Friday, April 22, 2011

Earth Day


Today is Earth Day. In honor of Earth Day, and because I am really trying to post more, I thought I would list some of our "green" habits. I am by no means perfect in my quest to be green, but I try. I will confess I haven't been nearly as good lately as I was when Lily was first born, but I plan on really embracing my crunchiness again.

- Cloth diapers. Duh. This is the number one biggest thing we did that was planet friendly. I am excited to cloth diaper again. Lily wasn't in cloth diapers for the last couple months she was in diapers, mostly because she had outgrown them. I had one size diapers, but one size wasn't the best fit on my active toddler. I didn't buy any bigger ones because I was so sure she would be potty trained any minute. With this new one, I will just buy the bigger diapers if necessary!

- Also cloth wipes and cloth nursing pads.

- Reusable shopping bags. Check.

- Recycling.

- Hand-me-downs. I accept almost all hand-me-downs, be it toys or clothes. It saves on resources being used to produce new ones and it keeps the old ones out of the landfills. And it is pretty nice on our wallets as well.

- We garden. It isn't super extensive and honestly isn't always all that successful, but we eat a portion of our produce each summer out of our garden.

- I hang dry some of our clothes. Not everything - I don't have enough drying racks nor space to put them, but at least one load is saved from the dryer. When our appliances bit the dust a couple years ago, we were sure to upgrade to a more energy efficient washer and dryer.

- I do some cleaning with baking soda and vinegar. Again, not everything, but I try to avoid the heavily chemical laden stuff as much as possible.

- I don't wash my clothes until they are dirty or smelly. I have one pair of jeans. They don't go into the laundry until they need to. I wear the same jammies all week, as do Lily and Matt. It really cuts down on the laundry if we don't throw things into the hamper until they need to be washed.

- I made my own baby food for Lily and I breast fed. No formula packages, no little jars of baby food going into the recycling. I intend to do this again.

- We compost a bit, but not nearly as much as we should.

- We live in a small house. This isn't necessarily a choice, as the housing market is crap and we can't move even though we want to. That being said, even my small, energy inefficient house, uses a lot less energy.

- I keep the heat low and the air high. I like to snuggle under blankets and be cozy, so we keep the thermostat about 67 in the winter and pull out the blankets and slippers and sweaters.

- Ok, this one is a little gross, but "if it's yellow, let it mellow, if it's brown, flush it down". We saves gallons and gallons of water by doing this. Obviously we flush every couple times as to not clog the loo with all that toilet paper.


That's all I can think of right now. I am sure there are more green things we do, and there are definitely areas we could be better. However, I like to think I am doing my part for the planet.

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