Thrifting is one of my favorite parts about living green; not only is it a terrific way to save money (especially for a single income family like ours) but it’s a great way to keep materials in the cycle of use (and out of landfills).

Last week Annabelle and stopped by one small shop tucked away onto a backroad where I found 2 vintage crafting books (I am especially excited about one entitled Winter Book, with a number of activities and green living ideas for cold weather and time spent indoors with kids), a couple of Melissa and Doug learning activities (great resources for our homeschooling adventures), a cardigan, and checkered curtains for our kitchen (I have been searching thrift shops and the Goodwill for over a year now to find these! If I were a better seamstress, I would have made my own curtains, but sadly, I will have to admire all you fabric goddesses out there who create beautiful items available on Etsy).

So here are my new, well used, curtains! Not only do I love my curtains (they were well worth the wait), but they are hand made too.

What about you? Do you frequent thrift, consignment, and other secondhand stores? What are your favorite finds? Has thrifting helped you cut costs or enhance your creativity? How else does your family help reduce waste? Do share in the comments. Thanks!

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A tell tale sign of any family’s commitment to the environment is whether or not they recycle. Since many communities and waste treatment facilities offer free recycling bins, it is always a wonder to me when I notice a house without one.

Recently I stumbled across one of the smartest ways to encourage recycling in every household: Pay as You Throw garbage collection programs. As a unit based approach to garbage collection, Pay as You Throw offers a financial incentive to households to reduce the amount of garbage they produce and to find alternative and environmentally friendly ways to manage their trash.

Coinciding with my discovery of the Pay as You Throw programs (in over 4,000 communities across the U.S.), are our children’s’ return to school. In honor of our kiddos going back to school (or resuming home studies) and inspired by SouleMama’s 30 Days of Summer project, I am hosting a 10 day mini project over here at Green Mamma to encourage creativity, recycling, and waste reduction.

Over the next 2 weeks, you can expect 10 days of trash talking; basically, I will share tips for repurposing household items, prolonging trash from entering the solid waste stream, and creating fun projects to do with your kids. As always, I am looking to learn a thing or two myself, so I welcome your comments and tips for reusing and repurposing old stuff to make new stuff and ultimately stopping lots of stuff from winding up in the landfill. I invite you to join me in my quest to talk trash. I’d love the morale boost and plus, it’s always fun to have some company when doing good deeds for Mamma Earth.

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If you have a minute, I have 2 new posts over at 5 Minutes for Going Green.  Check out “5 Minute Miracles” and  “Healthy Green Pets.”

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Prompted by the challenge “Create Against the Clock” at Inspire Me Thursday, Annabelle and I spent this past Sunday afternoon playing with tempera paints. Since I’m hoping she’ll learn a bit about color blending and the color wheel in the coming year, I brought home red, blue, yellow, and white and black paints from the craft store so that we may create other color variations.  For paint containers, we used old plastic food containers (like hummus, butter, and yogurt containers), and for tools, I invested in high quality brushes since they’re likely to get a lot of use.

Here’s what we made:

In 10 minutes, Annabelle achieved this brilliant masterpiece. Not too shabby, if I do say so.

In a little under an hour, Annabelle and I applied purple tempera to a dried, unfinished wood paper organizer that I picked up from a freecycler.

And while Annabelle worked on her 2 paintings, I played with her stamps to make the “mystery box” sign for her box by the same name. It is essentially a homemade version of this mystery box, although far less expensive. To make your own mystery box, repurpose a cardboard box (I used the one that my Nikon arrived in), cover with paper, paint, and other decorative materials. Ask your child to help decorate too.

Playing with the mystery box is a way for toddlers and pre-schoolers to focus on their sensory awareness, by “guessing” or identifying objects in the box based on texture, shape, and feel. For now, Annabelle loves putting her stuffed animals inside the box and playing peek-a-boo with them.

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Okay, so I have a strange neurosis regarding floor cleanliness and not wearing shoes indoors. Sometimes I even wish I were Asian so I could simply tell people that they have to remove their shoes because it’s a cultural thing. My husband looks a bit like Keanu Reeves, so I guess we could lie . . .

