I haven’t talked a lot about starting the chain reaction of awesome in my life, lately. While I was thinking about that this morning I noticed: I have a lot of “selp-improvement” type categories listed here. I think that observation says a lot right there, don’t you think? Like, maybe there’s a part of me hoping if I give it a category on my blog it will stick? Anyway…chain reaction of awesome…I’ve not been doing much to nurture that journey lately. Not just here on this blog, but here in my actual life was well.

When you’re trying to grow as a person in any way, whether it’s starting meditation, or exercise, or just eating better – it’s very easy to get distracted. It’s very easy to avoid the actions that further these goals when you have – what feels like – more pressing and real needs surrounding you. The dishes in the sink, the laundry in the dryer, the poopy diaper on the kid in the next room. All of these immediate needs tend to trump any tasks associated with long-term goals. So, my long-term goals? Get washed down the drain with the dirty dishwater.

Add to the daily mundane BIG activities like; putting your house on the market, high school musicals, estates in probate, or sick family – and those long-term goals or dreams? Really start gathering dust. Studying for the GMAT so I can get my MBA? Impossible when trying to get my house POD Ready (FYI: PODs are just portable container units, like renting storage that gets dropped off and then picked up and moved.) so we can get it on the market by the end of May. Getting back my running body? On the back burner while we wrap up dad’s estates proceedings in Knoxville. Meditating? Improving Nutrition? Parenting adjustments? Can’t think about those while I’m sealing the grout in my kitchen.

Do you see what I have here? A lot of really valid and truthful excuses to put off all of the things I want to be doing. The thing is? If you really examine some of those entries from the ninety million Self Improvement categories I have on this blog? You’ll see that the long list of really valid and truthful excuses? NEVER ENDS.

There are always going to be little things that get in the way day to day: Cat puke to clean up, plants to be watered, cars to be vacuumed. There are always going to be big things that get in the way week to week: illness, home improvement, community needs. If my six years of blogging about making myself better has taught me anything? Is that there will never be time. Time to do what it is I want to do that seems frivolous compared to the immediate needs in my life and in the life of my family members.

So…yet again…I find myself at a crossroads. A moment in my life where maybe some clarity will produce some change. Maybe the realization that I could actually put things off forever at the rate I’m going – is just depressing enough for me to stop putting things off at all. That maybe I pull in chaos in my life to help me avoid these great improvements I need/want to make – so that I don’t have to face failure head on. Maybe I encourage the perpetual list of chores as a way to keep me from actually accomplishing any of my personal goals, so that I’ll never have to officially fail at them. And while this clarity can be very depressing, it’s also nice to know that these changes can be in my power. I don’t have to wait on the universe to give me the perfect conditions to finally encourage me to eat better, harness my creativity, meet my professional goals. Instead, I can say I’ll deal with what the universe needs me to do…AFTER I meditate, or exercise, or eat this bowl of fresh fruit. I can prioritize my personal needs before the needs of my family and of the universe.

Now, I’m not necessarily going to leave my kid sitting in his dirty diaper while I go run – but I can put off folding clothes until after I meditate. I can take the time to plan my daily menu and put off paying the bills until after grocery shopping. Because – and here’s the kicker – I’ve proven over a lifetime of getting things done, THEY WILL GET DONE. The dishes will get in the dishwasher, the laundry will get folded, the holes will get caulked and the lawn will get mowed. If all of the procrastinating of my own wants and needs has taught me anything, it’s this: Everyone Else’s Needs Will Be Met. Just maybe not on the same timeline that ignores my own personal needs.

So, for the nineteen millionth time, I’m refocusing. I am going to spend the week shifting my priorities and digging into all of those entries about who and what I want to be. I don’t want to keep writing about starting these journeys to self-improvement under different categories with different focuses. I want to recognize that: THERE WILL NEVER BE TIME UNLESS I MAKE IT. And I’m going to start making time.

