Living Frugal or is it Living Green?

If you are frugal, chances are you are ‘green’. If you live green, chances are you are frugal. Simple enough. Those who are frugal are not wasteful, and the same goes for green living. It’s all about being more conscientious of the things around you and what is used and what is wasted. For instance: I conserve water in my home, along with electricity. Primarily because I want to keep the cost down. BUT in doing so, I am also being kinder to the environment by not wasting unnecessary water OR using more electricity, burning more fuel and leaving less of a carbon footprint by not using my dryer. As I’ve always been frugal, for the most part, I started to look into being greener. I was surprised that I am already green. Of course, there are some things that I should start doing that would make it more so, such as taking my own canvas totes to the stores instead of getting new plastic bags every time (but then what happens when I run low on the bags that I use as liners in the small trashcans in bathrooms??!!). I’ve started a ‘small’ garden. Actually, it’s small Styrofoam cups with a few seeds in each. Once they start sprouting & getting bigger I will decide if I am doing container or ground gardening. Plus I am trying to stagger the sprouting so I don’t suddenly have too much lettuce, herbs, etc.! I’ve gone back to the mindset that if I absolutely need something new to wear, I will shop thrift/2nd hand stores. I did that over the weekend and actually discovered a terrific new thrift store! Woohoo!! For $5 I got 3 new skirts for work & 2 pairs of shorts (ironically made from organic cotton!). I wish there was some way to easily cut back on the amount of driving I do. I mean, substantially. 30% would be nice. I’ve played with the idea of taking the city bus to work one day a week to see how ‘bad’ it really is. If I could park the truck 3 days a week, I’d be happy. Then again, that’s nothing since I don’t drive it on the weekends (dh has a company car – black hemi charger) that I drive on the weekends since his gas is ‘free’ from the company. I don’t put free in quotes to mean badly, but we still pay for it in the end on our income taxes. I could start riding my bike more. Not sure if I could ride it to work. 7 miles. Over 2 bridges. HOT outside. I dress up for work (law firm). Don’t know if I could pull that off or not. Wonder how long it would take me to get here anyway. Hour? Nah. Maybe? I might try it on my day off just to see how long it takes and how hard it really would be. Would be a nice ride though, ocean view ½ way and then the isle view ¼ of the way & the rest would be downtown, which the traffic would scare me at that point!! But the real point, and really, the only point: Whether you choose to live frugally, or you choose to live green, or be a tree hugger, or be conservative, it's all the same in the end. Just a matter of the words you put together to describe it :).

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