Some useful information, some anecdotes, some rantings, and some inspiration
from my quest to make my family and perhaps the world around me A Little Greener Every Day

Corey and Lynn from Celebrate Green have another fine post for us this month. St. Patrick’s Day is less than two weeks away, and this Irish girl is looking forward to celebrating and reminiscing about my trip to Ireland.

March can be a drab month–waiting for winter to end and the first signs of spring to emerge. That’s why, whether you’re Irish or not, celebrating St. Patrick’s Day is a cool idea–especially if you make it eco! Here are some simple, fun, affordable ideas for you and the family that will make those not included green with envy!

1. Gather your friends and neighbors for your own St. Patrick’s Day walking parade. Whether it’s around a cul de sac or down a street or two, you’re sure to have a great time if you dress in green and wish everyone the luck ‘o the Irish as you pass by! Encourage participants to make hats out of whatever they have around the house or before the parade, ask guests to bring an old white/beige t-shirt and meet at your house. Cut shamrock shapes into potatoes and stamp on the shirts with eco-friendly fabric paints.

2. Decorate at least one room in the house with the spirit ‘o the green. Gather everything green you have lying around from books to clothing to flower pots etc., even green sheets. Set the timer for ten minutes and let the kids decorate the room. Then have a party there! Put on some Irish music, learn a jig and celebrate.

3. Skip the corned beef. It’s not really Irish anyway! (According to the History Chanel, no one in Ireland ate this except for a few royals. But when the Irish immigrated to New York’s lower East side, they were looking for a cheaper alternative to bacon and probably learned about corned beef from their Jewish neighbors.) Since one of the most Earth-friendly habits you can get into is eating less (or no) beef, focus on the veggies. Cabbage is great if people like it, but if they don’t, potatoes are usually a favorite. How about setting up a potato bar and color the taters green with pureed veggies like kale, spinach, arugula, or pea pods. Add spice with green salsa or more interesting taste with sage.

4. End a party or St. Pat’s family dinner with homemade organic oatmeal cookies and pistachio, lime or mint ice cream/sherbert/sorbet.

5. For evening entertainment, borrow or rent A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. The story centers on an Irish immigrant family in Brooklyn in the 1900’s and their young daughter’s struggle to stay positive in the midst of poverty. Better yet, choose to start reading the book of the same name on St. Patrick’s Day.

6. If you want to enjoy the occasion with a touch of beer, always a St. Paddy’s Day favorite, check out the many organic alternatives.

7. A few quick, easy, no waste games for your gathering:

• See how many words two teams can make from the longest place name in Ireland: Muckanaghederdauhaulia

• Have everyone try to guess the meaning of Irish words like: handfasting, sean-nos, or a jaunting car. Answers and more words are here.

• Here’s an Irish children’s game: One child is Mr. Fox and the other children line the wall. Mr. Fox stands about 10 feet away with his back turned. The children in the line say, “What time is it Mr. Fox?” He replies, “one o’clock.” Then the children walk slowly toward the fox, repeating the question and answer until the Fox says, “Dinner time.” The fox chases everyone back to the wall. It anyone is tagged, he/she is now the Fox.

__________________________

Lynn Colwell and Corey Colwell-Lipson are mother and daughter and co-authors of Celebrate Green! Creating Eco-Savvy Holidays, Celebrations and Traditions for the Whole Family, available at www.CelebrateGreen.net

Listen to this. Share it with your children. Remember it when you’re speaking with friends and family about the environment. Remember it when you’re talking about most things.

Typography from Ronnie Bruce on Vimeo.

In the end, we will conserve only what we love, we will love only what we understand, and we will understand only what we are taught.

— Baba Dioum, Senegalese conservationist

Image: OliverAlex

It’s been a couple of weeks since I updated you on my green home office project. Believe it or not, I’m STILL purging. It’s amazing how much paper has piled up and how difficult it is to figure out what to do with it all. Some things are obviously not needed and get shredded and/or recycled. But other things take time to figure out.

