Can MOVING be GREEN?

Moving is EXPENSIVE! There are so many costs associated with moving and they add up quick! We recently moved and I found a great way to save money and be more GREEN!

Moving boxes are one of the biggest costs of moving! At http://www.moving.com/moving-boxes/packing-calculator.asp you can enter in the size of your house, years lived there and the number of adults to calculate how many boxes you will need to move. I used this tool and it suggests that we will need approximately 35 boxes of various sizes. (Although it did not take into account the mass quantity of books we own which took about 35 small book boxes alone!) There are many places you can purchase boxes from including: home improvement stores, moving truck rental locations and even storage facilities. To purchase a moving box kit of 35 boxes from one of these sources it would cost between $75-$100! WOW that is a lot of money!

So, how can you save money and the environment but still pack your house? Find boxes for FREE! I was able to find enough boxes through a couple of different sources. I discovered that many people post boxes for free on http://www.craigslist.org/ (this is also what I did after we were all moved in). This is the BEST idea I found! Simply type ‘moving boxes’ into the search engine and you will find many results, most of which will be free to pickup! Another way of course is to save the boxes you receive packages in. (I found that the post office flat rate boxes I received from deliveries came in very handy for packing books which can get too heavy very quickly!) Also, many retail, grocery and restaurants receive TONS of boxes in daily. It is possible to contact these local places and ask for boxes. I didn’t spend ANY money on boxes during our move – which saved us about $100. And when we finished unpacking the house, I listed the boxes on craigslist again.

Happy Green Moving!

-Kristin

Composting

We are so excited to start a compost pile! We have built our compost enclosure and started to add a mixture of things to it to get it started. Composting is an easy way to reduce your carbon footprint, create incredibly rich soil for your garden and help you live your happy green life!

Starting a compost is simple by following these easy steps:

Size: A compost pile should be a minimum of 10 feet around and 3-5 feet tall. This allows it to have enough room to decompose properly by creating the proper temperature and air flow.

Location: This is very important! Make sure to pick a good location for your compost pile – away from common areas and play areas. Compost will have a mixture of decaying materials in it and will have that ‘compost’ smell – so you will want to put it somewhere out of whiff.

Materials: There are numerous ways you can create a compost area. You can simply start a neat pile and leave it as is to rotate and maintain. If you want to create a more defined area for it you can build one from plastic fencing or wood. You can also purchase a composting bin at your local hardware store.

What to Compost: Vegetation, grass clippings, leaves, fruits and veggies, paper, coffee grounds, and egg shells all add value to your compost pile. These items will lead to a nutrient rich soil to plant your garden in. Make sure to follow a ratio of 1:1 brown vegetation to green vegetation when creating your compost. Brown materials include leaves, manure, newspaper, cardboard. Green materials include hedge and grass clippings, coffee grounds and fruit and vegetable peals.

What NOT to Compost: Meat, dairy, eggs, pet feces. These items can attract rodents to your pile and will not add to your piles nutrients.

After you get your pile started you let it sit. It will get hot – between 90 and 140 degrees - and you should see steam coming from it! It is very important to turn your compost pile every 4-7 days.

Now that we have started our pile we are excited to see it work! We will update on the progress as it starts cooking and starts the magic of turning into dirt!
Happy Green Composting!

- Kristin

the beginning of a happy green life

Why GREEN?

By 2009 Kristin and Amanda had careers, homes, husbands and our first babies. We realized that we needed to start making decisions that would help our families live happy lives that they could afford. Kristin decided to start cloth diapering to save money, it didn’t take long for her to realize that her decisions had an impact on the environment, soon her eyes were opened to other reusable products that would save her money and help the environment. By 2010 Kristin had opened diapeze.com a cloth diaper company that specializes in custom designed diapers and also carries eco friendly products like all natural laundry detergent and unpaper towels.  Amanda grew up with a very eco-conscious family but as she began to start her own family, making eco-friendly decisions was not as important.  Amanda was working towards getting her master’s degree in politics when she took an elective environmental studies course. This reintroduced her to principles that had been important to her family growing up and she decided to change her degree to environmental studies.  She realized that her family needed to make some changes. She began cloth diapering, recycling and purchasing the family food from the farmers market and butcher.

As we began changing our lives to be greener we realized how much money we were saving and how significant of an impact we were making. We also realized how many people thought that going green was difficult and expensive. It became apparent that while going green was becoming more popular it still had a bad rep for being too extreme for the average family.

So, we decided to make a blog. We would experiment with different ways of going green, some would be difficult big changes (like eliminating paper products) and some would be simple like turning off the lights when they left a room. This is our adventure in living a happy green life, we hope you enjoy reading about our journey!

We look forward to any suggestions for living a happy green life that you want to share.  Please email us at Kristin@ahappygreenlife.com or Amanda@ahappygreenlife.com