Earth Day / Good Friday

Hi blog friends!

Well this is going to be a combo post.

Good Friday

Mean anything to you? Well as a christian it means a lot to me and my family.

Good Friday is observed on the Friday before Easter Sunday. On this day Christians commemorate the passion, or suffering, and death on the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Many Christians spend this day fasting and praying and meditation of the agony and suffering of Christ on the cross. (yes and here I am blogging, but with purpose)

The biblical account of Jesus' death on the cross, his burial and his resurrection may be found in the following passages of Scripture: Matthew 27:27-28:8; Mark 15:16-16:19; Luke 23:26-24:35; and John 19:16-20:30.

I usually read the Easter story from Luke. It's a good time for me to regroup and focus on what really matters most. I take it all to heart, it's very personal for me. Rather than focus mostly on death and destruction it's really a joyous day as we look forward to Easter and the celebration of our Lord's victory. This year I know Princess will grasp a little bit more of what we celebrate and why we do. I don't even begin to know how to scratch the surface at how deeply I am moved by the cross that Jesus bore. The Passion Of The Christ, by Mel Gibson is very moving, if you've not seen it now is a good time to give it a viewing.

Earth Day

I've never been big on green affairs until this past year. As a mother many of my "green" actions result from trying to save some $ green cash. I'd like to think I'm a good stewart of both our finances and the earth {both given by God}. As stated in my New Year post this year, "Less Is More". We've done fairly well sticking to that motto. I'm not going to bore you with statistical data on how global warming is causing our planet to die. I simply want to state all the things that we are doing to be a greener family. We feel it's part of our job to make sure the future generations get to enjoy how God displays his magnificent creativity, splendor and yes even humor through nature. Our stewardship and happy earth friendly habits will be passed on as we live out loving the earth God gave us. So think of this not so much as a brag list, rather a list of ideas. Maybe we share the same ideas, maybe not.

Our family's earth friendly lifestyle:

Recycle, recycle, recycle - beyond curb side, we reuse everything and anything. Use old applesauce glass jars for non-food storage, old shirts become rags, newsprint becomes compost material and wrapping paper etc, etc. I love up-cycling household junk for crafts as well. Kind of a new hobby I guess. Why not use an old jelly jar (minus label) as a bud vase. If you're crafty, come up with a jar decoration or keep it simple with a little ribbon. Not hoarding or becoming a pack rat, there is a way to hold off and ask the question, "what could I use this for?" before tossing it into the trash. Pssst, hey fellow moms, if you have a paper company who prints your local paper visit them and ask for an 'end roll'. They are usually free or just a few bucks. An end roll is usually trash to them, it's the end of their paper printing roll. To ensure they won't run out of paper on a roll during printing production they'll take off the 'left over' roll and put on a new roll and resume printing. It's huge & great for coloring, wrapping gifts (or both), crafts, projects etc. Will last years! Don't forget the saying, one man's junk is another person's treasure. Find local mom groups that will swap out dish sets, clothes, hangers or whatever. Visit a 2nd hand store rather than buying new. You'll save, promise. Lastly here, I must confess that I reuse garbage bags from time to time if they are not so nasty. I usually combine garbage to consolidate and if the bag has a bunch of tissues in it I'll dump the tissues into another full garbage bag and leave the liner.

Use glass for storage - We use mason Jars for dry air tight food storage, storing freezer items such as soup stock. It cut's down the need for all those plastic Glad plastic containers (which drive me crazy anyway). Less demand on plastic generation.

Buy open bulk. One of the reason's I love shopping at Whole Foods is that I can buy all my flour, rice, beans, etc. in bulk. I'm able to save a little carbon foot print here by putting the stuff in my mason jars. It saves on cardboard and plastic packages that end up in the trash. One plastic bag weighs a lot of stuff.

Glass milk deposit- we buy our milk from a local dairy farmer who uses glass bottles. It's a sustainable way to sell the milk. Each time we bring back the bottle we get the bottle deposit discount. No more plastic milk jugs. Though they can be re-purposed into many useful things.

