For those of you who make green living a political issue, an issue including lines between democrats and republicans…stop. That’s ridiculous. I don’t care if global warming is a hoax. I don’t care if carbon footprints are a joke. I don’t really care because it doesn’t matter. It shouldn’t matter. Because regardless of what’s happening in our environment shouldn’t we all want more economical cars? Should we all want to be free of oil? Should we all want new and better technology? Shouldn’t we all want to keep landfills as empty as possible? Shouldn’t we all want to take care of our earth (come on Christians, this directive came straight from God)? So, here are a few suggestions that my wife and I have done to make less waste, spend less money, and get chemicals out of our home.

• Garbage bags- You’ve bought all those cloth bags to lug your groceries home, but everytime you go to the store you forget them! So what do you do? You use plastic. Well, we stopped buying garbage bags for our kitchen and bathroom garbage cans. Instead we use those extra plastic bags from the grocery store. Free. Recycled. The only major negative is that you’re emptying the garbage can at least once a day.
• Chickens- Yup, that’s right. Chickens. We didn’t want to compost ’cause we don’t have any leafy/grassy waste. So instead we bought a handful of chicks for a couple bucks a piece. Now that they’re full grown chickens we get four organic and free range eggs a day (from four chickens), we give the chickens all of our old food (obviously aside from meats and fats), my kids get an invaluable lesson concerning nature, and they’re incredibly easy to maintain! Oh, and yes we do live in the city. And yes most cities allow you to have around five chickens (not roosters).
• Worms- We did worm composting for a while. It was exciting for a while, they were like my own little pets. But eventually I got tired of the upkeep. If you could do your worm composting outside it would be much easier. I’ve written past blogs on worm composting so feel free to read those in order to understand more of what goes into this project. In the end it was a fun experiment that produced a great boost for our garden this year. Oh, and it’s cheap too! Dirt is free or cheap. Worms are like $20. And you can use many free containers that you’ll find in your garage (I converted a rubbermaid tub).
• Vinegar and Baking soda- These two are your lifesavers. They will keep you from spending an obscene amount of money on cleaning supplies. Using vinegar and baking soda you can clean nearly anything. And the best news? They’re super cheap!
• Recycling- Duh. If you don’t recycle as much as you possible can…start! For a while my wife and I lived in an apartment complex that paid for recycling but refused to allow or set up bins for pickup. The irony is that these apartments were run by the city…and yet they refused to allow recycling! At one point we even had the garbage/recycling people come down to our apartments to walk the managers through the process and then set it all up…the managers refused! Anyway, we had to save our recycling things and then load them up in the car and drive to a local collection agency. It sucked.
• Glass jars instead of tupperware- Start buying up mason jars at garage sales and use those for your storage containers instead of tupperware. This keeps those chemicals from leaching into your food through the plastic. Even better is to use old peanut butter, jelly, and pickle jars as your storage containers. Free, recycled, and better for you.
• Plastic containers- I know that I just said that plastic is the devil, but if you’re going to use it at least make use of old sour cream, cottage cheese, and other plastic containers. It’s free!
• Trader Joes- I used to write off TJ’s as a hyped up grocery store that just offered goods for yuppies. Turns out they have some great healthy food at a fraction of the price. Sounds like a good commercial right?
• Water Bottles- Stop buying individual bottled water! It’s is incredibly bad for your wallet and incredibly bad for the environment. Just don’t do it! If you have a compulsion with water buy yourself an expensive sigg bottle so that you can find joy in your water drinking. But don’t buy evian, aquafina, or Sierra! The water in those bottles have been tested…and guess what? It’s tap water!
• Rain barrel- I’m not sold on rain barrels yet. We’ve got one. It’s amazing how fast it fills up too. In one small rainfall our 55 gallon barrel filled up in just a few hours. We made the mistake, however, of not setting it up high enough so as to create quality water pressure. Here’s my question, the barrel I bought were food grade barrels filled with soy sauce. So before it’s ready for your use you’ve got to rinse it out a few times. Thats right. In order to save water with your rain barrel you’ve got to rinse it out a few times…rinse it out…with water…to save water…see the idiocy in this? I think if you use rain barrels long term it makes more sense. But it is cheap, and it’s kind of fun to set up, and it makes the neighbor kids ask lots of questions!

I feel like I should write some more about natural pesticides for your garden (a garden would have been a great thing to put on the list too!), avoiding the use of ziplocks and paper products, getting rid of your microwave, non-toxic paints, some creative artistic things for the kids, etc. I’m sure y’all have lots you could add to the discussion as well.

What an exiting thing it is to think creativly about how we can take care of this beautiful gift that God has given us.