It's Easy Being Green!

Most of us know to recycle our trash. Maybe we're good about not running the water while we brush our teeth. Maybe we even reuse a few items in our house. But there are some really easy ways to be a bit greener without much investment on your end, time, money or even patience wise.

The last thing we need is another complicated way to be greener right? Buying new appliances that are supposedly greener, or using new items instead of the old ones. Sometimes, you can just modify how you use something and be just a bit greener.

• Solar Charger: How many electronic devices do you have around your house that need charging? Between cell phones, handheld devices, MP3 players, PDA's and cameras can all be charged by a low cost solar charger. 

• Insulate your water heater. Heating water is one of the top uses of electricity in American homes today. If you're already installed a new, more efficient heater, turned the thermostat down and are taking shorter showers, you can always buy your water heater a blanket to keep the heat in the tank from escaping. 

• Stop using the heat dry cycle on your dishwasher. Using vinegar in the rinse aid compartment will keep water spots at bay, and you can simply open the door and let your dishes dry naturally, for free. In the winter, this will also help keep moisture in your air naturally. 

• Turn your oven off sooner. Most ovens today are built very well and are tremendously well insulated. Turn your oven off 5 or 10 minutes before your food is done. The temperature will stay the same in your oven, provided you don't open the door, and your food will continue to cook, without spending the money on electricity. 

• Don't use a pot smaller than your burner. This can waste up to 40% of the electricity needed to heat the burner. Pick the proper sized pot for your burner size, and if you have to, go larger instead of smaller. 

• Stop buying toys that need batteries, and are made solely of plastic. For many generations, children of the world have been entertained by noiseless, light-less, powerless and wooden toys. Your child will be just as entertained with wooden cars as they will be with cars that are plastic and light up and make noise. Also, you can pass down wooden toys many times to get extra life from them. Better yet, check flea markets, eBay, Craigslist, Freecycle and your local yard sales for wooden toys to buy secondhand. 

• Put up clothes lines. Not only outside but inside. You can find retractable clotheslines for your home in most major discount stores. Between indoor clothes lines and a clothes horse, you shouldn't need to use your dryer very often, even in the winter. Think you don't have room for a clothes line outside? Think again. An umbrella clothesline provides dozens of feet of drying space in a very small compact manner. Also, they're very easy to install. 

• Forget CFL's. Between the toxins they let off when they break, and how most of them will only last a few years, LED's are the way to go. You can get up to 30 years use from an LED bulb, and while they're expensive up front, they're an investment in your electric bill and your green living. 

• Get better about green habits. Make it a point, in the morning, to open all your blinds and curtains. This will let in the maximum amount of sunlight, and allow you to keep your lights off all day. Even on a rainy day, you can get enough daylight to forgo artificial lighting. Remember, humans lived for centuries without electricity, and only had daylight. 

• Invest in a really nice travel coffee cup, and then use it. Americans are the number one consumers of coffee, drinking in 400 million cups of coffee daily. Think of all that disposable trash! Your cup, lid, heat jacket, stirrer  sugar and cream packets! Yikes! Most espresso and coffee shops also offer a discount if you bring your own cup! 

• Eat one less meal a week with meat. Going meatless just one more day a week will help tremendously. Not only for the environment, but for your wallet and your waistline as well. 

• Skip the bottled water. Water bottles are the number one container waste in the nation. Invest instead, in a filtered reusable water bottle to take with you, on the go. 

• Try to borrow, instead of buy anytime you can. Perhaps your neighbor has a hedge trimmer and you have a tree pruner. Ask him if he'd be willing to lend out his, for borrowing yours when you need it. Borrow movies and books instead of buying. If you need to use a tool only a couple of times a year, call your local home improvement store and see if they rent tools by the hour. This will also save you space in your garage. 

• Lastly, if you're moving soon, try to think about your impact on where you're going to buy a house. If you can, try to live as locally as possible to your main haunts, and try to get within biking or walking distance of major retailers and shopping. Before you try to decide "how much house you can possibly afford" think about downsizing. Most of us, could live just fine with less stuff and less space in our homes. Less space means less heating and cooling, less area to clean, and better yet, nine times of ten cheaper housing prices.