Available Space Rather Than Size
September 15, 2009 by Steph
This post is part of September’s APLS Blog Carnival. Learn how others feel their household’s size affects their efforts to live a green life at crstn85 on September 19 to read all the submissions.
This month APLS took me on a walk down memory lane. As I pondered these questions:
When does size matter?… what efforts that you make are easier to do because of your household size? Which are harder and make you wish there were a better way?
I thought about our current life, our life with a two-year old and a baby, the toddler and a pregnant mom on bedrest life, our adjustment to parenthood with our eldest child, and our life pre-children.
As I considered the different configurations of our family’s size, I realized that the size of our family was not the biggest factor in our efforts to live a more sustainable life. We’ve been more, and less, successful with our efforts at every size. The biggest issue for us has been how much space is available in our life.
By space I mean unrestricted time and energy to plan and implement the changes we want to make. When Rich and I met, it was just the two of us but very little of our time was unencumbered as we both worked 60 to 80 hours a week. No reserves of time or energy meant fast-food meals and dry-cleaned clothes. We’ve had other periods with little or no reserves due to busy work schedules, health issues for one or more family members, or the like and they have always been our most unsustainable times.
Again and again we have seen that ensuring we have reserves means that we are able to live a greener life. When we set aside time to pack a healthy snack before setting out on errands, we don’t have to stop to get something (wrapped in plastic and full of chemicals) to eat. When we aren’t exhausted at night, it is easier to make one last pass to check that all the power strips are shut off before bed. And when we set aside all the money we save on electricity, water, and plastic cr@p in an emergency fund, it is possible to pay a little more for something that will last years rather than months (and will save us money in the long run).
As a result, we’ve been working to build more reserves into our life. How do you build reserves of time, energy, or money into your life? How do you make it easy to live a green life, even when you’re exhausted, or the kids are sick, or you are working under a deadline?
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This week has been a stressful one for me, and as I eat yogurt for dinner since I didn’t have time to cook, I very clearly see your point about time and energy far outweighing family size. The best thing I can do is make my green life such an effort that I don’t have to think about what I’m doing. I even wrote a post about that once during allergy season (when I have zero energy). http://crstn85.blogspot.com/2009/05/right-now-im-in-worst-part-of-allergy.html
crstn85, we are also working to create eco-friendly systems that can be maintained without too much additional effort. Getting those systems up and running is where we struggle!
Great post. Time is so helpful when being green. It’s 11 p.m. here right now and I have a few hours left of work for today.
Of course I don’t manage time very well but it can be hard to always cook from scratch and all those other green/health things. Of course I know it’s worth it so I make time! Who needs sleep? ;)