None of these tips are new, or earthshattering in any way, but they are effective and worth repeating. What it all boils down to, to my mind, is learning to become mindful of what you consume. That is not as easy as it sounds. Most of us here in the US have been raised to be mindless consumavores. It's the American Way - endless, mindless consumption is what makes our funny little hallucinated economic gears turn 'round and 'round. So actually thinking about and making conscious decisions about what we use is something that has to be learned.
1. If there are two lights on in the room and you don't need them both, turn one off. If you are leaving the room for even five minutes, turn the lights off.
2. Natural lighting is often more than sufficient for most tasks during the day. Only use artificial lighting when it's really needed. I've discovered that flipping on the lights when you enter a room is often more habit than anything.
3. Carefully monitor children's use of lighting. Flip off lights when they are not in their room, and make it a habit to check after they have used the bathroom to make sure they turned off the lights there, too. If the main light fixture in their room is one that takes multiple bulbs, consider using low-wattage bulbs, or only filling half the slots. Make it easy for the curtains or blinds to be opened to allow natural light in.
4. Don't let the water run excessively long when preparing a shower. Run it just long enough to get the water warm. If you don't have a water saving shower head, consider turning on the water pressure only half-way while showering, and/or actually turning it off while soaping up and scrubbing or shaving.
5. Don't run the sink water while you brush your teeth - turn it off and on as needed or use a cup.
6. Don't throw away leftovers - they make wonderful lunches and it saves money when you don't have to use fuel to cook again, or buy another meal's worth of food to serve. If you can save five dollars per adult, per day on lunch during the week (a very conservative estimate for purchased meals outside the home) that adds up to over $1,200.00 a year per person in monetary savings, not to mention less damage to the environment from waste.
7. Buy dry goods in bulk, repackage into reusable containers at home where needed, thus saving packaging waste and money. It's also nice to have a well-stocked pantry - it cuts down on trips to the store and on the late night aggravation when you find out as you are tucking your little guy or gal into bed that you are expected to send 2 dozen baked treats to school the next morning! For those of us that live where weather can become a bit dangerous, it's also quite nice to know that you won't be needing to head out in a snowstorm late at night for an emergency store run. There are many things worth risking your life for - but imho toilet paper is not one of them.
8. Every time a light bulb burns out, consider carefully whether you can replace it with a more efficient bulb (compact fluorescent) or a lower wattage bulb. In fact, if it is one of many in a particular room, you may decide you do not need to replace it at all. But if you do, stop and think for a minute about what you can do to use the opportunity to lower your household's consumption. If you do this for year or two, nearly every light in your house can be using less electricity.
9. Many things can be reused if you keep your eyes open for the opportunity. Even things like plastic bags can often be reused at least once. If you reuse something JUST ONCE, you've effectively cut your usage of that particular item by 50%, without even trying hard - and fifty percent is not a trivial amount! If you still think it is, think for a moment about how it would be to have fifty percent less room in your home, or fifty percent less distance to commute every day, or fifty percent less laundry to wash, or fifty percent less income. I'll bet fifty percent doesn't seem so trivial once you've thought about it that way, does it?
Monday, September 24, 2007
Sunday, September 23, 2007
Progress, progress! (paring down & reusable bags)
Well, the pile of garage-salable stuff in one bay of the garage is stacking up nicely. I've managed to work my way around 2/3rds of the kitchen or more, and only have two major areas left to declutter, pare down and reorganize. It's amazing how much you can get rid of if you really put your mind to it. My guess is the trick will be keeping it pared down!
After several months, I am finally getting the reusable bag gig down pat. I have actually started to amass an interesting collection of different types of reusable bags. I have five of the general cloth bags that are analogous to the plastic ones. I also have one bag with partitions that I got for free at Fred Meyer - it's great for holding six bottled items in a way that they don't clank around and crack. Then there is the insulated bag for frozen things. I also have two longer handled standard canvas totes I've accumulated from somewhere, and some new cotton mesh drawstring bags for dry produce items like fruits, winter squash and roots. Finally, there are the reusable "life extending" ziplocks for the wet stuff like lettuces and such. All of this fits into a lightweight compact foldable backpack, which is roomy enough to also hold my wallet, keys and cell phone.
I like this system so much that I've ordered four more of the basic bags, and after trying (unsuccessfully) to figure out how to fit two full size pork loins into them (I finally had to haul the loins out to the car unbagged, and the end of one split open in the car on the way home) I ordered an extra large duffle type bag for oversized items. I think this should allow me to have bags for pretty much every purchase that really needs to be bagged. I got almost all of my bags from http://www.reusablebags.com.
