My Mom is So Green...

She composts.  She rinses out her baggies.  She saves bread crusts and feeds the ducks at the pond.  She puts banana peels, coffee grounds and even dog hair in her garden.  She still knows how good laundry smells when dried on a line. She, born to parents who lived through the Depression, born in a time when things were war rationed, knows how to be thrifty and economical.  My mom is so green; so way way way ahead of her time.  She never believed in a throw-away culture.

We should all take lessons from our elders in these times. 

I tell my mom we can ebay her stuff.   I tell my mom we can sort out her house -- me, the Queen of Moving, can toss, toss, toss.  She cleans out a drawer or shelf or closet every day.  Today it takes her 45 minutes to do one shelf in the bathroom.  She sends me home with Dramamine she no longer needs for a grandchild on trips, and three jars of body cream she won't use.  It is easier to put it in my bag than to argue with her about how I don't need them.

My mother, the fair lady of recycling, is recycled herself in our stories of her.  I return to her a painting that has gone from my 6 or 7 homes to my daughter's and now back to her.  Up it goes on her living room wall, right where it once graced the wall, 25 years or more ago.  What goes around...

update: found this site for green living tips.  One, using cloth napkins, is a habit I picked up from mother.

Comments

[carron e.]

Right on! to your mama and her recycling ways! And her composting ways...I need to find out how to compost or just get off my butt and do it. It is so good for the earth. I am not of the Depression era, and I still have trouble throwing things away. I don't know...I just keep thinking some day I will need it or want it! So I have enough junk (make that, great stuff!) to fill another house and IT DRIVES MY HUSBAND CRAZY! One time he threw out one of my catalogs and we almost got divorced! Magazines are a big deal in our family (of origin)! Bless your mama's green heart! And all those books she has read this year...I am so impressed that she read Obama's book since she is a staunch republican. Or is it just your dad who is? Anyway, kudos to her!

[Hattie]

Composting's easy. You don't have to do it any fancy way. Just save all your garden waste and non-meat kitchen waste somewhere or other. You can even throw it in a plastic trash bag and let it sit around for a few months.
As a book on the subject I read once said, "Compost happens."

[Janet]

My mother would probably be greener if my stepfather would put up with it. And he DID live through the depression. He was literally dirt poor and yet he has no problem throwing things away. I finally talked them into crushing the plastic containers so they don't take up so much room, but they won't even recycle newspapers. I was going to try composting, but a friend of mine did it and ended up with a maggot-filled mess. Obviously there is more to it than we thought.