I had a good laugh at/with one of my friends but I also wondered how many others were in her shoes. At the beginning of the month, she was telling me about some of the things she wanted to accomplish in 2009. One of the things she wanted to do was "become green." This is where I had to laugh. Believe me, I am NOT anti-green!!!! But she was already doing "green" things and she didn't even realize it! "Being Green" has become such a catch phrase and so many people are trying to get on board yet they have no idea what that even entails. In fact, there are many things that people are already doing. I think the idea is really to become aware of our actions and how they effect our future generations. When we are aware, we can make better choices.

I recommended a book that I really enjoyed to my friend. I knew that as she read it she would see things that she is already doing and areas that she could do better in. So, recently she came up to me and was so excited! "I have been doing some of these things and didn't even realize it!"

When I was growing up, my Mom had this amazing clothes rack in the laundry room. So many of our clothes were dried on it. It wasn't done with environmental consciousness. It was really to preserve the quality and size of our clothes instead of buying new ones every few weeks. How often do we throw everything in the dryer only to find our jeans shrank just enough that you can't wear them with your favorite heels now? Or the shirt whose sleeves are just too short? Even to this day, I hang many of our clothes. If Washington didn't have so much rain or had a little more sun, I would have a year-round outdoor clothesline. I love the smell of clothes dried in the sun. Not to mention that the sun is a great stain remover!

We also had a huge garden! There is something so amazing about veggies straight from the garden. Although I did hate snapping green beans! Now, gardens are becoming popular again. And fresh herbs make dishes so much more enjoyable.

One thing that my friend was really excited that she was already doing was avoiding mass amounts of water bottles. Not only is it better for our world, it is economically better. I don't know many people that enjoy the taste of tap water. At least not in our city! Even after buying a good water purifier, the filters, and reusable water bottles for each person in our family we still spend less money than we would if we bought packs of water bottles that you can only use once. Yes, the initial cost of the purifier and reusable bottles seemed like a lot at once. But a filter lasts almost 2 months- and we drink a LOT of water. That's less than $8/month for water. You can't even buy water at Costco for that cheap- in the quantities that we drink.

There is so much more that can be said about this "green" movement- the food, the personal products, the home, the babies.... It really is about taking the time to do the research and learn some facts. Too often I watch people start something just because someone else was doing it. Yet they had no idea what they were doing. So not only were they doing things incorrectly, but they lost interest after a while. They were just blindly following what they thought they should be doing rather than making it a part of their lifestyle.