Beyond the enviromental impact, the best thing about using these bags instead of the plastic bags supplied by the store is that these don't rip and spill all your stuff onto the ground when you are least expecting it. Not only that, they hold twice as much by both weight and volume as the flimsy plastic ones, which means fewer bags to haul in when I get home. Yes, they often do weigh twice as much, but so far it has not been an issue. I mean, we're only talking at the most 10-15 pounds each even when they are loaded down with canned goods. I believe the maximum carrying capacity of the basic bags is well over 20 pounds each, so they can handle pretty much any type of normal grocery items.
The response I get at the store has overwhelmingly been positive. I have had some baggers look a bit confused by the bags at first, but no one has ever given me the impression that they would rather I hadn't brought them. I do try to speak up early to let the checkers know I have my own bags and that I prefer to use them, plus I open them up from their stuff sacks and lay them out on the counter so they are easy for the bagger to reach and load.
Oh, another way I've found to save on bagging is to have the baggers not bag things that really don't need it. For instance, gallon jugs of milk, which come with their own handles. Having gallon jugs of milk in bags really isn't necessary, so I told the baggers this week not to bother, unless it would be violating store policy. The young man who was helping me said 'No, it's not a problem - what YOU want IS store policy!" Wow. You don't often hear that sort of thing these days, do you?
After several months, I am finally getting the reusable bag gig down pat. I have actually started to amass an interesting collection of different types of reusable bags. I have five of the general cloth bags that are analogous to the plastic ones. I also have one bag with partitions that I got for free at Fred Meyer - it's great for holding six bottled items in a way that they don't clank around and crack. Then there is the insulated bag for frozen things. I also have two longer handled standard canvas totes I've accumulated from somewhere, and some new cotton mesh drawstring bags for dry produce items like fruits, winter squash and roots. Finally, there are the reusable "life extending" ziplocks for the wet stuff like lettuces and such. All of this fits into a lightweight compact foldable backpack, which is roomy enough to also hold my wallet, keys and cell phone.
I like this system so much that I've ordered four more of the basic bags, and after trying (unsuccessfully) to figure out how to fit two full size pork loins into them (I finally had to haul the loins out to the car unbagged, and the end of one split open in the car on the way home) I ordered an extra large duffle type bag for oversized items. I think this should allow me to have bags for pretty much every purchase that really needs to be bagged. I got almost all of my bags from http://www.reusablebags.com.
Beyond the enviromental impact, the best thing about using these bags instead of the plastic bags supplied by the store is that these don't rip and spill all your stuff onto the ground when you are least expecting it. Not only that, they hold twice as much by both weight and volume as the flimsy plastic ones, which means fewer bags to haul in when I get home. Yes, they often do weigh twice as much, but so far it has not been an issue. I mean, we're only talking at the most 10-15 pounds each even when they are loaded down with canned goods. I believe the maximum carrying capacity of the basic bags is well over 20 pounds each, so they can handle pretty much any type of normal grocery items.
The response I get at the store has overwhelmingly been positive. I have had some baggers look a bit confused by the bags at first, but no one has ever given me the impression that they would rather I hadn't brought them. I do try to speak up early to let the checkers know I have my own bags and that I prefer to use them, plus I open them up from their stuff sacks and lay them out on the counter so they are easy for the bagger to reach and load.
Oh, another way I've found to save on bagging is to have the baggers not bag things that really don't need it. For instance, gallon jugs of milk, which come with their own handles. Having gallon jugs of milk in bags really isn't necessary, so I told the baggers this week not to bother, unless it would be violating store policy. The young man who was helping me said 'No, it's not a problem - what YOU want IS store policy!" Wow. You don't often hear that sort of thing these days, do you?
Sunday, September 16, 2007
Putting my kitchen on a diet
My kitchen bugs me. The cabinets are overstuffed with "stuff" and some of them are so bad that if you open the door too quickly things fall out onto the ceramic tile floor and break. I can't find a lot of items I use or would like to use more often. We have multiples of some items that we simply don't need multiples of. I bought a really neat modular food storage system for putting away and saving leftovers, but I kept the mishmash of plastic food storage oddities I was using before. I have some lovely glass pie pans which bake the very best crusts, but I also still have a half dozen cheapie tin ones cluttering up the shelves that I never use. The top of the refrigerator hadn't been cleaned since who knows when. I think you get the picture.
