A low-waste block party

Last Tuesday for National Night Out, my street held a block party. Our street doesn't technically have any 'blocks' -- we're just one narrow, windy, pot-holed street about 1/2 mile long, comprising about 50 households. Typically a party with that many people would generate a lot of waste: paper plates and napkins, plastic cups and utensils. But my very eco-minded neighbors who organized the party wisely printed up flyers asking everyone to bring their own plates, utensils, cups and napkins, as well as a dish to share and a beverage of choice. Would folks comply?

Yes! Most people brought durables, and our hosts put out extras. There were a few disposables (I can see some in the photo), but not that many. A recycling bin captured glass beer bottles and aluminum soda cans, and our hosts put out jugs of water and durable cups. They didn't try to capture any compostable food waste since there was such a mix of meat, grain and dairy items. (But when curbside food scrap composting goes Portland-wide next year, we will be able to scrape our potluck plates right into our yard debris bins!) At the end of the evening, after 50 or so adults and children cycled through, all that remained was a small 20-gallon garbage can filled about 1/3 of the way with food and disposable waste. Not too shabby. I tossed our scraped plates and dirty utensils into a plastic bag and brought them home to wash, as did many of my neighbors. Easy peasy.

My low-carbon, high-super-fun gym

I've been in a bit of an eco-funk these past several weeks. I don't know if it was our extended dreary weather or the gulf oil spill, but I haven't been terribly motivated to try new 'green-living' projects. (You might have noticed, yes?) Not that I've reverted to old habits -- I mean, once you've given up Secret anti-perspirant there is no going back.! (Yesterday's high-90's weather was the ultimate test of my homemade deodorant, and I'm still loving it.) If there's been one bright spot in my day-to-day routine, it's been the accidental discovery of the most enjoyable type of exercise I've ever experienced. It's a story of a neighborhood business that gave me a whole new appreciation of my community, and frankly, my body.

It started with a postcard handed to me at our farmer's market. CrossFit Hillsdale, it said. Come try it free for a week, no obligation. I knew this place -- it had opened up right in my neighborhood just a few months earlier. Literally a 10-minute walk from my house. Hmm, a gym in my neighborhood -- that's a little too convenient. The exercises on the main Web site looked really intimidating: pull-ups and barbells and those crazy iron balls with handles (kettlebells) that make you think of Russian musclemen. It looked hard, and I doubted I could physically do it. But after a winter spent sick with non-stop sinus and respiratory infections, my body needed a kick in the ass. I kept going back to the line on the gym's Web site, that you don't have to be in good shape to do it, just show up.

So I showed up. And I kept showing up. Now, exercise is a pretty personal experience. You just need to do what works for you. And I think there's a reason that my old system of driving to the gym filled with machines and people with earbuds staring at televisions didn't work for me. I wasn't getting any support there. At my new gym, I was getting support. I was being taught correct form and being encouraged by my peers and being put in the position of really challenging myself in a very motivating environment. The workouts are different every day, and there's almost this game-like feeling to them, so it's fun. It's by far the hardest working-out I've ever done, and oftentimes I have to dumb-down an exercise or go slow, but it's fine. Because you know what? I've got abs now. And I'm getting stronger and more confident in my ability to push myself. It's awesome.

 

That's the Oprah-moment part of the story. What's also cool about this particular gym is its small footprint. It's a small space, compared to most gyms, but it makes use of every square inch. There aren't any televisions or fancy, plugged-in machines, just dumbells, barbells, kettlebells, medicine balls, a couple of rowing machines, pull-up bars and lots of floor space for push-ups, sit-ups, box jumps, jumping rope and the like. You don't need a lot of interior space to go for a run. Wally, the owner, told me that 80% of his equipment was bought used on Craigslist. Most days he rolls up the garage door so we get fresh air. It's in the basement of the building, so it stays cool on hot days. And because it's located at the base of a neighborhood, there are a few members (like me) who walk or bike there. Wally bikes there every. single. day. And, bonus: my kids both now take Kung Fu there.

So that's what I've been up to. Getting fit at a local, low-carbon gym that offers high-energy opportunities my family didn't even know existed before! We love it. Here's to taking care of ourselves and taking full advantage of our neighborhood!

