Living Green

Hello Everyone!

Our belief that we are supposed to be a good steward of everything we have been given, including creation, has lead us to put in place some practices in our daily lives that help us live a greener, less consuming lifestyle. There are a TON of websites that give tips on living green and here are just a few of the things that we have been doing!

PAPER TOWELS: We were BIG Kleenex Viva Paper Towel fans. We were using about 1 roll a week. We used them for everything! Viva's are one of the more expensive and least Eco-friendly paper towels on the market so we decided to "try" living without our beloved Vivas. My mom had a ton of cloth napkins so we went and got a dozen matching napkins from her and we also got a bunch of dish cloths that we could use for spills and general kitchen cleaning/wiping up. We knew that if these items weren't accessible that we wouldn't use them so we found a great little 2 drawer counter unit that now holds our cloth napkins and dish cloths. We made the switch 2 months ago and we have now cut our paper towel usage down to 1 roll every 6 weeks, which means that in 1 year we will use about 45 less rolls of paper towels and it saves us around $150.00 per year. Also, we just toss the cloth napkins and dish rags in with our regular laundry, so it doesn't increase our laundry at all. Win for us, Win for the environment.

Here is a picture of what we keep our napkins and dish rags in on our kitchen counter.

OUR HOME: The State of Alaska has a "Home Energy Rebate" program that is designed to refund homeowners a portion of what they spend making their homes more energy efficient. The way it works is that an energy rater comes out and does tests in your house to determine the current energy rating, then they give you a list of things you can do to increase the energy efficiency of your home. Based on the progress you make you qualify for a certain refund amount. We had our energy rating a few months ago and learned that we can increase our house to a 4 Star Energy Rating, and with that we will get a $4,500 refund on the work that we do. Also, we will decrease the carbon footprint of our house by about 1/3

One of our biggest issues is that our home isn't very air tight, which in the cold Alaskan winters is not a good thing, so, here are the steps that we are going to be taking over the next few months to make our home more energy efficient:

• Foam Outlet Inserts. These go under the switch plates of all outlets and switches and help stop the draft that normally comes through.
  
• Eliminating Recessed Lighting: We have 3 recessed lighting cans upstairs and they are where we lose most of our heat in the winter so we are sealing them up and putting in pendant lights.
• New Weather Stripping on all windows and doors: All of our windows and doors are pretty old, as is the weather stripping so we are replacing all weather stripping.
• New Sliding Glass Doors upstairs and downstairs: This is the change that we are most excited about. Both of our sliding glass doors are old and don't seal very well so we are having new doors put in.
• Weather Sealing: We are going to re-seal everything that vents to the outside, so our range hood, fireplace and dryer.

These few fairly simple steps will help our house become more energy efficient, save us money in the long run, get us a $4,500 energy rebate from the State of Alaska and will help increase the value of our home!

Here is a picture of the foam inserts for the outlets. We got these free from our local electric company!


LIGHT BULBS: This is one of the easiest first-steps that anyone can make. We have changed all of our light bulbs to the compact fluorescent bulbs. These bulbs do cost a little more but they use SO much less energy and they last MUCH longer.

SHOPPING BAGS: We have a set of re-usable shopping bags that we keep in each vehicle and we use them for grocery shopping, yard sale-ing, camping, book sales, etc... They hold more items then a normal shopping bag and we like using them much more. When we forget the reusable bags and have to use the plastic store bags we just hold on to them and take them to a local thrift store where they can always re-use plastic shopping bags.

NEWSPAPER: I am a huge news junkie and I couldn't imagine living without my news, however, I realized that receiving the paper every day was a bit much when I get most of my news from the Internet already. We cut our newspaper subscription down to only Friday, Saturday and Sunday, so we still get the weekend sale ad's and coupons, and we save 4 days of paper and we our subscription is cheaper!

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These are some of the things that we have been doing. Anything that you have been doing to try and live a greener life? Any good "green living" ideas? If so, leave us a comment!!