So last night, I began to slowly pare down and organize my kitchen. It's going to take a while, but I think it'll pay huge dividends in sanity and efficiency once I've finished. The first place I worked on was our cabinet above the trash compactor. It had been set up as more or less a larger version of the ubiquitous kitchen "junk drawer" (and yes, we have one of those, too, which I will get to later...) and was one of the cabinets things have been routinely falling out of. So I completely emptied it out, sorted the mess, threw away a large part of it, and refilled the cabinet with small appliances I like to use on a regular basis, but which were always on top shelves and very difficult for me to reach. One tiny bit of sanity reclaimed.
That made me feel so good that I just started working my way around the room. Next was the top of the refrigerator, and I won't even say how much junk and dust and grime I found there. I'll just leave it to the imagination - but be sure to imagine a lot. However, it's gone now and the only things still up there are three large bags of bulk cold cereal that I will be transferring to large pourable containers tomorrow. The cabinet above the fridge is also now cleared out and is home to a few things I use very seldom, but don't want to have to hike downstairs for when I need them. Things like the family-size Salton Yogurt Maker, and an extra small crockpot.
After that, I began to tackle the pantry wall. I consolidated all the dry goods cannisters and put them up high, and put the stuff that gets used every day in the two middle shelves. We now have a shelf just for items we use for bringing lunches to work and school - no more bleary-eyed digging in multiple cabinets in the morning looking for thermos jars and lunch kits and lids for the mess. I then pulled out the mish-mash of plastic containers and lids made obsolete by the new modular stuff and set them aside for the garage sale we'll be having in a couple of weeks. I also pulled out baking multiples like the tin pie pans and set many of them aside for resale. I took a good look at where and how things were being stored, and moved them around to where large items like oil containers no longer have to lay on their sides and leak because they are not able to stand upright on the shelves. That one change alone probably gained me back a handful of sorely needed sanity points.
I'm not finished by a long shot - but I have made significant improvements in just an evening's work. I am planning to work on it more this afternoon and evening, and after class tomorrow I will take a trip to the Don Aslett cleaning store here in town to pick up some specialty cleaning items like a cobwebber and a ceiling fan brush. I don't know what happened to the ones I had in Texas, but apparently they didn't make the move with me, and I'm tired of doing these chores without the proper tools. They are fairly inexpensive to buy, and save sanity points every time they are used. And believe me, I can use all the sanity points I can get these days!
So last night, I began to slowly pare down and organize my kitchen. It's going to take a while, but I think it'll pay huge dividends in sanity and efficiency once I've finished. The first place I worked on was our cabinet above the trash compactor. It had been set up as more or less a larger version of the ubiquitous kitchen "junk drawer" (and yes, we have one of those, too, which I will get to later...) and was one of the cabinets things have been routinely falling out of. So I completely emptied it out, sorted the mess, threw away a large part of it, and refilled the cabinet with small appliances I like to use on a regular basis, but which were always on top shelves and very difficult for me to reach. One tiny bit of sanity reclaimed.
That made me feel so good that I just started working my way around the room. Next was the top of the refrigerator, and I won't even say how much junk and dust and grime I found there. I'll just leave it to the imagination - but be sure to imagine a lot. However, it's gone now and the only things still up there are three large bags of bulk cold cereal that I will be transferring to large pourable containers tomorrow. The cabinet above the fridge is also now cleared out and is home to a few things I use very seldom, but don't want to have to hike downstairs for when I need them. Things like the family-size Salton Yogurt Maker, and an extra small crockpot.
After that, I began to tackle the pantry wall. I consolidated all the dry goods cannisters and put them up high, and put the stuff that gets used every day in the two middle shelves. We now have a shelf just for items we use for bringing lunches to work and school - no more bleary-eyed digging in multiple cabinets in the morning looking for thermos jars and lunch kits and lids for the mess. I then pulled out the mish-mash of plastic containers and lids made obsolete by the new modular stuff and set them aside for the garage sale we'll be having in a couple of weeks. I also pulled out baking multiples like the tin pie pans and set many of them aside for resale. I took a good look at where and how things were being stored, and moved them around to where large items like oil containers no longer have to lay on their sides and leak because they are not able to stand upright on the shelves. That one change alone probably gained me back a handful of sorely needed sanity points.
I'm not finished by a long shot - but I have made significant improvements in just an evening's work. I am planning to work on it more this afternoon and evening, and after class tomorrow I will take a trip to the Don Aslett cleaning store here in town to pick up some specialty cleaning items like a cobwebber and a ceiling fan brush. I don't know what happened to the ones I had in Texas, but apparently they didn't make the move with me, and I'm tired of doing these chores without the proper tools. They are fairly inexpensive to buy, and save sanity points every time they are used. And believe me, I can use all the sanity points I can get these days!
