In which we discuss how crunchy I am

Only recently I’ve realized I’m a little crunchy. You know granola? Don’t worry, I still shower and shave my legs, but I do little things to conserve energy and the environment. Here are a few examples:

• I wash and re-use our ziplock bags until they get a hole,  slice through them, or until they are used on meat
• Our trashcan is the same size as our recycle-can, and they’re right beside each other in the kitchen
• We bought an energy star fridge for the basement apartment, and when our upstairs fridge dies, we plan to replace that with an energy efficient fridge
• When we moved into the house we replaced all our inside bulbs with energy efficient bulbs
• I bake all our bread so we get the raw nutrients in the natural wheat that I grind myself
• We use organic brown rice for everything
• We plan to grow our own tomatoes to make our own salsa
• I’m excited to make our apricots into Apricot Jelly this fall
• I want raspberry bushes so we can make raspberry jelly too
• We shop at Thrift stores and like it
• I plan to put our kids in cloth diapers
• I lust after my Grandparent’s water saver washing machine, I think about it at least every time I wash clothes

Which leads me to my next crazy/granola idea: I want to put up a clothesline on our gazebo. Now I know that the best clotheslines are in direct sunlight, but I don’t want one in the middle of our already small yard. I also thought it would be convenient to have it under the gazebo because all we have to do is put in some rings, string it up, and it’s done! No installing poles in cement. Also, when it rains, I don’t have to freak out and quickly pull down all the already wet clothes. It just sounds like a great way to save a little more energy.

I don’t think I’ll put this project into effect until I’m no longer working, but we’ll see. I would love to save power now, but I don’t like the idea of hanging them up after washing on Wednesday nights and leaving them up until I get home from work the next day. But then again, it’s out of the way, it probably won’t be a problem, and I don’t think the bachelor neighbor next door will want to steal our clothes!

Also, eventually I need to decide how many rungs I’ll need to install to have enough space for all our clothes, and how much clothesline to buy. I’m thinking 6 on each side will do. I’ve read all about this on different sites, so I’m feeling pretty confident. It would be great if we could stop using the drier all together, but we’ll see!