Having a blog with thousands of loyal readers is a great way to feel accountable for those Earth Day Resolutions that sometimes fall by the wayside in the midst of raising a family.  I’m happy to report that we’ve made some progress toward accomplishing our green goals for the coming year in just a few months.

Green groceries:  B+    

We struggled with finding reasonably priced organic produce without driving all over town.  Thank goodness for our CSA!  I have to admit that some pieces of random produce have perished in our fridge but it has provided a wonderful variety of veggies and fruits that usually make it into our menus.

Eco-friendly transport:  A

We just purchased a 2001 Honda Civic to replace the 4 Runner we had been borrowing for the last eight years.  The Civic’s average gas mileage is a whopping ten miles per gallon more than the 4 Runner and I can almost feel the lighter carbon load while I drive.  As if the fuel efficiency wasn’t enough, this particular Civic happens to be forest green.  It was meant to be! 

Energy efficient lighting: C

I have replaced about half of the lights in our home with compact fluorescents, but we now have two halogen light fixtures in our home.  I’m pretty sure they aren’t the most efficient bulbs but I do love the bright light they provide in our tiny kitchen and dark hallway. 

Potty training:   I

That’s an I for incomplete.  Roscoe now tells me right before he performs a bodily function, but doesn’t want to do it anywhere near a toilet.   We may need to break down and buy a more exciting potty to inspire him to help us out on this one.  Still, he’s quite young so we may just hold out and hope that his tiny bladder makes enough progress to get him in training pants someday soon. 

If I manage to overcome my last hurdles on these resolutions I may just have to set a few new goals for the months to come.  Change is a slow and overwhelming process, but it’s nice to look back and see that we are indeed making green progress.  It’s clumsy and imperfect, but we are stumbling in a forward direction.

It’s almost summer and with gas prices skyrocketing, global warming in full swing, and a toddler who loves to be outside, I’m longing to climb on my bike and pedal off into the sunset. But NOT WITH TOE CLIPS!!  You may think my fervor is a bit intense for the rather benign little stirrup that holds a cyclist’s shoe to the pedal, but you won’t after you read this post on my toe-clip trauma. 

Here is the synopsis:

On a family bike ride, my husband stopped short right in front of me.

As I careened toward the pavement, the toe clip trapped my foot.

I dislocated my arm and broke off a few bits as well.

I had to work several doctor’s appointments into my busy life.

I learned how to tote my toddler with one arm.

He’s learned how to cling onto me like a monkey (with sound effects) and climb into his car seat.

Then, I had surgery to fix the nerve so that I could again bend my arm.

A week later, with an arm that is still black and blue and won’t move, the surgeon has told me tat I’ll have to undergo another more invasive surgery to ensure that I can get my range of motion back. 

That means more monkey clinging, more purple arm, and more frustration with the fact that I need two arms to juggle this very full life of mine. 

Have you removed your toe clips yet?  Please go do so before summer bike rides, pavement collisions and future surgeries.  And every time you bend and straighten your arms do so with gratitude—it’s harder than it seems!

Sheryl Crow had one. Parents magazine raved about them in last March’s issue.  An eco-conscious expecting mother in your life may be hinting for one.  But what is a green baby shower?  It may seem like a ploy to get you to “buy” your way into the green movement.  Are we just trading piles of Pampers and mounds of plastic toys for $50 organic onesies and free-trade rattles?  Maybe.  But it’s also possible to throw an old-fashioned, down-to-earth baby shower that’s simple and eco-friendly.  Here are just a few ideas to celebrate the arrival of a new baby.

Throw a book baby shower.  Don’t forget the Green Baby Guide’s article touting the merits of giving the gift of imagination.  Attendants bring a book or two the child can treasure well after she’s outgrown her bouncy seat.

Try a secondhand fete.  If most of the attendants have had babies in the last few years, a secondhand shower can be an entertaining way to pass treasured belongings from one family to another.  Of course, this idea might not fly with many expecting parents or hosts-but it may be right up a green family’s alley. 

