Barbara's blog

The Back-to-School ritual that happens ever fall is one of those tides of consumption that periodically sweeps over us in our lives.  We can easily avoid the pit fall of clothing right now as our son is still young and having new trendy things is not important to him.  We are very proud of our little guy who gladly accepts cast-offs and thrift store clothes.  This may change when he gets nearer to his teenage years. 

Well, since my husband and I signed up to Riot 4 Austerity this year, we have been taking a close look at the 7 basic areas and their relationship to our life style.  We passed with flying colors in 5 areas.  The areas we found that we could really reduce our impact was driving and food.

Recently an article on incinerators came into my lap.

www.nytimes.com/2010/04/13/science/earth/13trash.html?pagewanted=1&th&em...

We are under 20 gallons per day per person.  The Riot4Austerity goal is 10 gallons per person per  day.  The almost 20 gallons we use includes some outdoor watering and some for my work as a costumer.  Textiles is a water intensive profession so we are proud to be as close as we are.

I know I have only lived here for 7 years which isnt long compared to some of the families who have been here for generations but I love it here and there are things I want for the community.

I want there to be no more building on San Bruno Mountain. End of story.

Recently we set up a TerraCycle collection program for my son's school. We collect certain items and for each item TerraCycle donates 2 cents to the school. Its a little money and great big feeling of happiness that our world is going to be a cleaner place.

For most of 2009 we kept a list of everything new we purchased. We called this the Red List because we happened to have a red pen that we used to record everything.

Rescue a beloved object.   Our son's favorite shirt had a very short life on account of it being a white shirt and his being 6 years old. He didn’t want to give it up. Mom found a second hand shirt, cut out the graphic and sewed it onto the front of the new shirt and presto! A new improved, larger, not-worn-out shirt.

January 13th, 2010

6:30 AM  Furnace comes on

6:45 Greg gets up for his shower, Barbara lingers in bed

7:15  I get up and raises the thermal curtains.  Then I call Byron for school.

Greg really wanted our son to have a lawn to on play in the summer.  When we bring out the sprinkler in the summer for some relief on the hottest days, our back yard just turned into a mud bowl so he finally got me to agree on putting in grass.