>Or maybe I’m just taking a nap. It’s so much easier to be “green” in the summer when the weather is warm and I’m not working full time. The sun comes up earlier and stays out later, so I can be outside instead of using up energy with lights and television and computer. Laundry gets done at off-peak hours so the washer and dryer don’t heat the house when it’s already hot outside. I can compost my coffee grounds and kitchen waste. The bunnies graze on grass and chow down on the garden leftovers.
It’s not easy being green in the winter, but I still minimize my impact a little bit whenever I can. The sweatshirts and sweatpants are hanging over drying racks at the moment, and the load of jeans will hang up, too, when the washer is done. I’ll put all of these heavy items in the dryer on low for a few minutes at the very end of Laundry Detail.
One of my “cabin fever” projects this winter is the gradual purging of our old file cabinets. I stand next to one cabinet with a paper grocery bag and a box. Junk goes in the bag; anything that might need shredding goes in the box. Both eventually get recycled. I work until I finish a file drawer or fill the bag. The file cabinet will either get reorganized and used more efficiently or we’ll sell it at a rummage sale this summer.
The Christmas cards await the fun craft scissors. I’ll turn them into tags for next year in another “cabin fever” project.
I won’t compost my coffee grounds today (they don’t decompose much in the bitter cold, anyway), but I’m acting locally and thinking globally, in my own small way.
>You should see the books and papers that accumulate worst than a snowdrift around here!
>Progress so far: I “purged” two out of four drawers in the large file cabinet. The two smaller ones will be tougher. They have all of our records from Amigo’s schooling, from age 9 months up to the present — 9th grade.