Right after I hang those pictures on the wall and clean my toilet.

(P.S. I categorized this entry in all of my self-improvement categories to prove my point with the excessive categorizing of my self-improvement. Except for one: Operation Marathon. Because let’s be honest, I did that once. And while some may discover their love of real long-distance running with their first marathon? I WAS NOT ONE OF THEM.)

First – let me do a follow-up on yesterday’s post. You all are wonderfully amazing, truly. I felt much better about the “negotiating” thing by the end of the day. Which made me feel much better in general because sometimes I’m just not confident enough in my parenting decisions to let them stand alone without validation. And I’m aware that is a whole other issue right there, I’m sure. Bedwetting: Last night I took NikkiZ to go potty before I went to bed. I just snuck in the room, picked her up, brought her out to the potty and sat her on it. AND SHE PEED! A LOT! I’m hoping between that (Why had I never thought of the Wake Her Up To Pee Again method?) and the fluid restrictions after dinner (we eat dinner around 5pm, she goes to bed after 7pm) we will put the kibosh on this pottying in bed thing. Bedsharing: We decided to use the Sleep On The Floor method. If she comes in? She has to sleep next to the bed on the floor. I have a pillow and blanket already out just in case. Maybe if she does that a few times (she didn’t try anything last night) it will lose the appeal. That’s all of the follow-up I have right now, thanks for your ideas!

How about a follow-up on the whole Stop and Think adjustment to my life? Eh. Regarding my parenting? I think it’s going well. Now, I am using the method several of you suggested to explain to NikkiZ what I’m doing. That I’m trying to relax and not freak out and that would be easier if she would avoid certain behaviors. Now…in every other part of my life? FAIL. I’m still doing a lot of impulse eating. Especially now that I have a freezer full of cookie dough from a fundraiser. SOMEONE COME GET THE COOKIE DOUGH OUT OF MY FREEZER.

Here’s a long overdo follow-up to Greening the Zoots. Man…we are making solid improvements in this area and I’m totally proud of myself for that. Biggest step? I’m almost completely free of plastic bags at the grocery store. I’ve gotten an assortment of reusable bags that stay in front of AndyZ’s carseat all the time so I have to think about them every time I get him out of his seat. Target has started a great thing where they take 5 cents off your total for every reusable bag you use. I also bought a bag from Target for 1.27 that crams into a little pouch and stays in my purse. That bag gets used all the time, if I make an uplanned stop somewhere or if I forget my bags in the car.

We are also still recycling like madmen, I make trips to the recycling center twice a week to take in glass, paper and cardboard. I fill up two bins to be picked up curbisde every week. I’m sure we could do better, but not much. I have also been trying to switch all of my cleaners out in my home to Earth Friendly. This is a slow transition as I’ve not found suitable replacements for some things yet. Mainly I’m trying to be Phosphate Free with my selections when I can be. If you have any suggestions of good earth friendly cleaning products? I’d love to hear them.

Now…this week’s Kim is Kooking update. (Hee. Kooking. I’m a dork.)

Last night I cooked ALL THREE ELEMENTS of dinner from a recipe. I cooked country style ribs in the crock pot and then I consulted the PDub arsenal for Butternut Squash Puree and Roasted Garlic New Potatoes. The entire meal was amazingly delicious in every way. I thought MrZ and LilZ were going to fist fight over the potatoes and that squash? YUMMY. That was a first for me: cooking an entire meal from recipes. The most I usually do is an entree and maybe one side, but most of the time I just make ONE thing from a recipe and everything else is from a box or a can. Last night was a very awesome milestone.

And the night before? I cooked Guiness Pork Chops with Apples. I kept the potatoes out because I was cooking scalloped potatoes as a side. So…after that dinner? What did my husband do? He Facebooked it:

My husband doesn’t do much online other than the periodic Facebook update. So – when my dinner made it into his status change? I felt like I had won the Culinary Lottery! Of course…when he heard I had cooked with Guiness? It wouldn’t have mattered how it tasted. All that mattered was: “Mmmmm….beer.” But LilZ liked it too, so I consider him to be a little less biased towards the ingredients. Either way: TWO SUCCESSFUL MEALS IN ONE WEEK. I am just going to go ahead and admit it: I AM AWESOME.

