for the love of earth
Hi friends! How’s the day going? Happy Earth day! I’m always trying to think of reasonable ways for our family to be more “green,” and this is always a nice kick in the pants to do what I can to reduce my impact on Mother Earth.
Some of the things I’ll be working on this year:
1) Reducing the amount of plastic in our lives. Plastic is convenient and there’s that whole being clumsy + glass shards thing, but I’ve found that I love glass containers so much more than plastic. A great thing about them: hot foods can be reheated in the oven without needed to switch containers. It’s so nice to place a covered glass casserole dish in the freezer and pop into the oven to reheat. I’ve been transitioning to moving our bulk items to jars in the pantry, which not only looks much cleaner than random half-open bags strewn about, but it’s easy to see what you need to replenish. If you have any containers you have at home and love, please let me know!! I’ve been really happy with the Life Factory brand for snacks and water bottles; I need to see if they have any pantry storage options.
2) Remembering the reusable bags. Does this happen to anyone else? I have 1400 cloth bags here at home, and somehow when we get to the store, they’re nowhere to be found. When I forget, I get paper bags (which we recycle) but it would be nice to start using the bags we already have. Brb, going to put a stack in the car.
3) Continuing to make cleaning supplies and beauty products at home when possible. Don’t be me wrong, nothing is keeping me from Sephora, but I really like making my own bath scrubs, shower gel, and household cleaners. It’s an easy way to eliminate plastic waste. Down the street, we also have a soap, shampoo and cleaning product business (I wish I could remember the name), and you take your containers down there and they’ll refill it for you. Definitely something I’m going to check out.
All of my favorite beauty DIYs are here!
4) Walk more. We’re lucky to live in an area now where it is possible to walk to a few places. (In Tucson, if you were out walking on the side of the road, people would ask you if your car broke down. Everything is VERY spread out.) I’m guilty of driving to places where I could have easily walked, and it’s a bonus way to sneak in some extra exercise.
5) Reduce water usage. This is critical right now with the drought, and I’ve been brainstorming little ways to use less water. I do water our herb garden each day, but I also take the world’s fastest shower.
Are you thinking of ways to be more green this year? I’m always looking for new ideas!! I also think this is a great WYCWYC-type goal: do what you can, when you can.
In honor of Earth Day, I think Liv and I need to watch Monkey kingdom tonight. 🙂
Hope you have a lovely evening! See you in the morning with a random post on hair extensions.
xoxo
Gina
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I stopped using a Keurig this year (hated the reusable kcup) and that has been a nice change. I live in the city but I’d like to move closer to work to use less gas.
Sam,
You should buy the reusable m-cup. I absolutely adore it!
Also-
I am working on using recycled bags, my water use and I need to get my tires pumped so I can bike to work!
Peace and love!
Happy Earth Day! I want to watch Monkey Kingdom too! haha
You could cloth diaper baby number 2! Cloth has come so fat. Its easy, cute, and budget friendly 🙂
And by fat I mean far lol lol
I’m trying to cut way down on paper towel usage by having a huge stack of rags and cloths in the kitchen and washing them. We’re also adding a compost pile to our backyard/
To help us remember our usable bags, we hung a rack right by the door. It’s from Ikea and meant to hold magazine on the wall, but we think it works great for usuable grocery bags. Even on of my friends loved it, and got it bc she always forgots her bags too.
And to help converse water when watering your herbs/tomatoes, we’ve been using the water we rinse the vitamix with after a smoothie for example- it’s like composting. Since obviously a lot of water can be used when rinsing out a vitamix…
I am going to start composting! Good for the earth and my garden =)
I want to set up a rain barrel at my house to water my garden (once I get it planted). yesterday, I accidentally started a debate on former Child Star/Current Author Lisa Jakub’s (The oldest daughter on Mrs. Doubtfire) Facebook page. She took a picture of herself with her rain barrel for Earth Day, and I happened to mention that they were illegal in some states (which is dumb), and people were commenting left and right. I couldn’t keep up with reading them all! lol. But I think Rain barrels are extremely smart, and some people really have inventive ways to save rain water for later use. I think NOT having a rain barrel if you can is irresponsible, honestly.
I think why they are illegal in some place is because it become stagnant water, which means mosquitos. They might just seem annoying but in some areas they can spread diseases. Aside from rain barrels I like to water my indoor plants with leftover soaking water for nuts or sprouting things. My plants go nuts since it has lots of nutrients in them. And I remember my father-in-law kept a bucket in his house to dump various types of water in to water plants. Like water for soaking pots (with no soap in it) or from cleaning produce, etc. It built up pretty fast. He also would use it for catching shower water that was wasted while the water heated up.
Someone in the debate mentioned that it’s due to the water’s ownership rights. No one mentioned mosquitos. That’s an interesting perspective, though.
in the summer i would worry about bees and mosquitoes! not a problem here though because it rains like 3x a year
Walk more would be a nice one! I wish I still lived in a city where it was easy to commute by foot. This year, instead of driving to the farmer’s market, we’ll be taking bikes (weather pending) It’s about 8 miles round trip, but my daughter loves to ride in the Burley and it’s a great way to enjoy the summer and get some exercise.
I’d love to begin using more natural cleaning supplies particularly if I can make them at home. Do you have any go-to DIY recipes for Cleaning Supplies? Or do you recommend any brands/ products for natural cleaning supplies? (Dish Soap, Surface Cleaners, Detergent etc.)
i love this shower cleaner: 1/4 castille soup, 1/4 white vinegar, 1/2 water, drops of lavender
as far as brands go, i’m a huge fan of honest company and method
Thank you!!
We have been changing over to glass as well! We have found these glass jars to be very helpful for our raw nuts, oats, and dates/dried fruit etc….
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0001BMYH0/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o04_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
Fans in the house to help with a/c electricity in the summer is big especially in AZ. I’ve also been wanting to get my garage insulated for more energy savings. I absolutely adore Life Factory! I only wish their stuff was cheaper. Have you found their products anywhere cheaper than Whole Paycheck?
My fiance and I actually live in a house that doesn’t have air conditioning. So over the summer, our windows are always opened and the ceiling fans are always running. It’s usually not too bad, although there are some nights it gets noticeably hot. Our bills are on the higher side in the winter, but pretty cheap in the summer! The weather is also getting nicer and we will ride our bikes to places that are close enough. We’ve biked downtown to go to some baseball games and hockey games! It’s great since we also don’t have to pay for parking!
The best way to save water is probably just to always shut it off when not using it… brushing your teeth, washing your face, washing pots&pans, etc… We also have started composting! I’m not sure how well this will work out, but we are trying… also, Denver does have a compost service that you can pay for. They pick up anything that can be composted… which is a great alternative if you aren’t doing yourself!
These are great “green” resolutions! I love reading them.
In the effort to create a more Pinterest-worthy look on our open shelving, we switched to glass jars for all of our pantry items too and I love it. We also reuse rags and don’t buy paper towels.
For the reusable shopping bags, we keep them on a hook next to the door. It’s not the prettiest, but it means we remember them at least 95% of the time. I want to start buying small reusable produce bags to bring as well.
I really want to be more intentional about making cleaning and beauty products at home. We keep vinegar and essential oils in a spray bottle for most things, but still use conventional products sometimes. I love our homemade deodorant (based off of Primal Pit Paste) and I plan to make LUSH Ultrabland without parabens when I run out.
I’m fortunate to be able to walk to work at the moment, and since the beginning of the year I’ve only been using my car for groceries, to go to yoga and small weekend trips. It’s been amazing. Walking everywhere makes me about 80% happier, so it’s totally worth it (and I’ve saved a small fortune on gas…I think I’ve bought two or three tanks of gas for all of 2015 so far).
Gina! I just wanted to pop in and say thank you for blogging about City Farmer’s Nursery. I went there two days ago and had an amazing time! It was like a needle in a haystack- SO close to SDSU’s campus, but I would have never known about it had I not seen your blog post.
so happy you loved it! i can’t wait to go back!
My goal this year is to replace all cleaning products and air fresheners in our apartment with all natural products. I’m finding the air fresheners to be the most difficult though.
honest company has great natural ones! so does method 🙂
Thank you! I’ll have to try them out!
I really want to see Monkey Kingdom! I need to make my twins see it with me.
I love Life Factory too. I’ve been slowly adding a couple containers at a time to my collection. They clean up so easily and I really like the tight fitting lids!
I’m always trying to reduce my paper towel usage. I think really hard about every towel I tear off the roll!
i do, too. i’ve mostly transitioned to cloth but still guilty of using paper towels every now and again
As you might know from your Indian food Wednesdays , Indian cooking uses a lot of legumes and lentils ( daals). You definitely need something to store all of those in!
So, when I buy pasta sauce, I save the glass jars, clean off the label, and re-use them to store the lentils and legumes. This way, I’m not spending extra $$ on storage items, AND it gives the storage a clean look when you open the pantry door. Sometimes if I run out of those glass jars, I do the same cleanup method for the large jugs of peanut butter and use those as storage.
Both ways , the jars are not exposed to heat.
this is an amazing idea. thank you!!!
One thing that’s easy for me to do is to STOP buying any produce that comes in plastic. This is one of the reasons I don’t buy a lot at Trader Joe’s, everything comes wrapped in plastic, especially any pre-cut fruit and veggies. I’ve also started putting a bucket in the shower while the water heats up and reusing it for my little garden, a tip I got from the Prudent Homemaker
yes! that’s another thing i love about the co-op: hardly any wrapped produce
love the bucket idea, too!
Totally random and I have no idea who these people are but hello awesome preschooler zumbaing.
https://www.facebook.com/DBAphotoboothbyAudrey/videos/1589721204604756/
oh my gosh, that was amazing
You’re basically required to have reusable bags in SF, so that’s something I’m good about. And recycling too! Next up is trying to reduce the time I take in the shower, but it’s so hard!
I had the same issue with the cloth grocery bags. So I got a pretty apple-green woven bin and put it in the car and it holds my bags. After I empty the bags from shopping, I put them in a stack by the door or even right out to the garage & in to the bin! At the beginning, I’d forget to bring them in to the store but I MADE myself always go out and get them and not use paper or plastic. After having to leave my cart to go to the car for bags and hoping it was still where I left it when I came back…suddenly my brain started helping me remember so I didn’t have to go “all the way” (LOL) back to the car to get them. And if I did have to? Great! A few extra steps 🙂 And the cart was always still there.
smart! i love that idea 🙂
Would you ever consider doing a post on drought-friendly healthy eating? I.e. Taking into consideration how much water it costs to produce what you eat (which has a large impact on overall water supply). As an almond butter addict who now feels too much guilt to buy another jar until we get some good rain, it would be fantastic to have some suggestions/ideas/recipes.