It's not easy being green

So for a long time I was a basher. I poopahed all those vegetarian, green, uber healthy, natural, hippy-dippy types. I'd read blogs and websites about women making their own everything, and not that it's a bad thing, but I just couldn't wrap my brain around the concept. It seemed to me that making your own cleaner apart from, oh laziness, it seemed wasteful and expensive to buy several products to then create one product. Why not just buy one, all-purpose cleaner? And I love me some animal. Steaks wrapped in bacon, hamburgers with bacon and avocado, fried chicken, bacon, juicy turkey. Anyway you slice it, I'll eat it. Especially bacon. Lots and lots of bacon.

And then there was that week back in November where NBC had a green week where EVERYTHING SINGLE SHOW pushed the "green agenda". Go green! Cut back on this! Cut back on that! You're selfish if you're not doing these things. All that green made me see red. I was sick and tired of being force fed the green lifestyle.

I mean, I'm not against being a responsible steward of what God has given us. We should take care of our environment, we shouldn't be wasteful. But come on, I'm not about to start a compost pile in my backyard. Because that would stink. And I don't like bugs. And you know what attracts bugs? ROTTING FOOD AND GARBAGE.

But you see, I've always recycled cans. When we first got married I was in awe that Scott had never, nor ever wanted to recycle cans. I mean, come on, it's like free money. Sure it's not much. But a couple of bags worth and we could go to the movies. Or to dinner. Or I could buy myself a cute shirt and/or pair of shoes at Target. Oooo or like 4 or 5 Starbucks! I digress. So it took me awhile to get Scott in the habit of recycling cans. But now he totally will empty the "can bag" under the sink into the garbage bag of cans in the garage without being asked. And then last summer, what with being pregnant and retaining WAY too much water weight (or at least I sleep better calling it water weight), we got on a water bottle kick buying cases of water. It just seemed natural to recycle the bottles too.

While pregnant I went through all those worries about cleaning products, terrified that cleaning my tub with comet would cause me to miscarry or make my baby sick. So I read somewhere that baking soda and lemon juice will do the same thing. And that it works good in sinks too. Which was awesome because at Costco you can buy a ginormous bazillion pound bag of baking soda and I can clean my kitchen sink and make cookies-Wahoo cookies.

And then, a few months after Henry was born and I was finally somewhat recovered from my c-section, I noticed the MONTHs and months of newspapers lying around the house that no one had read in months and MONTHS because, well, we had a newborn. So I got it in my head that I would walk down the street a few blocks to the recycling receptacles at the elementary school and recycle them. Which I did. And it felt good.

A few weeks ago we got a play saucer from one of my sisters-in-law that she'd had in her garage. It was filthy. And although Scott wiped it down really good I just didn't feel right about letting Henry chew, suck and slobber all over something that had only been wiped down. So I pulled out my cleaners. And even though it was Method, a seemingly good, non-toxic product, I just had a hard time spraying lavender all-purpose cleaner all over the toys. Then I remembered when I was pregnant that it was suggested to use a vinegar/water cleaner to avoid unhealthy fumes. So I added a little vinegar to my water spray bottle and sprayed away. And although I didn't like that my kitchen smelled like easter eggs, I had no reservation about plopping Henry down in his newest toy to chew and drool away.

Then it hit me.
I have become my own worst nightmare.
And you know what?
I like the smell of lemon in my kitchen sink.
I LOVE the extra $20 or so I get from cans and bottles a couple times a year.
And I love that when Henry crawls
(if he crawls-that kid HATES being on his belly)
that he can slobber all over the kitchen floor and I won't have to worry if I got all the floor cleaner residue up.
So while I never thought, in a MILLION years, I would say this...

I might just be a hippy-dippy, homemade-house-cleaner-concocter, recycler extraordinare after all. With a side of bacon.


**********************EDITED***************************

My apologies to my husband, apparently he did recycle after all. I'll just add that to the list of things that I STILL don't know about the man that I share my life with. That's why they call it a journey right?