Green and Content “In Plenty And In Want”

   I am in the Kermit the Frog camp: trying, yet discovering that “it’s just not that easy being green!” Or is it? Kermit and I might also say “it’s just not that easy to ‘think green’ either.”  Especially when we “live in plenty.” However, times when I “live in want,” when necessity becomes the mother of invention, Mother Nature and I benefit.  

   My husband lost his job three months ago. We have been forced to “think green” more than ever before. Unfortunately, I don’t mean in the environmentally friendly way; I mean we have far less “green stuff” available for managing our budget. We have been forced to get creative in order to save where we can to protect our world, as we know it. It was not easy to cut luxuries and frills that we perceived as “must haves.” We quickly discovered the difference between wants and needs, have developed a plan to stay afloat, and are doing what we have to do. We have found comfort in working together and contentment in how  these changes have become second nature.

   I don’t do the grocery shopping for the household anymore. I used to when I was a stay-at-home-Mom, although it was not in my nature. I loathed everything about it: the inventory control, the list making, the coupon cutting, the shopping with two kids in tow, the loading and unloading of the car, and the putting away of everything . I am ever grateful that my husband and his brother have taken over these duties. All I am responsible for now is buying and hanging a long magnetic pad of paper on the refrigerator so that our four-adult household can write their wants and needs on the list and, like magic, those wants and needs appear.

   Last week, my husband reminded me that we were almost out of paper on the magnetic pad. I found myself “thinking green” when I was deciding about replacing that pad of paper, and I became content when I decided to get creative in an effort to save and protect both my personal and global worlds in any small, baby-step way that I could.

   I did not run out to buy a new magnetic pad of paper. Instead, I tripped back in time to a childhood memory of my Aunt Dot—a delightful, inspiring ninety year old who has always been eco-friendly and highly organized when frugality rather than awareness dictated it. I can visualize her grocery lists on her harvest gold refrigerator. Now, my lists look just like hers. I have emptied the “junk mail” that arrives in plain envelopes and have placed these envelopes in the cabinet near the refrigerator. As needed, I let a dual purpose magnet–Dr./Dentist appointment or the magnet ripped off the used up pad of paper–hold the envelope to the refrigerator. The flap-side of the envelope becomes the perfect blank page for the grocery list, while the envelope itself houses coupons and receipts.

   Maybe it is easier than we think…this “being green.”