(All photos by Westside Academy of Kung Fu / Crossfit Hillsdale)

Building local community through parenting discussion groups

I don't have a parenting roadmap. For the most part I've just tried my hardest to role model and make sure my kids know they are loved and supported. But the tween and teen years are not too far down the road, and I know that stuff starts to change for these innocent young 'uns. Media influences, peers, hormones, school pressure, dating -- all this messy stuff that makes me long for a stunted-growth machine that can freeze their ages at 5 and 8 for a few more years. Thankfully, I think I've found a way to make the aging process less scary: a locally-based, self-directed parenting discussion group.

Maybe there are lots of these around the country, but here in my neck of the woods these groups are ramping up in popularity. I've just started meeting with a boys parenting discussion group, and I'm already hooked and feeling very excited about future meetings. Here's how it works:

You find 10-12 parents of boys (or girls) from your community who want to be in the discussion group. You decide how often to meet (once a month in our case) and where to meet (preferably out of hearing range of children), like in a church or library meeting room. Each parent has purchased a discussion guide and they read one chapter, which is discussed at the next meeting. The discussion guide we're using (don't be turned off by the infomercial feel of this Web site; the guides are quite good) was compiled by a local parenting coach and is chock full of articles by parenting experts and includes questions/exercises for the group to discuss. Each chapter covers a specific theme, like media, personal development, safety, etc. We talk about our own personal challenges and learn about how other parents are dealing with various issues and provide support for one another. We also take an 'oath' of confidentiality.

What I love about this self-directed model is that you are pulling from your immediate community and working together with parents who likely have similar values. (You can also hand-pick who to invite.) Two of my neighbors are in this group, as well as parents from our school and friends of friends. These are people I'll see on walks, at the grocery store, at school -- people who will be in my life in some capacity for many years to come. We meet in a location that is close and convenient and conducive to car-pooling, at a time that works for all. We'll be building a small network of local support over the course of year, which is how long our boys group will meet, and (hopefully) developing tools to help us raise healthy, happy boys. Hooray!

Have you participated in something similar? Are these groups gaining popularity in your community? The guide we're using (which is best for parents of elementary and middle school-aged kids) is not regionally-focused, so anyone from anywhere could use it. Start your own!

Celebrating moms

I'm easy to please when it comes to celebrations like birthdays and Mother's Day. I'll take a hand-drawn card wishing me a 'happy mothe's day' or telling me that I'm the 'beast mom' over anything mass produced. Flowers? That hand-picked bunch of dandelions is as cherished as the supermarket bouquet my husband sometimes spontaneously brings home. I don't need anything fancier than that.

One of the best Mother's Day gifts ever was the video my husband made of our kids the year before our oldest went into kindergarten. He mixed in still photos and video, using iMovie. The kids spoke in voice-over (with loving prompts from my hub) about how much they love me, and all the fun things we do together. It's so beautiful and simple and sweet. And the memories! When I look back at it now, it's hard to believe they were ever so little. How babyish my young one sounds saying: 'Mama is my favorite friend.' And my oldest (now 8) struggling at 5 to spell out the looooong word: M-O-T-H-E-R.

Some Mother's Days didn't involve gifts at all. Just special experiences like the one time my family made a favorite breakfast of French toast in bed. Or the year we picked that certain Sunday in May to kickoff gardening season, keeping our hands in the dirt all day.

Have any special Mother's Day memories or gifts to share? Please tell us about your best ones -- from both the giving and receiving points of view.

And from Heather and myself here at EnviroMom -- we wish our two wonderful moms a glorious mothe's day, because they're the beast!  Happy Mother's Day to all of you.

Time to share

 
My 2nd grader gets an allowance of $4 per week, $1 of which goes into a 'share' bank. Now that we've come to the end of the year we've been talking about what organization she wants to donate her 'share' to. Thanks to our school's wonderful Service Club, my kids have had a lot of exposure to the many needs of people in our community: food, clothing, books and basic everyday household items. This spirit of service and helping others gets talked about a lot this time of year, and it's a natural time to give. She's decided to give her money to the Oregon Food Bank, which is where you'll find our Service Club in January, sorting and packing food.

