The year is nearly over and my how the time has flow by. Sam's second birthday has come and gone and Ray is 7 months old - today. Mike asked me when I was going to start a blog or writing editorials to the newspaper with all my random thoughts and incite on things (maybe that was his loving way of saying he's sick of hearing my opinions about everything. I've never been quiet. I'm also at home all day long with Sam, Ray, and some toys...) so, I figured why not start a New Year's resolution early - who can actually keep them when they make them on New Year's anyways - and get going on this.
Lately I have been thinking a lot about getting rid of the "old". By that I mean organizing my closets, switching to cloth diapers, actually dropping off my recycling, and most importantly, getting rid of some of my old ways of thinking about myself (like - who is actually going to read this anyways?!) and others. More thoughts on all of this later, of course.
Last night I spent some time surfing the web with thoughts of "going green". It seems to me that websites are making it seem so much harder than it has to be for the average busy American. It was easy to find a site for a greener sex life (totally random) but hard to find a list of 5 easy ways to go green. Regardless, I am on a quest to make the Mara family a little greener. Send me suggestions if you have them.
Here are 5 things have done so far (and I promise these are all super easy):
1. Switched to reusable shopping bags.
2. Recycle all of our paper, plastics, and glass. I keep a second small trash can under the desk for paper - Sam even helps out with this. We don't have curbside so we do have to sort (we keep it in the garage) and drop it off at the Senior Center.
3. As our light bulbs burn out we switch them to the high efficiency ones - I think our switch is nearly complete.
4. We make our own baby food which cuts down on waste and tons of money. We are making the big switch to cloth diapers as soon as they come in the mail. I must admit I thought mamas that did this were crazy but these are not your mama's cloth diapers. Ask me if you are interested. (We are going to use BumGenius 3.0)
5. Sam and I throw as much scrap food as we can out the back door and then watch the squirrels and birds go crazy! I'm hoping to start a real compost pile in the spring and not just a big pile of yard waste like we have now.
Until next times random thoughts -
Sarah
i read your blog! i enjoy the blogging world so of course i say keep it up! :) i suppose i do green things in our family but my concern has always been health in our family and cost efficiency- that was my main reason for cloth diapering-because it saves money! yes i used bumgenius, i've tried maybe 4 different kinds and my personal preference was bumgenius. i also use 7th generation disposable diapers on him. let me know if you have any questions once you start down that road! it's not easy but i think cloth diapers are so much cuter than disposables! so there's one plus :)
ReplyDeletemichelle
What a great post! This really got me thinking about how I can become a bit greener...
ReplyDeleteYour blogs are beautiful. They bring joy to my soul. The favorite ornament part brought me to a state of catharsis (see wikipedia article for clarification). Anyways, Nate always points out to me that making "green" decisions is living out the resurrection. This comment is all over, but I am still slightly delusional from getting over food poisoning. Love you, keep bloggin'.
ReplyDeleteBy the way it was Matthew who posted that, not Katie. Don't know how to fix that.
ReplyDeleteInteresting thought about the resurrection - I like it. Two updates on our "green" effort. 1. We will have curb side recycling in the new year. I am so excited about this. 2. We are about 5 days in on the cloth diapering and it is going great!
ReplyDelete