out and about just without the car

This week the fast for the 7 experiment is waste.  It is hard to focus on waste and being "green" in just one week.  It is also hard when you already incorporate simple earth friendly practices in your normal routine such as recycling.  I have plans to make a worm compost bin, but haven't had a chance yet, but I still wanted to do something meaningful in these first couple of days so we decided to not drive anywhere today.  There were many temptations to hop in the car and go somewhere, but we didn't.  Neither car left the driveway today, heck neither car was even turned on.  Even though our cars never went anywhere, we didn't stay at home all day.  We went to church, the grocery store, the park, and 7-11 for Slurpee's, all on our bicycles.  We estimated that we rode about 6 miles today, that doesn't seem far, but my body feels like we rode 16.  Fortunately it was a gorgeous day and the perfect day to get out on a bike, I just wish our city was a little flatter without so many hills, I probably could go farther and longer.  No matter what, we did it, and realized it isn't that hard, even when you are out of shape like I am. 
This afternoon while riding, Jeff and I realized how our house is in a great location, we can ride our bicycles to the swimming pool, the grocery store, our favorite pizza place, a nice restaurant, a deli/gourmet food store, the post office, a Mexican restaurant, several churches, the kids' school, my mom's house, a park, and to the trail system that can get us a lot of other places (though there is a HUGE hill returning from the trails and the kids haven't tried that yet).  We left off quite a few other places like Walgreens, Starbucks, another grocery store, a shopping center, and more restaurants because we hadn't ventured to the next shopping center over with the kids on bikes.  I realized how good we have it, some people that live out in the surrounding counties don't have anywhere they can walk or ride to or no where safe because the main roads are all highways. 
Today was really good and fun and I hope that this spring and summer we can do a lot more riding and get more and more people doing the same, it is good for your body, good for the environment,  and good for your wallet. 
I joke and say that I am slowly becoming a hippie, but it is true, I really do feel like I am being called to live my life differently, simpler and "greener."  I have a lot of resistance, but the pull is there, I am little scared, but curious of what the future holds, what does this simple life look like for us?  Is this the change I have been yearning for?  Who knows, but today was good, it was nice to ride around and get exercise and make the world a better place.

you know you are officially an adult when. . .

you ask for a thermostat for Christmas and are so excited when you actually get it.
Yes a thermostat.  I am not officially a hippie geek.
Before December 25th, we had a programmable thermostat that was never really worked.  We should earn an A for effort, but the programming was hard to set up and once the batteries quit so did we.  For the last several years we just would turn it up or down when necessary, so basically our house stayed the same temperature, not good for energy efficiency.
Now we have a Nest and we are very aware of our energy usage, the temperature in the house, the humidity in the house, and how to be the most efficient. 
I LOVE IT!  I honestly never thought I could get excited over a thermostat, but I am.
Our nest tracks our energy usage and we try and earn leaves:

 As you can see we didn't do so good Tuesday, but it was REALLY cold.  We did earn a leaf Sunday since we were out-of-town.  The leaf indicates energy efficiency and hopefully will teach us to lower the thermostat more to save energy and money.  It is too early to tell yet whether we have actually saved any money, but we are much more aware of the heat and when it is on and only using it when we are home and awake which hopefully will pay off in the end.  Even the kids have gotten in the game, they are curious if the temperature will earn us a leaf or not.  I love that it is more than just a programmable thermostat, it learns our patterns and adjusts accordingly, after a week of turning the thermostat up to 70 at 7am, it now has the house at 70 degrees at 7am, it is so nice not waking up to freezing cold temperatures.
So last year's experiment was homemade laundry detergent, this year, energy efficiency in heating and cooling.   Yes, I am yet one more step closer to becoming a hippie or maybe an just an energy nazi.

homemade laundry detergent revisisted

So one year ago and 17 days ago I made my first batch of homemade laundry detergent. 
I wanted to try it after seeing it on Pinterest and wanting an alternative to the expensive detergents at the store and to find something that would stop ruining my clothing.  All of my shirts were getting holes in them and after a google search I suspected that it was an anti-pilling agent in the detergent that was causing the holes in my clothes so I decided to try homemade, it was safer and maybe less holey.
A year later. . .
I am still making it and using it and LOVE IT!
I went from having at least 8 shirts with holes with no holes, or I should say no new holes.
It is so easy to make and so much cheaper.  I also don't like a lot of smells so this is perfect for me.
I even made a liquid detergent to use when I wash cold because a few times I had problems with the powder not dissolving.
It also gets out stains better than I expected.  It was and still is hard to get use to the fact that you only need 1 Tablespoon of detergent.  I know that most people use way more detergent than they need, but 1 Tablespoon seems like nothing.
So I am officially a convert!
I have also quit using dryer sheets because of the waste and thankfully Method came out with a fabric softener for when I want a little sent and softness though I don't need it.  I also use a lightly balled up piece of aluminum foil to prevent static.
So I have made the switch and haven't looked back since.
I am turning into a hippie one day at a time.