plans

I tend to follow a few other blogs, some are adoption, some are smart shopping and others are enviromental. Lately, I am finding myself more interested in the enviromental blogs. They are so inspiring. There are all these people doing things to help the planet that I have never even considered. For instance, one woman is making her own toothpaste, soap, shampoo and laundry detergent using all natural ingredients she mostly had at home anyway. Another person doesn't use any paper products whatsoever and makes cloth substitutes for all the paper equivalents.

I am so impressed by these green bloggers, but a little ashamed that I have not been keeping up. In fact, I am falling behind. :(

I used to live in a house with solar panels on the roof. My father and I put those panels on the roof so an enviromental lifestyle was a self-imposed necessity. I had a tiny little fridge and unplugged all devices unless they were in use. I had no choice, but I did not mind. My photovoltaic setup was a 1.44kwh system meaning I couldn't use anything high powered in conjunction with another high powered device, CFL bulbs and low-watt devices were de rigueur. My tiny little fridge was in the basement so that it wouldn't have to work as hard to stay cold. I mainly used a toaster oven instead of the big old traditional oven and I went out and bought a much smaller laptop (8.9" screen) so that my computer use would also not drain my batteries (I had 12 batteries in the basement storing the electricity generated by my panels). Ahh, those were good old days...

I would so totally love to put solar tiles on the roof where I am now, but sadly, they are not recommended for northern climes. I suppose I could put panels on the back of the roof since it faces SE, but there is the issue of snow accumulation in the non-sun hours when the panels are cool. I wonder if there is a snow panel wiper out there similar to windshield wipers in cars?.. The other house had a covered patio, so it was easy to climb on the roof and stand on the flat roof of the patio to brush off the panels. The roof of the house where I am now does not have that feature. I don't relish the idea of waving my body on a wobbly ladder to wipe panels. Additionally, the ideal south facing location for the panels would be on the south side of my garage roof. It is a very steep roof, but still had a snow accummulation this past winter. Plus, my garage is behind the house and not heated, so the charge controller, inverter and battery bank would need to go in the house. More logistics issues with overhead or underground that I am not ready to consider.

As much as I want to put panels on this house, I am not sure I can do it right now.

In the meantime, I am planning not to buy anymore soap, shampoo, toothpaste and detergent. I am going to make my own. In fact, I am going to start experimenting with different recipes before I run out of the store-bought stuff I have now. Even though I agree with cloth diapers, I don't know if I can commit to cloth wipes just yet.

I am still figuring out how crunchy is the granola in me and how much I want to give to E. :)