New Year: Launching 2010 Part III

Resolution #2 ~ Continue my green journey. I love the outdoors, nature, animals, the planet. So it only makes sense that I should do my part to take care of it, and there are so many ways I can improve. As I mentioned before, I came up with a great system for collecting my recyclables last year. I hated the look of having a bunch of bins stacked up or beside each other to separately hold the recyclables, and putting them down in the basement would have been out of sight, but also too much hassle and therefore I probably would not have done it. My solution was to purchase an old dresser (from the Rescue Mission Thrift Store for only $15), take out all of the drawers, and cut out the drawer supports. Then I put 3 trash cans lined up inside it, and hung a simple, inexpensive curtain across the front, so it just looks like a piece of furniture. We keep it on the covered side porch (to eliminate any issues of odor inside), and I use the top of the dresser to decorate (changing the decor out with the seasons/holidays). Then we use a very large outdoor trash can for the plastics, since they usually take up the most space, and keep it next to our regular trash can. The only problem we have run into with this system is taking the recyclables to the recycling center when the cans are full. We did pretty good with it for about a minute, and then kept forgetting. And since the cans are full, we started throwing away things that should have been recycled. So for this year I am striving to do better with actually taking the recyclables to the center. Or actually, it will need to be Shane doing this since he has the appropriate vehicle.

Then I also want to start switching over my cleaning supplies, hygiene products, and other household necessities to those that are gentler on the environment. I had started doing this at one point in time several years ago, but found the eco-friendly options to be a bit pricey. I am hoping that they've come down in price, or maybe I could just switch some items but not all. I'll have to look into that. I'd also like to research some better ways to control fleas on the pets, rather than coating them in harmful pesticides once a month. We have some pretty hardy fleas around here, but I'm willing to at least try some more natural methods.

The last couple of years we have tried our hands at gardening, but have not had much success. We got the plants to grow, but they didn't produce since our yard is so shady. I think this year I want to experiment with some things that tolerate shade (I've read that leafy greens tolerate some shade), and I have a friend who has much better success with her garden and is willing to trade some of her produce for fresh eggs from my hens. I also have plans of starting a small compost pile at the back of our yard, and the chicken manure should come in quite handy for that!