Ecominded Mama

A year of ecomindedness

I've been blogging about my efforts to be more ecominded for a year now, and I have to say that I'm pretty proud of the changes I've made. I certainly could be more ecominded in my actions (I've been wanting to buy a compost bin for at least a year, for example, but still haven't bought one), but all in all I'm doing a lot better than I was when I started this blog. I committed to changing my habits and my spending patterns whenever I could, and for the most part I've been satisfied and even incredibly surprised at how easy those changes were: I turn off my car when I think I'll be idling for more than 10 seconds, my dryer goes largely unused because I dry most of my family's laundry on clothes racks if the weather isn't amenable to me drying them outside on my clothesline, I pack snacks and leftovers in reusable containers, we fill our Klean Kanteen and Sigg bottles with water at home instead of buying bottled water (my 5-year-old did not lose her school Klean Kanteen bottle for even a DAY this year!), we unplug appliances we aren't using, and minimize our entertainment center's phantom load by hooking everything up to the Smart Strip. Am I singlehandedly saving the planet with these small changes? No. But I am making a difference, and that's something to celebrate. 

Minimizing products packaged in plastic

I took a look at my recycling bin recently and was somewhat surprised to only realize NOW, after nearly a year of consciously trying to reduce my environmental impact, that many of the products I'd bought in landfill-clogging plastic bottles could have been bought in paper packages instead. To name a few: bar soap in a paper box instead of liquid soap in a plastic bottle, and powder laundry and dishwasher detergent instead of liquids in bottles. I'm going to make an effort to choose products packaged in paper from now on whenever I have a choice.

Landscaping: Use what you have

We've been in the suburbs for just over two years now, and fixing up the yard has been on our to-do list ever since we moved. We did a lot of work last spring (tearing out dead and overgrown plants and shrubs and replacing them with healthy evergreens), but we ran out of money and inspiration when it came to choosing paving stones to separate our plants and the mulch surrounding them from the grass. We went to our local nursery, which we love the idea of (all organic, family-owned) but that seriously falls down in the customer-service department, but didn't see any that we liked. Then we went to Home Depot thinking that they'd have a larger selection, but again -- nothing that suited our taste. We pretty much decided to shelve the project, but then my husband had an idea: Why don't we collect some of the mid-size rocks that are scattered around the yard and use them? We spent about 90 minutes collecting and placing the rocks, with fantastic results (I'll post a picture in the next day or two... it's raining buckets here now). The rocks are small enough that they're unobtrusive, yet large enough to contain the mulch and provide a nice visual separation between the plants and grass. The rocks were free, and now other areas of the yard are more conducive to barefoot play -- bonanza!