Anyway, to read more about my obsession with clean, green, and healthy floors, go on over to 5 Minutes for Going Green and read “Shoes Off!”

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A good friend once told me that she is a collector of friends. In my own lifetime, I have met many wonderful and interesting people with whom I cultivated friendships that lasted the years. More recently, since becoming a mamma and a blogger, I have met and become friends with many environmentalists (and discovered old friends who had been living environmentally all along), many who I not only admire but whose reverence for planet earth I can only hope to emulate. A few months ago I met such a person when I brought Annabelle to the park. While Annabelle ran around and around the playground, she caught the attention of 2 older little girls who followed her and doted on her. The girls belonged to Laura, a mom who loves to talk as much as I do. When we discovered a shared love for the environment, so began a new friendship.

What I love about Laura, aside from the fact that she shares my passion for green living, is that she is a passionate thinker. When Laura comes across new information, she researches it until she finds answers that satisfy her. And as a full time mother, she is not one to sit and watch her children play by themselves in the yard but feels free to run around and play with them. A few weeks ago when I visited Laura and her girls in Hamilton, she showed me her backyard where her children are tending a large vegetable garden. Propped up next to the garden was a huge repurposed water barrel, which once stored pickles for a Greek exporter. Laura and her girls water their garden by collecting water in the barrel and transporting it over to their garden.

Water conservation is vital in Laura’s hometown of Hamilton; because of the cost of water there, as well as Laura’s commitment to protecting the earth’s resources, she has become an expert on how to save water. Since she knows a bit more about water conservation than I do, let me turn you over to her:

There are the usual water saving tips like turning off the sink when you brush your teeth or put soap on your hands [before washing], [but] there are less obvious ways to conserve too:

Outside

1. Add compost. When planting a garden add compost. Compost acts like a sponge and absorbs water [to help nourish the plants in your garden].

2. Mulch heavily. Mulch acts like a blanket keeping the moisture in and decreases the weeds that grow and steal water from your garden plants.

3. Water 2 in 1. Hold smaller pots over larger ones when watering in order to catch the overflow from the smaller one.

4. Say no to mow. Keep your grass a little longer in dry spells as freshly cut grass allows for more evaporation.

5. Don’t throw the baby out with the kiddie pool. If you have a young child who likes to use a wading pool use the water to water your garden after play is over. Better yet, fill it with water from a water barrel and refill the water barrel with it when done.

Thank you Laura for these wonderful water saving tips! By making small changes, even one or two, in our own homes, we are able to make a huge difference for the environment.

Do you have a water conservation tip? If so, please share. I love hearing your thoughts! =)

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Our family’s efforts to go green coincided with my discovery of the famous Fly Lady, an on-line personal assistant who works day and night to guide folks living in CHAOS (Can’t Have Anyone Over Syndrome) to a life of order, organization, routine, and an environment that is clutter free. As I’ve mentioned time and time again to you, readers, greening my life and decluttering our home emerged while I was pregnant and nesting. Luckily, I became well acquainted with eco-friendly ways to dispose of our clutter, selling and giving away our belongings on Craig’s List and Freecycle. I decluttered with such enthusiasm that my husband once dreamed that I had freecycled pictures of our newborn! (No, I never freecyled pictures of my own daughter, but apparently I was getting rid of so much stuff that my husband worried that I might freecyle him and our daughter).

What I have noticed since decluttering our home and implementing a routine (even loosely followed) is that I manage to accomplish more–much more than I ever imagined possible. Creativity flows for me when my sink isn’t full of dishes, toys aren’t scattered all over the floor, and the laundry is tended to daily. I am (prepare yourselves for a confession) one of those people that thrives on external order, and it is my feeling that when my home and world are (or seem to be) in order, I am better prepared to manage the inner workings of my life.

Greater still, than being able to manage one’s personal life, I think, is having the energy to do something about chaos in the greater world. Over the years, being the do-gooder that I aspired to be, I have learned that there are many, many causes out there that need attention. Many people want to contribute, on some level, to making a difference, and one way or another, folks usually find a purpose or cause that they live for. Focusing on a single cause or two, though, makes it more likely that one’s efforts can be channeled towards real change that means something for the world.

