Every Day is a New Lightbulb

Each day has brought new ideas and realizations as we move towards a more environmentally friendly, self-sustaining household.  Keep in mind that Dean and I are children of the 80's.  We grew up on video games, fast cars and fast food.  This isn't easy and there are things that just aren't going to change.  I'm a sucker for convenience and Queen Slacker.  Hell, we have a housekeeping service that comes over once a week so I can forget about vacuuming and dusting.  At some point though, I will probably be providing them with a different set of cleaning products, replacing the 409.

While doing the dishes today, I thought about our water usage and how lucky we are that we're on the city grid with potable water readily available.  I spent a few years off the grid with well water, but the only time source was ever an issue was when our generator died and therefore our well pump died.  Now that we're beginning this whole garden thing, I was thinking about our "waste" water.  There's so much that goes down our kitchen sink that's not really bad.  I wasn't using soap today, I was just scrubbing off the crusted on stuff.  It was all organic matter that went down the drain.  Is there anything wrong with me using this for our gardens?  I don't really see a down side so long as its not say.. chicken water or chemical water.


 Reduce, reuse, recycle!  Wasn't that the motto we grew up with? I was super gung-ho about it in elementary school, especially when it came to ocean conservation.  As I grew up and the ocean became further away in my imagination, conservation ideals went with it.  Now we come back to our roots and as I'm staring at the dishwater I'm wondering what all I can do with it.  Right now it just went out to water the lawn, but that's better than down the drain I hope.


 

Small things that we can do right now in our home to feel better about our waste, consumption, and foootprint:

• Using non-chemical waste water for plant watering, concrete mixing, etc.
• Bringing my own containers for the bulk section at HEB
• Be better about using our single-stream recycling container
• Consider composting.  It is something I'd like to do at some point, and some point soon, its just an intimidating thought!  In the next couple weeks I'll look at easily accessible and easily accomplished suburban composting options

My new sink water catching method, full of kind of dirty leftover potato-boiling water (used for boiling potatoes for sexy potato salad crafting time!)