So. Tired.
In an attempt to de-clutter my house and pretty much my life, I have been working my arse off, like all day. I’m sitting down for what’s possibly the first time today and GOD, it does feel amazing. I’ve bagged up 10+ bags of clothing to send to Goodwill, 4 bags of toys to send to Goodwill, and 3 bags of trash from my room and my children’s room. I found a way to use the old pizza boxes that had been stacking up because I didn’t feel like throwing them away, but never knew what to do with them. I broke down many old boxes that weren’t going to get used – the kids made a “hoppity-hop-scotch” mat out of one of them, lol.
I’d call my newfound motivation half-selfish, half-un-selfish. Part of me wants to de-clutter and live a little more “green” because a.) My family just creates too much trash – we have trash pickup two times a week and we have at least four bags that acculumate between Monday and Thursday, sometimes more than that over the weekend. Especially if its a payday weekend. And I just really don’t have room for all those garbage bags! Second, my electricity bill is SKY high. I’d say that’s 90% selfish on my part to start conserving energy, because I’m too poor to pay $300 for electricity! xD
But that’s not it. There’s something else. My husband was a manager working for an auto parts chain. The bs and bureacracy and favoritism and commuting and long hours and crappy pay was getting to him, thus it was getting to us. So he decided to step down to a less paying position, with my support. The pay is drastically lower, but one day I was thinking. I actually don’t mind being broke so much. When he was making more money, he’d get paid and we’d go out, spend a truckload of money, and still have nothing. When we don’t have that much, we have to pay attention to what we spend. It means more this way. Because we can’t afford to go out all the time, we spend more time together as a family. I just got this great epiphany one day about how I’d been living and how I feel this way is really better for me and my family. And oh yeah, the planet. 
I’m in the middle of turning my family’s life completely upside-down, but in the best way. We are going to stop creating so much waste – this is not an option. This is something that has to be done. But how? Here’s my small list.
- No more paper towels. Dish towels only.
- No more paper plates. Or at least something like earth shell.
- Use leftovers more. Heck, use leftovers, period.
- Compare the amount of packaging when buying products. Try and buy the one with less to throw away.
- Recycle as much as possible. We don’t have recycle pickup so this will be a chore, but my 6 year old is fascinated with recycling, so should be able to keep me on my toes.
As far as conserving energy, I’ve already begun unplugging all of the vampiric appliances in the house, looking in to getting surge protectors for a few of them. Replacing all bulbs with more efficient ones, making sure only necessary lights are on – I’ve been very lax about this in the past. It’s Florida, so the air conditioner is a major problem for us. I’m going to figure out how to set the thermostat and keep it at about 76, I think. Hopefully soon the weather will turn fall-ish and I’ll be able to turn it up higher, possibly even off, and just have a nice breeze blow through the house with the windows open. Right now though…:\ I’ve already heard the dryer is a big energy suck and am looking in to ways to cut the drying time, such as dryer balls. If I get really brave (and ever catch up on my laundry so that I don’t have mountains of it) I might cut out out the dryer completely and install this on the back of a door. What? I’m staying positive. 
Well, the chicken in the crockpot smells delish and I’ve got even more de-cluttering to do, if you can believe it. I’ll leave with a picture of some girls I know playing in a summer rain shower.
