Going Green in Comfort

(Image by Stuart Miles / FreeRangeStock.com ) Recently, my daughter asked me where paper comes from. The question seemed out of the blue, so I figured she probably already knew the answer, probably something she learned while watching YouTube. "Trees," I said. "I don't know how they do it, but they make paper from trees." After a short pause, she told me that she didn't want to color anymore because coloring on paper would mean that trees would be cut down. But then she qualified it. "Well, I don't want to do a lot of coloring." Her concern for the trees made me smile. I don't think her motivation had anything to do with living greener, but rather was nothing more than a brief feeling of guilt about what happens to a tree in part because she enjoys drawing and coloring. But I like that she thought about it and felt the need to take action.* As I make changes for a greener lifestyle, I've toyed with the ide...

Six boxes of crayons, twelve glue sticks, two bottles of Elmer's school glue ... the school supply list for my daughter's first-grade class goes on and on. Before I became a parent, I had no idea how much stuff kids had to have each school year. Or how quickly it can all add up. With the school year looming, I bought her entire list without giving much thought to whether the supplies were eco-friendly. That occurred to me later, as the bags of supplies took over my dining room table awaiting the start of school. It's too late to go green for this school year, but I figured there is probably some website that sells greener versions of most items, so I went online and found Green Backpack , which states that everything on the site is made of recycled or sustainable materials. That's the good news: eco-friendly school supplies are out there! Yay! The bad news is how much more pricey they are. I expected them to cost more than regular supplies, but I had no ...

Baby clothes drying on the line. Back in May, I wrote about how my husband, who does the laundry in our house, has been using a clothesline for several years. When I had told him what my post was about that week, he confessed that he hadn't been hanging out as many clothes as he used to. Last year, he was hanging out everything except our unmentionables. This summer, only one load a week got hung out to dry, which made the umbrella-style pop-up clothesline in the background of the photo above unnecessary. He and I both vowed to do better, with me promising to help hang out clothes if he wants. So far, he hasn't asked for me to help, but because he's a man of his word, he took the pop-up clothesline out of the garage recently, stuck it in the ground and went back to hanging out everything but our underwear. Side note: Did you know that if you don't use a pop-up clothesline for a year or so, the ground builds up around the cement hole you made for it? It to...