Give the gift of food.  Attendants can bring casseroles, desserts, or snacks that can be frozen until the bundle of joy arrives.  Exhausted new parents don’t have to spend time cooking during the first couple weeks or months with a newborn. 

Leave the shower out of baby shower.  It’s possible to have a party with friends, family, and games without involving gifts.  Participants can even write out wishes or blessings for the new addition that the host can make into a keepsake book.  Or circumvent the baby shower ritual altogether and involve friends and family in a picnic, hike, or other decidedly non-showery celebration.

It’s possible to throw a baby shower for expecting parents without busting your budget on so-called eco-friendly food, decorations, and presents.  A simple gathering of friends and family can accomplish the most important part of a shower’s purpose: welcoming a new baby into the world.

Any green baby shower ideas we forgot?  Post a comment!

If you’ve read my Earth Day resolution post, you know that I’m trying to lose two hundred and fifty pounds.  The Toyota Four Runner that we’ve been graciously allowed to borrow for the last seven years needs to be sold and we want to replace it with a more earth-friendly vehicle. 

Our challenge is to find a safe, reliable, fuel-efficient vehicle for between six and eight thousand dollars.  We’d like to have something that we can pile miles on for trips around town so that we keep our other car, a newer Toyota Camry, stowed away in the garage for most of the year.  Unfortunately we don’t all fit in the very NmG electric car pictured to the right. 

Originally we were thinking of buying a van or a crossover vehicle for the cargo space.  My mom helped us solve this dilemma by inspiring us to add a trailer hitch to one of our cars for around one hundred dollars.  We can rent a trailer for cheap whenever we need the space, but save loads of money on gas by driving a more compact vehicle. 

Here are some tips I’ve discovered so far in my search:

Narrow down your make and model: We began our search by thinking about the type of car we wanted to purchase.  Since Hondas and Toyotas offer the most reliable and fuel efficient options, we have narrowed our options down to either a Corolla or a Civic.  We’d love a Matrix or a Vibe but they’re a bit out of our price range.

Carefully check gas mileage for each year: In the beginning I wanted an older car with very low miles so that we can drive it forever, but I’ve found that each model year has different gas mileage.  For example, a 1992 Toyota Corolla gets just 23 miles per gallon in the city and 26 on the highway, while a 2001 model gets 27 mpg in town and 36 on the freeway.  That’s a tremendous difference! The best site for checking gas mileage of every vehicle around is here. 

Consider Safety: The other option to consider is that older models often don’t have the safety features of the more recent years.  We’re looking for a compact car from the late nineties or newer that’s safe enough to carry our precious toddler cargo.  This is a great site for checking crash test ratings.

Buy from a private party: We’d never find what we’re looking for at a car dealership for the amount of money we’d like to spend, but we will find it when buying directly from another car owner.  Private party price on Kelley Blue Book is often several thousand less than retail.  Plus we have the added benefit of being able to personally speak with the owner and find out more about the history of the car. 

Look in a variety of places: Honestly, this tends to make me a bit obsessive-compulsive, but it’s good to check Craigslist regularly just to compare and see what’s out there.  I’ve also looked the newspaper and some small, free publications here in town.

Use Carfax: For a nominal twenty-something dollars we can check the full accident and ownership history of a car and find out if there have been any odometer rollbacks.  

Get it checked out by a mechanic: One owner assured us that the car had been thoroughly cared for its whole life.  Our mechanic disagreed when he discovered the original spark plugs hadn’t been replaced after 72,000 miles of use.  Whew!  We’re glad we were able to dodge a potential lemon. 

Go with your gut: If I feel desperate to get the car, I know I’m not making a wise decision.  We have found that with our first car purchase as a couple we both had a great instinct about the vehicle that we ended up buying.  That’s the feeling that we’re looking for this second time.

I’ll keep you posted on our car buying escapades but mainly I’m interested in your tips.  If you’ve discovered a safe, inexpensive and fuel-efficient vehicle that I haven’t thought of yet, I’d love to hear about it! 

