Confessions from Suburbia

Ok, suburbia might be a bit melodramatic.

However, I've come to a realization in this, our seventh year of parenting: Mom definitely had it all figured out.  Don't worry, I've confessed and given her ample opportunity to laugh at me.

I've just spent an hour in the kitchen on a Sunday evening, and dinner did not come as a result of it.  I have:

- Used my laminated grocery list to shop for the week and plan meals in advance.
- Washed grapes and put them in a colander in the fridge.
- Sliced and prepped grapefruit halves and placed them in the fridge with grapefruit spoons on top.
- Written the week's meals on a chalkboard so I don't come in from work and stare into the fridge mindlessly, trying to figure out what it was I was going to fix for dinner when I bought all those groceries.
- Prepped five little containers of fruits and five little containers of veggies for school lunches, plus extras for grown-up snacking.
- Packed Sophie's lunch for tomorrow, and prepped breakfast and coffee items down to bowls by the cereal, spoons in the reusable coffee mugs and vitamins on the counter.
- Filled our reusable water bottles and put them in the fridge, so we have cold water ready to grab.

I realize this hardly makes for titillating reading, and probably appears as though I'm bragging.  Trust me, I'm not.  I used to judge the lady in the grocery store with the pre-typed, nerdy grocery list as some stay-at-home mom with too much time on her hands, struggling to be the alpha in the play-date group.  Now, I recognize that she is simply in tune with her own schizophrenia.  Me too.

All this to say that the realization of this approach to life came way too late, but better late than never.  Here's what that nerdy hour in the kitchen equates to for my family this week:

- I will not stand groggy-eyed in the kitchen each morning trying to remember what highly-intelligent task it is I am supposed to complete (pour cereal, eat with spoon).

- My child doesn't have a lunch that consists of Goldfish and a semi-rotten banana, AND she actually brings home the little containers to recycle for the next lunch rather than us going through gobs of environmentally-caustic plastic baggies.

- My entire family spies fresh, prepared, easy to grab fruits and vegetables in the fridge and (gasp!) they look appetizing, so they grab them for snacks along with drinking enough water daily that I don't spiral into certainty that they will all perish from dehydration (yes, really - I worry about that.  You should, as well.)

- We leave for work and school on time, replete with our reusable supplies for the day so we aren't caught making a last minute (gasp again!) plastic water bottle purchase or using a disposable coffee cup.  Turns out, sustainability comes down to preparedness as well, per my previous rant.

We also now have a genius "go-home basket" (no thanks to my own intelligence) - it's full of the stuff we shuttle around our world.  Stuff that needs to head to the car (the reusable shopping bags from today), the post office, be returned to a friend etc. is all in the basket ready to grab in the morning, right next to our family communication area where we file papers from school, hang keys, place receipts in a file (just getting this one down recently) and hang backpacks, purses, sunglasses, wallets etc.

So why gloat about it?  I'm definitely not gloating.  If what you write becomes gospel, saying it will keep me beholden to it.  I view all of this: the hour in the kitchen on Sunday, the laminated chore lists (for the seven year old and for me), the prepared meals and all the rest of it as my last and only stand against insanity.

Miraculously, our lives have gotten stunningly simple and relaxing - just the opposite of what you'd expect from someone with a laminated grocery list, right?  Meals go quickly, we're on time to work and school, we have time to hang out as a family in the evening, and most importantly: I'm not that Mom I was a year ago, barking at my child to hurry up every morning so she isn't tardy.  Because at the end of the day, it's not the six year old's fault if she dawdles and is late.  Six year olds, it appears, dawdle.  So with a streamlined morning complete with dawdling built in, we still enjoy breakfast together and walk, pleasantly, to school rather than dashing out the door, possibly with or without lunch, homework and hair brushed.

It's a delightful existence, and I wish like so many others I'd discovered why Mom did what she did for all those years ages ago.  It's not a noble feat in alpha parenting - it's a lifeline.

Little Green Steps

So, I've been particularly inspired to seek out new ways to green my life recently - beyond the usual suspects.  I felt as though I'd read every list about the obvious solutions, and I care more about finding the subtle or often-overlooked tools for making improvements.  Here are a few - other ideas?

Incidentally, I realized that most of these are office rather than home related.  I had done a pretty good job of controlling my own life, it's outside influences that are more difficult.

Being organized
Revelation: getting my green act together didn't take commitment (had that), it took organization.  Just like making mornings go smoother at our house by laying out clothes, packing lunches and prepping school/work/gym/library bags the night before, I have to take a few steps every night to make sure the next day goes by in a green fashion.   It's when I'm disorganized or don't plan ahead that I find myself in a situation that generates waste or less than desirable behavior (i.e. buying a plastic bottle of water).

So, each night I set out the next day's coffee/drink mug and pre-fill a water bottle and place it in the fridge so I have cold water ready to go.  We have multiple stainless water bottles for each family member so there's never a reason to go without.  I was very inspired by a friend who met me at a restaurant and brought in his own cup, and have taken his lead to avoid styrofoam whenever possible.  From local restaurants to Subway (p.s. don't forget to decline the plastic bag and all that packaging!), most are willing to allow you to use your own cup.  They'll warn you in a cautionary tone that they still have to charge you for a drink or (gasp!) their largest size, but weren't you going to pay for it anyway?

