Mom Goes Green

photo by: Chrysaora

My husband, Jim (www.jimkukral.com), is a great guy, great husband, great dad…he works hard to support our family, he goes places and does things that most husbands/dads would refuse to even consider and he adores all of us. However…HOWEVER….he violates every green rule in the book. Okay, maybe “every” is an exaggeration, but he’s still a rule breaker!

I usually call him “honey” but the next most frequent thing he hears from me sounds something like this: “(*big sigh*)…Jiiiiiiim!” My dear husband knows how green minded I am, yet each time I walk into his home office the trash can is overflowing with paper, junkmail, paper, cardboard FedEx envelopes, paper…and more PAPER! (All recyclable through our curbside pickup!) Last week, I actually found an empty plastic water bottle!!! AUGH!

I get tired of nagging, so I definitely know he is tired of my nagging! But somehow, the guidelines escaped from his long- (and short-) term memory. The idea that recyclable plastics are marked with numbers for convenience goes over his head because he can’t remember the numbers. He’s asked at least 20 times if he needs to recycle our organic milk containers. He will throw a cardboard box, wrapped with mega amounts of packaging tape and loaded with bubble-wrap, directly in the recycling can. He dislikes my cleaning products because they are green and don’t contain any perfumes (so they don’t SMELL clean!). Most of the time, I think he simply chooses to play “clueless” and leave things for me to figure out.

Despite all of that, he never really complains and he tolerates the nagging…and he’s the one who encouraged me to start this blog. And…he is trying …I think and that’s all I’m asking for.

Happy Father’s Day, honey! (Hold the ‘Jiiiiiiim!”)

Sometimes it seems so difficult to find the organic and earth-friendly products that I’m searching for. Not because they don’t exist, but because my “former life” has left me a bit cynical.

Having a career in advertising makes you realize that the right words and images can make anything look terrific. Believe me, I’ve been a part of working magic on campaigns where you knew the product was mediocre, at best! (Industry friends…you know what I mean!) And now, ironically, I find myself really, seriously looking for products that are important to me and I don’t know who or WHAT to believe sometimes.

And also believe me when I say that it’s so easy to get around the guidelines of a product and say “natural”, “organic” and “eco-“ that it honestly leaves you wondering what’s true and how much is a smoke screen to tell you what you want to hear. The mainstream commercial manufacturers are slamming products onto grocery store and retailer shelves and they want us to feel that we can trust them, but can we? I almost feel like they are just jumping on the green bandwagon, but their products aren’t really as green as they should be, or as green as they lead us to believe.

In all honestly, I want to see labels that say “we swear this is 100% earth-friendly, organic, chemical-free, non-carcinogen, bio-degradable, and will spread world peace.” Okay, maybe the world peace part is a little much, but all the rest, I really mean. And I want the words to be absolutely true.

Good luck to us. It just isn’t as easy as it should be.

Yes, I have a confession. I leave lights on in the daytime.

The back of our house is on a beautiful, heavily treed ravine and our kids’ bedrooms are situated at the back of the house, so they tend to be a bit dark regardless of the time of day. For as long as I can remember, I’ve always left a small lamp on each of their dressers lit all day long, otherwise the rooms seem dark and gloomy. I know it’s selfish, but dark, gloomy children’s bedrooms feel sad to me.

I have tried to be at least a bit more conscious of this habit by gradually replacing all of our home’s light bulbs with CFLs (compact fluorescent lights). Honestly, these bulbs are great. They take some getting used to because when you first switch them on, there is a second delay before they actually illuminate and the color of the light they emit is different that what I’m used to. And I occasionally swear at that tilted lampshade because they aren’t so friendly to shades with wire holders that attach directly to the bulb(!), but I’m willing to deal.

While they are more expensive, they last eight or nine times as long as incandescent bulbs and only need to be replaced every five to six years! Plus, they are recommended for places where lights are on for long periods of time (e.g. my kids’ bedrooms!) since frequent switching on and off can shorten their life.

But my favorite fact is this: If every household in the U.S. replaced one light bulb with a CFL, it would prevent enough pollution to equal removing one million cars from the road…now that’s powerful!

About a year ago, following a trip to the grocery store, I looked around my kitchen and saw the carnage of my trip – an armload of plastic bags. My city had stopped accepting them in the recycling (because it supposedly takes too many bags to create enough volume to recycle), so I had been saving them… and the area under my sink was ready to explode. So I made the decision to make a change. I bought reusable non-woven poly bags… one dozen of them, at a whopping cost of $12! That is sarcastic, of course, because it is the best dozen bucks I ever spent.

When you think about the number of bags that wind up in your house on a weekly basis, it’s no wonder EPA data has placed the annual worldwide usage of plastic bags somewhere between 500 billion and a trillion! They’re a horrible source of litter, they don’t biodegrade, they end up polluting landfills and waterways, and they affect animals, the earth, water supplies and… (surprise, surprise!) …us! I can hardly respond to that. It’s just mind boggling. So yeah, I’ll do my part.

Please join me. Buy reusable bags. It’s a wonderful first step.

photo by: www.cnet.com

So, here I am. Joining the world of blogging. Something I thought I would never do. Not because I have a negative view, but because I never imagined I had anything passionate enough to talk about or an expertise that others would be interested in. I left a professional career in advertising a year after our daughter was born and have steered away from that chaotic world for the past five years. Three years ago, our son entered the world and my life has continued to focus on family and (trying) to give my kids and husband the best of me (although at times I imagine one or ALL of them would say “oh for pete’s sake…relax, would you!?”)

In this crazy life adventure of trying to raise a family and do the best I can by them, I have “accidentally” found another passion…trying to live as green as possible. I have “known” recycling my entire life. My mom was always an avid recycler. Even when being green wasn’t cool. She lovingly packed up the bottles, cans and newspapers and DROVE them to a recycling center 30 minutes across town. Clearly, she gave me my start.

I have had so many bizarre experiences when it comes to trying to be green. And that is how this all started. My husband reminded me that every other day I have a story about something that I experienced, something I read, something I learned or something that really pissed me off.

I’m not perfect. My life is far from being as green as I would like it to be. I make mistakes, and I’m trying to leave some selfish things behind (like those fabulous smelling laundry detergents!) but I’m trying…and I’m learning. I just want to leave this world knowing that I did all I could manage to do. I hope to teach my kids how to treat their planet, live better and choose products that are best for their own well-being and they have already started to embraced it…little sponges that they are. I hope to continue to teach them the right way. Only then will I feel like I have truly done my best job.

This blog will be my journey…both the good and the bad, mistakes included.