Most Americans’ idea of a dream home is something like a large mini-mansion with six bedrooms, six full baths and four living areas.

Not mine. I want to live in an earthship.

An earthship is made of rammed earth tires (tires filled with packed dirt) with solar panels on the south side of the house. The tires are either built up against the side of a hill, or straw bales coated with plaster encircle the outside of the tires. The spaces between the tires are filled with materials such as plastic water bottles or rocks.

Earthship under construction

Why do I want to live in such an unconventional, strange-looking home? Easy. Jerry and I want to be off the grid, and you can’t be off the grid if you have central air and heat. And in a regular, modern-day house you need central air and heat in north Texas.

As Michael Reynolds explains in Comfort in Any Climate, the combination of rammed earth tires and the actual earth itself or straw bales create an indoor environment similar to the adobe houses of the Southwest. In the heat of the summer, the earthship is cool. In the frigid winter, the south-facing solar panels provide a passive heat source.

Although a space heater or wood stove may be necessary to maintain a comfortable temperature in the winter, you certainly don’t need to expend the amount of energy needed to heat a regular house.

And central air conditioning cost is non-existent, as are the costs to repair and eventually replace air conditioning and heating systems.

Having spent eight or nine grand on our two A/C units during the past five years, Jerry and I are more than ready for an alternative. It will save us money and headaches, as well as drastically reducing our carbon footprint.

Not only that, but you can run plumbing and electricity into earthships, the same as any house, and build it as big or as small as you want. We plan to build one (er, uh, have one built) between 1200 and 1500 square feet.

Maybe you like your big energy-sucking house and enjoy paying hundreds of dollars in utility bills every month. That’s you. You be you, and that’s okay with me.

But we’ve decided that simple means less maintenance, less money and a whole lot less stress. I can hardly wait for my earthship home.

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For those of us who are really into “green”, finding an eco-friendly pillow can be a challenge. One of the biggest challenges is that not only do we want it to be free of unsustainable materials, but comfortable as well. The greatest ideal for such a pillow is one that is made of all natural and completely sustainable materials, and that helps you to sleep better.

The foam memory pillows you see advertised on T.V. definitely meet the last qualification, but are anything but natural and sustainable. In fact, the last one that I used is sitting in a linen closet because I’m hesitant to add that foam stuff to the landfill. If I had known about the natural rubber contour pillows, I may have bought one of those instead.

Or not. They are up to six times more costly than the synthetic rubber ones (and don’t last any longer), and at the time I bought the synthetic one I preferred to spend my limited health budget on shower filters and air purifiers.

A down-filled pillow–especially if it has an organic cotton cover–would be natural enough, but here we have the question of whether the feathers were obtained in a humane manner. You can also find a pillow filled with hypoallergenic recycled polyester fill. Sustainable, yes, but this green perfectionist doubts that the sustainability can neutralize the possible effect of the chemicals in synthetic material.

In my quest for an eco-friendly pillow, I’ve discovered three affordable possibilities.

1. The Natura Wool Cloud Pillow.

This pillow is filled with wool and covered with organic cotton.

2. The Organic Cotton Pillow.

Another all-natural, sustainable alternative, this pillow is all organic cotton, inside and out.

3. The Organic Buckwheat Pillow.

My favorite of the three. Why? I just started using one from Gaiam.com, and can attest to its comfort. The filling–of either buckwheat hulls or a combination of that and millet hulls–conform to the natural shape and bend of your neck. Even better, it will last between ten and fifteen years. When you consider the fact that most other pillows need to be changed out every eighteen to twenty-four months, this buckwheat pillow ends up costing you no more than a high-quality pillow from a department store.

By the way, you can find lesser expensive buckwheat pillows. However, those don’t have the comfy wool padding layer that the one from Gaiam.com has. I don’t know that I’d like to spend night after night with just a thin layer of cotton fabric between my head and a bunch of buckwheat hulls.

So, looking for an eco-friendly pillow? An all-natural pillow that is comfortable and affordable? Let this list be your starting place.

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I have a laundry quandry.

A few years ago, before I was really into green and trying to buy only natural and/or sustainable materials, I bought this nylon laundry basket from a home department store. It isn’t your typical plastic basket, but a deep nylon cylinder held up by a wire coil. The combination of nylon and coil enables you to press down on the top of the basket, making it shorten, in order to access the laundry at the bottom–no getting your arms and head lost in its deep blue depths.

Not only that, but this laundry basket holds a lot of laundry. I’ve enjoyed it.

