Tips for being a greener mommy! Choose one or a few to do and celebrate what you're already doing.
1. Avoid “ green guilt” – every small action is better than no action at all.
2. Birthdays, Holidays – ask for & give “experience” gifts: ie, kid’s museum membership, ice cream & park outing, swim lessons, cookie ingredients in a jar with instructions, Highlights magazine subscription, trip to the bookstore to pick out new books, parks pass, farm stay, musical instrument & lesson, flower or herb seeds to plant a garden, miniature golf adventure, children’s theater passes, camping gear for a weekend getaway, donation to future college fund, “adopt” a wild animal with WWF symbolic species adoptions, Train town day, zoo membership, Skunk train tickets, to name a few.
3. Use your Green Waste can – So easy to do and it diverts space from our landfills and gets made into landscape and garden soil.
4. Reusable water bottle – ditch plastic water bottles when you can
5. Buy local produce when possible – Imwalle Farms has a year-round store with lots of produce some of which they grow; farmer’s markets, veggie subscription boxes, Oliver’s carries local produce
6. Secondhand clothes & toys for your kids– SRMC clothing swaps, hand-me-downs, thrift stores, FB marketplace. Bypass fast fashion and manufacturing waste when you shop secondhand for clothes that your child will only be wearing for a short time.
7. Environmentally friendly cleaning products – most work *almost* as well as their more toxic counterparts and you don’t have to worry about your kids or pets getting exposed to any harsh chemicals.
8. Hang dry a load of laundry every so often – utilize the latest solar technology with a clothesline or indoor drying rack
9. Organic food – good for the farm workers and their families and good for you and your family
10. Minimize single use items – try to use something at least twice before it goes in the garbage
11. Reusable shopping bags – keep them in the car and by the door; sad fact: flimsy plastic bags rarely get recycled and most get sent overseas to other countries with laxer environmental standards to deal with.
12. Save water – stop showering, just kidding! But consider dumping left over water on your plants instead of down the drain and other ways to minimize your water usage. We’re in a drought peeps!
13. Get out into nature – stress levels go down when we look at beautiful vistas and breathe oxygen-rich air while reminding us of other species who share our precious planet.
14. Buy less – kids are amazing innovators and don’t need tons of toys to be entertained
15. Fix/repair/sew – sometimes it’s possible to save a toy or slightly ripped shirt from going into the landfill with just a little bit of repairing. I have a “mend” pile for those rare nights when I want to watch TV and sew.
