Goin' Green

I have decided to decrease my carbon footprint. Although I wasn't doing too shabby on that front already, now that Luci is here, I want to create a better world for her. Lame, right?

I already use reusable shopping bags, keep my heat turned down, recycle, keep lights on only in the room I am in, combine shopping trips, and pay my bills online. I feel slightly superior on garbage pick up days when I see other's trash cans completely over flowing, while ours is only half full. I feel even more superior when we place both of our recycling bins by the curb and note that many others do not even have one. This complex continues when Chad and I make trips to the local recycling facility to drop off things they will not pick up curb side.

Yet, I have many bad habits....

1. I am slightly addicted to the "clean" smell. I love harsh, strong cleaning products because they appear to make my house look and smell better. I know this is not true and have on occasion, used vinegar and baking soda with great sucess. Yet, like an addict I keep returning to the sauce.

2. I like magazines. I do not enjoy People, US Weekly, and publications such as those. Unfortunately, the magazines I do enjoy seem to always be supersized. Oprah and Real Simple make my day, yet take up a lot of space in the recycling bin. "But Heather," you say, "Those can be recycled." Yes, they can but the cost to produce them outweighs the benefits of recycling.

3. I use more toilet paper and paper towel than I should. I like clean things, enough said.

4. I can't seem to get into the idea of cloth diapering. I know I should, but I can't. It's not that I don't want to. It just seems like so much work. Please tell me I am wrong.

5. I use alot of copy paper in my job. I am a teacher and I create and copy a lot of documents for my students. I send many things home that I know just gets thrown away. We recycle in our classroom, yet I am not sure how to instill this at home.

The list goes on. So I am making a decision to spend some time working on making this list shorter. I already have many ideas for things to do, but am definately interested in learning about more....