Property of HGTV: Lovable Chaos

This post is actually from www.hgtv.com/changetheworld I am blogging for my own company (it's like giving it away... yeesh!) My assignment is to document my family's attempts at living green for a year. My call sign? "Gang Green". Here's the first post:


In my home, there is no clutter. The counters are kept clean. The paperwork never piles up. The laundry is immediately folded and put away while still warm. I have a beautifully manicured lawn with flowers that bloom each season. My two children are fed healthy dinners each night and then we read from classic novels before promptly going to bed.

Okay, you’re not buying this are you?

If I really had to describe life in my home in two words or less it would be “lovable chaos”. I have a husband with a home-based business, a 14 year old girl, an 8 year old boy, a large dog, and what seems like an even larger cat.

I am big on preservation and living green. I love this earth and don’t want to leave a big ugly footprint. However, the difficulty of leading that kind of life increases proportionally with the amount of living creatures in your home. So I would say I’m not earning too many green points compared to others.

Each day doors are left ajar, lights are left on, TV’s are left blaring, someone stands staring into the fridge for minutes at a time, my daughter takes 30 minute showers, and I sometimes dry a laundry load twice to fluff it up because I had left it in there so long.

My goal this year is to make my home and my family more earth friendly. This blog will be my witness and confession to the progress I am making as a working mother with her hands overly full who’s trying to “go green”.

For the record, I do have one can for garbage and one can for recycling. That’s about as “earth-conscious” as it gets in my house. However, I once considered switching to cloth napkins. But when the paper napkin package got down to three left, I panicked and drove my SUV to the store for more. Does that count?