Musings on the stock market and interest rates
Although I don't always see eye to eye with Jim Kunstler, I think he really hit on something in one of his posts earlier this month. In particular, this...
"In healthier times, finance was but one part of the economy, the means for raising capital investment to apply to productive activity. For the past two decades, we have allowed it to become an end in itself." Link.
Earlier this summer, as part of my ongoing work on my Business degree, I was required to take a couple of courses in finance. Those courses were a real eye-opener, to say the least. By the time the semester was over, my opinion of the modern finance world pretty much matched Mr. Kunstler's views above: somewhere along the way, companies changed their mission from that of making money by creating quality products for sale to customers, to making money by creating ephemeral on-paper "wealth" for their investors. It's to the point now where I'd have to say that for many companies, the product is no more than a secondary consideration - merely the means to accomplish their first priority of increasing their stock prices and thereby their ability to borrow and leverage. In other words, they are no longer in the business of selling things, they now are in the business of being in business, which is a totally different subject all together.
I think this obsession with stock prices has contributed much to the decline of quality in this country. In a business climate where a percentage point or two difference in profits can send your stock reeling one way or the other, the bottom line has become god. CEO's are now the untouchable high priesthood of this god. Want proof? Look at their salaries and pensions - and look at their severance packages when they fail to deliver the promised rains and bumper-crops. Where else on earth, except maybe politics, are people so richly rewarded for being failures?
So what do I think this means for those of us living mostly on the outside of the ongoing mass hallucination? Well, for one thing, higher prices and scarcity now and possibly for the foreseeable future as hallucinated wealth bubbles, like the sub-prime mortgage bubble, start to collapse one by one in a chain reaction. Companies are already beginning to fold as their paper wealth is decreased by stock price cuts to the point where they cannot service their own leveraged debts and therefore are force to admit they are insolvent. Fewer companies means fewer goods and services available, higher prices from reduced competition, fewer jobs to be had, and collateral damage via unpaid invoices to suppliers and other creditors. If you carefully sniff the air, you can probably already smell the scent of carrion wafting from the direction of the markets.
Unfortunately for us, we've allowed our country to become reliant upon these markets to tell us who we are. It drives everything these days, even interest rates. I know the Fed is supposed to control interest rates in order to control the economy, but this is not what I see happening now. If it were, the Fed would not be planning an interest rate cut next week for what appears to be the sole purpose of staunching heavy bleeding from the market. But they are, so I say that this cart-leading-the-horse is proof that things have gone too far and the stock market is now controlling interest rates by default. Put a big enough financial gun to the Fed's head, in other words, and interest rates will change. That is control, for all intents and purposes.
On a related note: if you've never really looked into what sort of "investments" are being made these days in the stock and commodities markets, you really should. If you have had little to no exposure to it before prepare to be a bit shocked and disillusioned. One of the ladies in my class said it well, I believe, when she exclaimed after our professor's lecture on short-selling that next time she got a hankering to go to Vegas, she'd simply get online and try a making few short sells. She felt this would give her just as much gambling thrill as the casinos, but require less hassle and expense for travel, and she wouldn't have to drag her unwilling husband along with her! (Yes, she was serious.)
Like gambling, the stock market is highly reactive to and even driven to a large extent by perceptions and magical thinking. Perception, while not always grounded in reality, is unfortunately a major component in speculative investment. A large part of the investment scene right now is rife with speculation investment in all its amazing permutations. This is worrisome because should perceptions change, speculation bubbles burst, and the stock market collapse, so will our economy. They have, in many important and frightening ways, apparently become one and the same.
"In healthier times, finance was but one part of the economy, the means for raising capital investment to apply to productive activity. For the past two decades, we have allowed it to become an end in itself." Link.
Earlier this summer, as part of my ongoing work on my Business degree, I was required to take a couple of courses in finance. Those courses were a real eye-opener, to say the least. By the time the semester was over, my opinion of the modern finance world pretty much matched Mr. Kunstler's views above: somewhere along the way, companies changed their mission from that of making money by creating quality products for sale to customers, to making money by creating ephemeral on-paper "wealth" for their investors. It's to the point now where I'd have to say that for many companies, the product is no more than a secondary consideration - merely the means to accomplish their first priority of increasing their stock prices and thereby their ability to borrow and leverage. In other words, they are no longer in the business of selling things, they now are in the business of being in business, which is a totally different subject all together.
