live greener

OK, I’m going to try taking this in baby steps. Once a month I will try a new way of being greener. This month I am only going to use recycled shopping totes. I have plenty of these and shouldn’t have to take a bag at any store. If I can do this for a month I should be able to keep doing it.

Ok, so I’ve never been very big on cleaning. We had a maid growing up; the only thing I ever had to do was dishes and laundry. As an adult I have two male roommates.
So, post-Thanksgiving, it comes as no surprise that my apartment is in deep need of cleansing.
Why does this fall under the “live greener” category?
Well, when I was at the hardware store the other day, I grabbed a can of BonAmi, a powdered cleanser that I remembered always seeing under the sink at my folks’ home. I knew it would clean the sinks and bathrooms. Halfway through scouring the kitchen, I stopped dead in my tracks, wondering if this was actually an environmentally friendly cleaner. I looked at the can, got on the website, and was surprised that it was quite earth-friendly.

Living greener is something I really want to do, but it’s moving in little steps. I did finally get a couple of re-usable shopping bags, which I usually remember to take to the store. Not always, but more often than not.
Now I’m using a (very inexpensive!) earth-friendly cleaner.
Next step: driving less…walking/bicycling more.

user brickhorse wrote an entry about turning off the water while lathering up in the shower. i tried this once and it immediately made so much sense! this is how my showers have been lately. it’s colder (not as much steam in the bathroom to warm it up), but i’m managing so far. thanks for the suggestion!

Well, I have been making changes here and there. Sometimes I forget, but I’m learning and trying to make it a habit!

One thing I have always been is a crafter. I love to make things with my hands. Even better than that, I love making this out of something that has no purpose anymore, things people just throw away.

Which leads me to this awesome website that I stumbled across last night and just had to share!

http://www.myrecycledbags.com/

This website is going to be the thing that finally nudges me into learning how to crochet!

I absolutely LOVE the idea of using those plastic grocery bags for something instead of just throwing them away. I know you can recycle them at the store now, which is great, but if you are like me you probably forget to take them.

There is a pattern on this site to make a reusable grocery bag out of all those ugly flimsy ones, and this one looks really sturdy!

this morning i was boiling beans, steaming green veggies, and washing carrots. and instead of throwing all of that veggie water down the drain, i cooled it and watered our plants with it!

now i’m eating the veggies and the plants are having veggie juice.

i want to reduce my carbon footprint.

recycling is easy. just take your recyclables and toss ‘em right into the ol recycle bin.

the reduce and reuse parts are a bit harder. i want to be better at this. i want to reduce how much i contribute to my trash can and reuse things like cloth napkins and silverware.

I want to live greener. I am pregnant with my first child, and I want to preserve the earth as much as I can for her. I am trying to make the transition by using resuable shopping bags instead of plastic, switching out all my regular lightbulbs for CFL, and I am going to try to start recycling all other products I can. It’s kind of an ongoing process and quite an adjustment for our family, but I am ready to make the change!

I’ve been slacking lately. I’m still saving cans, but I haven’t been using my rerusable bags. I need to start doing this again. I have plastic bags everywhere. I do reuse them, but I shouldn’t have gotten them in the first place.

I don’t know why I didn’t think of this before, but I can reuse some food containers instead of always going out and buying new Gladware. The other day I was making my lunch for work and couldn’t find a Glad bowl large enough for what I needed, so I used a microwave bowl that bbq had came in from the grocery. It had stuff written on it, but I knew it was microwave safe and I was giving it a new use without creating more trash.

I have had 3 regular bulbs blow out in the last couple of days. I am slowly replacing all my bulbs with CFLs. Maybe this will also help with the electricity bill.