Eco-stuffers- cloth "baggies for lunches, and use wax paper rather than plastic wrap whenever possible. Cloth lunch bags too, they are so much easier to run through the wash than conventional ones.

Eco napkins napkins that are tossed into the wash and used again {no more paper}

Un-Paper (paper towels but made from cloth) Click the link to see the cute storage counter towel house. We love ours.

Produce bags- rather than use the plastic bags from the supermarket paper or plastic we bring our bags and reuse them over and over. They are really neat and I often get the $.5 reusable bag discount as well (more savings) click the link for a picture. Oh and I'll add in we use these great ziplock gallon sized bag replacements. They are wonderful! Water proof and food safe as well. No more plastic baggies!

Reusable shopping bags- which you can get everywhere these days. We have a variety of styles we use. And often use them beyond the super market. Target is also giving five cents back on reusable bag usage. (don't forget to wash them from time to time)

Dish cloths rather than sponges- (ours are crochet kind or rags that were not used to clean up motor oil or unsafe fabrics). These get rewashed and reused. I hate sponges, especially when they smell bad. It means they are full of bacteria ~ yuck.

Reusable mop pads- I have both microfiber and the ones for a Swiffer brand mop click the link to see a picture of the ones I prefer. Could not stand how Swiffer made my floor sticky and what's in that stuff anyway? So we mop and toss the mop head in the wash ~ easy breezy!

Make our own cleaning products- I can't stand buying 'green' cleaners. I make my own multi-purpose cleaner, window & glass cleaner, wood polish, toilet & tile cleaner, air freshener ~ you name it. I actually prefer using my home made cleaners over the conventional and find myself cleaning more because I kinda enjoy it just a tad bit better.

Use cloth baby / toddler wipes- Well let's just say I really like it since making the switch. I make the wipe solution too. Check out my most recent blog postings for more on this.

Fabric diaper bag- Well the most common diaper bags are made up of a great deal of plastic these days. I got mine mostly because I grew tired of all the little sticky stuff that collected in the crevices. So hard to clean. Your kid ever give you an 'icky something' from the ground you couldn't throw away right away due to limited access to a garbage container? Ever have a sippy cup or bottle leak? No well you're lucky. I've used my cloth diaper bags as handbags and purse on occasion (minus the diapers etc.) LOL. Stylish and yet practical too. Have I mentioned that I love how washable they are? Click on the link, the seller is super nice and fabulous. She even added snap closure and cell phone pocket :-) just for me.

Reusable eye make-up remover pads- I use organic cotton flannel round pads to wipe off my eye makeup with olive oil. Surprised at how much I was saving in buying mascara remover this stuck as a sure keeper. If you click the link the bamboo ones will come up but the shop owner was able to make a custom listing for me. Great to work with from Etsy.

Coasters. We have these great non-stone / earth eroding coasters we use. Great for folks with kids because they are easy to clean and won't damage your furniture when Jr. decides to bang it on your coffee table.

Ditch the fabric softener- We don't use fabric softener. Many of them pollute the water ways and so we use vinegar in our rinse cycle.

Air Dry- we use the clothes line whenever possible to save on electricity.

Combine errands by location resulting in less gas usage and better use of my time.

Don't buy plastic-ware or paper plates for picnics, we bring our own stuff from home and I have a few old mismatched dishes from the 2nd hand store we bring with us. Why not? lol.

We do use cfl and eco / green light-bulbs etc throughout the house but I'm thinking twice about this. Many of them don't really last 7 - 11 years. There is some talk that government might make it mandatory. I'm not thrilled at what actually makes up those eco-light-bulbs. As a mom it kinda scares me a tad bit.

Ditched bottled water. We use glass always unless we really can't. Camelbacks are good for hikes in the woods. We don't spend money on bottled water and have a water filtration system that we use and store our 'bottled water' in a glass pitcher. My water bottle is made of glass. I love it. Dropped it a few times and didn't shatter. Saves on water as well because if you are like me and you didn't finish the bottled water from yesterday and still have a bit left chances are it is less appealing to finish the next day if left in a plastic container. I'ts the plastic leaching into the water that makes it taste funny. I put the lid on my glass container and pop in the fridge for the next day ~ out comes flavor free water.