So…there you have it. I’m becoming a better cook, a better Mom, and a better steward of this planet and I can honestly say I owe most of it to this blog and to you. You all deserve a cookie. Now…can you give me your favorite cookie recipe so I can make you one?

One day. ONE DAY. That’s how long it took us to accumulate that pile of trash. If you’ll recall, we kept track of our trash for a whole week so that we could really see how wasteful we are. As you can see above? ONE DAY. Have I mentioned that? ONE DAY.

I definitely learned a lot over the last week. To start things off on a positive note, I’ll start with the good things I noticed.

• While my box/can cooking style might not be that exciting for my family, it makes it so that most of our dinner-created trash is recyclable!
• And we actually recycle that stuff!

Not much of a positive list, huh? But really – that last part? Big deal. We sent recyclables away with the trash every week for YEARS. Now that we actually take the stuff to the recycling center, we’ve made big progress. Below are pictures of one week’s worth of recyclables we take in. Stuff that we used to send out with the garbage.

That’s something to be proud of, right? Yes. And now that I’ve boosted us a bit: time for THE BAD.

• Most of our trash consists of disposable diapers. Which is why most of you use cloth diapers, I know.
• I do so little from scratch, we make hardly any compostable waste. Which is sad, really. MrZ is still going to set us up a compost bin, just in case I some day I attempt to cook with real ingredients, we’ll be able to do something with the waste.
• Another huge portion of our waste comes from packaged items I only buy to make it easier to be lazy. As in, I buy the boxes of oatmeal in packets for NikkiZ’s breakfast instead of a larger container of oatmeal that I scoop servings from every day. One week’s worth of lazy-style oatmeal creates quite a bit of waste, I learned.

There are several things we’re going to attempt to modify in our consumption habits so that this project in six months will hopefully yield better results. All in all? Totally glad we did it. Even though it was embarrassing to look at all week. And the rest of my family? Who did not ask for this project in the first place? Was very glad that I stopped taking pictures of our garbage every night.

Another picture of one day’s worth of trash. ONE DAY.

I’m doing something insane, guys. Seriously. Even crazier than I usually do around here. I’ve joined a challenge posed by a new Green Blog I found to keep my trash in my garage for an entire week to see how much garbage I create. And if you think that sounds crazy, consider that the guy issuing the challenge is one day away from finishing one whole year of doing the SAME THING. As in, as we speak, he has a year’s worth of garbage in his basement. It’s a fascinating story you should totally check out if you get a chance. But in the meantime? Let’s ponder what the HELL I’ve signed up for here!

Why, exactly, are you doing this?
If you’ll recall, my family decided to make the effort some time last year to start taking anything to the recycling center that we could. Especially the things that they don’t want in the bin: like glass and cereal boxes. (Huntsville residents, find the list of what goes in the bin here.) This made a HUGE impact in how much garbage we created every week as before that? We were about to have to ask the city to give us another garbage bin. And that’s kinda disgraceful. Since then, some weeks have gone by where we forget to but the garbage bin on the street, but we have enough room for TWO weeks of garbage in it now. So it’s not a big deal.

I’d like to try to make that amount even smaller this year. Just find ways to reuse, avoid over-packaged items, recycle more, anything to reduce what we send out in our garbage bin every week. I thought, in order to see how much of a change we make, monitoring it for a week would be a great idea! I decided we’d do this project for a week now, and a week in six months and compare the lists to see how much we reduce.