But alas, the inevitable has happened, and the coils have begun to break through the nylon. The top of the basket has a three-inch piece of stiff wire sticking out, the proverbial accident waiting to happen.

Of course, I’m not quite ready to throw it out. I will wait until the top wire protudes obnoxiously, or until the as-yet small hole at the bottom of the basket grows until it rips wide open.

However, I’m already wondering how to replace it when it must go to the laundry basket graveyard. I really don’t want a plastic one, as my goal is to eventually replace all plastic household items, as they break or become otherwise unusable, with natural materials. I could buy a wicker basket–probably even find one made of sustainable wood online–but having just spent several hundred dollars in other household goods and supplements, I just don’t feel like springing for a pricey laundry basket.

So I’ve been thinking, and analyzing, and strategizing…until I finally had this thought: the greenest thing to do is to reuse what’s already hanging around the house. Preferably something that doesn’t already have a use, maybe something that might otherwise be recycled or thrown away.

Then came my eureka!: a cardboard box. Large ones come through our house with regularity, as I buy most of my nuts and seeds online, often at least than ten pounds at a time. I can cut holes in the sides for carrying, and by the time the first box wears out, I will surely have another one waiting in the wings (actually, in the garage).

Ugly? Yes. But how many of you household managers out there show off your laundry baskets to company? It will hide in our bedroom closet and only show its face on laundry day. As long as it does its job, I’ll be happy.

And the earth will be a little happier, too.

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I thought I was doing pretty well in developing a green kitchen. Here are just a few things I’ve done to make my kitchen a healthier, more energy-efficient place to be:

• Got rid of all non-stick cookware (okay, I have two Teflon cake pans and two Teflons bread pans, but my husband had them before he married “The Crunchy Coach” and they are not used for baking, but for drumming by our son).
• Bought Energy-Star appliances when the older ones went kaput (refrigerator and dishwasher).
• Use old terry cloth towels to wipe up spills instead of paper towels.
• Use sunlight coming through kitchen window for growing plants.
• Bought a  soapstone griddle to replace the Teflon frying pan.
• Used non-toxic paint to paint the kitchen.
• Use more glass storage containers.
• Never use the microwave for cooking (only for sterilizing sponges and such).
• Use biodegradable sponges for washing dishes and wiping counters.

Of course, I know we could do better. When we replaced our kitchen countertop, I didn’t even think about looking into sustainable materials (I was pregnant and just at the end of a very nauseating first trimester, so please forgive me). Our refrigerator runs on electricity instead of propane or solar energy (but I keep it full, thus increasing its efficiency). And I regularly use stainless steel pans for cooking, which–according to my top recommended nutritional resource, the Healing Gourmet e-book series–may leech some potentially dangerous metals, like nickel and molybdenum (say “molybdenum” ten times fast) into food.

Okay, so I’m thinking that if we ever have a house built from the ground up, we’ll use concrete for the countertops and install solar panels onto the roof. We’ll have a system put in to collect all the gray water leaving the kitchen.

And then we will have arrived. We will have reached the pinnacle of green kitchen living.

Or so I thought, until I found out about this. (So sorry, I wasn’t sure if I could legally copy and paste this photo into my blog, so click the link and come right back!)

“This”, ladies and gentlemen, is the Flow2 Kitchen. You wash your dishes by hand and hang them up on the vertical drying rack, which then drip water into the plant pots below. The refrigerator is cooled by evaporation, rather than electricity, and underneath the wooden cutting board is a worm composting bin.

Just when I thought I knew what a “green kitchen” should look like.

What do you think–the epitome of green, or too simple for your lifestyle?

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Learn the principles of living in optimum health.

Looking for natural, chemical-free treatments and cures that work? Try undiluted, unadulterated essential oils.

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Much ado is made these days about compact flourescent light bulbs. They are said to last eight to fifteen times as long as incandescent bulbs (the non-eco friendly kind you grew up with) and use much less power, producing significantly less of the greenhouse gases than the incandescents put into the air. They also only cost two to three times more than incandescents, making them more cost effective.

Ever wanting to do the “green” thing, I talked my husband into replacing the incandescents in the two most-used rooms in our house–the family room and master bathroom–with CFLs. Jerry dutifully went to Lowes and bought the required number, then came home and changed out the bulbs.

The first obstacle was getting used to that strange spiral shape. But that only took a couple of weeks, and we began to appreciate the brightness of the bulbs. However, at about the same time, one of the brand new bulbs in the family room went out. After a few days, we gave up on it and replaced it with yet another bulb. A few weeks later, yet another one went out. This time we just rolled our eyes and sighed and decided to leave it alone. There were three other bulbs in the fixture, giving plenty of light, so a fourth wasn’t really necessary.

