I went to the grocery store this past weekend to begin an experiment on the differences on pricing and products between the large chain grocery store and the granola store (which I realize is a chain too but there is only one here in the city).

I bought what most of what we needed and tired not to pay attention to prices because if I did the granola store would automatically lose the competition. I bought brand names and tried to stay away from plastic, but that was all but impossible. I want this experiment to show the pros and cons of both stores but especially the environmental costs.

What I do know is that I spent $155 on about weeks worth of groceries. I tried to only shop the outside isles where the best food is (fresh produce and the meat and fish counters) but I had to buy breakfast food and a couple other household staples. I actually spent $185 but about $30 of that total were non-food items that I will not count in my actual totals because those kinds of items are not bought on a weekly basis.

Next week I am going to shop at the chain store and at the Farmers Market to see what kind of difference that makes. The week after that will be at the granola store only and then the following week will be the granola store and Farmer’s Market. At the end I will compare all the pros and cons and ask you to make the decision as to where I should shop.

How is the increase in food and gas costs effecting you?

Well you know what they say about the best laid plans right? What about Murphy’s Law? All those things were working against me over the past few weeks, but now I am back and ready to get down and dirty again!

Now don’t you worry your pretty little head, while I was gone I still tried to stay away from plastic, in fact I had some plastic free weeks. But it’s been getting tougher and tougher for me to stay away from plastic though. I try to shop at the granola store, which is 5 or 6 miles from my home instead of my local grocery store which is less then a mile, because there are more plastic free alternatives at the granola store but with gas reaching $4 a gallon I just don’t know if I can continue to drive out of my way for groceries.

Another reason is with the rising prices of food I can’t afford to pay the already high cost of food from the granola store plus the rising cost. I’ve seen my grocery bill go up by $25 to $30 and when you only have a budget of $500 a month that added cost can mean the difference of eating well for the last week or not. I might have to stop shopping at the Farmer’s Market because they are passing on the high cost of gas to the consumers too. I’d like not to stray to far from my values but a budget can only stretch so far.

It’s not cheep to feed a family of 6, especially a family that has so many food issues. One doesn’t eat fish, one doesn’t eat vegetables, and the list goes on. Gesh they are picky, why can’t they all be like my oldest son and eat pretty much whatever I put on the table? I am going to have to open them up to some new cheaper dishes or we will never stay afloat. What will/do you feed your family now that the times are getting tough? Can you stay within your values and not sink deeper into debt?

Of course that is not a picture of the plastic consumption from last week but does do a good job of representing what I did consume and sadly it was a waste of plastic when it boils down to it.

I was looking for something quick and simple to cook for dinner one night and the granola store is not known for it’s convenience food, but they do have a good Asian Food section. I love Sushi but my husband doesn’t so I needed to find something that would go along with the sushi that I had picked up for me, well I found it it in a plastic bag.

Now I know that it wasn’t the best choice but when you have only been sleeping a few hours a night and your husband volunteers to cook, you want what’s easy, especially when all he knows how to do is cook spaghetti. The bag said that all he had to do was dice some chicken, brown it and add the other ingredients, easy enough so I bought it. What I didn’t realize was there were 3 bags inside the main bag, so I was stuck with 4 plastic bags instead of the one.

Lesson learned…conveniences food is just that and it’s never any good for you, plus most of the time it just tastes bag.

I have been slowly working my way to a plastic free bathroom. The firs thing and easiest item I change was to buy soap wrapped in paper and not in plastic. Then the second item on the agenda was the individually wrapped, in paper, toilet paper rolls. The third thing to do was to get rid of my shampoo and conditioner and I have been less then successful at that. In fact I have bought 2 bottles of shampoo and conditioner since the beginning of the year because I have been afraid of what the soap would do to my hair. My hair is super fine and without the right balance of chemicals it hangs there lifelessly and just makes me sad.