A few years ago when I was pregnant with Roscoe, I had a sudden Saturday urge to grow zucchini and hustled off to the hardware store to buy the wares for a small raised bed.  I sat in our driveway with the drill and awkwardly put together a rather pathetic little garden box that has nonetheless yielded some beautiful basil and tomatoes over the last few summers.  In this photo Roscoe is trying to prevent the weed-filled bed from being captured on film. 

This year with the help of my neighbors, I plan on putting together a more respectable raised bed.  Although I could just plop the plants in the dirt, raised beds provide excellent drainage for plants and also allow you to heap in all your own rich new soil. 

If you’d like directions on how to build one yourself, go to this website and check it out.  Then get some dirt, dump in those plants and see what happens.  (One tip: some websites recommend using pressure treated wood or painting the wood with stain, but you might not want those chemicals leaching into your plants.  We just chose to skip that step.)

If you have lawn you’d like to cover with raised beds, you don’t have to worry about digging out the sod.  Our neighbors gave us the great tip of going to a bike shop and getting large cardboard boxes.  Simply place the boxes along the bottom of your raised beds to stop the grass from growing up through your garden.  Then pile the dirt on top and you’re ready to go!

Squash, sweet potatoes, zucchini,  cauliflower, and sweet peas are just a few of the plants that you can easily turn into organic baby food as they are harvested.  Remember that home-prepared spinach, beets, turnips, carrots or collard greens shouldn’t be fed to babies younger than six months because of the high level of nitrates they contain. 

If you need further inspiration to grow your own organic vegetables, check out Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle.  It documents her family’s year of living off the land and is full of her rich and often funny descriptive writing.  You’ll also find yourself motivated to hit the farmer’s market and maybe even plant your own asparagus.  Enjoy the sunshine!

If both parents have demanding careers and multiple children, how do they manage things like washing cloth diapers, composting, making healthy dinners and spending time with baby? There are also some single parents out there who are handling full-time schedules and parenting while keeping the planet in mind. How do they do it?  I am utterly in awe of people who can juggle so much without feeling overwhelmed. 

My husband and I both work thirty-some hours per week and yet we find the balance of a two career family rather precarious at times. Over the last few weeks illness and injury has made the daily challenge of laundry and homemade dinners seem ever greater.   I often long for take-out, or look lustfully at the frozen entrees in the grocery store,  knowing that those convenience items are designed for the hectic, dual income family.  Even though I’m often overwhelmed,  I don’t want to give into the urge to buy disposable, convenience items, saving time while potentially harming the planet.  At this point it seems we should be able to handle some extra time for green choices since we have just one child, we both work equally hard on domestic tasks, and neither of us are working full time.

I’ve been wondering lately if it would actually be greener for one of us to quit working outside the home. It’s hard to say, but I do have visions of myself cooking up batches of homemade yogurt, biking everywhere with our son, and canning veggies that I’ve grown in our organic garden. On the other hand, I know from having summers off, that the reality of staying home is much more challenging and less productive than I imagine.  It’s WONDERFUL having lots of fun with my son, but I haven’t yet managed to weave organic clothing from the cotton that’s sprouted in my backyard. 

Since my teaching job provides our health insurance, I don’t foresee taking a leave of absence anytime soon. We just might find in the years to come that my husband is the one to be home with the children, which would still provide us with lots of family time to share during school breaks and holidays.

Really it isn’t fair to pick a winner in the working vs. stay-at-home debate since there are so many creative solutions available to families today.  Many parents have found ways to work at home, work part time, or take a leave of absence for a few years before heading back to their jobs. There is no absolutely right or wrong option, but it definitely seems like having more time at home allows parents to enjoy a more earth-friendly lifestyle.  Since summer is just a few weeks away, I’m counting the days until I get to enjoy a few months of stay-at-home motherhood—even if it’s just as a temp. 

