The Inhuman Stain

We have stains. Yes we do. All manner of baby body by-product stains, with blowout poopies being the worst. I'm willing to let a lot of things slide in my life, but wearing stained clothes myself (or suiting my kiddo up in them) is something I'm inexplicably weird and vain about. I think it has something to do with my great-grandmother, a very sensible woman, whose maxims have attained the status of mantra in my family. She used to say something along the lines of "you may be poor, but that's no excuse for not looking as neat and clean as you can," and for whatever reason I really took that to heart. I don't feel good about the cleaning product choices we've been making and have been wanting to move towards either making our own or at least buying something a little greener and a little safer to use in the house now that we have a baby around. So a few nights ago I was in my local co-op and saw some Ecover stain remover. Biodegradable! Safe for marine life! And not that much more expensive than the conventional brands. We were almost out of stain remover at home, so despite my skepticism that this stuff would actually work, I bought some. Which brings us to this evening, when the pile of baby laundry reached critical (and stinky) mass. All the stains (and there were many) got treated with Ecover, and all the stains came out! You could have knocked me over with a baby wipe. It even worked on an old spit-up stain on a hand-me-down sleeper I was washing for the first time. So I'm sold, and passing the info along. (And no, I don't work for Ecover.) Wonder if it will change those blowout diapers, too? At 3 a.m. Now THAT would be something.

Not Bigfoot after all

I have big feet. I do. Size 10, which sounds worse than it is, I suppose, since I'm also pretty tall. If my feet were any smaller it would probably look strange at the very least and I'd probably tip over into the bargain. I'm still haunted, though, by memories of having feet this big since I was in junior high school (hint: I wasn't this tall then and was a good bit skinnier) and so still have this sense of myself as having freakishly gargantuan tootsies. And because I've had the same sense of creeping horror that our household's carbon footprint would be equally outsized, I've hesitated to do one of those online carbon calculators. In honor of the Copenhahen summit, however, I finally broke down and filled one out. It's hard to change your ways when you don't know for certain what you're doing wrong, after all. Apparently, the average tonnage for US households is 20.4, and as poorly as I feel we're doing sometimes, I would not have been at all shocked to see us blowing through 30 or so annual tonnes. But you know what our result was? 8.43! That's eight, not eighteen, not eighty. Eight. I was (pleasantly) shocked - we must be doing something right, then. But this is no time to rest on our greenish laurels - the worldwide average for industrial nations is 11 (we're still good by comparison), but the average worldwide footprint is only 4 tonnes, and the worldwide target to combat climate change is a scant 2 tonnes. If we actually start doing some of the additional things I know we could (and should) do, I wonder how low we can go.

So... OK - feeling better, but off to do some more math. Hopefully subtraction.

Things we already do

-scratch cook most of our own food from staples
-cook mostly meatless meals
-buy some local produce & patronize the farmer's markets
-buy some organic foods
-buy staple foods in bulk when possible
-shop with canvas bags
-recycle, reuse, or repurpose as much as we possibly can
-try to mend and repair things instead of throwing them out
-buy only what we need or what we really, really want - but buy very little overall
-if we buy something, see first if we can get it second-hand
-fill as many of our needs as possible with second-hand and thrifted goods
-my husband does some bike commuting to work
-i'm transitioning to a work-at-home job
-use a low flow toilet and showerhead
-use rechargeable batteries
-keep the thermostat set lower in winter and higher in summer
-purchased an energy-efficient refrigerator
-things go in the wash pile only when they really need washed
-hang a lot of our laundry to dry
-minimal use of paper towels and other disposable paper products
-use a washable fabric shower curtain
-DIY as much as possible
-we try (and usually succeed) to not throw any food away, i.e. leftovers really get eaten, etc
-we buy drinking water in bulk and store it in reusable jugs
-we wash and reuse plastic storage bags
-we reuse things like oat cylinders, yogurt tubs and spice jars for storage and bulk buying

In other seasons, we've had a small garden and composted. This year, with me being pregnant and some other craziness ensuing, we didn't get the garden in and let the composting slide. One of the first steps for us is to get back on the wagon with both of these.

Day to day, it feels like we do a pretty good job; indeed, we do more than a lot of people we know. Looking at this list, though, and seeing it actually written down, it seems so... paltry. I find myself thinking that surely we're doing more than that. But everyone has to start somewhere, and seeing a list like this really helps create the motivation to step up our efforts.