Do you ever wonder “what more can I do?”
I have been wondering that lately. How green can I be? Where is the line between what is practical and what is possiable? I want to be as green as I can be but not to the point of affecting my family. I don’t mean that I don’t want to ‘inconvienance them’ I’m talking time here. Many green/eco-friendly things are time consuming. For example:
- Gardening– I have to water every other day (drout) for 5-10 min and weed once a week for 15 min or so that would be an average of 45 min a week.
- Cloth Diapers– Washing doesn’t take but a min (less than going to a store and buying a new box) however I try to line dry whenever possiable, the sun is a magical thing. That takes about 10 min to hang and 5 min to pull down every other day plus maybe 5-10 min of organizing in her dresser. I would say I average 1 hour and 15 min just hanging and putting away diapers.
- Recycling– The tossing of the can into the recycle bag vs the garbage is the same but the work to rinse out the jar/can remove the paper or break down the cardboard takes a moment here and there. I would say maybe 15 min per week.
Just these 3 things every week average around 2 hours of my time, and I would NEVER change that. However it does make me wonder about adding other time consuming things to my life. Where is the line between eco-friendly and family irresponsable? I think I’m right on that line and I’m going to carefully walk it until I can figure out what to do next….or I can teach Apple how to handel the garden and recycling 😉
So for now I’m going to stick to:
- Reuseable everything for food, bottles, straws, napkins….
- Products made from real ingrediants (cleaners, soaps…)
- Cloth Diapers
- Recycling
- Gardening
- Buying as local as possiable
- Eating clean (most of the time)
And many more things I’m sure I can’t remember but that seems like a pretty good list to me!
Gardening can be time consuming. However I love the feel of the dirt between the fingers and toes. “Yes I garden barefoot” I also find it to be more leisure then work. 🙂 Ways that we stay “green” at our house really wasn’t a time thing it was a money thing. It was cheaper and healthier to make our own laundry soap and to make our own cleaning products. It is amazing what some simple Vinegar and water will do along with baking soda and vinegar. I give you a lot of credit for doing cloth diapers. They are very time consuming. What are your tricks for washing them?
I love our friend Joshua Becker’s definition of “Rational Minimalism”= The intentional promotion of everything we most value and the removal of anything that distracts us from it.” What do you most value? To really enjoy life we need to remove the things that distract us from that – whatever they are…at least to some degree.
These are questions we need to ask about every aspect of our lives. Good things can be come more trouble than they are worth if we are not careful.