How It Started

It's about time I tell you how and why I'm on this journey.

It all started when I gave birth to my little angel I named Brie (short for Gabrielle).  Three months premature, she had to stay incubated for two and a half months.  (I was only allowed to hold her when she was already two months old despite insisting that she would breathe better when I would touch her.)  A stay in a private hospital that long meant an enormous bill.  Thankfully, someone helped cover a huge part of the bill and other expenses.  But, knowing what future expenses a baby can bring, I didn't want to ask for any other monetary assistance from anyone else for any reason once I brought the Brie home.  So I had to come up with some plan to budget what money I had left after I left my job to give birth.

After much contemplation, I decided to completely forget about buying my angel any kind of formula milk.  She would be exclusively breastfed by me for however long it takes to wean her.  Her birthday's coming up in a month and a half and I'm proud to say she's still exclusively breastfed!  Just making that decision made all the difference.  All other mothers I talked to during my daily visits to the hospital who were not as firm in their decision to breastfeed, who allowed themselves the leeway of buying formula milk "in case I don't have enough", eventually "ran out" of breast milk shortly after bringing their child home.  (Their expectation of "not having enough breast milk" came true.)

Other decision I made was to drastically cut down on her expected consumption of disposable diapers.  I remembered my mother using cloth diapers (lampin or bird's-eye cloth) for us.  Researching online, I was inspired to make diapers for her and use the three dozen bird's-eye cloths I had as padding or inserts.  I came up with the simplest design I could think of that didn't require me to measure a lot and make curves.  All pieces were rectangles.  Not having my own sewing machine, I sewed the first one by hand.  This is what two of them look like:

The first one I made is in the middle.  To the right is an example of
what I use as padding. The left diaper was a modified version of the first.

After accomplishing that, I still felt I could still do more.  I found so many ideas on the Internet but I wanted a singular focus that could define a specific goal that would define everything I would do.  Having a goal to "be green" was just too broad and could be subject to widely varying points of view depending on who is giving the advice or tip.  I wanted something simpler, something to the point that would mean living green, aiming for sustainability etc etc.

Then I stumbled onto Bea's Zero Waste Home blog.  Eureka!!!  Aiming for a zero waste home was about as green as I could possible get.  A zero waste home would practically leave no carbon footprint.  Well, it may still have but it would definitely have a much smaller one than most homes.  Such a house would mean the environment would have one less family to worry about.  One less family who adds to the garbage now killing our earth.

So, now here I am...on my own journey to a zero waste home and a better future!

How did you get started?  What inspired you to make a change?