Be more green

I’ve been trying to “green” my beauty products, and eliminate SLS, parabens, and unnecessary chemicals. Right now I’m really liking Kiss My Face products, especially their olive oil soap. So silky, and really pure. Most “natural” soaps are made with coconut oil, which dries your skin. I’m still hunting for the best shampoo, though. I have REALLY hard water in my house, and everything I use, natural or not, just goops up my hair, making it sticky and dull. I’ve tried baking soda, and vinegar rinses, and nothing works.

I’m not a “save the planet” kind of person, nor a fanatic in any sense. By “going green” I mean eliminating harmful chemicals from my life for the health of my family, and reducing waste. I definitely want to make the transition to as natural as possible (no harsh synthetic chemicals, eating organic meat/eggs and most veggies, etc.) before we have kids. I want to try to raise them responsibly, and I feel that willfully exposing them to known toxins and hormones is not the best way to accomplish that.

We have been making an effort to reduce the amount of water we use. This is the first year our city has had landscape water restrictions so we aren’t using as much water since we can’t water often enough to keep the grass green.

Our local water district just updated their website and offers comparisons for our area. Our water usage is currently 52% of the average on our street and 35% of the average of the entire city. We used 66% less water than the same billing cycle in 2008.

We still need to make a few changes to use a little less water in the future.

I haven’t used the clothes dryer in almost 6 months. Hanging laundry outside was so easy because it dried in just an hour or two. Now that the weather is cooling off and there’s less sun, the clothes takes much longer to dry. I need to only do one load of laundry a day now that the drying time has slowed down.

My plan is to avoid using the dryer as much as possible and will start hanging clothes up in the bathrooms during the cooler days. I want to buy an indoor clothes drying rack. The shower rod is fine for shirts, but I need something else for the the small items. I will probably still hang towels and sheets outside and can wait a few days until the weather warms up again.

I have a roommate who’s big on organic food so maybe I’ll improve on buying more organic food… though there’s been doubts whether or not organic is actually beneficial to the environment or not. Hmmm…
I’m buying my own food now so I could also try to buy more local products too.

Even better, I’m finally usually the compost bin on a daily basis! :D
Plus, I haven’t been in a car since forever. I’ve either been walking or taking the subway.

Bringing green hygiene stuff along.

Cloth bags for shopping.

Bagasse, corn starch, potato starch, and hemp stuff bringing with us we are, as Yoda would say.

Bring hemp or cotton napkins along. We will be eating a few meals in restaurants, but we plan to eat some meals in our room too, as we will have a fridge and a microwave. Weather permitting, we might even eat nude on our balcony. :-)

Bagasse utensils.

I’ll jot down a few other tips as I think of them. I will need to order some bagasse stuff. We will be on vacation Sept.14-18

Bagasse microwavable containers.

re-use the towels as often as possible.