave a room. Except for the 10 watt bulb in the table lamp in the foyer. This drives JD crazy but it emits such a nice glow and ambience to our entryway. We have HE appliances that conserve water and use less energy. We turn the water off while brushing our teeth. I hand wash most of the dishes and try to only run the dishwasher once or twice a week. We cloth diaper. We use natural detergent with no harsh chemicals. We make our own baby food. We buy organic. We use all of the shampoo before we throw away the bottle. We buy recycled goods. We donate our clothing. We use hand-me-down baby gear.

I don't know why it is important to me to be green. God commands us to be good stewards of the earth and our resources. I definitely want to be obedient. But I also really like getting back to the basics of things. I can honestly say that I have only cooked JD a meal out of a box or a bag maybe 5 times in our relationship. I like to make things from scratch. I like knowing what is in our food. I like doing it the old fashioned way. I enjoy taking the time to do things the harder way if it saves us money and is better for us. I've found that conserving and doing things the eco-friendly way yields some pretty good rewards.

I just did a google search on ways to be more green and it listed a lot of the things we already do. Maybe we are pretty green (except for the recycling thing, but I'm going to look into that this week). It feels really good to do what we can to be better stewards of our resources. I hope to inspire folks to get back to the basics by using less and reusing more. It feels great to do your part.