Well stirred on by my National Day of Prayer post I decided to go for it and try out the soap that I had in my bathroom. We have several bars in the shower…one for me, one for my husband and another for the kids, so I had plenty to choose from. I decided to try the the goats milk one, thinking that out of all of them it would do the least amount of drying. I thought it might be awkward rubbing a bar on my head but it wasn’t at all. Just a few swipes on the head and tada fabulous lather. Rinsing was a piece of cake and I didn’t have any tangles at all. What I did have was squeaky clean hair, and I mean squeaky clean. Because I didn’t have any tangles I went without conditioner but later on decided that I would have to use some kind of conditioning agent a couple times of week or my hair would become straw-like.

Today I went to the granola store and picked up yet another bar of soap, this time one made from olive oil. I chose that one thinking that the olive oil might do enough conditioning all by itself and I could forgo the regular conditioner. I will continue to try out using the bar soap on my hair and give you an update in a few weeks…until then

Today I might lose half my readers but God willing I may gain several more. You see I already go against the grain by working towards a greener planet, but as a Christian in the green arena I really ruffle some feathers. I don’t know any Eco-Bloggers that openly talk about their beliefs and unfortunitly I have only done it once or twice but today is the perfect day to work God into my postings.

Today is the National Day of Prayer and God tells us to pray about all things big and small. And I believe that the Earth Crisis is a big issue that we need to send our prayers up for. We need to ask God to put the environment on the hearts of our Congresspeople and our President. We need to ask that the Lord to give business people and inventors the eyes to see solutions to our eco-problems. We need to ask that the Lord forgives us for the mess that we have made out of His amazing creation.

We should ask that He opens the eyes of the “doubting Thomas’s” of the world to the growing energy and food crisis’s. We need to ask that He brings an end to global warming and global poverty. I don’t believe for one minute that our extinction dues to global warming or hunger is God’s plan. God promised Noah that He wouldn’t again wipe out the Human race so the problems that we are facing are problems that we have created.

Dear Lord, I thank you that you have created an amazing place for us to live and discover who You are and how much you love us through your creation. I ask that you forgive us for what we have done to the planet that you have given us and I ask that you open our eyes to how we can fix the problems that we have created. Open the hearts of our Congresspeople to the plight of your Creation, give them eyes to see that there are plenty of other forms of energy that we need to be pursing. Give creative ideas to your people on how we as Christians can come along side the other Eco-warriors who are on the front lines fighting for your Creation without really knowing you. Give us the opportunity to open their eyes to Your love and mercies. Bring the planet together, under Your umbrella of love, so that we work together and bring your message to the ends of the earth. Amen

I don’t subscribe to the, no need to clean your ears with q-tips people. In fact everyday after I take a shower I break out the q-tips and gently swab my ear, cause I don’t know about you but I don’t like the inside of my ears being wet and as my husband will tell you, I have tiny ears and the towel is just to thick to do a good job of getting the wetness out. But after the q-tips ran out last week I have been trying to figure out how to buy more q-tips without buying plastic.

No not only are the middles of most q-tips plastic but the boxes that they come in are plastic. I have become so desperate that I have been using wadded up toilet paper and the end of my pinky finger (told you I have small ears) to clean them out.

This is the problem with plastic in our society, it’s so darn cheep and so prevalent that it’s hard to just stop using it. I’ve gotten plastic out of my life in so many other areas…no more plastic wrapped toilet paper or soap, no more trash bags or grocery bags, no more plastic veggie or bulk food bags. I’ve managed to find a place that will allow me to reuse my plastic kitty litter bottle over and over again. I’ve struggled in finding a plastic free/natural laundry detergent and of course I still get my medicine in plastic bottles. I am slowly working on going plastic free in the bathroom, I’m still worried about using bar soap on my hair and the only bar conditioner I can find is from Lush and I am not to keen on it’s smell or price (I’ve tried the Vinegar rinse and it’s not good for my hair at all).