Now we’ve written about avoiding plastics in baby care products, teethers, and toys.  Parents left and right are freaking out about all the possible health risks associated with some plastics.  You may be one of them.  I try not to freak out over everything I read, but I have become more aware of the preponderance of plastic in my life.  I even have a kind of hazy goal involving eliminating plastic from my house entirely.  But where do I even start? 

Okay, so purging the house of plastic may sound overwhelming, but there are little things you can do to start replacing it with other materials.  I try to limit my plastic consumption one step at a time.  When I needed new food storage containers, for example, I opted for glass.  (Stay tuned for yet another installment in my plastic saga: Eliminating Plastic Containers.)

I’ve also started figuring out which plastics are “bad” and which ones are okay.  National Geographic’s Green Guide has an article about how to tell the good plastics (numbers 1, 2, 4, 5) from the bad: numbers 3, 6, and 7.  They also have a down-loadable “Smart Shoppers’ Plastic Picks” card available through the above link.

Glad freezer and sandwich bags are phthalate-free

I’ve been using ceramic or glass to microwave foods for a while now.  Freezing and microwaving causes phthalates to leach into foods.  “Microwave Safe” only means the plastic won’t melt–it does not necessarily mean it’s “safe” to eat foods microwaved in them.  Softer plastics such as Ziplock bags are more likely to be phthalate-free than harder plastics, so freezing in bags may be a better choice than freezing in plastic containers.  According to this website, Ziploc regular and freezer bags, Glad sandwich and freezer bags, Hefty OneZip bags, Glad Cling, and Saran Cling Plus are all phthalate-free.

One day I’m sure I’ll have that beautiful, plastic-free house of my dreams.  All of my storage containers will be glass.  All of my furniture will be wooden (yes, I have plastic furniture–it was free!).  And I will hand-carve all of my daughter’s toys out of twigs that have fallen to the ground.  Until that day, though, I will just take it one step at a time. 

Toe clips are the new bane of my existence.   A few weeks ago while endeavoring to save the earth by riding our bicycles, my husband made an unexpected (to me) stop just in front of me in our driveway.  Instead of pulling forward and running over my son in the bike trailer I too tried to stop suddenly.  As my bike slowly tipped toward the cement, I struggled in vain to pull my foot out from its toe clip and ended up sticking out my arm instead.  Crack! 

I knew it was broken right away but didn’t realize it was also quite dislocated. As Roscoe chanted “Uh-oh Mama,” I wondered whether I would actually be able to pull myself off the pavement.  I lay there ungracefully sprawled out for few moments, using Lamaze breathing to try not to descend into shock.  Some very kind passersby stopped to help, the neighbors volunteered to take Roscoe, and we were off to the hospital in search of healing and relief in the form of morphine.

Despite the pain and the long emergency room ordeal, I am very grateful for the small things that have made this bearable.  Here are the lessons that I’ve learned that (abstractly) relate to living green.

• Local is Better: Thank goodness it happened in our driveway rather than a few miles away!

• Community Counts: Friends, neighbors, and family cooked for us, babysat and let me take long naps.  We are so grateful to have a circle of support.

• Children Need To Be Empowered:  Roscoe can do more than I realized and having one arm has helped me allow him more independence.  He now climbs into his car seat by himself and walks more than ever before since I can’t lug him around as much.

• Cloth Diapering Is Shockingly Easy: If I can change a poopy cloth diaper with one arm and a squirmy son, surely anyone can! 

Now that my arm brace is off and I’m slowly improving my range of motion, I hope to be back on the bike before summer begins.  In the meantime, I’m feeling gratitude for all the things I once took for granted, like scratching my nose, having two arms for toddler tending, and being able to type this blog.  

Every time I pull the plug on Roscoe’s bath, it pains me to watch several gallons of relatively clean water vanish down the drain.  Perhaps this angst is inherited from my resourceful mother, who always transferred our bathwater to the washing machine for a load of laundry after we were tucked into bed.  She currently keeps a bucket in her shower at all times to capture water for use in her garden but she wishes that there was a better solution for all that gray water waste. 

