Green Family Living

Everyday I try to add some green living to our family. On Thursday I woke up to a beautiful sunny day and decided we were going to make a family trip to our local farm. We arrived excited to pick fresh fruits and vegetables. After spending an hour picking salad vegetables and berries we were ready to head for home and lunch! I quickly prepared a fresh salad with our pickings and combined the berries together for a colorful fruit salad on top of shortcake. Yeah! I just added my green living to our family for today! What can you choose to add to your green living day?

My next goal is to visit our local weekly farmers market to pick up locally grown fruits and vegetables. After that it would be ever nicer to try and bike to this market and shop while also saving on gas and emissions! Accomplishing this would be the best green living for our family!

Over the months of trying to help educate myself and my family we have practiced green living by the 3Rs. Reduce, Reuse and Recycle. I would say the easiest has been to consistently recycle for our family. We have even added an extra recycle container to the upstairs of our home just to make it convenient. Now that we are in the habit of recycling in all rooms of our house we can honestly say that when it is trash day our recycle container is fuller than our trash container. The habit of reusing can be practiced on many levels.

I have long been a fan of passing down gently used children’s clothing. Now that my kids are a little older they can see the joy in another child’s eyes when they hand down a gently used toy or sports gear. I am often know for being an over cleaner. Now, my laundry is less because my kids have learned that not everything has to be washed after being worn if it is still reasonably clean. There were many times that we would get up in the morning, get dressed, and then change clothes for an event like gymnastics, dance, baseball or whatever then only to come home, put on clean clothes for dinner and then off to bath time and of course more clean clothes for bed. Only to get up in the morning and do it all over again. So now, I am reducing my laundry loads and everything that goes along with that. We of course purchased the new energy efficient washer and dryer a year ago to make sure we were living green laundry. We are always trying to reduce everything in our lifestyle. Less is more right!

I have also spent the last few months converting our home full of pets over the a greener lifestyle. I started with our two small dogs. They were converted about a year ago with the big pet food contamination. They are now eating all natural dog food. My cats are also very happy with their new healthy all natural kibble. Green living for pets is important in our home since they are a part of our family. We have a small area on the side of our house where we are able to grow a few vegetables. We recently added two guinea pigs and a rabbit to our mix. They are currently eating fresh vegetables from our own garden in addition to their basic diet pellets. They are very healthy and happy. There are so many green pet products on the market to choose from and add to your green living at home.

I have been converting to using greener cleaning products by trial and error. This has taken some time and patience. Mostly just willingness to try something new and different from what has been used for generations. Education on what works and realizing that for many generations they got along just fine without all the fancy brands and did a much better job of protecting and preserving the environment. My latest challenge has been as needed investing in greener choices for clothing and bedding. My daily best for greener living is one step at a time.

From:http://ezinearticles.com/?Green-Family-Living&id=1226990