Resolutions

Aaron and I have been discussing resolutions lately- both personal and family ones. I've never been very good at the whole resolution thing. I find it hard to come up with realistic goals to set for myself, and even harder to reach them. This year, though, we decided that what we'd really like to do is make a family resolution to live more Earth friendly- "green" if you will. While I think the phrases "going green" and "living green" are pretty unoriginal and even a bit cliche, the idea is something that we feel strongly about and we're going to do our best to pay more attention to the impact our family is making.

So to kick things off right, and to help the kids be aware of the changes we'll be making, we gathered up the recycling that's been accumulating in our kitchen and garage and made a trip to the bins.

Yikes.

Afterwards we went to Home Depot and picked up a new house plant. What I really wanted to do was buy a plant that we could start indoors, then plant outside in the spring, but they didn't have anything like that available. That's okay, though. The point we were trying to make with this was that we want to be kinder to the Earth, and I think the kids (well, Pyper at least) gets it. She loves to "recycle" and fully appreciates being able to reuse something. I'll start to toss something in the garbage and she'll take it and say, "Maybe I can use it for something." She's so funny.
I also thought I'd include this list of things that we're going to implement in our household to be a little more Earth friendly in 2009. Some of these things we're already doing (in blue), but I think all of them are pretty easy and inexpensive.

-lower your thermostat in winter and raise it in the summer
-use compact flourescent light (CFL) bulbs instead of incandescent
-use a "smart" power strip that senses when things like computers and TVs aren't on, to reduce "vampire" energy use
-wash clothes in cold water when possible
-use cloth shopping bags everywhere
-use dryer balls to cut drying time
-install low-flow shower heads
-buy second hand (clothing, toys, furniture, decor, etc.)
-borrow books from the library instead of buying
-buy in bulk
-invest in high quality, long lasting products
-lower water heater setting to 120 degrees or "medium"
-hang clothes to dry
-recycle!
-use cloth diapers instead of disposable
-turn off the lights
-use rechargeable batteries
-purchase products that use less packaging (i.e. buy juice concentrate and mix in an empty juice bottle instead of buying bottle after bottle of 'real' juice)

Obviously there are TONS of other ideas out there for reducing our impact on the environment, but these are the ones we've come up with so far that we're going to try out. If you have some ideas please let me know! I'm really excited to start doing these things, and hopefully you'll try a few of them yourselves.

I have a lot of cloth tote bags that I use for shopping, but this one is my new favorite! Bryce & Dena sent us a black one for Christmas. It's flippin' awesome.