My present causes include working (and writing) to protect and care for the earth’s environment, and to be a domestic do-gooder who raises a family that is mindful of the planet’s health, as well as the well-being of people all over the world. Regarding my first cause, the environment, my hope is that my children’s generation will be able to walk outside and not have to pick up garbage off the side of the road. Littering, pollution, and all things contributing to global warming will be in decline; our children will revere the earth and each other. Yes, I have a dream.

Getting the earth’s climate in order is no small dream. It is tempting to be pessimistic and list all of the ways our environment is going to h*** in a handbag. But I belong more to the school of “the glass is half full,” and so instead, here are a few thoughts on order and harmony as I see it manifest in our environment:

I notice order and harmony when I see. . .

a cloth diapered baby

yard composts

high heeled ladies and oxford soled men cycling to work

stay-cationers

vegetable gardens

groceries in cloth bags

used book stores

the Goodwill

clean roads

farmers’ markets

stream and water monitoring

recycling centers

green blogs, growing, growing, growing with crunchy, practical green thoughts

A small victory for me, as an environmentalist, was noticing that our local YMCA implemented a recycling program by simply taping “RECYCLE” signs to several former trashcans. Over the past few months, each time I visited the Y, I left a comment about there not being a recycling effort in place and how I would love to participate in setting it up. While no one ever contacted me to help with set-up, I can’t tell you how happy I was to walk past the new recycling program that is underway at the Y.

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If you have a minute, check out my post “10 Easy Ways to Reduce Paper Consumption” on 5 Minutes for Going Green.  Just think what we can accomplish for our planet if we all made just a couple of changes in our daily lives!

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This week on Green Mamma, I am happy to introduce Forced Green, a new green living web-site started by Laura Rembowski, who says that going green means being “aware of our carbon footprint and . . . mak[ing] changes in our lives . . . [to] make this world a better place.” Currently, Linda lives in a recreational vehicle, or an R.V., which she describes as  “bootcamp” for going green. Here’s what Linda has to say about living green when your home’s on wheels:

1. Conserve water and power. Water conservation and power are daily necessities for R.V. living. By reducing the gallons of water used each time we flush the toilet, wash our hands, toss in a load of laundry, or hop into the bath and shower, we are helping to save water, water, water! Ways to be mindful of water use include: installing a water dam into our toilets or purchasing low flush toilets, using energy efficient and high efficiency washers, and co-bathing or timed baths and showers.

As for cutting out power draining habits? Linda explains the way our society’s dependency on power adds up: “Even when powered down, computer desk equipment, entertainment center, coffee pot, hair dryers, and appliances are consuming energy. Use power strips with on/off buttons. Plug all your equipment into them and switch them off when they’re not in use so that they’re not pulling a load.”

2. Grow a young environmentalist. Linda is aunt to several green nieces and nephews. To peak youth interest in caring for nature, Linda suggests that children be allowed to grow a plant or garden. To get started, she explains, “Give them a packet of seeds, let them plant it, and care for it. They will go out each and every day to watch it grow.”

In addition to showing children how to grow and care for plants, Linda suggests taking children for a walk, bringing a plastic bag, and allowing them to pick up debris to help keep the environment clean. One of my own favorite green moments with Annabelle happened on a hot summer morning last August; we jogged down to our bike trail where Annabelle sat in her stroller and observed her passionate green mamma picking up discarded bottles, cans, paper, and cigarette butts for some 500 yards. I filled 6 bags or so, which isn’t much in the grand scheme of things; however, I know that somewhere in my little one’s mind, she’ll understand the value of cleaning up and caring for our earth.

When it comes to teaching our children to value their environment, Linda puts it best, “If they keep the land clean, they’ll learn that [the earth] will take care of them.”

3. Go high-tech! Linda swears by Hy-Tech paint, which incorporates a ceramic barrier into household paint and works to reduce your home’s absorption of heat by reflecting the sun off the walls of a house. And guess who is a major customer of Hy-Tech paint? None other than the leaders of air and space research, NASA! To learn more about Hy-Tech paint and its environmental benefits, visit Hy-TECH Sales.

