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If your family is like ours keeping utility costs low is not only a budgetary concern, it’s an environmental one as well. The less we consume, the lighter our footprint on the planet. It’s not enough for kids to learn to reuse, recycle and upcycle, we have to really work on that third R: Reduce. Utilities are both expensive and a fact of life. While you can skip purchasing entertainment and can go without haircuts for long periods of time in order to save money, you can’t really decide not to buy electric or water services. However, there are plenty of things you can do in order to lower your utility costs. Shutting of lights when you’re not using them is obvious, but there are other, very simple ways to significantly reduce your utility bill as well as your impact on the planet.

Turn Off Unused Lights and Appliances

Many families waste electricity by leaving lights on that are not being used. For example, if you go into the kitchen to have a late night snack and don’t turn off the light before heading back to bed, you’re wasting a lot of electricity, as nobody in your home benefits from this light. Get in the habit of turning off lights before leaving a room and teach your children to do the same in order to save electricity costs.

Similarly, you should turn of televisions, radios and other appliances that are not being used. This strategy may endear you to your neighbors as well as help you save on your utility bills, as a blaring television or radio can disturb others.

Control Temperature Through Clothing

Instead of using heat or air conditioning to control your home’s temperature, adjust the clothing you wear. You can save electricity by keeping your home slightly warmer in the summer and slightly cooler in the winter. Keep your thermostat set to 68 degrees during winter time and 78 degrees in the summer. This allows the air conditioning unit to run more effectively. If you are too hot or cold at these temperatures, change your clothes. Wearing sweaters in the winter or tank tops in the summer can help you stay comfortable without using an excessive amount of electricity.

Unplug Chargers and Cords When Not In Use

If you keep your phone charger plugged in when your phone is not being charged, it draws a tiny bit of electricity. Over the course of a month, this can really add up. Instead, unplug your phone charger when you are not charging your phone. Similarly, unplug small appliances like toaster ovens and coffee makers when not in use to save electricity.

Don’t Start Your Shower Prematurely

People sometimes turn on the shower before getting everything they need for a pleasant shower experience. Wait until you are sure you are ready to get in before you turn on your shower so that you don’t waste water. To save additional money on your utilities, consider showering in the dark so that you don’t use electricity while you are showering either. Make sure that your bathroom floor is free of obstacles before trying this electricity-saving tip so that you don’t fall over anything in the dark.

Dry Dishes and Clothes Manually

You can save electricity by not running the dry cycle on your dishwasher and by avoiding using a clothes dryer to dry your clothes. To save money on washing your dishes, don’t run the dishwasher until it is completely full. Then, watch it and turn it off as soon as the rinse cycle is finished. Open the dishwasher and let the dishes air dry.

Similarly, you can hang both towels and clothes on a clothesline outside to dry them on sunny days. Even if you prefer to use your clothes dryer for clothes, you should consider air-drying heavy items such as towels and bath mats to save energy. One family we know reduced their utility bill by $30 a month by switching to line drying their clothing alone!

If you follow these energy-saving tips, you should soon see a dramatic reduction in your utility bills. There are plenty of other things you can do to save energy as well; just get in the habit of saving energy whenever you can and new, creative ways of conserving electricity and water will occur to you. Better yet, make it a family challenge! Give the kids the job of coming up with bigger, better, faster ways of lowering the utility bills and reward them with part of the proceeds!

What does your family do to save money and the planet at the same time?

Author Bio:

Tom writes for Heating Oil Shopper, a leading source of information on a range of topics related to home heating oil pricing .

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Saving energy in your home is fairly easy. How much energy you save, however, will depend on how much you know about green living practices. For example, there are dozens of ways to save energy, time and money with green cooking in your kitchen.

Green cooking is a fairly easy habit. It just means cooking in such a way that you are protecting the planet. There are multiple ways to do that in every kitchen, but you should start with buying the right foods and buying them in the right ways. (more…)

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We try to live naturally and frugally. Sometimes those two values conflict in ways I wish they wouldn’t. And, sometimes they complement one another and remind me that although it may take a little more time to prepare, we are saving money.

Recently while taking a shower I was thinking about all the different products I use on my body. Face wash, face lotion, shampoo, conditioner, soap, lotion, tooth paste, and the list goes on. Each of these products cost money. And, even more money if I want to buy an organic option.

I talked about this with a friend and we did a little research and found all sorts of recipes to make your own health care items with just a handful of basic ingredients, most of which we already owned.

Why Make Your Own?

