Lately I've been getting quite a few emails from friends and family who are looking for some ideas about conserving more resources/living more simply/becoming "greener". I thought I'd post some of the things we do on the blog in the hopes that we can all share more ideas about these things. John and I are feeling a bit stuck in some areas. It seems that some of the changes we can make in our lives cost quite a bit of money and we know eventually it will pay off (money-wise) and its important for the planet, we have to sustain our family financially as well. (No replacing our washing machine that works well with a front-loader.) Anyway, we can get some new ideas from your comments, and maybe you can get some new ideas as well.
It seems odd in wet western Oregon that we need to think about conserving water outdoors, but we get little to no rain in the summers - just when we're trying to raise veggies in the garden. One way we're trying to conserve water is by installing a drip line that we got from
dripworks.
Also, we try to gather as much water as we can that would normally go down the drain and water our plants with that. It's not much, (until we can legally collect our gray water) but its something. For example, we eat oatmeal almost every morning and we fill the empty pot with water to soak until we can wash the dishes. That water gets dumped on the apple tree. The water that our tofu swims in until we eat it gets dumped as well.
