From the category archives:

Green living

Planning A Vegetable Garden

by emily on November 24, 2009

in Green living

If you’re a northener, planning a vegetable garden may not be up there on your list of priorities right now. But here in north Texas, this is the time to create a garden plan for next spring. While planning my garden a couple of weeks ago, I didn’t realize how close I was cutting it [...]

{ 0 comments }

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 [...]

{ 0 comments }

My Laundry Quandry

by emily on October 12, 2009

in Green home, Green living

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 [...]

{ 0 comments }

How Green Is Your Kitchen?

photo of kitchen

by emily on October 5, 2009

in Green home, Green living

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 [...]

{ 0 comments }

Green Lighting: CFLs versus LEDs

by emily on September 21, 2009

in Green home, Green living

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 [...]

{ 0 comments }

In Praise Of The Humble Broom

by emily on September 14, 2009

in Green living

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 [...]

{ 0 comments }

…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 [...]

{ 0 comments }

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 [...]

{ 0 comments }

I’ve been searching high and low for a chemical-free shampoo that works, and the search has been going on for some time. The qualifications I’ve been looking for are:

it would not have any chemicals (or at least no chemicals rated above a “0″ on the Environmental Working Group’s hazard scale), and
it would leave my [...]

{ 2 comments }

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 [...]

{ 0 comments }