Plastic has it’s good points and it does plenty of good things. Without plastic I would be without this computer and worse I wouldn’t be able to see but we need to figure out how to use other materials to take the place of all the non-biodegradable plastic that is filling up our landfills. Even the so called biodegradable plastic leaves behind a toxic residue so we need to start thinking beyond plastic box and get to thinking about using bamboo or glass as the new popular item for packaging.

In what ways does plastic impact your life? Have you come to just accept plastic because it is so easy? Are you willing to give up your q-tips to make the world a better place?

If you are in the Memphis area and are not going to Mud Fest this weekend why don’t you come down to the Cockeyed Camel and party with me on Friday and Saturday nights. My favorite bands, The Distraxshuns and Funk De Ville are playing this weekend (of course I am biased since I’m married to one of the band members). They start around 9:00pm both nights, I hope that you come out and introduce yourself to me.

It’s getting to be that time of the year again here in the south, time to turn on the A/C. I figure that we have about 3 more weeks of bearable temperatures and by the end of May the windows will be closed and the a/c will be on full time. Right now at the low impact house we have had the windows open and the fans circulating.

In fact we have used so little electricity (no heater or air conditioner) our bill has dropped another $50, for those of you keeping track that means that our current bill is now down below $80 or $100 with the additional green power cost.

And like the past 2 months, our water usage has been so little that we have continually gotten the “minimal usage” charge. In fact the bulk of our bill ($18.00) goes to have our trash picked up once a week. I guess I shouldn’t complain about the garbage and sewer cost, but it does irk me that I only need the trash service twice a month and still have to pay the same price.

Back to the a/c issue…I promise to keep the thermostat above 78 degrees when we are home and 83 when we are gone, which is a big change from the 74 that is was set at last summer. I am thinking that I will have to keep the whole house fan on when we are home, My husband is not exactly the nicest person to live with when he is hot and I have a terrible time sleeping when I am overly warm and here in the south just because the sun has gone down doesn’t mean that the temperature has done the same.

Where do you pledge to keep your a/c set at this summer…if you live in the south can you stand to go higher then me?

Well I wanted to report on how my all natural cleaning went…it was awesome! I was really skeptical since I have used heavy duty cleaners on my soap scummed shower doors and after getting high breathing in the fumes the soap scum was still there, but a few drops of essential oil, lemon juice, castille soap and water and the soap scum was gone, I didn’t even have to scrub the doors! I used the same concoction on the rusty water scum that was left over from the other day when the plumber emptied the old water heater into the bathtub and not outside, yeah don’t even get me started on that. I was very worried that the water had stained the bathtub but it came off as easily as the soap scum.

The next thing I need to try my new cleaner out on is the mold on the walls. You see our bathroom is about the size of my “desk” and since the bathroom is in the hallway the door stays closed all the time and in turn that makes the bathroom a breeding ground for mold. There is a line on the wall that I have been able to reach to clean and above that line there is mold, so I am having to convince my taller husband to climb all over the shower and clean the higher parts.

I’m worried that any harsh cleaner that I might use will take the paint off the wall or stain it in some way or worse get into my husbands eyes as he reaches over his head to scrub. My solution is to use straight lemon and baking soda. Using the lemon as a sponge and the baking soda as the scrubber I hope to take the stuck on mold without taking off the paint. Any of you have another natural way to get rid of mold?

Well I didn’t post last week about my plastic because there wasn’t any! Woohoo! Unfortunitily I can’t say that about this week but this week there are only 3 items that I added after the plastic free pledge. The plastic noodle wrappers have been in the house for so long that I don’t remember buying them. I had a half open box of spiral noodles that I added the other noodles into. I kept shoving them deeper and deeper in the cabinet and had even forgotten that they were there, so this way they will get used. The plastic that I added was the Mrs Myers liquid detergent (you guys know all about that), the plastic spout on the milk container and the plastic wrapper on the drink boxes. Two weeks 3 pieces of plastic…how much plastic did you use this week?