The Little Way Toward a Green(er) Home
As a Catholic mother of 6, I’ve been trying figure out ways that our family can live more simply, create less waste, and help our environment. I’m sure Self-Appointed Someone on the Internet will have all kinds of unsolicited feedback and criticisms about whatever I post on the topic, and that’s fine. I suppose that’s a chance you take when you put anything out into the digital world!
Nonetheless, I want to share what I’m calling our family’s Little Way Toward a Green(er) Home. I’ve always had a devotion to St. Therese. Her “Little Way” influences every area of my vocation. I may not be able to do big things, but I can do little things with great love. I’m hopeful that this will be an encouragement for others hoping to make small changes toward green(er) homes. We can all do something, and we don’t have to do it perfectly for it to make a difference for the better.
Our family is far from doing everything we can. We’re not perfect. We’re still making a lot of mistakes. *But* we’re finding ways to use less, change habits, and do our part to help our environment. I’m calling it the Little Way Toward a Green(er) Home because it’s something that will take a lifetime of small, incremental changes.
So, what are some small, simple things that we’re doing?
Dipping Our Toes Into Composting
The dream is to build a compost pile like this near our garden. This week, my goal is to source some untreated wood pallets from a grocery store, farmer supply, or nursery. I want to have the pile built and ready for use by April 1. In the meantime, we’ve been doing some composting baby steps toward that goal.
We got ourselves this 2.4 gallon bucket that lives underneath the kitchen sink. We use biodegradable bags inside, and the lid has a carbon filter to reduce odors. I’m not getting paid to share those links. I just wanted to share what we’re using.
We put all of our kitchen scraps in there excluding meats and dairy. It’s amazing how much less trash we’ve created since we started using our compost bucket. Coffee grounds, egg shells, banana peels, and little bites scraped off of plates really add up! Once we fill a bag, we take it out to an old garbage can on the side of the house that we were using to collect yard waste.
We are also collecting “browns”—all of the paper products in our home that can be added to our composting pile. As a homeschooling family, we create a lot of paper between our math scratch paper and prolific artists. We’re shredding or tearing everything as much as possible. Toilet and paper towel roll cardboard holders get torn up and tossed in there, too. Until the compost pile is built, the “browns” are living in the garage drop zone in paper bags.
Do I know how to create the perfect ratio of “greens” to “browns” or even what is good or bad to put in those piles? No. Will I keep messing it up? Yes. Do I still have A LOT to learn? YES. Can we still start collecting the stuff as we use it today? Yes.
(Side note: I’m keeping our yogurt containers for potting up my plants that I’m starting from seed in the basement under grow lights.)
Using Rags Instead of Paper Towels
We are recovering paper towel addicts. We were buying a pack of paper towels from Sam’s every few weeks. Gulp. I feel so exposed. That’s $20 per pack. That’s a lot of financial and physical waste. That’s a lot to add to our landfills. Forgive me, Father. We knew not what we were doing!
We’re experimenting with what this will look like in practice, but here’s what we’re doing for now: I had an extra pack of gray microfiber rags that we weren’t using. I stuck them in a basket on the kitchen counter, and I pushed the roll of paper towels off to the corner where they would be less accessible and tempting to use.
I just read yesterday that microfiber cloths have microplastics that are released every time you use them. Gracious. Perhaps someday down the road we will invest in some reusable cotton paper towels like these beautiful ones on Etsy. They’d make a fun summer craft project.
Meanwhile, every time we would have used a paper towel, we reach for a gray towel instead. The kids started calling the gray rags the “anti-paper towels.” We’re swiping crumbs, wiping faces, patting rinsed produce dry, cleaning spills, etc. with them.
We’re still figuring out our “rules” when it comes to how much/how a rag can be reused. The ones that can be reused hang on a metal rack on the inside of the cabinet under the kitchen sink. The ones that are dirty and need to be washed go in a bucket under the sink. We’re running out of real estate under there for the ones that are damp and need to dry. It’s all figure-out-able, so we’re doing it imperfectly in the meantime.
We will still use paper towels for things like drying raw meat or cleaning up our elderly dog’s accidents.
Those are 2 things helping us on our Little Way Toward a Green(er) Home. They’re simple, easy, and something you could begin doing today.
It’s ASTONISHING how much less we’re emptying the garbage these days. Turns out not tossing a bunch of paper towels or things that could be composted into the trash makes a difference!
What About You and Your Little Way Toward a Green(er) Home?
What’s helping you on your Little Way Toward a Green(er) Home?
Do you have experience with composting? What’s your set-up look like? How concerned do I need to be about animals getting into the compost pile out here in the country?
What about using rags or reusable paper towels? What are your “rules” about how often a towel can be used before being put in the bucket? What do you do with them when they’re still wet?