Monthly Missions
Sometimes I feel like I am fighting an up hill battle trying to be green in this plastic jungle. There are so many things in our home here in Thailand that I want to change to improve our carbon foot print. Every year we try, but just get so frustrated and over whelmed that we give up on many things. This year we agreed to try something new.After reading this article I decided that we needed a family mission statement. I am a total 7 Habits person, and I feel that it is important to begin with the end in mind. So, family meeting time! It's not easy to sum up your life in a paragraph, but I recommended to keep it simple and don't try to over think it. Simply look at what you think is most important and what your family hopes to represent. In other words, when poeple look at you, what do you want them to see?
Sometimes I feel like I am fighting an up hill battle trying to be green in this plastic jungle. There are so many things in our home here in Thailand that I want to change to improve our carbon foot print. Every year we try, but just get so frustrated and over whelmed that we give up on many things. This year we agreed to try something new.After reading this article I decided that we needed a family mission statement. I am a total 7 Habits person, and I feel that it is important to begin with the end in mind. So, family meeting time! It's not easy to sum up your life in a paragraph, but I recommended to keep it simple and don't try to over think it. Simply look at what you think is most important and what your family hopes to represent. In other words, when poeple look at you, what do you want them to see?
In order to really live this mission statement,we have decided to concentrate on changing one thing a month that we feel needs changing in our lives. It may be something to move towards lowering our carbon foot print, to a health change or maybe even a spiritual change. Heaven knows we got issues and 12 months ain't gonna change them all, but by taking them one baby step at a time, maybe we will really make important changes..
I challenge you to join us in the baby steps to change our lives. Each moth choose one thing that you would like to change in your home or life style. It might be using only reusable grocery bags, changing to chemical free cleaners, changing to cloth diapers or giving up meat. You make the choices on what you feel are the most important things that you what to change. Throughout the month work on your goal and then blog about it, and send me a link to you blog. Or add your comments here. I look forward to hearing what you would like to change and how you do it.
Although it is almost April, I am adding my journals for the past few months so you can see how we have fared.
March Monthly Baby Steps/ Save the Trees!
This month our focus has been on reducing the paper waste in our house. If you take a look around, I am sure that you will find many paper products that could very easily be replaced with reusable items or eliminated all together. I love paper towels. And even though we compost them, I know that the idea isn’t really to recycle, but to try to reduce what we use so that it doesn’t have to be recycled in the first place. So, paper towels must go. In there place I bought a bundle or micro terry rags and put them in a basket on the counter for quick pick ups.
Next item on the list is sanitary napkins. Seems really gross at first, but if you install a handy dandy butt squirter like we have here in Thailand, it’s not too bad. My DH Google actually designed the pads and I sewed them out of left-over pvc material, flannel and old towels. I even have a little travel wet bag for when I am away from home. Takes a bit to get use to, but not too bad in the end. I am also making nursing pads right now because I tend to need them A LOT.
Oh the baby front, I have spent the month sewing cloth diapers for Pickles. Twenty of each size (nb, s,m.l) and about 20 liners. I also will be using handmade diaper wipes once again using some really cheap baby washcloths and a lovely Jungle Baby Bottom Spray I made.
To add to potty time fun, say goodbye to the TP! I figure if we can use reusable wipes for the baby (EWWWW) why not for our little ( or not so little) bottoms? We have the butt squirter, (so the yuck gets washed off) and here in Thailand we don’t flush the TP anyway, so why the heck not??? I got some lovely, soft, super cheap baby washcloths, cut them in half and put them in a nice little basket on the back of the potty. Add a nice covered can by the Boy is Baby Beans gonna love this when she gets here from the states in a few days!
If you have a baby and are already doing cloth diapers, this isn’t really any worse.
Oh the baby front, I have spent the month sewing cloth diapers for Pickles. Twenty of each size (nb, s,m.l) and about 20 liners. I also will be using handmade diaper wipes, once again using some really cheap baby washcloths and a lovely Jungle Baby Bottom Spray I made.
Some other things I am working on are home made cloth dinner napkins and placemats, reusable sandwich bags, Bento box lunches, and switching to small containers for condiments(instead of things like sugar packets.)
It took a little work, but what an easy change it was to make and I figure it will save us about 1200 baht ($40) a month. Yipee Ki Yah!!!!
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