So today I'm super tired, seems like I've done a bunch of nothing but am exhausted. I have been running and I'm not good but today I managed 2 miles! ok this isnt suppose to be about this so I"ll get on track. So part of sustainable living is making green choices. I am trying different things that I know my family can do in the long run. So check out some of what I'm doing and see if you can do just a few to help out mother earth.
1. Harvest rain water- This is as easy as getting a few used 5 gallon buckets and letting the rain fill them up. My choice was to visit my local recycle center and I purchased 55 gallon black plastic barrels. They were $5 each and I actually bought 9 of them. 3 are for rainwater catching. I have linked them together with pvc and put spickets on the bottom. One I am going to use in my greenhouse. The other two have a double spicket adapter. One hose runs to my garden and the other hose is hooked to two float valves that auto water my chickens. Yes its a bit of an investment for the spickets, barrels, gutter, pvc, and down spouts but think of all the water you will save. I didnt realize this but they actually pump water to California cities. That is crazy! They say if the water stopped coming then the towns would disappear. Well I dont want them moving near me so I'll do my part lol. BTW I use rainwater for my fish tanks too, its naturally soft water.
2. Recycle your grass clippings- We invested in a lawn sweeper. The past few years we have asked our neighbors when they cut their grass and sweep their lawn to call us. This makes a great weed barrier for your garden. I use it between all my rows to stop weeds from coming up in my vegetable garden. I plant vegetables by season. I start in March on St. Patricks day and plant my peas and brussel sprouts. Then two weeks later I plant my cool weather crops and root crops. So the mowing we do starts the grass being put in these rows. Then as I plant more crops I fill in my "walk" paths between the rows with this. During the season it starts to break down and then when we till the garden at the end of the season it is then composting during winter. Its the best garden weed buster I've found. Everything else takes forever to break down.
3. Use all natural fertilizer- I have a friend who has cows. I dont have room for cows. I took one of my 9 barrels and made a poop barrel. I can use hot manure or composted manure and it last all season. All I need is about 1/4th of the barrel of manure then I add water to the top and slosh it around. I use the water on top along rain water to make a fertilizer for my garden. If it is hot manure I use half water and half manure water. When the barrel gets down some I fill it with more rain water. I put this manure water in between my rows, never on the plants. Its nice not to have to have a lot of manure on my property.
4. Change your lightbulbs- My electric bill was getting outragious. I found out that if I had all my lights on it was wasting 500 watts of energy. I went out and bought energy efficient bulbs and got my watts down to 125! My family wastes lots of electricity, so I'm trying to get them to help out.
5. Shut off power strips- As mentioned my family wastes lots of electricty. I have power strips hooked to my tv,x-box, dvd, vcr, and wii. See my family has a lot of electricity drainers. The only thing I left plugged into the wall was my dish network box because I still want to be able to record my soap opera while the power strip is off all day. I also hooked my computer up to one also but not my internet box. We have wifi and my laptop uses less energy so I can use that without having my desktop on all day.
6. Recycle as much as you can- We are recycling plastic, cardboard, aluminum, and paper. We take plastic and aluminum to the recycle center. The cardboard we are composting. The paper we are also recycling but it gets recycled then recycled lol. We bought a shredder and we shred the paper. Then we use it in our chicken nesting boxes. It is soft and fluffy and the chickens love to lay eggs on it. We also use grass clipping for this but I like the paper better. Then once it gets kinda gross then we recycle the nesting material to compost.
7. Dont buy things you dont need to- Its amazing how much we buy when there are alternatives. Cleaners for instance. Sometimes I use bleach but most of the time I use vinegar to clean things. If you mix it with water about 1 part vinegar to 3 parts water it smells a little and cleans a lot! It cleans bird poop excellently. I use it to clean counters, the bathroom, and most everything I can. I keep vinegar because I can alot and need it. I havent switched to the homemade laundry detergent only because I have a high efficiency washer and I"m a little scared. Its all about small changes. I"ve also started making my own bread and pasta. It isnt always cheaper but I always have the ingredients on hand. By not buying bread I do not have the plastic bag to deal with either. Pasta, I dont have the box or plastic container depending on which I normally buy.
8. Hang your laundry- We have an energy efficient dryer but why use it when the wind is free! I have a clothes line just wide and long enough to do one load of laundry. I only do one load of laundry a day and we are a family of 4. On the weekends I normally dont do laundry. Its a chore thing lol. My two children take turns each day folding and putting away the laundry so by doing one load each day it ensures a chore for the day plus who wants to spend all day doing laundry? I do one in the morning and move on to other things.
There are probably more things we are doing but I cant think of any. Some long term plans of ours are to go partially off-grid. This means that we will be using either solar or wind power to run part of the things in our house instead of using electricity from the local company. Our whole house is electric, we dont use gas for anything. When the power goes out we lose everything. Build a greenhouse so that I can grow food during winter therefore lowering our grocery bills. We are in the process of this now. Planting fruit trees is another thing we are going to do this year. Again lowering the grocery bill. I would also like to build a solar cooker. During the summer it gets very hot in my house because most of the summer I am canning vegetables and fruits. Why add to that with trying to cook dinner? These are fairly easy to make but I want to use recycled material. I would like to install a tankless water heater. My water heater eats electricty and we only use hot water for the dishwasher and shower. Tankless would use a lot less energy and electricty. I know I know..dishwasher..yes its one thing I cant give up because it helps me get a lot of other things done. sorry lol. I said it all had to be something we all could live with. I will give up pretty much everything else but not my dishwasher.
So there is the list, look online for some great ways you can start to become a little greener and put some of these into use for your family too. Remember do things that you know you can stick with. If you are not sure try it for a while, dont be afraid to try new things, you might end up liking what your doing!
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