One of the actions I’m taking to stop the inflow of paper is to sign up for as much paperless billing as I possibly can. I am in charge of the bills in my household as well as all of my mother’s bills. She’s not going to be happy that I’m signing her up for paperless billing, but it’s the only way I can get this mess under control. The amount of mail that I get from her business affairs – bills, investments, bank accounts is so much more than what comes through my own family’s mail. For the longest time, I’ve gone along with all of the paper that comes my way through her because she isn’t comfortable with everything being electronic, but I just can’t do it anymore. I can’t go paperless with only my family’s stuff and keep her’s on paper. It would defeat this whole project.

Anyway, I realize that I need to do more than just sign up for paperless bills. I also needed to take the simple step of setting up to folders in my e-mail. One for paperless bills and one for bill payment confirmations. A lot of the bills I pay through my bank account, but there are a few that get paid through a specific company’s website. When I pay, I need a way to keep track of the payment confirmation e-mails.

It may seem simple to set up e-mail folders, but it’s something I’m really bad about. Even organizing my e-mail doesn’t come naturally to me. Right now, I’ve got over 3000 e-mails in my general in box! So I realize that not only do I need to get my physical space organized, I need to get my virtual space organized.

I still haven’t taken the time to find the right software to keep all of my financial statements – bank and investment statements. If anyone has any suggestions on really idiot friendly, yet extraordinarily effective financial software, please let me know.

One last thing – it looks like I will physically be moving my entire office in the next month or so. That might speed up the purgin process. We’ve decided to rearrange our entire house. My office is now in the old nursery, but I’m going to be moving down to what is the dining room and having half of it. The other half will be the boys’ study area. The dining room will move into a much smaller room that we now call the Internet Cafe. It’s the room where the boys computer is and a small table for their homework. So I suppose, my office will now be located in the new Internet Cafe. We’re doing this so each of the boys can have his own room.

The thing is, if I move my office to the first floor and I have to share the space with the boys, I really need to downsize, which is perfect for this project. Also, when I’m on the first floor, the office will be much more visible to people who come in the house so I will need to keep it tidy. Going paperless as much as possible is going to help that.

If you’ve read all the way here, thank you for putting up with my rambling. Part of the reason I’m documenting this on the blog is to have a written account to refer back to when I write my Green Home Office book.

I mentioned the other day that my eco-friendliness has led me to embrace thrift store shopping. Buying at a thrift store or even a consignment shop is environmentally friendly because it gives a second life to something that might otherwise be thrown in the trash and it keeps down the amount of new things that need to be created from raw materials.

I’m not a seasoned thrift store shopper, but  I do have some tips for those of you who are just starting out and are looking to buy clothes.

• Try it on. Thrift store purchases usually can’t be returned. There’s one thrift store in my area that doesn’t have any dressing rooms. I won’t shop there.
• Bring cash. Most thrift stores don’t take credit cards or checks.
• Be prepared to spend some time. It varies from store to store, but many stores don’t have the time or resources to sort clothing. Often the boys and girls clothing are on the same racks, and things are rarely sorted by size. It can take a lot of hunting to find something you like that is in your size.
• When you’re looking for something specific, check everywhere. My youngest son needed a costume for a local theater production that he was playing a pirate in. I was looking for a vest and some sort of shirt for him. After finding nothing in the children’s section, I went to the women’s section and looked through the size smalls. I ended up finding a perfect shirt and a black woman’s sleeveless button up blouse. We cut the collar off the sleeveless blouse and it made a great vest.
• Clean everything before it gets worn. Most things can be thrown in the washing machine, but some things will need to be dry cleaned. If an item needs to be dry cleaned, factor in that cost before you consider it a bargain. After I bought a black wool coat for $6.99, I spent an additional $14 to have it cleaned. That was definitely still a bargain.
• Take you own shopping bags.
• You don’t ever have to tell anyone you bought something at a thrift store if you don’t want to.

Those are my beginner thrift store shopping tips. Got anything to add?

Image: ilovememphis