I don’t think it’s any secret that the “family” has changed a lot over the last 30-40 years. “Family time” now means rushing to get your kids’ meal after you get home from work, rushing them to do their home work, maybe sitting down for some mindless television watching together and then rushing to get…
It’s hard to believe, but this good old-fashioned country girl has not decorated a Christmas tree since moving to Florida 6 years ago. It’s been very hard for me to get into the Christmas spirit in the absence of snow and frigid weather. (Although, at this point, 65 feels pretty nippy to me. But that’s…
If you’re from Florida, you know what a McMansion is. It’s an embarrassingly large (3,000+ square feet), yet somehow mundanely generic house, usually built for just two people – often a second home that is only lived in for part of the year. They are the epitome of conspicuous consumerism and the apex of wasteful and greedy…
For those of us who are trying really hard to live more sustainable lives, it is often frustrating when we revert to our wasteful ways. Maybe you were visiting a friend and etiquette required that you flush *every time*. Or you were dining out and knew the food wasn’t sourced locally.
Anyone who has ever charted their carbon footprint knows that traveling can add enormous weight to your impact on the planet. Plane travel uses a frighteningly large amount of gasoline, and the airline industry and its associated services use lots of energy and create a serious amount of waste. So how does one embark on…
I must be the luckiest girl alive because my sweetheart LOVES to help me with home improvement projects. I can’t explain it and do not dare question it. I just revel in it night and day. I think one reason he enjoys it is because my projects are Earth-friendly, small and fairly straightforward. My latest…
Although I try to minimize the amount of paper used in my business, I still sometimes scribble notes on scrap paper or inadvertently print out an incorrect invoice. Previously, when I had pieces of paper with “private” data on them (including personal bank statements and the like), I always shredded them. We hear all the…
I’ve always thought the coolest thing you could do was teach your cat how to use the toilet. I get green with envy when I think about people who have done this. As you can imagine, cats aren’t easy to teach, so I’m not even going to attempt this daunting feat on my adult cat. …
Some people choose to eat less meat because they love animals. They can’t imagine killing them and cooking them up for dinner. To be fair, I always had an aversion to veal, lamb and rabbit. It was my thought that small, furry animals should be spared. To this end, I definitely think no animal deserves the…
I recently received the latest issue of Good magazine, and it happened to be entirely about water – the state of our water supply, how to use less water, how much water goes into producing the food you eat, etc. One article, called “This is a turn off” states that the average American uses more…