It flickered on and off for a few more weeks, and ever since has remained dark.

Okay, so there’s a dud in every group. Still, that was two in just the first few weeks. Having gotten the impression they would last half a lifetime, we were a bit disappointed.

Then I learned that CFLs were considered hazardous waste because they contained mercury. Thankfully, we hadn’t thrown the other dud in the trash–yet. But I began to question the “greenness” of CFLs. I’m not happy with the mercury in my teeth; why would I want to risk putting more into my environment?

Ed Begley, Jr., esteemed actor and author of Living Like Ed: A Guide to the Eco-Friendly Life, would disagree. He believes that the benefit of the decreased amount of pollution they cause considerably outweighs the potential danger of the tiny amount of mercury contained in compact flourescent bulbs.

He does have a point, but I’m still not convinced CFLs should be considered the green “savior” when it comes to lighting.

Then there are the light emitting diode bulbs, or LEDs. They last even longer than the CFLs, contain no mercury, and use even less power than the compact flourescent bulbs. Last year, Jerry and I bought mini LED flashlights that we could carry on our person for emergencies. If you’ve never tried one, you would be amazed at the amount of light those tiny little bulbs put out!

The major disadvantage of the LEDs is cost. For a comparable $2.00 incandescent bulb, you pay twelve times that for an LED. However, considering the fact that they may last at least twenty times longer, I would consider it a good investment.

So we come to the big question: is it really worth replacing incandescent bulbs with the newer, “greener” choices? In my opinion, the answer is a big resounding “YES”. If every household in the United States replaced just one incandescent bulb with a compact flourescent bulb, the energy saved would be enough to light up a city of 1.5 million people. Obviously, for light emitting diode bulbs the amount of energy saved would be even higher.

And lower energy production means less air pollution. Which means an increased chance of better health for you, me and the birds.

Our family’s goal is to be happy with the CFL’s already installed, but to begin to change incandescent bulbs to LEDs as they go out. How about you? CFL or LED?

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As a resident of one of the nicer neighborhoods in a middle-class suburb,  I would like to give kudos to my neighbors who not only maintain their own lawns, but also use a broom to clean up afterward. Whether they do it consciously or not, they are making the greener (and more economical) choice.

I despise leaf blowers. I do. Ask my husband. (He doesn’t own one, by the way, and never has.) If we are out walking, and come near a lawn where someone is using a leaf blower, I will cross the street, hold my breath for an entire block, then–when I get my breath back–have something not very nice to say about the person who invented the contraption.

When I was growing up, they didn’t even exist. (Okay, Wikipedia says they existed, but they didn’t become popular until I was around twenty years old.) Since I grew up in rural Minnesota and never witnessed a suburban lawn getting a professional cut, I can’t say for sure what lawn maintenance people used back then to clean the grass clippings and bush trimmings.

But my hunch is, a broom.

I like brooms. They don’t spew out pollution, increasing your risk of lung disease and organ dysfunction. They don’t make any noise. Their carbon footprint is on the negative scale. And if you choose to use a broom instead of an electric- or gas-powered machine, you get more fit.

And in case you were born a few years later than I and have hardly ever seen a broom in your life, may I kindly point out that cleaning up lawn trimmings isn’t the only use for a broom. It in fact has several uses that, for some reason or other, have been relegated to some machine or other. Off the top of my head:

• Sweeping the kitchen floor. Use a broom instead of a vacuum to clean the kitchen floor, and you’ll burn more calories, be able to reach under the bottoms of the cabinets, and save the environment while not taking hardly any more time for the job.
• Cleaning the garage floor. Yes, I understand that once in a while–twice a year, maybe?–hosing off the garage floor is necessary to get all the grime and dust off. However, a broom does just fine at getting the worst of the dirt and debris out of the garage on a regular basis.
• Sweeping cobwebs off the ceiling. I think using a broom for this job is actually easier than using a vacuum attachment, if the ceiling’s not too high. And you don’t have noise or use electricity.
• A pony. Or a giant sword. Or a dance partner… One of these days I’m going to go off on how most toys, even for babies and toddlers, require batteries these days. For the moment I will just point out that a child who still has an imagination because she hasn’t sat in front of the TV since the age of six months can find a broom to be a versatile toy.

As much as I dislike housework, I do like brooms. They are quiet, lightweight, and have no cords to yank around. They are the greenest (and cheapest!) choice in many cleaning situations. These humble tools deserve at least a little praise, don’t you think?