I think this obsession with stock prices has contributed much to the decline of quality in this country. In a business climate where a percentage point or two difference in profits can send your stock reeling one way or the other, the bottom line has become god. CEO's are now the untouchable high priesthood of this god. Want proof? Look at their salaries and pensions - and look at their severance packages when they fail to deliver the promised rains and bumper-crops. Where else on earth, except maybe politics, are people so richly rewarded for being failures?
So what do I think this means for those of us living mostly on the outside of the ongoing mass hallucination? Well, for one thing, higher prices and scarcity now and possibly for the foreseeable future as hallucinated wealth bubbles, like the sub-prime mortgage bubble, start to collapse one by one in a chain reaction. Companies are already beginning to fold as their paper wealth is decreased by stock price cuts to the point where they cannot service their own leveraged debts and therefore are force to admit they are insolvent. Fewer companies means fewer goods and services available, higher prices from reduced competition, fewer jobs to be had, and collateral damage via unpaid invoices to suppliers and other creditors. If you carefully sniff the air, you can probably already smell the scent of carrion wafting from the direction of the markets.
Unfortunately for us, we've allowed our country to become reliant upon these markets to tell us who we are. It drives everything these days, even interest rates. I know the Fed is supposed to control interest rates in order to control the economy, but this is not what I see happening now. If it were, the Fed would not be planning an interest rate cut next week for what appears to be the sole purpose of staunching heavy bleeding from the market. But they are, so I say that this cart-leading-the-horse is proof that things have gone too far and the stock market is now controlling interest rates by default. Put a big enough financial gun to the Fed's head, in other words, and interest rates will change. That is control, for all intents and purposes.
On a related note: if you've never really looked into what sort of "investments" are being made these days in the stock and commodities markets, you really should. If you have had little to no exposure to it before prepare to be a bit shocked and disillusioned. One of the ladies in my class said it well, I believe, when she exclaimed after our professor's lecture on short-selling that next time she got a hankering to go to Vegas, she'd simply get online and try a making few short sells. She felt this would give her just as much gambling thrill as the casinos, but require less hassle and expense for travel, and she wouldn't have to drag her unwilling husband along with her! (Yes, she was serious.)
Like gambling, the stock market is highly reactive to and even driven to a large extent by perceptions and magical thinking. Perception, while not always grounded in reality, is unfortunately a major component in speculative investment. A large part of the investment scene right now is rife with speculation investment in all its amazing permutations. This is worrisome because should perceptions change, speculation bubbles burst, and the stock market collapse, so will our economy. They have, in many important and frightening ways, apparently become one and the same.
Thursday, September 13, 2007
The odometer *must* be lying...
How can I have already driven nearly 140 miles since Monday? *erk*
It looks like I do a lot more driving on a typical week than I imagined. Which is fine, that's what I needed to know. I can't work to reduce my driving until I have some sort of idea how much driving I actually do. (How in the world did people live before motor vehicles? When it took a day of travel by horse or wagon to get to the nearest town, or two days on foot?)
So far this week I've driven to and from school several times, downtown a time or two, and to Idaho Falls and back once. I plan to drive to the farmer's market this weekend, as well to see some friends out of town. At this rate, it wouldn't be a surprise if I racked up 200+ miles on the odometer in just this one week. It's amazing how our off the cuff estimates can be so far off. I wouldn't have guessed even half that much. At this rate I may well be consuming the national average of 500 gallons of gasoline per person per year after all.
Well, on the up-side, I guess that means I've got a lot of room for improvement!
It looks like I do a lot more driving on a typical week than I imagined. Which is fine, that's what I needed to know. I can't work to reduce my driving until I have some sort of idea how much driving I actually do. (How in the world did people live before motor vehicles? When it took a day of travel by horse or wagon to get to the nearest town, or two days on foot?)
So far this week I've driven to and from school several times, downtown a time or two, and to Idaho Falls and back once. I plan to drive to the farmer's market this weekend, as well to see some friends out of town. At this rate, it wouldn't be a surprise if I racked up 200+ miles on the odometer in just this one week. It's amazing how our off the cuff estimates can be so far off. I wouldn't have guessed even half that much. At this rate I may well be consuming the national average of 500 gallons of gasoline per person per year after all.
Well, on the up-side, I guess that means I've got a lot of room for improvement!
