2.15.2010

Crunchy Mama Bragging Rights OR Doing the Green Things I Gotta Do

There is so much talk all over the web, especially on these homeschooling mama blogs that I frequent, about going green this and going green that and trying to be more conscious and more present and whatever else it is. I take an anarchistic approach to all this, with a little stylisitic anarchism thrown in because I'm not entirely into knitting and baking as the root of defining my soul (though I do knit and I do bake).

Well, I've been doing this shit for years. Part of that is that I was born into a family full of lefties who joined that back-to-earth movement (sort of) back in the 70s, so there was plenty of DIY motivation about in childhood. Later on, I became conscious, as my mother did, of more bits here and there of what to do to not destroy the planet, at least by minute little segments. So for more than a decade I've been carrying cloth grocery bags and using rags and cloth napkins and the like. Additionally, we
  • make most of our own cleaning products, purchasing only detergents and soaps and oils
  • grow gardens
  • compost
  • recycle
  • hardly ever flush the toilet
  • try not to randomly set things on fire
  • maintain only one car
  • walk
  • buy local and organic
  • eat vegetables
  • volunteer with a Community Supported Agriculture Group
  • buy used
  • reuse glass and plastic
  • convert old items to new ones
  • use cloth toilet paper
  • cloth diaper (when we diapered)
  • breastfeed (when we breastfed)
  • rely heavily on the library
  • do not ever buy bottled water - we used to use SIGG bottles, but turns out they suck too (and that buying something we don't need to stop doing something we don't need to do doesn't make sense), so now we reuse glass jars
  • make things from scratch
  • develop plans for our organic unicorn farm where we will live happily ever after in a carbon-footprintless environ, free from the worries of modern life. For reals.
My life is perfect. What, yours isn't? And that's all stuff that we do that "saves" the environment. That doesn't even get into the details about how gloriously perfectly crunchy we are. My kids ran around in hand-dyed cloth diapers covered over with hand-knit organic wool longies eating veggies from our garden and drinking kale smoothies. I mean, clearly I win, right?

Not only that, but we do ridiculously crunchy things like homebirth and unschool. We go on hikes in the woods and volunteer together as a family. Lordy, if I were a better blogger, I could win crunchydom real easy. Especially if I had a DSLR, because then I could showcase our wood floors and nature trays and the crafting we do and crap and it would look so beautiful and perfect, which my life is, of course (that whole complaint list notwithstanding). Then all the moms in their houses could ooh and ahh at what an excellent mother I am whilst trying to keep a damper on the creeping feeling that maybe they're not quite as good as me.

Yes, that must be it. I might as well already live on that organic unicorn farm.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

I am dying to have a DSLR. Dying.

I don't read those blogs. I have some on my blogroll, but I never read them because the anxiety outweighs the porny pleasure and inspiration.

A lot of these things I do because they just work better and don't hurt me (I have chemical sensitivities.) Also, even if we weren't drowning under mountains of disgusting junk, pointless waste is gauche. Also, synthetics are icky and I am too good for them. (There is something to be said for furthering the green movement by appealing to people's snobbishness...)

anna kiss said...

I've been dying for a DSLR as well. I have the same issues with those blogs. Clearly.

I'm not sure if this post wasn't only funny because I have severe psychological problems that I seem willing to explore publicly. lol okay, not really.

Good for you. You do it!

Anonymous said...

"For reals"...oh I love it. This saying is a favorite in my family. Just curious if you love "Nacho Libre" as much as our family.

It's good to come across your blog.