What Exactly Will You Be Putting In Your Garage This Week?
Essentially I’ll be removing all trash cans in the house for the week, forcing everyone to give their garbage to me so that I can sort it in the garage. We’re going to keep our recycling pile, but not take it in for a week so that we can see that pile after a week. All of the garbage without food or grime on it will go in another pile, compartmentalized if there’s a lot of repeats. Anything that we can wash clean will go in that pile, but anything that we can’t get clean enough for me to feel comfortable leaving in the garage…that will go in the outdoor garbage bin. But not until AFTER I’ve documented it and photographed it.

How Will You Document The Results?
At the end of each day I’m going to photograph our garbage before dividing it up into the areas we’ll keep it in for the week. I’ll also document it in list form so that at the end of the week I’ll have that list along with the photographic evidence of how truly wasteful we are. So my children can hold it against me in 10 years.

Will You Try To Create Less Garbage Than You Would Normally To Make Yourself Look Better?
No. The point of this is to see how much we waste normally. In 6 months, when I do this again, hopefully we’ll have adopted new habits that will reduce our garbage production, but I’m not going to do those things this week. That said – I’m sure I’ll avoid certain things because I don’t feel like carrying the trash around with me, but I’ll do my best to keep things wasteful as usual!

What about diapers
I will count how many of those go in the outside bin, but that are indeed GOING IN THE BIN. I’m not going to take this so far to photograph dirty diapers or keep them for a week. There are several reasons why we don’t use cloth diapers and while I’m sure we could change this year, and we might decide that – it’s not something I can up and decide to start tomorrow. And also? We’re trying to show how much garbage we create and we use disposable diapers, so changing that now wouldn’t give us a clear picture.

Is your whole family participating in this insanity?
We are participating as a household, and then I’m participating fully. In other words, any garbage the household produces will be documented. Any garbage I produce outside of the house I’ll bring home to document. But – my family won’t have to do that part. I’m not going to inflict my own insanity on them.

Now – Starting when I wake up tomorrow morning (good timing, huh?) until when I wake up next Thursday – I’ll be doing this. This week will be my baseline so that in six months I can try to calculate how we’ve improved throughout the year. Hopefully seeing this garbage in a pile in my garage will really help me see how wasteful we are and will inspire me to make changes in our lives this year.

Either that, or it will gross me out so much I run away screaming and continue my life living in the woods and surviving off of fish and berries.

We’ll see.

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Next are the series of questions Dave posed to those of us participating. He has an “After” set of questions for us to answer as well. I’ll include those when I’m done.

What do you think makes up the largest part of your trash?
I think diapers would be the most by weight, however. Especially if I brought home the ones they change at daycare. (Which I will NOT be doing by the way. They already think I’m weird enough there.)

What do you think makes up the largest part of your recycling?
In terms of space? It’s boxes and cans from dinner prep every night because I rarely (never) cook from scratch. Lucky those are recyclable so that eases my guilt a bit. But I have a feeling I may find that my diet coke consumption will actually be the most. I’m curious to see.

Are you saving everything or keeping a list of what you would have saved?
Saving for a week, keeping a list, and photographing.

If you are saving everything, where are you keeping it?
In the garage. Except for diapers and any item I worry may attract mice (that I couldn’t clean enough or something like that). I’ll list those out, and then I’ll put them in our outdoor garbage bin.

Do you compost and if not, what will you do with your food waste?
We don’t compost now, but that is one of the things we are going to start this year. Our food waste (which there’s usually not much) will just go into the garbage disposal. If it can’t, we’ll put it in a bag and put it in the outside garbage bin.

The green movement is a weird one, doncha’ think? I live in the South, home of the evangelical fundamentalist southern Baptist, yet I have never met anyone more pushy than a Green person. Either they’re preaching against certain lifestyles because they’re adding to the greenhouse emissions or they’re scoffing at the glass bottle in the garbage can that someone didn’t take to the recycle bin. They openly tell me I’m ruining the planet with my use of disposable diapers when I’m really just trying to be funny. They are VERY SERIOUS. Do not mess with them.

