A bajillion years ago, a friend told me that she thought becoming a SAHM would help reduce their carbon footprint.  ”Huh?” I thought.  I’m all for a petite carbon footprint, but how, precisely, did one follow the other?

After 14 months as a SAHM, I must admit that I get it.  Not only do I get it, but I’ve done it.  Going green doesn’t require a ton of cash, but it does take some thought, and a modest amount of effort.  It’s tough to do those things when you’re in a constant rush to keep up with the day-to-day.

So, in honor of Earth Day, here’s a list of the things we’ve done to tread more lightly on the planet since settling in our new home last July.

  1. We rarely drive.  When we chose our home, we picked one that’s accessible to mass transit and shopping.  I do drive to the grocery store once or twice a month, to stock up on bulky items and to visit the Whole Foods in the next town over.  But my husband commutes via Metro, and I conduct most of our daily business on foot.  My son walks to school, and we walk to church on the weekends.  It’s made a huge environmental impact, I’m certain.  But we all really enjoy the pedestrian lifestyle, and we’re skinnier, too.
  2. We recycle like mad.  Our town collects plastics labeled 1 through 7, and we take paper and cardboard – including cereal and cracker boxes – to nearby collection sites.  There’s a Salvation Army collection point about a mile away, and we also make sure to take anything with life left in it over to the SA instead of tossing it in the dumpster.
  3. We’re cleaning greener.  While I’ve not yet figured out how to use baking soda to scrub the entire house, I have switched to Seventh Generation and Method cleaning products, plus a whole lot of good ol’ Simple Green, which is a miracle worker.  Reusable microfiber cloths have replaced paper towels for most routine cleaning, though I’ll admit that I still use paper towels and disposable dust cloths for some jobs.
  4. We’re EnergyStars.  Our new home is wonderfully efficient.  Every appliance is EnergyStar certified, including our front-loading washing machine. Still, there’s significant impact from living in new construction – even when you’ve built on a former parking lot, not an orchard – so this was the least we could do.  I’ve also taken to keeping the house pretty cool in the winter and warm in the summer.
  5. We buy less.  A few weeks ago, my husband bought a pair of jeans and a pair of boots in the same weekend.  The $120 he spent was easily the most he’s invested in his wardrobe in more than a year.  While I can’t say the same, we do try very hard to avoid bringing home things that are not absolutely necessary.  And for certain things – bottled water, for example – we’ve invested in Sigg bottles, and now fill up before leaving home.  Not only do we save a dollar or two, that’s another plastic bottle that doesn’t have to be recycled.
  6. We buy better quality.  After we moved, my husband pointed out a simple fact: we could buy something from Ikea, knowing that we’d have to replace it in a few years, or buy something better quality and plan to have it for the rest of our lives.  He’s right.  And so along with buying fewer objects, we’re saving up so we can choose good quality ones that will last a long time – and have a life as hand-me-downs afterwards.  This goes for clothing, too.  And we’ve tried very hard to encourage friends and family to buy our son toys made from sustainable woods (PlanToys rocks!) or to simply skip the gift entirely.
  7. We eat lower on the food chain.  My husband and I both grew up with fairly typical meat’n'potato meals.  Since moving to our new digs, I’ve taken over cooking – and we’re favoring more whole grain rice and pasta dishes with turkey or chicken tossed in for protein.  Turns out these dinners are easier for me to throw together, and more satisfying that our old stand-bys.
  8. We eat at home.  We do have a standing date at our local resto for Friday night dinner, but most of the time we eat at home.  It’s less expensive, and less wasteful, too.  Plus, because I know we’re going to be eating at home, I’ve been buying larger portions and fewer individually wrapped items – which really adds up.
  9. We wash greener.  Besides our new high efficiency washing machine, we wash most loads in cold water and skip the fabric softener unless there are socks in the load.
  10. We carry our own bags.  At first, I was forever walking out the door without them.  But now I can usually complete an entire shopping trip without so much as a single plastic bag.  I also carrying a big enough tote that for small purchases, I can just tuck them away.

We’ve made progress, there’s no doubt.  But there’s more to do.  Here’s what I’m thinking for the coming year:

  1. Greening the paper monster.  Yeah, I know No Impact Man banned toilet paper.  We’re not ready to go that far.  But we have switched to 100% recycled napkins (with at least 80% post consumer content) and we’re auditioning Seventh Generation toilet paper.  I need to track down green tissues – the only ones in our local grocery are a trifling 20% recycled content.  7Gen makes them, but if I have to drive 20 miles to buy them, well …
  2. Speaking of paper … I need to purchase a reusable, refillable coffee cup.  Now.  I drink at least three paper cups of coffee a week, and there’s just no need for me to keep filling up the landfills.
  3. Color that baby green!  When the newest member debuts this Fall, he or she will be diapered in cloth with 7Gen or gDiapers for outings, fed at least some homemade baby food and, should bottles be required, drink from good ol’ fashioned recyclable glass.  If the baby is a boy, he’ll also wear almost entirely hand-me-downs, including things bought second hand in the first place.  If she’s a she?  That might make for a lighter shade of green, but I’ll still do my best to buy secondhand.
  4. Eat local.  Our farmer’s market swings back into action in a few more weeks, and I’ll be there.  Unfortunately, our market is quite modest, so I couldn’t grocery shop there.  But if I keep going, perhaps it will someday resemble the Utopia that set up by my husband’s old apartment.
  5. Reuse, reuse, reuse!  I’m at war with clutter, so I tend to avoid saving and reusing things.  But lately, I figured that if I label, say, my freezer bags, I can and should get more than one use out of them.  The same is true for aluminum foil.  I heat up a bagel in our toaster oven most mornings – I really ought to reuse that square.
  6. Powering down.  At some point, I need to figure out if we can hook up more of our stuff to power strips – especially televisions and computers – and get in the habit of turning them off when we leave for the day – or at least for the weekend.
  7. Up on the roof.  Solar panels were not an option when we built our home, and I’ve yet to find a company that can put them on our super-skinny rowhome.  The big sticking point seems to be that our local utilities have not rushed to embrace the option.  But I’m sure that will change, so we’re keeping an eye out for effective technologies that will suit our needs.
  8. Shine a light.  We continue to replace our light bulbs with compact fluorescent bulbs.  As it turns out, they don’t fit all of our needs.  (Our garage light, for example, defies all CFs on the market.)  But for the rest of the house, we’re slowly changing over.

So far there’s only one thing that we ruled out, and that’s composting.  Why, you ask?  In our urban rowhome, we don’t actually own any of the grass in our community.  Not that’s there a ton of green.  We do have a roof deck, so we could compost.  But we realized that we don’t have much to do with the composted material.  Most experts suggest that compost not be used for indoor plants, and thus far, we don’t have much in the way of outdoor foliage on our roof deck.  Sure, we could drag it back to a public park – maybe – but dragging bags of dirt down four flights of stairs into the Jeep and out to the park?  Um, no thanks.

Instead, we’re going to keep evaluating both the tools available for home composting and the possible uses for soil.  This might be the kind of thing that makes sense in a year or two – but right now, it’s just not the right change for us.

So there you have it.  It’s imperfect, but we’ve made a good start.  Here’s hoping I’ll have more to report Earth Day 2009.