A post from another blog - lowercase numbers: the link is just over to your right - challenged folks to try to walk a little instead of just hopping in the car. My knee jerk reaction was 'Yeah right, tree-hugger boy. Easy for you to say. Try that idea with small children!' But honestly. How much harder is it to strap the wee ones into a stroller instead of into their car seats? Who doesn't need the sunshine? And how about getting myself moving a little more often? What better excuse than doing my small part to save the planet?
That challenge - thank you Mr. Pulsipher, and sorry, I don't remember how long ago it was offered, but it has indeed been a while - got me thinking about small things I can actually do to use less energy - fossil fuel kind or non-renewable, that is. It would actually not be so bad if I expended more energy. So now, if it's a minor grocery run, we walk it. This also has the benefit of actually only buying what is on my list, instead of everything that looks good. One benefit of where we live in Wrongmont is that we are just one block off of Main St. - easy access to many fine eateries such as Good Times, Chipotle, and Three Margaritas, as well as fine shopping Murdoch's Ranch Supply and, my childhood favorite, BigK. We even took a stroll over to the monster Wallmart before our trip out West - even though I HATE Wallmart, the walkability of it won over hopping in the car and going to Target. Insanity. It's a whole new Kat! The car trip that we've cut out that struck me as the silliest was to the park. There's a pretty good park about a mile away, which we used to drive to most of the time. Let's hurry up and drive to go play! That's just funny to me. Half of the fun is the getting there. And if we actually get to wait for a train, it's like Christmas morning for little Katie!
Other painless changes:
- Switching out incandescent bulbs to CFLs as they need changing. A little pricey at first, but they should pay for themselves in no time.
- Hanging a few loads of laundry out on the line instead of using the dryer. I admit I'm not ready for crunchy, scratchy towels, but I actually like the feel and smell of sheets that have dried outside BETTER than ones dried in the dryer. Bounce tries hard to recreate that smell, but nature wins on that one.
- Garden/canning adventures. We are not self-sufficient over here . . . yet. But we're practicing. With Roger 'McGyver' working his magic on the watering system and grow boxes, we're getting a pretty good little garden going. I just need to figure out how to keep the poachers out of my blackberries! There are a fair number of man hours involved in the canning process, but in a couple of days I canned 20 quarts of apple juice and 42 pints of apple sauce, all with fruit from a tree that we do little in the way of taking care of. The grapevine that we don't even water yielded approximately 25 quarts of juice as well. And my cost, outside of sweat? A trip to Boulder to borrow all the equipment from my mom! :)Since I'm not ready to grow EVERYTHING we eat yet, buying locally-grown produce and making more things from scratch are relatively painless changes too.
- We've (by 'we' I of course mean Rog) started to install low-flow toilets, experimenting with our place first. Jacuzzi makes a nice one that actually works well - the American Standard did not have adequate power for our needs, shall we say. The city pays $50 for the old toilet, and we easily saved $20 off our water bill with just one toilet changed out.
Just some musings. Once again, I've been surprised at what actually paying attention to things in my little world shows me. Bottled water has been making me shake my head lately. Buy a Nalgene bottle and a water filter if you really need one! Why so much plastic?! Guess a little Berkeley rubbed off on me after all!