In Portland, both the Oregonian and Willamette Week newspapers have made it easy to donate to non-profit organizations with their respective giving guides. In addition, in-kind donations of warm coats, blankets and other winter clothing are always in need by so many non-profits. This weekend, take a peek into your closets (and your bank account) and see if there isn't something you can give to the folks in your community. Engage your children, make it a tradition, and instill that wonderful feeling that comes from sharing.

Networking among neighboring green schools

Theren's nothing I love better than a potluck dinner, and although I'm not sure what side dish I'm bringing to tonight's potluck, we're lucky to be in the abundant harvest season with heaps of local, organic produce coming out our ears. What's especially cool about tonight's potluck is that it's being hosted by one of the moms heading up the Green Team at a neighboring elementary school. We met randomly on a local playground this summer. This mom thought it would be a great idea if we all met and had an opportunity to get to know one another better. Socializing is always a good thing. With the added benefit of sharing knowledge so that each school doesn't have to reinvent the proverbial wheel. I've been frustrated by how long it takes to get things done at school, and often I'll read something cool in the paper about what another school is doing -- and just like one of my kids, I'll be all: 'Hey! I want that! How do we do that? Gimme that NOW!' As you can imagine, that approach is about as productive as when my kids try it. So you save the idea 'til the next meeting, bring it up, hopefully get some others fired up by it, and then do some research, and propose it to the principal or the district, then get some feedback about priorities and tight budgets, and ultimately get fairly depressed so you don't care anymore, and then it's the end of the year. Wow. Just call me Little Miss Sunshine! Gotta work on my attitude...

Couple of things our school's green team is focusing on for next year:

• Reduce the ridiculous number of catalogs our school office receives. Sure we've all done the Catalog Choice stuff at home. Now it's time to do it for our school. This will be a volunteer-heavy quest. It takes almost forever for the aforementioned service to kick in, so it'd probably be more effective to get a few parents to take stacks of catalogs, call the 800 numbers and get us off the mailing lists. High marks for easy, and if we make the calls, we should get off the lists fairly quickly.
• Increase usage of durable party kids in the classrooms. Last year, we tested the concept in one of the first grade classrooms. One parent put together a big tub of small durable plates, cups, spoons and cloth napkins. It was a hit. I believe it fell to the volunteer room parent to wash the stuff after a party, but it made a big dent the amount of trash the classroom was producing for celebrations. For next year, we are going to fundraise at our annual auction to provide more classroom durable kits. We are blessed with a generous, green-minded group of parents at our school. Hopefully, the auction will fund more durable kits and the class parents won't mind the added task of some occasional dishes and laundry.

Back to our random playground chat... I shared these initiatives with the potluck hosting mom, and she was excited to try these projects at her school too, and especially if we would share what we learned to save them some work. Likewise, their school has made progress in the styrofoam lunchtray war, by setting up a process to recycle their trays. This continues to be our Waterloo, as our school have different challenges. But maybe we can learn something. Or figure out a more creative approach. They also hosted a styrofoam weekend recycling event. Which we'd love to do. Anyhoo. Tonight's potluck should have parents representing a handful of neighboring schools. I'll let you know how it goes. Can't wait! Now, back to my side dish...

Do you network with neighboring green schools? What's the best green initiative your school has implemented? Send us an email, and we'd be glad to feature it in a post.

To-do list

Pardon me while I jot down a little to-do list.

1) Work with neighbors to start a collective, like the Ainsworth Street Collective featured last month in Sunset Magazine. Email the woman you met yesterday who's part of it. Investigate Bright Neighbor, a Web site designed to help Portland neighborhoods set up sharing programs.

2) Start saving for a gray water system as discussed in today's Oregonian article. Bathroom reno in 1-2 years...hopefully by then gray water systems will be legal in Oregon!

3) Test CFL bulbs in kitchen recessed light fixtures for best light quality. Keep hoping that LED technology will improve so the lights aren't so cold and blue!

4) Sew bulk food bags using monster pile of fabric in laundry room. It can't be that hard.

5) Fight the plastics industry -- and their stupid campaign to get millenials to think plastic is really cool -- by buying less plastic. Seriously: make the yogurt and the salsa already, and take a bread-baking class if you have to. It's time.

6) Despite your recent good hair days, rethink the Pantene Pro-V shampoo. You may look good on the surface, but what is the guilt doing to your inner child? Not to mention the sodium lauryl sulfate? Try the no-poo for a month? Will it make my straight, fine hair limp and greasy? There's only one way to find out.