Shred- We use the paper from our shredder to package and send gifts. Most of it goes into the recycle bin but come Christmas birthday or holiday time we use it as backing rather than peanuts.

Ditch the wrapping paper- last Christmas we used fabric remnants from the frabric store and old blankets from yard sales etc. as gift wrapping. We tied the gifts up with yarn so every thing can be used year after year. I'ts not hard given that we instated the three gifts rule. (see our Christmas post for more info on the three gifts) I have a ton of gift bags left over from when folks have given us gifts. I keep a stash of them and us next time we need to bring a gift. Rather than tissue paper, in goes the shredded paper. Makes a mess but saves a ton. Tissue paper is an expensive toss away. Feels like throwing money away. I tie up the packages real nice and usually make the cards. You can re-purpose cereal boxes for puzzles. or cardboard boxes as doll houses or kids cars or ships with things around your house (just as mentioned in the first listing).

Well that's some list we've built up last year. This year we are adding to the list with some more recent initiatives. Some we just started and some we have planned for future dates. Such as,

Adding a faucet aerator to conserve water in our kitchen. We got a great one from Earth Easy. It not only conserves water like the ones you see in home centers but it has this great little switch to turn the water off while washing. This means I don't have to re-work the hot and cold water combo.

No more drier sheets- (we have not used drier sheets in years) but we are giving these wool drier balls a whirl. They are said to cut down dryer usage time by 25 min. Also they won't be putting toxins in your wash. Good thing to have on a rainy day when we can't use the line to dry. I do also have a small line in our basement for little things that shouldn't go in the drier. It's just not big enough for loads of laundry.

Compost- self explanatory. We'll be putting out less compost-able (if that's even a word) garbage in the landfill and using it to fertilize our garden. Yes I'm going to try to give my brown thumb a try at gardening.

CSA / Community Supported Agriculture- They say supporting local is the best thing you can do. Less petroleum trucking around all the food and local growers want to please their customers so they are most often than not willing to be transparent in their farming methods. In addition to our CSA (beginning this June) we've been buying our meat from a local farmer who raises animals on a grass-fed diet. Better for us and better for the planet. We also recycle our egg containers. When we go out to the farm for our meat or milk both sell local eggs where we can bring the containers back when we buy new dozen. This way we don't have to throw the egg containers away to the landfills.

Cooking on cast iron- which is a new thing. It's considered the original non-stick and takes us away from the Teflon market. Teflon is fairly toxic to make and not very earth friendly. Greenware is all the rage but I still think there is something to my non-stick 90 year old cast iron pan. Teflon pans have been replaced as early as 3-6 years in our home. The non-stick starts to flake off (which is toxic for humans) and yet than it makes you run out to the store for another non-stick Teflon pan. Great for the producers and marketers of Teflon. Bad for our wallet and planet.

Rain barrels- This is a new project for the spring/summer. We're getting old 50 gal barrels that use to hold laundry soap. Good way to re-purpose because they'd be fast on their way to the landfill. Hey we're happy to be taking two out of the equation. We'll be using the water collected from the rooftop. For this reason our rain-barrels won't be used to water our garden/food plants. I've read that it's really not a good idea for many reasons. But it will make great water to clean the car with and water the lawn and flower beds.

I'm sure our list will grow further. For now thanks for reading. I hope you got some ideas. I'm a mom and it's totally do-able. Might be a tad bit more work but I know that these green changes in our family also lend themselves to more green in our pockets. This means we have more of the extra by not spending on throw-aways. Get inspired, go a little greener! Happy Earth Day and many blessings to you on this holy Good Friday!

PS I'd also love to hear how you've gone a little green or what Good Friday means to you. Comments welcome {I've been very transparent here so please, nice comments only}!