Tuesday, May 17, 2011

Going green

I'm all for being environentally friendly and more energy efficient, but it seems like no matter how hard I try I can't get it right. For several years I have used vinegar to clean around the house. I have one of those spray mop things and I refill the bottle with vinegar and water when it runs out. I've probably had the same bottle for 5 years. I also load it up with a small towel that I've cut in half so that I don't have to use the disposable ones. But, my children spill so much on my floor that the amount of water I have to use washing those cleaning towels is ridiculous. I'm sure it probably negates the effects of not using disposables, especially since I have an older washer that uses at least 30 gallons of water for each load. Also, I don't typically have paper plates or napkins in my house, so I should run the dishwasher more than once a day. Though I admit that I'm too lazy for that. It gets loaded when we run out of dishes to eat on. I did give in to my husband's whining about paper towels though. He refused to use the cleaning rags for things. It really annoyed him to not have a paper towel to nuke his sausage biscuit in. Go figure. When we use paper towels, it makes me feel like I just wadded up a dollar bill and threw it away.

It's the same things with those fancy, really expensive, toxic lightbulbs. They are supposed to save energy, but at the rate that my kids knock over the lamps and break them I'm thinking of switching back to normal bulbs. When one gets broken, the way some people talk, I should put on my haz-mat suit just to clean it up. And where do I throw it? In the trash, of course, where it ends up in the landfill stinking up our air and leaching who knows what into the earth.

Remember that old country song that goes, "every light in the house is on, the back yard's bright as the crack of dawn, the front walk looks like runway lights, it's kinda like noon in the dead of night..." Yeah, that's my house. I'm constantly running around turning off lights. In the morning after the girls leave for school I head downstairs and turn off no less than 9 lights. I'm not kidding. Explain to me how that can be remotely energy efficient, even with the toxic light bulbs.

While we're talking about enery efficiency, let's bring our attention to the refrigerator, shall we? If you can't find something in there, does standing in the door staring for 10 minutes make it magically appear? You know you're going to ask me where the mayo is hiding anyway, so why waste time and let out all the bought air? I distinctly remember that my children were born in hospitals and not in barns, so what's with leaving all the doors open all over the place?

I think this post is rapidly becoming a rant about things that drive me crazy, so I'll go ahead and cut it short. I can't think straight anyway because now I have Trace Adkins stuck in my head. "Every light in the house is on....."