1. With our skin being our largest organ, and so porous, the chemicals we use to “clean” our hair and skin can easily enter the bloodstream. By making your own, you are using natural ingredients and can tweak the ingredients to best work with your skin/hair type.
2. In making your own products, you are using items that you already have on hand and can put them in containers that you already own, thus cutting down on the amount of waste.
3. You are cutting out the influence of advertising in your home.
4. It is quite satisfying knowing, “I made that!”

Deodorant

3 Tablespoons Baking Soda
4 Tablespoons Coconut Oil
4 Tablespoons Cornstarch
1/4 Cup Shea Butter or Coco Butter
10-15 drops of essential oil (I really like using geranium)

Melt the Shea/Coco Butter and Coconut oil and mix the ingredients all together. Store in a shallow container.  Apply like you would lotion, under your arms.

I am a very sweaty and can be very smelly, but this deodorant works great for me!

Toothpaste

2 Tablespoons of coconut oil
2-3 Tablespoons of Baking Soda
1/4 teaspoon of stevia powder (this is to sweeten it and take away from the strong baking soda taste)
2 drops of peppermint essential oil

Melt the coconut oil and mix all ingredients together until it resembles the consistency of toothpaste.  Keep in mind that it will thicken as the coconut oil re-hardens.  Apply a small amount on toothbrush.

My husband has yet to come around to the baking soda taste, but I don’t mind it.  And, I definitely love that it is cheaper than the $5 tube of natural toothpaste that I had been buying.

Face “Wash”

This was the most interesting experiment for me in this world of making my own health care products. I read that the sebum our skin secretes is actually good for us, and when we strip it away by using “oil free” face cleaners, our body compensates by producing more oil (causing oily skin).  Or, it doesn’t compensate and replenish the natural oils that have been stripped away (resulting in very dry skin that is also acne prone).

Here is a quote from www.acne.org that gives the recipe I’m about to share with you a lot of credibility.

““Oil dissolves oil. One of the most basic principals of chemistry is that “like dissolves like.” The best way to desolve a non-polar solvent like sebum/oil, is by using another non-polar solvent similar in composition: other oils. By using the right oils, you can cleanse your pores of dirt and bacteria naturally, gently and effectively, while replacing the dirty oil with beneficial ones extracted from natural botanicals, vegetables and fruit that heal, protect and nourish your skin. When done properly and consistently, the oil cleansing method can clear the skin from issues like oily skin, dry skin, sensitive skin, blackheads, whiteheads and other problems caused by mild to moderate acne–while leaving your skin healthy, balanced and properly moisturized.”

I live in Arizona where we have about 5-10% humidity most of the year.  So on top of having dry skin because of stripping away my natural oils over the years, I have really dry skin because there is so little moisture in the air.

The most common face wash recipe that follows the Oil Cleansing Method, is to use equal parts castor oil and extra virgin olive oil.

I have found for me though that I need 5 parts olive oil to 1 part castor oil since I have such dry skin.

I would suggest starting off with equal parts, and then adjust as needed.

Tea tree essential oil is a natural antiseptic.  Add a few drops to your Oil Cleansing mixture to clear up any acne.

Now, for how to use it:

• Do not wet your face.
• Place a quarter-sized amount on your fingertips and rub hands together.
• Gently rub onto your dry face.
• Steam your face by placing a hot washcloth over it, and allow it to stay there until it starts to cool.
• And finally, use the wash cloth to gently wipe off any extra oil.

I have found that with using this method, I no longer need to use face lotion.  And, I only need to wash my face once a day.

Do you have any recipes for homemade body care products to share with us? Please do!!

*You can also check out MadeOn Hard Lotion for an excellent selection of homemade, whole ingredient body care products & kits to make your own!

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The Report: It’s Not Good

Monday, June 20, 2011, the International Programme on the State of the Ocean released this report: International Earth System Expert Workshop on Ocean Stresses and Impacts. It is a must read and only takes a few minutes.

Conclusions are:

The participants concluded that not only are we already experiencing severe declines in many species to the point of commercial extinction in some cases, and an unparalleled rate of regional extinctions of habitat types (eg mangroves and seagrass meadows), but we now face losing marine species and entire marine ecosystems, such as coral reefs, within a single generation.Unless action is taken now, the consequences of our activities are at a high risk of causing, through the combined effects of climate change, overexploitation, pollution and habitat loss, the next globally significant extinction event in the ocean. It is notable that the occurrence of multiple high intensity stressors has been a pre–‐requisite for all the five global extinction events of the past 600 million years (Barnosky et al., 2009).