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Learn the principles of living in optimum health.

Looking for natural, chemical-free treatments and cures that work? Try undiluted, unadulterated essential oils.

There is no better supplement than Masaji. Find out how it changed my life here.

You’re improving your health; ready to get really free? Check out my other blog, freetoliveyourdreams.com.

…reduce, reuse, recycle!

When I was teaching in the inner city, I was continually annoyed at how wasteful my students were. It didn’t matter how old they were. Fifth graders destroyed puzzle boxes as quickly as my Kindergartners, and every year I had to take each class through intensive training on why we put waste paper in a separate box from the trash.

After getting a few years of teaching under my belt, it occurred to me that maybe, just maybe, the reason the kiddos were so careless and apparently ignorant was that they hadn’t been taught to conserve resources before. Maybe I was the first adult in their life to make a big deal about caring for the planet.

Through my experience with my former students, and now with my almost three-year-old son, Benjamin, who loves to “help”, I have learned some tricks on encouraging kids to get interested in the three R’s of reduce, reuse, recycle. Off the top of my head, here are eight.

1. Begin training your children to reduce waste as early as possible. Already, Benjamin is learning not to turn the water on full force when washing his hands (not that he doesn’t when Mommy’s not looking, but this age is seed-planting time, right?). Children as young as three and four can be taught to put certain types of waste into recycle bins. By the time a child is five or six years old, he or she should understand that making a couple marks on a piece of paper, and then throwing it away is a BIG no-no.

2. Buy and play “green” games. Garden- Opoly, for example, is a version of Monopoly in which players exchange clay pots for greenhouses and encounter challenges such as aphid infestations. Xeko teaches about endangered species. The Wild Seed Game is appropriate for younger children, and teaches how wild seeds come to be able to sprout and grow to maturity.

3. Read stories and books that illustrate green concepts. A classic example–and a childhood favorite of mine–is The Wump World by Bill Peet. A similarly poignant look at how modern development projects put both animal species and the health of the planet at risk is Peet’s Farewell to Shady Glade. Dear Greenpeace by Simon James and Spud Goes Green by Giles Thaxton are two more recent books that address various environmental issues.

4. Model the behavior you want your children to learn. Do you want your kids to learn to recycle paper and use less water? Let them see you do it, consistently, day after day. On the other hand, if your kids never see you picking up trash in the park, why should they? Explain to your children why you conserve, why you recycle, and then do it in front of them as often as possible.

5. Use clean trash for crafts. Got empty toilet paper tubes? Bottle caps? Save up a few of these and other kinds of “clean trash” for a rainy day. Then give the supplies, along with glue and markers, to your kids and let their imaginations run wild!

6. Explain why you do what you do. If you combine errands to conserve gas and lessen air pollution, for example, your children–especially the older ones–can understand, and will be a step closer to recognizing the importance of living more lightly.

7. Make recycle bins convenient for them. If your recycle bins are located in an inconvenient or forbidden area (such as the back of the garage), your kids won’t learn to use them(and you may not, either!). Keep them in a convenient place within reach, and when they recycle something without being reminded, lavish them with praise.

8. Visit a landfill. To really make an impact on your children about what wasteful living does to the environment, take them to a dump. In this case, a picture may be worth a million words!

Teaching children how to reduce, reuse and recycle–as well as the why–doesn’t have to be a chore. Try some of these ideas, and watch your kids soar to a new level of “green.”

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Learn the principles of living in optimum health.

Looking for natural, chemical-free treatments and cures that work? Try undiluted, unadulterated essential oils.

There is no better supplement than Masaji. Find out how it changed my life here.

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The concept of fair trade is simple. Producers in developing nations are paid fair market value for their goods, thus helping them to achieve economic stability and self-sufficiency. Sounds reasonable, doesn’t it? People should be paid well for the work they do and receive a living wage.

However, since the inception of the Industrial Revolution–especially in recent decades when “outsourcing” has become a lucrative way for large companies to make more money–peoples of the Third World have experienced anything but “fair trade.” One well-known example are the major banana growers. They have, in the past, been notorious for exploiting their workers, turning them into near slaves.

Then there are the world’s sweatshops. In those factories conditions are typically unsafe and unsanitary, and workers are paid barely enough to put food on their family’s table. That is, if they’re old enough to have a family. Many of the workers are mere children, their childhood and health eradicated by greedy overseas (a-hem, American) manufacturers who refuse to pay adults a living wage.

When you buy something labeled “fair trade,” however, you can be sure that the people who made/grew the product were adults who received a decent wage from it. The product is also very likely to be of higher quality than related goods that were not produced under humane conditions.