Monday, September 10, 2007
First Project - Gasoline
I have no idea how many miles a week/month I typically drive. So for this week, and possibly the next, I'm going to drive a "normal" amount for me and actually keep track of it. I'll drive to and from school, to and from work, out of town to visit some friends a couple of times, and maybe add a trip to the mall or to the craft store. I reset my trip meter and my mileage reading, so by the end of this time I should have my average mpg and my miles to use to calculate my average gas useage. Then it'll be time to start strategizing ways to lower that by at least 33%.
Since part of the purpose of my Reduction Project is to also reduce complexity and overall consumption in my life in general, I plan to alternate making energy reductions with making certain conscious consumption reductions. For instance, I'm going to see if I can reduce the amount of clothing in my closet by at least 50%. I plan to use the 80/20 rule, with only a few exceptions, to clear away any and everything I do not like, or do not routinely wear. Why keep it around?
So, onward.
Since part of the purpose of my Reduction Project is to also reduce complexity and overall consumption in my life in general, I plan to alternate making energy reductions with making certain conscious consumption reductions. For instance, I'm going to see if I can reduce the amount of clothing in my closet by at least 50%. I plan to use the 80/20 rule, with only a few exceptions, to clear away any and everything I do not like, or do not routinely wear. Why keep it around?
So, onward.
Monday, September 3, 2007
Fifty percent reduction in what?
Good question. I suppose the answer is - a fifty percent reduction in whatever I determine necessary to get my "carbon footprint" down to a level that I can accept as "at least minimally responsible." The framework for what I'm planning here is somewhat like what the 90% Reduction (Riot for Austerity) movement is doing. Ninety percent is the figure given as what the average US citizen would have to reduce to hit the globally sustainable level for consumption. I've had a look at what they are doing and while I agree with it in principal, I just can't do that much at this time.
The main sticking points for me are the fact that I've got two part time jobs and also attend college full time. I also have a family, pets, yardwork, housework, etc, and family that lives out of town. This means that I don't have a lot of the time (or the money required to pay someone else to do the extra work) that would be needed to make that sort of change in my life, since the bottom line on things of this sort usually is that you trade chunks of your personal time for a lowering of your consumption/environmental footprint. For instance, you spend an hour or so each week grinding flour and baking your household's bread from scratch, instead of just throwing a few loaves into the basket next time you are at the store. Sometimes that's possible, sometimes it's not. Frankly, I'd love to be able to walk to school and work every single day - about a mile each way- but some days I just can't do it due to time constraints. Some days I will have to take the car, as much as I loathe the thought of backing it out of the garage for just a one mile trip. Unfortunately, some days I simply won't have the extra 15-20 minutes each way to spare in my schedule.
It's sad that I'm so busy some days that I feel I can't even block out an extra 40 minutes, but that's life at the moment. Setting myself up for failure by pretending these constraints don't exist will just add to my stress levels and I sure don't need that, either. So, for me, a more reasonable figure is somewhere around 33-50% reduction in my consumption and lifestyle. By setting the bar towards the higher number it still gives me something to shoot for that should actually be doable in some areas. I hope to do more in a couple of years when I graduate.
So, Fifty Percent it is for now. Time to start making a roadmap to attain that goal!
The main sticking points for me are the fact that I've got two part time jobs and also attend college full time. I also have a family, pets, yardwork, housework, etc, and family that lives out of town. This means that I don't have a lot of the time (or the money required to pay someone else to do the extra work) that would be needed to make that sort of change in my life, since the bottom line on things of this sort usually is that you trade chunks of your personal time for a lowering of your consumption/environmental footprint. For instance, you spend an hour or so each week grinding flour and baking your household's bread from scratch, instead of just throwing a few loaves into the basket next time you are at the store. Sometimes that's possible, sometimes it's not. Frankly, I'd love to be able to walk to school and work every single day - about a mile each way- but some days I just can't do it due to time constraints. Some days I will have to take the car, as much as I loathe the thought of backing it out of the garage for just a one mile trip. Unfortunately, some days I simply won't have the extra 15-20 minutes each way to spare in my schedule.
It's sad that I'm so busy some days that I feel I can't even block out an extra 40 minutes, but that's life at the moment. Setting myself up for failure by pretending these constraints don't exist will just add to my stress levels and I sure don't need that, either. So, for me, a more reasonable figure is somewhere around 33-50% reduction in my consumption and lifestyle. By setting the bar towards the higher number it still gives me something to shoot for that should actually be doable in some areas. I hope to do more in a couple of years when I graduate.
So, Fifty Percent it is for now. Time to start making a roadmap to attain that goal!
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