Thanks to Brac Systems, an innovative Canadian company, there is!  They have designed a grey water recovery system that filters bathwater and redirects it for use in toilets.  The entire system costs just a few thousand dollars (plus installation) but Brac claims that the system could save people up to 40% of their water bill costs.  It’s possible to redirect the water for landscaping use as well and to use the system to harvest rainwater. 

Since my life is too complicated for a new Brac System at this time, I’ve turned to simpler solutions for saving bath water in the short run. 

• We wash Roscoe’s cloth diaper covers in his leftover bath water. 

• I sometimes soak my toes in his tub, getting a mini-pedicure while he plays.

• Roscoe uses his bathwater as a beverage.  (Gross I know!  We’re working on this.)

• A few nights a week, Roscoe showers with daddy to save water and time.

• Rebecca opts for weekly baths for her toddler, saving at least 120 gallons of water a week by forgoing a daily tub time.

• Some people use leftover bath water to flush toilets.  They leave a bucket in the bathroom, scoop up some leftover bath water and pour it into the toilet, activating the flush mechanism.    

Roscoe accrues enough grime in a day to truly create his own gray water.  Someday it shall all end up watering our petunias or supplying our toilets.  Until then, we shall dutifully do our best to make it a darker shade of gray before it goes down the drain.  For a huge list of simple tips that just might make your Wednesday a little easier, go to Rocks In My Dryer.  

You may recall from my Earth Day Resolution blog that I’m a struggling grocery shopper. Deciding what’s for dinner is hard enough, but figuring out how to get healthful eco-friendly food for reasonable prices has felt nearly impossible.  I want my child to munch on organic fruits and veggies, but when I see the prices my inner tightwad has a nervous breakdown. 

I’ve only been a Community Supported Agriculture member for one week, but already I feel vastly better about our family’s grocery habits.  Wondering what a CSA is? It’s a farm that provides seasonal organic produce directly to community members for a regular monthly price.  In our case we pay $135 each month for weekly bags chock full of organic goodies.  Click here for more info on CSA’s in general and here to find out if there’s one in your area.

Our CSA, Sweetwater Farm, allows people to join a month at a time so I was able to make the giant leap over to a farm subscription without worrying about a year-long commitment. After just one week we love it, and here’s why:

It’s easy!  Every Thursday we head to a shopping center close to our home to pick up our bag of mystery veggies and fruits.  They’re fresh, mostly local and so very good for us.  I don’t have to run around town to get the best prices or scrub my non-organic veggies to get the sludge off. 

It inspires healthy eating.  My friend Andy lost 18 pounds when she joined her CSA just because she found herself surrounded by glorious wholesome foods and subsequently began eating better each week.  She ended up quitting Weight Watchers but sticking with her CSA.

It gets us out of our comfort zone.  The idea of getting a large bag full of unknown produce was daunting at first, but already we’ve had some amazing meals with cabbage, asparagus, and fingerling potatoes that I wouldn’t have picked up on regular trips to the grocery store.

It exposes our toddler to a variety of produce. He’s still young enough not to stick out his tongue when we pile veggies onto his plate.  If he gets accustomed to eating lots of green stuff now, we may be able to avoid the long “cheese pizza” phase that some youngsters undergo.  (My fingers are crossed!) 

It comes with recipes. Last night I made an amazing frittata with Swiss chard and earlier this week we ate a scrumptious stir fry with cabbage and fresh asparagus.  I NEED weekly ideas for meals so this has been a treat!

It sends money directly to farmers. When we buy produce at the grocery store a tiny fraction ends up in the hands of the people who labored to grow the food.  With a CSA your money goes directly to the grower, so  you are sustaining your local economy, eating organic food for less, and helping the planet. 

We’re certainly spending more than we did on produce, but that motivates us to value our veggies and buy less meat, which happens to be environmentally beneficial as well.  My only regret in joining a CSA is that I didn’t do it sooner. What are your tips for finding good prices on organic fruits and vegetables?