Green Daily

I used to aspire to SuperMom-dom. I'd wear Armani suits to my Wall Street office, where I'd toil for 12 hours and then go home to bake cupcakes and read classic literature to my family of brilliant, adorable children. Then the reality of parenthood hit and, as it turns out, I really aspire to spend more time with my brilliant, adorable, but totally flawed children in our patched assortment of Goodwill bins clothing and our as-yet-un-remodeled 1912 home. Oh yeah, no Wall Street, very little Armani (but it's by choice! Really!). I discover that what I am really aspiring toward is the übermom. In yesterday's New York Times, the profile of Shannon Hayes is full of generosity, nuance, and flaw; she's a representative of the mother who chooses to trade a power suit for cast-off jeans, to home school her children, to eschew plastics, to recycle and compost everything, to live more simply. She's also a representative of the women who can't do it all (her fridge isn't sparkling, she doesn't fold her clean laundry).

It's immediately clear that her lifestyle is vastly appealing to those who would Live More Simply. She raises her own food and her family barters its chickens for handmade pottery. She and her husband don't work conventional jobs, choosing instead to spend plenty of time with their two young daughters and evangelizing the sustainable lifestyle; to butcher and sell their fancy organic lamb.

I live in the outrageously kooky city of Portland, Oregon, and one of its denizens' blogs crossed my digital path today. He's the Urban Scout, and his cause is "rewilding." To rewild is (according to the wiki I believe to be largely written by him) to undo domestication; to prepare for the eventual undoing of civilization. Scout isn't only suggesting you un-domesticate animals (send your housecats out to hunt mice instead of buying them Fancy Feast, for instance); no, he wants people to lose their domestication.

Rewilding could be as low-key as reading a book instead of watching TV (sounds civilized to me). But it can also include killing and eating a squirrel (maybe that one who's been storing his acorns in the little alcove next to my home office); or "refusing to pay rent or buy food" or even more anarchist, like " tearing up the streets with a sledge-hammer to plant crops" or "taking down civilization."

I'm the first proponent of taking a sledgehammer to the concrete in your backyard to plant a vegetable garden, or reading books and coloring instead of playing Halo 3 (though that last might build useful skills were civilization to fall). But some of the extremes supported by the rewilding folk -- stealing from the cash register at your "wage slave" job, for instance -- aren't on my list of best ways to fix Mother Earth.

What are some friendly ways to rewild your life? Check out our gallery:

What will you eat for lunch today? Why not a peanut butter & jelly sandwich? The old lunchtime standby doesn't just take you back to when you were a kid, it also saves the planet -- three different ways.

1. Stop global warming by saving 2.5 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions. Peanut butter and jelly are both plant-based foods, and according to the PB&J Campaign, a PB&J sandwich requires 2.5 fewer pounds of carbon dioxide than an average animal-based lunch, like grilled cheese or chicken salad.
2. Use fewer resources by saving 280 gallons of water. If you picked peanut butter over a hamburger, creating that protein required far less water.
3. Reduce your footprint by saving about 25 square feet of land. Depending on the choice, you'll save between 12 and 50 square feet "from deforestation, over-grazing, and pesticide and fertilizer pollution."

By my calculation, my tomato-and-lentil soup is equally planet-friendly! Check out your lunch bag: how did it affect the earth today?

via 21st Century Citizen.

I'll admit it: I'm cheap. And, I'm a skeptic. When it comes to cleaning fruits, vegetables, sinks, windows, and even my kitchen floor, I just can't bring myself to invest in pricey organic or "gentle" washes. Not when I have plain old (and cheap) white vinegar!

This morning I was pleased to hear my ways validated in a study on cleaning fresh produce on NPR. The editors of Cooks Illustrated magazine used four different methods to clean apples and pears: antibacterial soap, a vinegar and water solution, scrubbing with a brush, and just using plain water. Not only did squirting produce with a solution of three parts water, one part vinegar work the best, it was by a landslide -- it removed 98% of bacteria, compared to 85% for scrubbing.

In a separate study, researchers at the Tennessee State University compared a vinegar-water solution to Veggie Wash (sold for around $4 a small bottle in my grocery store). Vinegar won that battle too, and it's interesting to note that the old-fashioned method of polishing fruit on your shirttails was better than nothing.

Best of all, vinegar is harmless to your body, your pipes, and the planet. Sometimes the cheap way and the green way are one and the same.

I remember back when I was a kid, and people were really starting to pay attention to the environment in my crunchy hippy hometown of Portland, Oregon. I also remember how embarrassed I was that my mom carried ratty cloth bags she'd made to haul our books from the library, our groceries from the market; I remember recoiling at the thought of compost heaps; I remember my anger and frustration at being asked to cut the grass with the mechanical mower. Yup. Back then, being resource-smart wasn't cool. It was stinky, weird, a little desperate. It made you seem poor.

I thought things had changed a little. After all, designers are pushing fabulous instead-of-plastic bags to carry around your groceries and library books and iPhones; bottled water is being banned in San Francisco. It's hip to care.

Or not. Yesterday's Wall Street Journal reminded me just how uncool being green still is. Or in this case, entirely against the rules. Susan Taylor, in Awbrey Butte, Oregon (just over the mountains from where I live in Portland, near my mother's childhood home), has her neighbors up in arms -- and threatening legal action -- because she's hanging her laundry up to dry.