Sunday, October 28, 2007

Green Update

So we've been living this whole green lifestyle for a few months now and I thought I would update you all on how its going.

Well, so far so good. I do loathe my low flow shower head!! Not only is it low flow, its also stingy with the heat! You have to pump it up and then its still only lukewarm which just makes me want to get out. Ok ok, that isn't a bad thing and truly I have to break my nice hot morning shower habit....but if I can't take a bath anymore....sigh....that one has been hard.

No more paper towels at our house anymore! WE finally ran out of paper towels about 3 weeks ago and it was an easy transition. The cloth napkins are easier and prettier to use anyway. My son actually was the easy one to make the switch to cloth. He accepted it right away and lately I've caught him blowing his nose on them too. Which could be defined as a good thing or a bad thing really! Just need to have him keep using that same one to blow his nose on! Ugh.

My husband isn't really having an easy time with this whole "green" stuff though. Although he doesn't really complain. Occasionally he'll bring up how eco-friendly something is or how energy efficient something is. He's coming around slowly, but he'll get there.

I on the other hand have found some of this to be a little hard. They say it takes 21 days to change a bad habit, but some of my bad habits I've been doing for about 21 yrs. Those types of habits are a little harder to break.
Take the whole lunch box ordeal. At times I find myself lamenting for the days of individually packaged lunch things or not having to think about what to pack in my sons lunch. But then I'm reminded of how much garbage we are saving by not buying that stuff anymore.
And I'm finding that the money I'm saving on not buying lunch junk is allowing me room to buy organic products.

One huge advance in my green challenge has been my mom. My mom is not the most eco-friendly person. Ok she has ZERO eco-ness (is that a word??) in her body. BUT the other day when I climbed into her large SUV type car (you knew that was coming right!?!) she had cloth shopping bags in her front seat. She went on to tell me about how she has to put them in the front seat so she won't forget them, how they hold so much stuff, how she gets a 5 cent refund for each bag at Safeway, how nice and big they were and on and on.
Sniff.
I could have shed a tear with her little speech. Now I'm sure she isn't using those cloth bags all the time because she is pretty forgetful, but the fact that she is even TRYING is HUGE for her. Just huge!!! (If my brother Corey is reading this he is probably saying "NO WAY!")
I don't know when she caught onto the reusable bags. It might have been during the summer when I would go shopping with her lugging around my cloth bags everywhere I went.

They say that people will most want to be like you by watching what you do. I guess I made myself out to be an example for her and honestly, I'm SUPER proud!

Now I'm just trying to come up with a neat present for C-mas that is eco-friendly that she'll use and actually like. Maybe something beyond cloth bags and CFL light bulbs.

Anyone got any good ideas??

The Cactus Picture is from Natalie Dee. She has some of the BEST art check it out at http://www.nataliedee.com/index.php

No comments: