Ecolicious Wannabe: Making a Sustainable Effort

The other day my sister-in law replied to an email I sent her through Facebook telling her that despite our distance if she ever needs any help (she is pregnant) to let me know. A few days later she replies saying she very likely will since I'm an organic and green living mom. I was honored that she, living in California with more green opportunities, would want advice from me living here in the conservative south. Truth is I wanna live green, but the options feel so limited here.

There are so few programs and such little education about living green that I'm going all about it through trial and error. Even when I research the information I find it has an overwhelming amount of information with little backbone to it. Many time various contradicting reports will be found on a single issue. For example, bleach, is it earth-friendly or not? It's hard to tell. Everyone uses it. Some reports say its safe and eco-friendly when used in small amounts. Other reports say it's harmful to the environment. The there are reports that state that it depends on the type of bleach used. I didn't know there was more than one type. Bleach is bleach, isn't it?

So who do we turn to? Who is the expert?

I have decided that sometimes it is best to step away from complicated information like this. The way I see it, natural is best. I know the sun will help bleach everything, so if I need clothes bleached I'll hang it outside. If this isn't possible then I just wont do it.

The hardest thing about living green is having the money for it and the time for it. A few years ago I wrote an article for Green is Universal I was very proud of, minus the embarrassing grammatical and spelling mistakes. In the article I discussed my green influence over other people leading by example.

An example I used for leading by example was my push reel mower. That was then. Since then my husband left for training to Iraq, faught in Iraq, and is now back. Oh, and I had a baby between that time too. Yes, it's his baby. It was his going away present. With a 9 month old and two other kids living green in someways, like pushing a push mower proved to be difficult for my lifestyle. So I gave up on it. Yeah I know you're think, "I though you said I didn't quit!" I didn't quit quit I just found an alternative that fit better for my lifestyle still I felt terrible for giving up on the push reel mower. I didn't keep it either. I let my sister borrow it for her tiny yard and I let my neighbor mow my grass with his gas mower.

I console my guilt with the fact that my neighbor has had that mower for fifteen years... always maintained well. The mower also mulches my grass making it easier to decompose where it is. Because of it my grass is healthy and green. I have no need for fertilizer or weed killers. It also provides my neighbor with free meals and exercise.

He is an elderly man who often claims to be bored, but is always doing something handy and turning something old into something new. Just a few days ago he brought over a desk he made for himself out of recycled pieces. I gave him a tote to hang on the side for his supplies. He seemed please.

I have a lot of totes. That's one of the things I do try hard to continue doing as much as I possible can, reuse those reusable bags. Totes are better than plastic or paper bags in so many ways. I love totes and I wonder why we never used them before. How did those flimsy wasteful plastic bags ever become so popular and mainstream in our society anyways?

I also wonder why some people spend so much money on totes. They're just bags. I get them at the grocery store for 99 cents. They are just as big and sturdy as the expensive ones, but a lot cheaper. I keep the whole lot of them in the back of my SUV. [Yes I have an SUV, but please don't bomb my car! Like I said, I'm not perfect and besides how else should I affordable drive 3 kids around.] Being green doesn't mean you need to spend your paycheck. There are so many ways to live green without spending a dime, but you have to learn how and that isn't always easy, but you can learn and it does become easier as you learn.

One the easiest and one of my favorite ways to live green is composting. I find it amazing that 55 gallons of kitchen scraps and lawn clippings can decompose into about 1 or 2 gallons of rich black healthy soil that smells like fresh earth after it rains. My husband and I have been discussing how to collect more compost waste for more soil for our garden. We don't produce enough waste for soil for our garden so we have to out source. So far HEB has helped. I wrote about it at my organic blog OrganicTaste which you will find below, but other than that we haven't had much chance to find other places.

This is where I am now in my green life... Everything green is expensive or inconvenient or I find out isn't really green... On some days I don't care and I just live green or not. On other days I think to myself don't give up. I remind myself about the importance of it, why I started to live green in the first place: to help fight cancers and other disease and health issues that I believe a toxic environment has contributed to, to help leave a beautiful world for my children and their children to live in, to help make a world with cleaner air for the current population to live on and to do it because it is the right thing to do.

Thee are critiques on both sides. Tree Huggers telling people like me that what we do isn't enough and never will be because we already destroyed the world. Then there is the other side, like people in my family, mostly in laws, aunts, cousins and uncles that question everything I do green.

As always I try to live my green life by example. I'm not perfect. I make a lot of mistakes. Many times I fail to live greens and other times I go overboard, if that is possible.

I tell myself to just live and respect my home and the people I love and everyone else in between. I realize that to do that I can't be a wasteful or do anything that can harm anyone. I must look at everything in a way that isn't wasteful or toxic. I must find out where things come from, how they are made, what it took to get from point A to point B because every little bit counts. It really does. It's all about ripples. These ripples are green, just as they should be.

So far, my eldest daughter has taken interest in the environment, especially since she learned to read. The year she began to read Organic on food labels and asking me what it is about. I tried to explain to her as best I could. Overall I believe she understand it is better for the environment and for our health. She also likes that we recycle and she is highly motivated to make crafts out of recycled materials. I only wish I was more creative in this area. I have a feeling she will be when she is older or maybe as a teenager she will rebel and destroy things. You never know with a teenager. I remember the things I did and its scary.

Either way I'm not going to push her into it. I'm not going to push any of my kids into it. It is all about respect and leading by example. If my kids see me do it they will probably do it. That's my thought on it anyway.

Pushy people just make things worse for people. You can't force people to do the right thing. I find that a lot of fanatics do this and it just turns people off and away. I blame it on the pushy people for sending us far back in both directions, the extreme non-environmentalists and the extreme environmentalists. It would be nice if we could all just meet in the middle somewhere. It would be nice if we could do this with every issue we face in the world today. Maybe....