Why should I buy fair trade goods?

Taking all that into consideration, I can think of three compelling reasons to buy fair trade items:

1. helps support  families who would otherwise remain in deplorable working and living conditions;
2. forces large companies to treat their laborers better, and to adhere to child labor laws; and
3. ensures you are getting a well-made (or sustainably-grown) product.

Where do I find these goods?

I recently discovered Earth brand bananas at Whole Foods. These bananas are grown using sustainable methods by farmers at Earth University in Costa Rica, whose mission is to train the natives in sustainable agriculture. They are the best bananas I’ve ever eaten, and they cost less than the organic ones!

Organic food manufacturers provide sustainably and ethically produced items as well. For example, in my pantry I have a bottle of Frontier Vanilla Flavor , which is certified fair trade. You can find coffee that has been grown by small farmers who are paid much better than their plantation co-horts.

With a little bit of digging, you can find several online sources for high-quality, handmade toys that come from artisans in developing countries. Craftsbury Kids is one of those sources. Gifts With Humanity provides a variety of fair trade products, from clothing to home decor to instruments.

From now on, when you’re out shopping, I hope you take into consideration where your prospective buy has come from.

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Learn the principles of living in optimum health.

Looking for natural, chemical-free treatments and cures that work? Try undiluted, unadulterated essential oils.

There is no better supplement than Masaji. Find out how it changed my life here.

You’re improving your health; ready to get really free? Check out my other blog, freetoliveyourdreams.com.

I first started line-drying my laundry when my son, Benjamin, was about 20 months old. It was the “green” thing to do, I knew. So twice a week, I would lug the basket outside and hang our laundry up on the makeshift clotheslines that my husband had put up for me.

I thought I would enjoy it. Really, I did. I like being outside, and I figured  I could use the time to pray. It’s not like you have to think to hang up clothes.

Then Benjamin discovered dirt. And how fun it was to throw on the freshly washed towels and sheets hanging up to dry. Subsequently I realized that air-drying clothing does nothing to get the lint out. I tried washing only lights together, then washing only towels together. After line-drying my laundry, I still ended up with obvious and hideous lint smears all over the dark-colored shirts and pants.

In the meantime, my solution to the dirt-throwing problem was simply to keep Benjamin inside the house while I hung up the laundry. Uh, huh. And listen to him scream at the window the whole time.

In utter frustration, I began using the dryer again on a full-time basis, praying that the green police wouldn’t come to my house and find me out.

T-shirts swinging in the breeze

This past summer, with Benjamin a little older, I thought I’d try line-drying again. I’d figured out that I could remove the lint off the dark clothes by running them on the air-fluff setting in the dryer for twenty minutes (which uses much less electricity than using warm/hot air for sixty minutes). And I hoped that Benjamin, being a little more mature, would refrain from the dirt-throwing.

He behaved slightly better, but now the heat and humidity conspired against my desire to be greener. I would be miserable and crabby by the time I finished hanging the laundry out to dry.

I was determined to find a solution, since I have three compelling reasons to line-dry my laundry and avoid the dryer.

1. If you only air-dry your clothes, and never use the dryer, your clothes and linens will last twice as long.
2. As J. Matthew Sleeth puts it in his book Serve God, Save the Planet, every kilowatt of coal-based electricity you use equals more pollution, which affects air quality–even for people halfway around the world who use no electricity.
3. Laundry that has hung outside on a clothesline smells delicious!

Finally, I got a hold of Ed Begley Jr.’s Living Like Ed: A Guide to the Eco-Friendly Life. Among other simple green ideas, Ed and his wife hang their laundry on drying racks. Inside the house.

What brilliance! What absolute genius! I could hang up the laundry inside, and not have to deal with the heat and a mischievous toddler. (Hey, I’m a busy mom. I’m allowed to have occasional brain freezes.)

Unless I’m in a mood or feeling rushed, I still line-dry the sheets outside. But I now only run the dryer to get the lint off, and everything else gets hung up on hangers or on a drying rack in the upstairs bathroom. Yes, it takes more time than using the dryer. But you’d be surprised at how quickly the hanging up can go.

What is something you’re trying to do a little “greener” and searching for a solution that fits into your lifestyle ?

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Learn the principles of living in optimum health.

Looking for natural, chemical-free treatments and cures that work? Try undiluted, unadulterated essential oils.

There is no better supplement than Masaji. Find out how it changed my life here.

You’re improving your health; ready to get really free? Check out my other blog, freetoliveyourdreams.com.