Sustaining in Suburbia

Ahhh - Sweet Suburbia - where SUV's reign and your mettle as a mom is determined by the size of the bow in your daughter's hair. Sad, but true. Alas, this is where we are and, given the current economic climate, this is where we will stay for at least a few more years. And so we have realized that our dreams of sustainability will start here in Sweet Suburbia.





To date, our biggest accomplishments involve reducing our trash and reducing our dependence on Wal-Mart. I have turned my daughter's old flannel receiving blankets into "paper" towels that we can use over and over. We joined a food co-op through a local natural foods store, which has been awesome. Unfortunately, we are still supplementing what we get from the co-op with trips to Wal-Mart, but we are trying to cut back. I am hoping that the money we save from using re-usables instead of disposables and from using other less-expensive homemade alternatives will allow us to purchase more local items and fewer Wal-Mart items.





My darling husband made me a compost tumbler for Valentine's Day. He bought the barrel for $10 (it used to hold Dr. Pepper syrup!) and built the stand/tumbler from scraps in the garage. Sounds weird, I know, but it was actually really romantic! This has reduced our trash by a surprising amount. I didn't realize just how much compostable material we were throwing away. Plus, we will not have to visit a big box store to purchase compost or fertilizer for our garden. Oh yes, our garden. We have dabbled in the past, but this year we are serious! I just finished Mel Bartholomew's book and we have big square foot garden plans. His website is full of great info as well. I ordered way, way too many seeds from Baker Creek. They have an amazing selection of organic seeds - that means no genetically modified organisms. Their plants are open-pollinated, so I can collect seeds and keep planting gorgeous and nutritious heirloom vegetables year after year. (Check out this site to learn more about why that is so important.) I just started my seeds indoors yesterday and I can't wait until they sprout!



We've done some other fun things as well. I learned how to make soap from this cool website that also explains how to turn that soap into homemade, all-natural laundry detergent. I also learned more about soap here. What a fun adventure! We've eliminated disposable dryer sheets by cutting strips from tattered washcloths. Currently, we spritz a strip with a mixture of liquid fabric softener diluted with water (2 capfuls softener to about 2 cups of water fills up our spray bottle). About 5 spritzes onto the cloth and the cloth strip goes into the dryer with the laundry. It really works great! Sometimes there is some static in the clothes, but that's not a huge problem. Once we use up the fabric softener, which will take quite a while at this rate, I am going to experiment with some homemade softener recipes I've found online. That way we can eliminate some more chemicals from our home environment.

Well, this post has gotten quite long and, since it's a bit self-indulgent anyway, I will go ahead and close. Will post new and fun green and thrifty ideas soon!