Considering that I celebrate Earth Day in some small way each day, I don’t feel too badly about not giving it a formal acknowledgement yesterday. I meant to; but by the time I posted about Louie, worked, cleaned, commenced with various kid duties and played outside a bit, it was already late in the evening. In other words, I was too pooped to party! (my husband has been out of town since Sunday, so I’ve been 100% in charge - kudos to single parents everywhere!)

push mower

I’ve been thinking about some of the little things we do that add up to make a big difference:

  • We’ve replaced all of our halogen lights with CFL’s.
  • We use cloth bags at the grocery store and whenever we go shopping. (Have you noticed that Taget now sells their own canvas bags? Hooray for Target!)
  • We use cloth napkins during meals.
  • We dry our clothes on a line outside during warm weather. We also have a line in our laundry room.
  • Every new appliance we purchase has the Energy Star label on it.
  • We cut the grass out back using a push mower. (purchased at Home Depot for less than $75)
  • We grow a good supply of fruits and vegetables each year and visit the Ithaca Farmer’s Market as much as possible. Incidentally, I came across a blog yesterday called Eggs On Sunday. This local blogger has some fabulous pictures of the Ithaca Farmer’s Market (not to mention some palate-pleasing recipes).
  • We don’t turn on the lights unless we absolutely need to. We are fortunate that our house allows a lot of nice, natural light.
  • We compost.
  • We purchase as many organics as our budget allows.
  • We don’t eat a lot of meat.
  • We’re slowly replacing our 1950’s storm windows with new, energy-efficient windows.
  • We recycle (almost forgot this one)

These are just a few things that come to mind right off. Our biggest embarrassment is our 1950’s furnace. We have got to replace that monster, considering it’s too inefficient to tell you just how inefficient it is. The darn thing is also costing us a small fortune in utilities each month. THANK GOODNESS it hasn’t run in over a week now. We’ve had the windows open instead ~ lovely!

For everyone who is working on a Root and Sprout project (whether it’s an article or *somethng else*), I’m going to need you to complete it by May 15th in order to be ready for the June 1st launch. If you would like to contribute, please read the submission guidelines. We have TONS of openings available, so please consider writing something. You do NOT need to be a professional writer to participate. I’ve received many comments and emails from people saying they would like to contribute but that they are just not much of a writer. I want to stress that Root and Sprout is a website for parents written by parents (or people who have experience working with children). If you can write a blog post, you can write an article for Root and Sprout! (Don’t forget that you get a byline and link to your blog or website)

If you truly do not wish to write an article but would like to help out in a minor way, would you please consider spreading the word about Root and Sprout on your blog? If so, you can link to this post. Thank you!

If you would like to be one of the first to claim an advertising space (not to be too forward), I’ll be providing the details tomorrow. Once Root and Sprout is officially open, I will no longer be advertising on this site (and the process of advertising will be a bit different and hopefully better).

:-)