Ecominded Mama

Consolidate errands

I love (truly love) the town we live in, but the limited number and type of stores downtown often means that I have to drive a couple of towns over to a much bigger shopping area when I need anything beyond the basics. During particularly busy weeks, I sometimes found myself driving over two or three times and inevitably I'd still have forgotten something.

So last week I tried something new -- I kept a list throughout the week of what stores I needed to go to and what I needed to buy, and drove to the area just once to knock off all of the errands. I saved on gas, certainly, but the best part was that the list kept me organized and it saved time by eliminating the need to go back and forth. Time is something I can definitely use more of!   

Kids spreading the word

I was in a local cafe today and heard some older women at the next table talking about "that flyer" by the bathrooms, and although I couldn't quite catch what the flyer said from the snippets of conversation I heard, I could tell it was something to do with the environment. How cool is it that a child's drawing (click on the picture to enlarge it) got two senior citizens to think about their driving habits ? What a great way to spread the word about the negative impacts of idling.

No longer a one-car family + car-buying research sites

I was very proud of the fact that we managed to live our suburban lives with only one car, but today we broke down and bought a second car. Our first was becoming increasingly unreliable, and after the car had a cooling-system malfunction and my husband and the girls were stranded we decided that we needed to buy a second car. Our first will now be the "station car," the car my husband drives to the train station on days when he doesn't walk there. If we put 1,000 miles on it in the next year, I'll be amazed.

Our starting criteria for buying the new car were simple:

1. Seats 5.

2. Has high fuel economy.

3. Ideally under $30,000. 

I desperately wanted a Prius, but it's too small for us (we rented one while on vacation and loved it, but it was cramped with two gigantic car seats in the back; plus we needed room for our dog). Two sites were infinitely helpful in our search: MyProductAdvisor.com (which asks you a series of questions, then recommends cars that meet your criteria) and Edmunds.com (which gives you all sorts of technical information, reviews, pricing information, and advice). We narrowed our list to four cars that we test-drove, the Subaru Outback, Subaru Forrester, Saturn Vue Hybrid, and Honda CR-V. And today we bought (drum roll, please!) the CR-V.

No more idling

My Dad had his first car in the '60s, and many of his beliefs about cars and car maintenance stem from cars of that era. He was adamant about two rules he said would extend the life of my car:

1. Warm up the car for at least two minutes when you start it.

2. The process of starting your car is incredibly hard on it -- leave it running if you'll be idling for less than 5 minutes.

And being the dutiful daughter that I am (most of the time), I've followed his advice for the past 20 years. But yesterday I learned that (gasp!) he's wrong about both rules... or at least those rules do not apply to modern cars.

According to the California Energy Commission's site, if you'll be idling for more than 10 seconds, it's better for the environment and for your car to turn it off. I recommend that you read the full article, but here are some highlights:

• For every two minutes a car is idling, it uses about the same amount of fuel it takes to go about one mile.... But you're not going anywhere. Idling gets ZERO miles per gallon.

• Ten seconds of idling can use more fuel than turning off the engine and restarting it.

• With today's modern engines, you need no more than 30 seconds of idling on winter days before driving away. [Note that they say WINTER days. I'm sure a few seconds will suffice during the summer.]

• Excessive idling can actually damage your engine components, including cylinders, spark plugs, and exhaust systems. Fuel is only partially combusted when idling because an engine does not operate at its peak temperature. This leads to the build up of fuel residues on cylinder walls that can damage engine components and increase fuel consumption.

• Frequent restarting has little impact on engine components like the battery and the starter motor. Component wear caused by restarting the engine is estimated to add $10 per year to the cost of driving, money that will likely be recovered several times over in fuel savings from reduced idling.

I gave this "no idling" rule a try yesterday: I waited to turn on the car until I was ready to drive away (kids settled, seatbelts on, iPod playing, sunglasses on); I turned off the car when I got to the station to pick up my husband even though I could see the train coming in; and later, I waited to start the car until the other traffic had passed and I could leave my parking spot. It'll take me a while to get used to this way of thinking (I forgot to turn off the car when I hit red lights, for example), but this seems doable.