7) Sweat more: on the bike, on a hike, at the community center gym, playing kickball at the park. Be a better active role model for your children.

There! Why am I still sitting here?

Feel free to add your to-dos in the comments. (It will feel good to get them out of your head.) And have a glorious weekend!

Green mom or eco-freak? You decide...

Top indicators that you have crossed the line from regular ol' heart-in-the-right-place green mom to eco-freak:

• Taking your kids to a public restroom and failing to control them from tearing off an extra sheet from one of those 'awesome' automatic paper towel dispensers, then finding you have no place to leave the toweling so that another person might use it instead of thinking it is garbage, then sticking it in your purse (while worrying some stranger might come in and think you are stealing) because you can't abide the thought of just wasting it
• Asking your friend if she'll flush up or down while entering a restroom that uses dual-flush toilets
• Bringing home -- not just your own compostable food waste and/or recyclables -- but also that of all your co-workers
• Opting to skip a dinner party because you have far too many leftovers in your fridge that your family really should be eating, and can't stand the idea of all that food going to waste
• Taking pictures of your compost pile, and showing it to others with comments like 'You think your compost looks good? Well take a look at this...'
• Obsessing about recyclables while on vacation
• Bringing a non-fiction book titled Ecological Intelligence on summer vacation and actually preferring it to the juicy fiction selection that was also brought along

Turns out I've crossed the line from green mom to eco-freak. And I think I'm ok with that. How about you? Got any good ones to share?

Climate champions: starting conversations

Heather, our friend Carol and I attended one of the town hall meetings Portland is hosting on its Climate Action Plan. I don't know if I'm just easy to impress, or what, but I think it's fantastic that our city continues to take initiative on this global problem. It was news to me that Portland has been on it -- I believe they said since 1993 -- long before I'd ever head the terms 'global warming' or 'climate change.' They are seeking feedback before July 13, and what frequently came up in our session was the phrase: 'It's just great that we're having this conversation.' From the real-time surveys they took from those attending, we were not atypical. These people are pro-solar, bike-riding, vegetarian, green team, One Can A Month kind of people.

The plan, which Heather outlined, identifies eight areas where regular folk, just like you and me, can make changes with a goal of reducing carbon emissions by 80 percent. Ambitious? You bet! And a heck a lot easier to take actions in our own lives than to talk about it with friends, family, and neighbors who haven't yet drunk of the green kool-aid.

I left the meeting charged up. I will become a 'climate champion'! In many ways, I feel I already am one. But it's easy talking to you guys and gals. We're preaching to the choir, right? So how do you have conversations with those who are not buying into the science supporting global warming, or are in denial because they don't want to change their ways? I hope this isn't too heavy of a topic for a Friday. But really. I want to know. How do you start the conversation?

Experiential Fathers' Day: Kicks off Sunday Parkways in Portland

The parental acknowledgment holidays sneak up on me. May arrives, I'm nothing but ready to bask in the glow of Mothers' Day. Then I remember I have a mother too. And a mother-in-law. And a grandma. So we kick ourselves in gear to get some cards in the mail. Now here it is June, and Fathers' Day is upon us. That means my husband and my father, who lives locally.

This year, we have an ace in the hole. We will celebrate experientially (because really, does dad need another tie? BBQ implements? golf shirts??) by partaking in the first of three Sunday Parkway dates. I wrote about last year's first ever Sunday Parkways event, when the city of Portland blocked off several miles worth of city streets to make them the ideal spot for family bike riding, skate-boarding, walking, strolling, roller-blading, what-have-you. The routes are linked to city parks featuring crazy cool tall or hand-welded bikes, bicycle rickshas, hula-hoopers, unicyclers, etc. Excellent family fun.

(video by Clarence Eckerson, Jr.)

This years three free events will run from 9am to 4pm each day, and feature different sections of Portland:

• June 21, North Portland
• July 19, Northeast Portland
• August 16, Southeast Portland

Of course, that's just here in Portland. And biking may not be every dad's cup of tea. But there's tons of fun things to do with family in June, no? Killer rummage sales! Strawberry festivals! How do you plan to fete the fantastic dads in your life this Fathers' Day?