As Kermit said, "It ain't easy being green..."

Well, I have officially spent one week trying to be more aware of my environmental impact and living more "greenly" (if that isn't a real word, it is now...).

I have had some mild successes, and also some definite failures. I did actually go to Lowe's and swap out the heat lamp in my bathroom for an energy saving light; I was happy to have followed through on that. While I was there, an employee told me that sometimes Lowe's has an event where they team up with Puget Sound Energy and for every standard light bulb you bring into the store, you can exchange it for an energy-efficient one instead, for free! What an awesome idea! It eliminates people saying that they don't want to spend the money changing their lighting; it's simple and makes a difference. I had no idea there was anything like this, which makes me wonder how people find out about it. Perhaps a promotional opportunity there because that is a wonderful program that the entire community should be a part of...

I also did better this week at consolidating all my running around so that I drove less. By just taking a couple minutes to think about what I am trying to do that day instead of making multiple trips I was able to map everything out into one or two drives per day. Not only is this better from an environmental standpoint, I even ended up feeling less scrambled, which is always a plus!

My one huge failure for the week is that I have to confess I have not gotten a reusable water bottle yet. Even though I refill them and then recycle the plastic water bottles, I know that they are still terrible to use. I honestly am not completely sure why I didn't accomplish fixing that this week; I think I just have to switch my mind set. I am so used to just grabbing a plastic water bottle and it's easy for me, which isn't a sufficient excuse to not make the switch...

So that's my one big goal for this next week; to find an environmentally friendly water bottle that I can get myself in the habit of using. So cheers to success and wish me luck!