Day One

Yesterday was day one or ground zero in our efforts to move from being total consumers to living a greener life.  I want to say that this change is going to be easy and convenient.  It's not.  And it is costing us some money up front...  More than we really want to spend, but in the long run we are going to start saving far more than what I have spend thus far.

I started with a very selfish goal.  To save money.  My husband and I are fast approaching the arrival of the 5th child in our family.  We have to find creative ways to cut costs and make ends meet.  With the addition of baby number 5, we knew we were going to have 2 in diapers for at least a year.  That is a lot of money going out each month just for diapers, so I made the decision to switch to cloth.  We have been using a combination of cloth and disposables for a few weeks now and fully switched over to cloth this past week when I got a shipment of the rest of the diapers we would need to get us through 2 days.  I have gotten a lot of funny looks from my other mama friends, but I truly believe this is the right move for our family.  It has taken our diaper budget from around $80 a month, to nil.  I have put in about $300 so far buying used diapers, but that is more than enough diapers for us to get through 2 days.

So I started with my cloth diaper conversion and I have fallen in love with cloth.  I am kicking myself for not doing this all along.  I am literally keeping over 2 tons of waste out of our local landfill.  I will save well over $2000 by the time it is all said and done.  AND, cloth diapers are way more fun to buy than disposables.

Cloth Diapers made me start questioning all of our other choices....  Why are we using paper towels?  Why am I still using diaper wipes and not cloth wipes?  About every choice I had made in the last 10 years was called into question...  I started doing research into the products that we use on a day to day basis.  I was appalled.  My oldest son has pretty severe skin issues.  I thought I had done everything I could to help him.  We use special soap, detergent, etc.  I didn't stop to think.  I also have very sensitive skin and things like Pledge or Endust bother me while I am cleaning.  I am constantly washing my hands and using a sugar scrub after to get the chemicals off.  So now, my husband and I have made the decision that we are going to get all the non-natural chemicals out of our house and start a completely new lifestyle.  Yesterday was the day that we finally started to pull the trigger on all of this...  Today we are purging our house and tomorrow I will set aside most of the day to making homemade products.

I am doing this for so many reasons I have lost count now..  I think it will be better for our family.  It will cost us significantly less than traditional cleaning products, and everything I am finding in research suggests that cleaning naturally will actually boost my kids immune systems.  I have been called a granola flake, a hippie and a tree hugger...  Well if that is what you think, hooray for you!  But as a mother, I want to do what I think is the absolute best for my family.  I am excited about the change over... My family and close friends and starting to be converted to my line of thinking...  And I know that I am going to be reducing our families carbon footprint by a significant amount.