Living Green

One of the things I am currently workign on is living a 'greener' life. Back in the hazy misty days of high school, I wanted to tbe an environmental engineer. I really don't like our country's mass waste, disposable use society. Everything is use and toss, essentially so that we can drive the manufacturing process, spend more money, etc etc etc. But I digress...

I really like the idea of using foot power to get places I need to go. I even attempted biking to work a few times in my kid-free days, when it was 23 miles one way. It's a lot more challenging with two small children, but we have managed to make walking to Gymboree part of our weekly routine, and Esposo is biking to the train a lot lately.

The biggest change we've made so far is going to cloth diapers. We get to save money (and you should know by now, I'm cheap) and help out the environment a little. The new cloth diapers are pretty spiffy so it was little change in routine. I was already looking into my next step, how to save electricity, when our electric bill came for the first month I had been using cloth diapers exclusively for both children. It went up about $45. What had we changed? Use of the dryer.

Crap, not only did that mean we were causing a greater environmental impact by using so much more electricity, but it was negating the cost effectiveness of cloth diapers. I started washing the diapers and liners every night and hanging them to dry. I started hanging the children's clothes to dry, too - they don't get stretched out like adult clothes would (I am literally hanging them on hangers since I have no clothesline... yet). I was pleased with my progress and curious to see how the electric bill would be affected.

Well, we happened to get this month's electric bill yesterday. Which should have still been very high, because it's only been a week since we implemented the drastic dryer use reduction plan.

It was not. It was $50 LESS than a typical month. The stupid electric company had misread our meter!!! So we AREN'T draining the world's power, but I'm still going to line dry.