Friday, March 21, 2008

A fun contest

Karen at Pediascribe is having a contest to win some neat reusable bags from Skeeda. I love the look of these bags (the Frost color is my favorite). I have been wanting to ditch the plastic bags for some time now, I am tired of drowning in them. I am working on building up my bag stash and winning one would help this along. She asks us to list five "green" things that we already do and two that we are thinking about trying. A lot of the "green" things that we do are actually things we did initially to save money. It is nice to know that you can save money and do something nice for the earth at the same time.

Things I already do:
  1. Cloth diapers.
  2. We have a HE washer and dryer. We use less soap and less water every time we wash our clothing. It is also nice to know that we are using less energy to dry our clothing.
  3. Compact fluorescent light bulbs. We use a lot fewer light bulbs and our electric bill is a lot lower.
  4. Recycling. This is one thing that we do purely for Mother Earth. Our city has a great program where you can mix all of your recyclables into one bin making it so simple to recycle.
  5. We have a programmable thermostat. I love being able to set it and forget it. Before we got our nice thermostat I was always forgetting to turn our heat down at night and since it was not digital. I was always fiddling with the temperature never believing that the temp that was stated was really the temperature, now I have no excuse for turning it up when I feel cold.
Things I want to try (I think that I have a lot more than the two asked for):
  1. Ditch the plastic bags! I am in the process of very slowly adding to our bag stash.
  2. Compost. We don't have the room for this at my current location, but we plan on starting our heap as soon as we move. I get frustrated with the amount of food that I end up throwing away after meals. It would be nice to gain further benefit from it.
  3. Plant a garden and grow that garden organically. I really want to grow as much as my own food as possible.
  4. Eventually when we stop moving so much we are planning on adding livestock to our life so that we can have even greater control about what goes into our food.
  5. Using more natural cleaning products. Once we move I am not going to fall into the trap of buying all the shiny new cleaning products out there. Right now we have far too many and I think that there is great room to simplify.
  6. I am toying with the idea of using cloth pads. I am already using cloth diapers, why not expand?
  7. Drying more of our clothing outside. Again this is something that we really do not have the room for in our current living situation but are planning on implementing after the move.

5 comments:

Jennifer Swanepoel said...

I admire you for wanting to try cloth pads. I tried cloth diapers for awhile, but I can't keep up with my laundry ANYWAY. I totally see the benefit of using cloth diapers, but I have to draw the line at cloth pads. I just can't wrap my head around it. But I applaud you for it!!

Anonymous said...

We do the recycle bit - we have a great program too, and the flourecent light bulbs. However, the cloth diaper thing we just couldn't do - we had 3 kids still diapers at one point (with how close together they all were - though it only lasted for a month or two) and there was no way I could have managed to keep up with the laundry. No Way. :-) Anyway, good for you on all your green. :-) We are hoping to get our garden going this year too - hoping. It is a bit of a job with a new baby, so we shall see...

Elizabeth-W said...

It took me until reading meadow's comment to figure out what a cloth pad was. I guess that tells how good I'm doing in the 'green' department.

Anonymous said...

With the cloth pads ... I was all hmmm no, however I have been reading about the Diva Cup. With that and a cloth liner I am so hoping to try. Thankfully at the moment mother nature has eliminated that...another great reason to breastfeed!

Unknown said...

Hey there Awesome,

I envy you that HE washer and dryer. Cool that you are considering line drying too. That is on my list for this spring (if it EVER stops snowing here -- a global warming issue too!).

We did cloth diapers from a diaper service back when our kids were diapered.

Our family has belonged to a CSA (community supported agriculture) coop for years now. Do you have those locally (um, in KANSAS?). You buy organic produce from small, locally owned farms. Neighborhood drop-off, weekly supply of seasonal fruits and veggies. Ours added in free-range eggs and cheese from a neighboring farm too (with web cams, you can see the fat chickens out scratching in the pastures).

Great post, great meme-ish idea of 5 plus 2. Thanks!
tl