Wednesday, March 20, 2013

My green bucket list

Okay, so I've been giving a lot of thought to the "greening" of my lifestyle over the last few years. As with any lifestyle change (at least the ones that stick) its been a slow process. I've started a mental list of things I would like to accomplish and the things I already have. I'm going to start documenting my journey here (in addition to the recipes and such) so let me begin where I do best, with a list!

Things I've already done:

1. Gone from using paper napkins to cloth. This was really a no brainer, I had lots of napkins I inherited from my grandmother, back when they USED these thing regularly! At first I wasn't sure what to do with the dirty ones, but a friend of mine came up with the DUH idea of putting a small stainless trash can in the kitchen to use as a hamper... So there we go. I love it, and it even has a removable hard plastic liner with a handle that made it ridiculously easy to bring down to the laundry.

2. Gotten rid of my old Teflon pans. I didn't realize how scary a substance this was, especially when you're an idiot like me and used metal forks and stuff to stir your food (hey I didn't know!) and scratched the hell out of them. So yeah, ten years of digesting Teflon, probably not good... But I am feeling good about the cusinart green gourmet ceramic pans I bought recently. And now I use only soft things to stir with! Also, the 50% off sale on amazon helped (going green is infuriatingly expensive, but that's a whole post).

3. Reduced my paper towel usage by 90% by buying cheap dish rags and using them for all but the most gross of messes... Sorry but anything poop or throw up related does NOT go into my washer! I also had a duh moment for this as I thought more about it. Instead of buying brand new rags, as these wear out I plan to start saving and cutting up old clothes that aren't donatable.

4. My family has made a huge commitment to eat organic, with no HFCS, food dyes, additives or other ingredients that I can't pronounce. This has been tough, but I've gotten to be a decent chef in the last couple of years, and have gotten into the habit of cooking A ALOT. It's a pain in the butt, and has increased my food budget by at least 30%, but I don't really feel like a have a choice these days. Soooooo much crap in food. Can't even really call half of it food. Going to be starting a garden (hopefully!) this spring, so here's hoping to offset the costs a bit. My attempts at gardening for the first time since I was 10 years old ought to make for some amusing stories for this blog project! Feel free to laugh at me, I do it all the time!

Okay that's enough for now, I've promised my son some outside time today (and I'm a horrible horrible mother if I ignore my sons desire to go play outside because I'm too busy blogging about how cool and green I am!)