April 24, 2008

Going green and lean

So I decided that we needed to be a little "greener" around here. Every week, we would have several bags of garbage, more than any of our neighbors. I thought "well, we do have 3 kids", but then I decided that maybe we should be recycling. The small town we live in doesn't pick up recycling nor does it have a recycle bin to drop things off at, at least that I've found anyway. So this is going to require loading up boxes of containers, cardboard, and newspaper and driving it into the larger town we work in. Which won't be too big of a deal. We also plan on recycling aluminum cans, and we can actually make some money off of that, $.50 per lb. We've been doing this for about 2 weeks, and we really have reduced the amount of garbage we've set out on the curb. If I could only bring myself to use cloth diapers, we'd be golden. But I'm not sure I can bring myself to rinse out poopy diapers. I know my husband won't. We've switched out lightbulbs where we can, and we've insulated the attic. I've also been looking at ways to save us money, especially with gas prices the way they are. I try to make every trip into town count (we live 10 miles away from where we work), and I haven't made many day trips to the grandparents lately. I cancelled my gym membership since all I did there was run on the treadmill, and I can run for free around town. I've been a big coupon clipper since Jacob was a baby, and I buy generic on some things. I also scope out the sale papers on Sunday for deals, especially diapers and wipes, but most of the time I get lazy and don't want to run around town. What I really need to do is sit down and make out a weekly menu and buy according to that. That sounds easy enough, but what will happen is I'll decide I don't want what I've planned for that meal, or I just don't want to cook. I also need to start hitting garage sales. There is a big town garage sale in May, and last year there were quite a few nice things, and lots of good kids clothes. There's also a good kids resale shop that I've consigned with before. I need to take in some clothes and see what they have because all of Jacob's t-shirts from last summer are too short. I've got big plans - we'll see if I can actually do it. Anybody have any good money-saver tips that work for you?

1 comment:

Jennifer (Niffer) said...

I swear that we are the same person! Ha! I'm also trying to be greener, switched out light bulbs, recycling (more) using reusable shopping bags, and couponing and shopping the sales.
www.mygrocerydeals.com is great for comparing sales on food items at a lot of different stores, and The Grocery Gathering (on my blogroll) has weekly deals listed on too many stores to count. I've started hunting for coupons online too, a lot of my blogroll are blogs about being frugal and getting things for free. Definately plan a menu! Takes some time to get started in that routine, but it takes the headache out of trying to figure it out when everyone's hungry and the baby's cranky! I have one day a week (Monday while DD is at preschool) that my boys and I go shopping at about 5 different stores) I may only be getting one item at each store, but I hit them in geographical order, so I don't think I'm using that much more gas.
check out www.afullcup.com to checkout awesome Target coupons and deals! Hope this helps! Good luck!