Being Green And Happy With Family

In case you missed it, my dad is here for his annual summer trip, which has been keeping me pretty busy. And I have found that for me, being green can be tricky with company, even when that company is family.

For example, my dad, being a man, shaves every day. And when he shaves he leaves the water running….full blast. Now Todd shaves every day too, but he fills the sink instead of letting the water run. And I know it’s silly, but even though it’s my house and it literally gives me a stomach ache to see all that water being wasted, I just can’t seem to tell my dad to fill the sink and turn the water off. Put that under things to work on.

Also when he comes out we always go places. And lots of times going places means eating out whether it be lunch or just getting snacks that we wouldn’t normally eat. Now whenever I go out I always skip napkins, hi, ridiculously wasteful. This however, would not be the case with my dad. While I skip them for me and the boys (cuz I’ve got my PeopleTowles and Litter Free Lunch napkins) he doesn't. Great.

But that’s just me. While I feel these things are wasteful, I have a hard time telling other people what they should do.

So instead of worrying about the things that are being done wrong, I’ve been trying extra hard to do the things that I think are right. Everywhere we’ve gone I’ve taken our water bottles, I’ve made sure to have extra napkins so even if some get dirty I still have more and all snacks have been packed in reusable containers like the super cool reusable snack bags from Litter Free Lunch. Oh, there will be much more about those bags later, so stay tuned.

I know some people probably think I’m shirking my responsibilities not getting my dad to change. After all they are small changes and it shouldn’t be that hard to tell him that it could be done better. But I think that there are others out there that know that trying to change your family is just quite possibly more difficult then trying to change strangers.

Well at any rate it felt good to get that off my chest and hopefully you don’t think any less of me for not going all green ninja on my dad. Sometimes even green ninjas need a break.



Update: So I'm talking to my dad about the shaving and he tells me that actually he doesn't shave every day and he does sometimes fill the sink. The things you learn when you take the time to ask.

Oh, and I should point out that he he is the master of reusing plastic baggies. He washes and reuses them until they fall apart.

You know, I bet if I mentioned the napkins he'd probably be willing to find a way to make it work for him.

Green ninja strikes again! ;)