I’ll admit it: we are not a green family. That’s not to say I’ve never been in that area of the grass. When I was single, I was a vegetarian for about two years and thus, green. I read alternative niche magazines published on recycled paper. I used Seventh Generation products when you could only buy them in little health-food shops in the East Village. I shopped at Whole Foods before it got mainstream. I carried my heels and lunch to work in a reusable bag. I didn’t microwave plastic. I made my own laundry detergent (borax, baking soda, and lemon oil ... gross). I made a soy shake every morning and used only local produce. Oh yes, I was green.
Then I almost fainted one day from being so anemic. I needed meat, and a lot of it. I missed Tupperware. Whole Foods almost bankrupted me. And once the kids came, it was all downhill from there. Paying three times as much for organic baby lotions and dish soap lasted about twelve minutes. Target brands will do just fine, thank you.
Anyway, while my husband and I have always done our best to try to conserve and teach our kids to be stewards of this earth (recycle, don’t waste, fluorescent light bulbs, yaddya yaddya), we’re still energy and garbage hogs. It’s a fact of life. But being poor ... now there is a recipe for conservationism. Since we’ve began struggling financially (we sold our business last year), we leave the lights OFF as long as possible.
We turn the hot water heater off at night when no one is using it.
I’ve learned to be one foxy, creative cook. Not one thing goes to waste in our fridge. Casseroles are a mom’s best friend to using leftovers. When my baby stopped wanting his cereal, I used the rest as an ingredient in meatballs. Oh, yeaaahh.
G and I try to pick up litter at the park whenever we can, though I draw the line at anything crusted in what looks like slime or human-something.
We walk whenever we can.
We don’t use the dryer on nice days. We pay online or over the phone (hey, stamps are expensive!).
I still don’t use cleaning products; I use vinegar and water in a spray bottle and it works better than Windex. (I’ll never go without my All laundry detergent, though. Baking soda ain’t getting out baby diarrhea, I’ll tell you that much.)
We shop at thrift stores and do toy exchanges with friends and family.
We use Freecycle religiously, and Craigslist has become a dear, dear friend.
You won’t catch me in a Hybrid (I like my SUV gas-guzzler just fine, thank you) or composting (yuuuuck) or weeping about the lack of trees (I think we have more now than 100 years ago because of all the tree-planting projects), but I will say that quite by accident, we’ve ended up not totally green, but in the same spectrum. And it’s nice.
