Green-ifying our lives…

The more I read about it, the more I think on the things that we are doing or could be doing to give our 2 cents to help with the environment. There are simply some lifestyle habits or choices that we can change to make a difference. We wont be doing this drastically, and I wont be making my own facil cleanser, but Im positive about little things that we can do here and there.

Either to help the environment, or (let’s face it) to save money, here are the things that the blooming buds are doing (or will start doing) to have a greener life.

1 – Saving Energy. It is a norm in our house that every unused bulb is turned off. I must have gotten that from my mom, but it drives me crazy to see the lights on in an empty room. Also, our bulbs are compact florescent bulbs from EnergyStar. The only regular bulb we have in one from the front of the house that we hardly ever light anyway. However, we tent to leave the fans on, even if we are outside of the house. This doesn’t fit with the “saving energy” motto, but when we turn them off; the rooms are so hot and with humidity smell.

2 - Greeifying my computer. Let's face it... You all know my computer is ON all day long. But one thing that I do is that I always turn off the monitor when I get up from the computer. I can still hear the beeps from an incoming email or the messenger, but at least Im saving some energy as one of the things that makes the bill go higher is the monitor. I do that at school too. I NEVER set the screensaver... What's the point of that? I also turn off the speakers when I will be too far from the computer to hear any beep.

3 - Low printing. As you guys know, I dont print in my business (except for a few things like mommy and business cards), but mostly everything is without printing. Then, when my customers print, they only print the exact amount that they need, and dont have to buy extras (if I sell the cards with printing, the amounts will be rounded and people will end up with leftover cards). I also store my pictures in the computer and CD's, instead of printing EVERY SINGLE picture that I take. I cant even imagine what it will be like if I were to print every single shot that I take...

4 - Washing. I know sometimes I wish to wash with warm water, but we dont even have the hot water connected to the washer machine, so we are set to cold water. I also hand-wash little things instead of running the washer machine for little items.

5 – Gas. We all go to the same area everyday, which reduces our gas consumption in the car. We were both too far before, and saving on gas was one of the things that help us to make the decision of hubby changing job a few months ago. We also try to avoid several trips to the Supermarket or any other place that we frequent. When we need the pharmacy or something from la bodega, we call in for delivery. They use gas to bring it, but less gas is used in a motorcycle than in our car.

The building of the girls preschool is two blocks away down and then one block way right, and MOST people drive back and forth. We try not to drive when we need to go during the morning for one reason or the other. We try to only drive there when is to pick up the girls.

6 – Cloth Diapers. Everybody thought that I was crazy, but we started and it was great. When the girls started school, we kinda stopped using them, especially since Mimi started having rashes. Later I found out that those rashes where because of the detergent we were using on the diapers. Mia is Potty Trained already, but we plan to resume cloth diapering with Mimi this week. Still trying to find the right detergent to wash them. It is amazing the amount of trash that disposable diaper generates, and I really don’t want to continue adding to it. We also NEVER use disposable swimming diapers… We have always used cloth swimming diapers. We also dont use wipes since long time ago. We use cloth wipes or (most of the times) simply water and soap.

7 - Bags. This is something that we somehow need to start doing. I need to research a bit more, so I will leave this subject on hold while I do it. We do plan to buy some plastic containers to stop using the ziplocs that we are using for the school's snacks, but in the meantime, we are reusing the ziplocs when the teacher send them back (which is regular).

8 - Napkins. I have been googling some cloth napkins. I have never been a big fan of disposable napkins anyway, so I will stock up with some cloth ones so we dont even buy the disposables anymore. We wash everyday anyway, so throwing something extra wont hurt us anyway.

9 - Cleaning Supplies: I haven’t done anything in this subject but I plan to do it. I have heard of people using vinager, vaking soda and a few other things to replace some cleaning supplies. It wont hurt to try something to clean that doesn’t make you dizzy as most of the cleaning products make me. I promise to blog more about this when I do the proper research and start doing it.

10 - Food. I have always been very eager to make homemade food instead of buying ready-made food, incluing baby food. I have never understood what is the point of buying a banana babyfood, when I can simply buy the bananas and throw them in the chopper. If you guys dont own a chopper I hightly recommend the Ultimate Chopper. I got one since Gaby started solid months when she was a baby, and we CANT live without it.

I know there are tons of other things that I could be doing, and I plan to work on a few more once I became more aware of them. I also plan to teach my daughters on the day-to-day about how important this is.