4. Grow a dirt-free garden. While living in a motor home provides access to wide open spaces and beautiful scenery, Linda’s front yard is ever changing. To stay in touch with nature when out on the road, Linda makes use of aeroponics, a dirt free growing method in which a plant’s roots are suspended in a 100% humidity, highly oxygenated chamber. Aerogrow, the company that provided Linda with her own aeroponic garden, is committed to sustainability for climate protection and employee wellness. Oh, and just in case your wondering, aeroponics is said to produce vegetables that are just as nutritious, if not more so, than traditionally grown plants.

5. Spot the Green Seal. Linda recommends that when shopping for green products, especially suspect items that may be “green washed,” to search for the Green Seal of approval. Based on a life cycle evaluating process, Green Seal evaluates a product from material extraction and its inception to manufacturing and use and ending with recycling or disposal of a product. To find out whether your favorite green products are Green Seal certified, visit Green Seal.org.

Living green on the road has opened Linda’s eyes to ingenuous ways to care for the earth’s environment. Of her unique motor home lifestyle and its influence on her efforts to care for the earth, Linda comments, “I often [think] that if everyone in the world was required to live in an RV for year or two, there would be absolutely no problem[s] living in our environment.”

With the rising costs of gasoline on our budgets and the environment, those living an RV or motor home lifestyle may want to learn more ways to live green on the road, save money, and reduce their overall impact on the earth. And for everyone else concerned with caring  for the earth, check out Linda at Forced Green to learn easy ways to live a natural life in an industrial world.

Oh, and just in case you were wondering, the RV lifestyle is growing.  Here’s a few neat facts and stats about RVs from RV-N-Motorhomes:

Typically RVers travel 4500 miles annually on excursions that total 28 to 35 days annually.

Americans in the age group of 35-to-54 year are keener on owning an RV of their own.

The typical RV owner is age 49, married, owns a home and has an annual household income of $68,000.

With nearly 7.2 million RVs on the road in the year 2001, the sales of RVs have steadily increased through the following years: 2002, +21.1%; 2003, +3.2%; 2004, +15.4%.

RV rental has become a $350 million/year business, experiencing a 63% growth rate between 1997 and 2002, according to the U.S. Census Bureau and the RV Rental Assoc.

The retail value of RVs produced was more than $12.4 billion. Combined with the RV rental market, it is estimated that RVs are $15.75 billion a year industry.

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Last week Everyday Woman announced her intention to include a gratitude post each week which she calls Thankful Thursday. Inspired by the poetic prose of her entry, I have decided to make a change to my own gratitude post. I plan to introduce a gratitude word of the week, which I hope to reflect on throughout my week so that not only am I aware of how I have been blessed by life but so that I practice being mindful of what is most important to me.

This week I have chosen the word “forgive” to inspire my gratitude post. I thought about how I interact with the word “forgive” on a personal level and having held those thoughts for several days have decided that what craves forgiveness on my behalf is actually myself. And so I forgive and am grateful for it . . .

I forgive myself for raising my voice with my daughter. . .

I thank the universe for her everyday. My daughter is my precious love.

I forgive myself for making promises that I wish I had not made . . .

I am grateful for the opportunities presented so that I might flex my soul and try new things.

I forgive myself for quitting . . .

I now know that it’s okay to fail and move on from it.

I forgive myself for worrying . . .

The world is beyond my control and sometimes terrible events turn out to be wonderful blessings.

I forgive myself for holding grudges . . .

I shudder to think how many good times I have missed out on for staying angry over petty things.

I forgive myself for guzzling a gallon of gasoline each week . . .

may my children forgive me too.

I forgive myself for being a perfectionist . . .

the world is perfect in its imperfections, and yet, time and time again, I find myself straightening up a clean room or tidying up the yard when I should be spending time with my family.

I forgive my impatience . . .

everything will happen in its own time and life is sweeter when I am not rushing out the door.

I forgive myself for having impossible standards . . .

my true friends don’t care whether my house is clean, my hair is combed, or whether I am mother or wife of the year. I suspect that some of the qualities that I loathe about myself are what others like about me anyway.

And last, I forgive myself for manging at 10 p.m. when I really should just drink a glass of water . . .

snacking is so yummy though!

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