To my mind going green is very simple; it's all about less. Consume less, travel less, waste less, use less. Trouble is achieving this always seems to involve more; more hassle, more time and often more money. The more you look at it, the more you realise becoming anything more than the palest shade of green touches all aspects of household life - food, waste, shopping, water, travel, work, leisure, holidays. Beyond making simple changes (like your lightbulbs) becoming a darker shade of green means changing habits, changing routines you just don’t think about day to day, routines that have served you well for years, unconscious routines that are hard to change. While I find the idea of greening simple, it's still a challenge personally. And then there's the Washingqueen.
To make a change in any household you not only need to change your own habits, you need to nudge, cajole and persuade your housemates to change theirs too. And if they don't believe in the same things you do, have the same fervour, enthusiasm, sense of urgency or aptitude for change then things get harder still. Let's just say the Washingqueen and I have different interests in this, move in different ways and at a different pace. I try to think of it as a healthy tension, especially when I'm completely exasperated by her lack of buy-in to my latest green scheme.
Still, the Washingqueen has come a long way in her greening, so much so she wants to change her name to Ecoworrier. It's a change I support and reflects a change in her and the progress we've made in 18 months of trying to keep being green high on our household agenda while bringing up three kids, trying to keep food on the table, empty the washing basket, earn a living and share a little of the experience through our blog. She's campaigned hard to persuade me that we should publish our blog more widely through the Westmorland Gazette, to encourage others to think greener, act greener, be greener. Well, put that way it's a project I can only support. I hope that something of what we share here, despite being one more thing for me to do will help us all with the greatest problem of all, how to live with less.
