Going Green!

With the new house comes new recycling rules! The City of Fort Worth is much more strict about their recycling policies than Watauga. They provide much larger bins for recycling and many more opportunities. These recycling rules have inspired me to implement some of the changes I've been wanting to make our family more "green".

We've definitely been making better efforts at recycling. In addition to the recycling, I'm making more of an effort to reduce our waste in general. In order to cut down on the amount of paper towels we use, I purchased some dishcloths to use as cloth napkins. I prefer the dishcloths over traditional cloth napkins because they are more absorbent. I'm also keeping an eye out for boxes and things that we can reuse instead of discarding.

We had already changed out our regular lightbulbs for those compact flourescent bulbs. We've all been making an effort to conserve electricity by turning off lights when they're not in use and opening the blinds to use more natural light. I'm also going to make an effort to turn off my computer when not in use because I'm really bad about leaving it running all the time. I'm trying to find a good setting on our thermostat to keep it comfortable while using the least amount of energy. It's hard on the weekends because Luke is home more and he's rather hot-natured. I was quite comfortable today but he was complaining about being too hot.

I'm also going to be starting a garden! My main motivation for that is to save money on groceries and have a new hobby but I know it's also good for our environment. More on that tomorrow!