On the preparedness front, I also force myself to return a stockpile of reusable shopping and produce bags to the car daily if necessary, so I'm never caught without my own bag.  I find it is easier to remember them for groceries, tougher when you dash into a gift or book store.  After a few times making myself carry lots of loose items out without a bag as self-punishment for forgetting my own, I've been in the habit for several years.


Cutting back on junk mail
Obviously, I've removed not only myself but the rest of our family from as many mailing lists as possible through tools such as www.dmachoice.org.  In fact, for a really thorough blog post on that subject, check out Simple. Organized. Life. http://simpleorganizedlife.com/how-i-went-99-9-paperless-at-home/.  However, a number of items still slip through the cracks, and most specifically I'm frustrated by the number of mailings to "supervisor" we receive at the office.  I've found in that case that unsubscribing doesn't work, and unfortunately the solution is to be slow and systematic: reach out to each organization.

Since I'm relatively new as director of our organization, it is taking some time to get my predecessor off lists and encourage the same from other staff.  As an example, in today's mail received a random laminated products catalog (52 pages) from Connecticut, a "green" (ha!) jobs journal (28 pages) and a blanket seminar mailing in addition to local offers and invitations.  It takes time to check each website and ask to be removed (and ask for email confirmation for a track record), but we're slowly chipping away at the number of mailings received at the office.  Most people are good about making this change in their personal lives, but be systematic about it at work as well.  I've seen mailings (and faxes - gasp!) continue to come to organizations in the name of people who haven't worked there for a decade. 

Influencing others

What doesn't work for me (preaching) doesn't work for anyone else.  I've found a few ways to impart change without being a martyr recently.  For example, at my organization's board and other monthly meetings, we moved first from twelve meetings a year with eighteen meeting attendees receiving printed meeting packets of 30+ pages (no exaggeration) by mail to holding meetings just six times per year (less gas, better use of their time) with packets sent in advance electronically.  Then, last month we took the big leap: attendees are now advised that they will receive packets in advance and we will not print copies for them - they must print their own (which we discourage) if they want a hard copy, and we project the agenda, minutes and financial reports for the meeting.  We've had not a single complaint - in fact, much enthusiasm.

Likewise, most meetings that I run for volunteer efforts are conducted this way, and I use my own electronic copy of the agenda whenever possible.  Of course, I still take notes, but I maximize the space and recycle or file (i.e. scan) the paper before recycling.

Our organization is also asked to participate in a number of community events each year (farmers' markets, children's festivals, expos, teacher fairs and the like).  We do so enthusiastically, but of course try to minimize the paper products and junk (tchotchkes) we distribute.  We've also taken a small but hopefully influential step: we simply ask event organizers if recycling will be provided at the event.  If it isn't, we offer to help coordinate it.  Hopefully, it influences these individuals to make considerations about the way they execute their event, and at the very least, it makes clear our commitment and further develops our brand.

On a similar note, I recently had the privilege of attending the national ANCA summit (Association of Nature Center Administrators), where I participated in a great session on "greening your special event" led by Amy Yeakel of the Squam Lakes Natural Science Center (www.nhnature.org).  Here's a link to notes from that session - while some may not be relevant outside our profession, I was very inspired and hope that we can incorporate many of them into our signature Call of the Wild event on April 16, 2011 and beyond.  We've already developed an event planning subcommittee to focus on the overall footprint of the event, and believe it will be an education for us as well as our attendees so that we can improve over time!

Greening Your Special Event (from ANCA Summit 2010, www.natctr.org):  http://bit.ly/aooSsf 

And when she was bad, she was horrid.

With the recent passage of Earth Day 2010 and Earth Month drawing to a close, I was rereading some past posts from a blog that must now rest in peace.  However, a handful are almost worth sharing:

From My Life in Green, 2009


I assess my efforts to live a little greener like an excerpt from the Henry Wadsworth Longfellow poem: "...when she was good she was very, very good, and when she was bad she was horrid." Here's the poem in its entirety, in case it doesn't ring a bell: http://tinyurl.com/ykyegu6.

Ever since dragging home a four foot tall recycling bin soon after we moved to the Pacific Northwest (which my parents gamely embraced after reminding me that my Dad, an employee of Alcoa, produced aluminum for a living), I've known that I could do a bit better. Throughout junior high and high school, we dutifully hauled our recycling spoils down to the Wenatchee (WA) recycling center, where we would sometimes receive up to seven whole dollars for our efforts!

Newspapers were stacked by the door and bundled with twine to take to the center, and magazines were begrudgingly (more on magazines as the ultimate vice of our family's females later) sent once in a while as well. Not bad in the grand scheme of things, given that our home's location half way up a mountain did not exactly make curbside or mainstream options available.

These days, my husband, five year old and I do a pretty bang up job recycling every single item in the city's curbside program, and we generate very little trash each week. We need to revisit our composting efforts, but for now my focus has been on making improvements in various other areas a little bit at a time.