As much as we *say* that we care about the environment and treading lightly on the earth, we're not doing a very good job of living that. We get complacent and buy packaged snacks, we buy chemical laden beauty products, we got lazy over the winter and stopped composting - all of these things add up!
The thing is, being eco-friendly is also very frugal. Pre-packaged convenience food and fast foods are all heavily packaged, not very healthy, and EXPENSIVE. Leaving lights on, water running, and turning up the heat/air conditioning adds up in cost. Driving too much racks up the cost of gas pretty quickly with the price these days. And buying used rather than new is almost always cheaper. So if it saves money - why aren't we all doing it? Of course the trade-off to it being cheaper, is that it takes more TIME, something that we're all on short supply of these days.
I've really been struggling with things that take more time these days. With the goals I've set for work I am spending around 6 hours every day working, add that to the fact that I am the primary caregiver for 3 kids, I prepare breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks every day, and I am solely responsible for meal planning, shopping, and laundry.... and yeah, time is in VERY short supply. But something that I need to reconcile with myself is that it's not always about the money. In this case, the positives far outweigh any negatives in terms of time spent.
With back-to-school here I think our first and biggest challenge is going to be resisting buying packaged snacks and making everything at home and using reusable containers. The best part about making everything yourself is that you end up with ingredients with lots of possibilities! Less packaging, more cupboard space, and more creativity.
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I struggle with this same kind of issue too. I want to be more "green," but struggle with the ease of doing that. Add in the size of our family... I'm doing what I can, but need more family buy-in to do better.
ReplyDeleteI think the thing to remember is to just continue to make small changes and not feel like a failure that you're not doing everything all at once. My kids are still young so I'm hoping that the changes we make now will stick and having them buy-in won't be an issue, it will just be the way we've always done things.
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