What can we do? According to the report:

Technical means to achieve the solutions to many of these problems already exist, but that current societal values prevent humankind from addressing them effectively.

My Personal Dilemma

What one little thing can you do to reduce your impact?

My family will raise our thermostat, better plan our car trips, and take at least one less car trip a week.

Who am I and why do I want to do this? I was an award-winning environmental planner and lobbyist in Florida. My focus was manatee and ecosystem protection, a contentious effort that taught me the realities of our political process and the impact we can have on it. I spent 20 years working in government, for an environmental non-profit and as a private consultant. I have helped bring
lawsuits against government and defend government from frivolous lawsuits. I have drafted legislation and lobbied at the local and state levels, and this year I had two health care related legislative victories in North Carolina.

And I will have to decide which battle I am going to fight – health care freedom or environmental protection. Environmental protection clearly is more fundamental and critical, but it is a battle I fought for 20 years. I did my time and I am not sure I want to jump back in.

This year I waged a couple of health freedom battles in the North Carolina legislature (and won I might add). The return on investment as far as my human body energy output is concerned is much greater in these battles, and I enjoyed them. Environmental battles, in contrast, became a grind. Maybe taking the last five years off was the break I needed?

“What to do, what to do?” As my wonderful calculus professor used to say in his cool Polish accent.

I had human race survival concerns when I was little – the commercial of the Native American walking through the trash on the shoreline always upset me.

My earliest belief has always been “We need clean air and clean water or we will not survive.”

It is why I became an environmental planner and fought hard for 20 years. It is why I stood up to those who lied and threatened and stomped on the planet and then threatened my family, resulting in police protection for my home and family.

I have had a quiet five years in North Carolina and loved it. Now I have a decision to make. I am no longer into being an environmental martyr, and I have relatively buried my head in the sand. I love being a homeschooling mom! But what good will that ultimately do my son?

Who knew that a little girl in the 70s would be reading this Oceans report? Hopefully my little boy from the 2000s will not see it come true.

What Can You Do?

If you are wondering what you can do, just do something. People do not understand how easy it is to influence society and the political process.

You could:

• Stop buying crap and stop supporting the stores that sell it
• Take one less car trip a week
• Call your federal and state senators and representatives and actually write them letters. Calls and letters have more impact that emails and petitions
• Have your children send letters and pictures to these same elected officials
• Start your own local small group of people to take action. Don’t do it under an umbrella organization such as Sierra or Audubon. Just do it as yourselves with no group name. That was a new technique for me this year when dealing with the North Carolina legislature, and it was far more powerful than working for an organization.

I am sure you get the idea. Be creative and make your voices heard.

Revolution 2011 Club

Now move forward one day to June 21, 2011, when I created Revolution 2011 Club for kids.

There is nothing like a little time to reflect and develop a way for me to combine all of my loves: homeschooling, environmental activism, and teaching others how to affect government and shape their communities (see State of the Ocean Report – Time to Act).

I started the Revolution 2011 Club for my homeschooling group. Hopefully we will take it national and make it available to other homeschooling groups or other kids groups in general. So far 21 kids are interested. We will be up and running soon, with a website, wiki and whatever other cool stuff they develop. I will keep you posted.

Here are the basics, which may be useful for some of you who might be interested in doing something similar with kids (regardless of whether or not they are homeschooled):

1. I want to teach kids how to become involved with and influence our government and their communities to make changes they think are important. I am planning this Fall to lead a group of kids (14 years+) to work on a city or county issue that requires the city or county commission to take action. We would start from identifying the issue, researching it, preparing our arguments in support and preparing to defend against opponents, and ultimately lobbying the local government to take action. This knowledge is such a fundamental part of ourcountry’s history and it is being lost much to our detriment.
2. I want to start a group or two (or three) groups of homeschoolers to take action regarding the 2011 Oceans report. I blogged about it which may  help you understand where I am coming from.
3. I want to have it open to ages 7 and up, but may divide it into two or three groups, depending on the age of our participants. If it breaks into multiple groups I will need some help facilitating them all.
4. If you are interested in participating in one or both of these groups, please drop me an email and let me know the ages of your interested children.

Thank you for taking the time to read and consider these calls to action, I hope to hear from you soon!

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For the past year, our family has been on a mission to reduce our household garbage and recycling.

We have examined our shopping habits, made many changes, and are proud to say that our family now throws out the equivalent of one medium size bag of garbage per month and we have cut down our recycling from four large bags to two large bags per month.

How’d we do it? Read on and I’ll show you, it’s easy! (more…)