I have been thinking about whether I should blog about this or not and decided that I would because hopefully some of you will decide to join me. I feel strongly that I have a responsibility to take care of this earth as best I can. Heavenly Father created it for us and it is our job to care for his creations and treat them with respect. So, recently I decided that I need to do more things to help our Earth to stay beautiful. The great thing about being "green" is that most of the things you do to help the planet also save you money. I'm going to share some of the things that we are trying slowly to do in our home and hopefully you can find a few of them that you are willing to do too. None of these are huge, but all of them make a small difference and if many of us do them then they make a bigger difference. So, even if you don't want to go green check out the ones that'll save you money!
Change to compact fluorescent light bulbs (cfl) in your home. We get them at Sam's club and they are pretty cheap compared to other places. They will save you money on your electric bill.
Get an aerated shower head to cut down on the amount of water you use when you shower while still giving you enough water pressure. This will save you on your water bill unless you already take "military showers" like my dad does :).
Wash most of your clothes in cold water to save the energy of heating the water and only run full loads of laundry.
Turn off he faucet while you brush your teeth.
Use natural (vinegar, baking soda) or bio degradable cleaning product. Use rags instead of paper towels to clean with. You will definitely save if you use natural cleaning products. There are tons of "recipes" online for cleaning with stuff you already have in your kitchen.
Seal up the cracks around windows and doors. They let the warm air out in the winter and the cold air out in the summer.
Use a reusable water bottle instead of buying new disposable ones all the time.
Check out Freecycle! Go to www.freecycle.org to find a group near you. This is a place where you can give away things that you no longer want/need but keep them out of the land fills. How often have you thrown away something that you thought no one would want only to find out later that someone could have used it. This is a great way to help others just by getting rid of your stuff.
So...if you decide to do one or more of these please leave a comment and tell me what you are doing. Also, if you have more ideas for easy ways to help the environment please share them by leaving a comment!
Have a great day!
Wednesday, January 23, 2008
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4 comments:
We use the new fancy lightbulbs and we have become recycling fanatics. We only have one garbage can to go out these days, if even that.
And I send everything not garbage worthy to the D.I.
Anyway, just my tidbits. I heard about the cleaning with vinegar and baking soda so I just bought a big thing of baking soda at Costco today. I now just need to remembert to use it. I am kind of a freak about this stuff. I grew up with my parents always saying to turn off lights, turn off water, don't leave doors open, they always put plastic over our windows, etc. etc. etc.
More power to you girl!!!! I hope it goes well for you.
Do you wash all your clothes in cold? I haven't been able to bring myself to wash whites in cold yet. I should just get over it. Oh well!!!
Tawnie,
I don't do my whites in cold either, but pretty much everything else. Thanks for commenting! It makes me feel less like I'm talking to myself when people comment. ;)
I clean a lot with vinegar. We also have the energy saving light bulbs. I could definitely do better on recycling though.
We ride our bikes a lot! My husband rides his bike to school (2 miles everyday) or catches the bus. I do not buy cleaning supplies because they smell bad and hurt my nose when I smell them. I think they are bad for you anyway. I like to re-use everything that I can. I turn off lights, and I try to unplug things when not in use. We only use those special light bulbs. I air dry my clothes when the weathers good. We like to recycle, especially because it's so easy in Davis. My kids elementary school recycles EVERYTHING! This is an Awesome town to live in because people really care about the environment, so we have good examples everywhere. We can do better. though.
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