Happy Earth Day!

To celebrate Earth Day, I'm sharing some of my favorite ways to be green, while at the same time saving some green.

1. Use cloth instead of paper napkins. I have a bunch of mismatched cloth napkins that we use daily and probably wash twice a week (?). Yes, we reuse them a few times before washing them unless we had ribs or something. Which we don't have because I have a thing about my teeth hitting animal bones when I'm eating. I'm gagging just thinking about it. So anyway, maybe you think that's gross that we use them a few times, but it saves water, and this is all about being green. Right? And just wait until you read number 3.
2. Use dish towels instead of paper towels. I keep my paper towels under the sink so it is less convenient to use them, and then I use dish towels to wipe up 97% of spills. These get washed more frequently, and I do pull out the paper towels to wipe up stuff that I don't want festering in my laundry for a couple of days (like animal barf).
3. If it's yellow let it mellow. Yep. You know the rhyme. And also? Pee in the shower. Everyone's doing it! I promise to clean the shower before you come and we'll all try to flush like civilized human beings while you're here. (I'll warsh up them cloth napkins all nice for ya too.)
4. Use reusable shopping bags. You can't just leave them in the car either. You might have to shell out $5 to get a few, but as long as you remember to use them, you won't have to find a place to store all those plastic bags anymore. (I find it ironic that I forgot my reusable bags when I went to the store today. On Earth Day.) Kolby would like me to get him this bag:
5. Stop buying bottled water. Seriously, if you are still doing this you need to come over here so I can slap you. Buy a cute reusable water bottle or carry around an old mason jar. I don't care. But we have the cleanest water in the world, so there's no reason to make some company rich bottling your tap water up all nicely for you so you can then throw a bunch of bottles in the landfill.
6. Eat one meatless meal a week. It takes 2500 gallons of water to produce one pound of beef. 'Nuff said. You can save the money you would have spent on meat on a cute reusable water bottle.
7. Eat leftovers. I feel downright smug when we are eating leftovers. It saves a ton of money, and wastes less, and I get the night off! When I'm in a good routine of cooking dinner, we usually have leftovers on Thursdays. I pull it all out of the fridge and everyone fights over chooses their favorites.
8. Compost. I have to admit, I do not have a compost bin. I've tried, but I just don't baby it like you should to get good dirt. So I save all of my kitchen scraps in a bowl on the counter while I'm cooking and cleaning up, and then I dump it in our yard debris bin and let the city compost it.
9. Turn down your thermostat two degrees in the winter or up two degrees in the summer. It promotes cuddling! And you can get your money's worth out of that Snuggie you love.
10. Turn down the thermostat on your water heater to 125 degrees. I did this when we went out of town one time, and forgot to turn it back up. Guess what? We didn't notice until we were going out of town the next time.