And the opposition is just as extreme. I’ve heard more heated arguments debating the cause of climate change than the existence of God. It’s a weird era, to say the least.

But here’s the thing that frustrates me the most: So many people seem to miss the point. Does it matter what, if anything, is even causing climate change? Does it matter if the hole in the ozone was caused by man or by nature? Does it matter if recycling actually consumes more energy than waste-disposal? Does it matter if you’re a tree-hugging, baby-killing liberal or a god-fearing, conservative? I guess it matters to some, and on some levels should matter to all. But – doesn’t much of that seem to miss the point? Or maybe not that it misses the point, but that it takes away focus from the simplest, yet most important of ideas: Waste Less.

We — as US citizens and wealthy humans on a planet with finite resources — should quit throwing away so much crap. WASTE LESS. Why isn’t everyone just using that motto? Can anyone argue with that? Is there anyone out there that honestly thinks our society isn’t wasteful? If so, they need to walk down my street and see the garbage each house produces in 7 days. Does anyone actually think that we should continue abusing natural resources? Is there anyone that says we should be throwing more crap away?

My family and I are wasteful. I can say that very honestly. We are actually very wasteful. Not as wasteful as some, I’m sure. But no where near as resourceful as my Dad who saved yogurt cups (back when they were actual cups) to use as drinking cups on camping trips. He had a backpack that had a hole in it so he cut out the zipper pouch from the front and used that as a bag for small tools. He made furniture out of old wooden crates (Right, Dad? Isn’t that what the TV stand is made out of?) and rescued a plethora of trashed equipment on the job to use in science fairs and in many ways around our house. I have never met anyone who re-uses more than my father. Once, he explained it that growing up in a big family on a farm, you learned to save everything in case you needed it later and (a) didn’t have a 24-hour Wal-Mart down the road or (b) couldn’t afford to buy the item if you did. So you use pencils until they are too small to write with, and pens until the ink runs dry. You use both sides of the paper and save mis-matched socks for dust rags.

The older (And possibly wiser? Nah. Surely not.) I get, the more I want to do the same.

MrZ and I have always held to the “Be Less Wasteful” mindset, but the manifestation of it has been a little lacking. Except for one area: We rarely, if ever, throw away food. That’s one thing we really don’t waste. We eat leftovers until they’re gone. We take food very seriously. But everything else? Not so much. We’re just busy. It’s easier to throw stuff away than to decide if it can be re-used in anyway.

However, we recently started watching this show that has inspired me in ways I just don’t know how to explain. It’s a show on the Sundance Channel called “It’s Not Easy Being Green”. It’s about the most fascinating family ever. I won’t bore you with the details except for the husband (engineer) and wife (hippy) prove that two different views on the world can still bring you to the same place in life: Where We Try To Be More Responsible Citizens Of This Planet. (Also, their son is cute and is always shirtless. Bonus.) This show does not preach politics. It simply shows one family trying to change their life. Become self-sustaining. They are just trying to learn and it motivates me to do the same. We’re not going to be driving a hybrid anytime soon because we can’t afford a new car. I don’t know how to sew so making use of old clothing may not be an option. The wife on the show is always talking about doing “Whatever You Can.” Not everyone can build a water-wheel on their property to power their lights. But we can try to create less waste. And that’s what we’ve been trying to do.

Before we throw things away now, we stop and just think if it could be used in anyway. Now, Huntsville has a Waste-to-Energy facility so we can throw away with less guilt than the average person. But – we are trying not to. We are not going to start using re-usable maxi pads (sorry, not there yet) but we are saving bread bags to use a lunch bags. We use grocery bags to line the trashcans. We are using both sides of the paper. It’s nothing ground-breaking. We’re not going to win any awards. But we are taking steps to using less. No matter what side of the “GREEN” argument you are on – you must admit – we use faster than the earth gives back. And we are just trying to tip that scale a little bit. One re-used diaper box at a time.