Will All The Green Divas Please Sit Down?

I have a confession to make.

I live in a house.

Please forgive me. I know, if I just tried hard enough, I could persuade my husband that we could live in a tent. Or at least one of those teepees or earthships that are growing in popularity among the crunchiest of the crunchy.

Imagine the cozy intimacy of three people living in a couple hundred square feet of space. Sharing body odors. Sleeping huddled together on the same futon serving as our living room sofa.

No more guilt of having unsustainably-made furniture decorated with knick-knacks made by starving Chinese children.

We would have a solar oven and a composting toilet (in different areas!) outside, and an old-fashioned icebox. Bicycles and feet would be the vehicles of choice, and most of our food would come from our own vegetable gardens and orchard.

Well, a girl can dream. For now, I'm stuck in a 2100 square foot home with a huge kitchen, more bedrooms than we need, and a two-car garage that houses—you guessed it—two cars. I try not to feel guilty that I am able to turn around in my kitchen and not knock a pan off the counter.

I try to appreciate the fact that my husband and I can get away from our son when we want to, um, be intimate. I try not to hate myself for being able to travel eight miles in fifteen minutes.

Okay, so I am being a bit facetious. But just when I think I'm bending over backwards trying to be as eco-conscious as I can, I read about someone who is living in a tent in a Californian forest living off wild edibles and carving dead wood for a living.

Should I be doing more? I ask myself. Is God going to hold me accountable for using my clothes dryer and not combining my errands?

Then what generally happens is I make myself and my husband, Jerry, miserable for the next few days. If a light is left on in a vacant room, Jerry hears about it (because, of course, I'm too green to let that happen).

I grow extra sprouts, even though the twice-daily sprout rinsing routine already feels like a burden.

I talk about buying an organic cotton mattress and organic cotton sheets, even though I know good and well Jerry is diligently working to replenish our emergency fund.

Then I wake up one morning, look at my life and my circumstances and say to myself, "Would you please get real?"

Ideally, I would hang all my laundry up outside in nice weather all the time. Reality check: I have a toddler who thinks it's a thrill to throw dirt on my freshly laundered and hung up clothes.

Ideally, I would buy handmade, organic cotton clothing to avoid buying sweat-shop-made items. Reality check: Although the kind of prosperity needed to buy that kind of clothes is on the way to our house, as of this writing it has not yet arrived.

Ideally, we would live in a completely self-sufficient home in a rural area. Reality check: food on the table is the higher priority, and we don't want Jerry to have a long commute to work.

The fact of the matter is that living green looks different for everybody because of unique individual circumstances. For example:

• My family grows some of our own vegetables. Maybe you buy as much food from the local farmer’s market as possible.
• We use homemade, natural, and eco-friendly cleaners. Maybe you hire a maid service that uses green cleaning.
• We buy at least 50% of our clothes from thrift stores. Maybe you regularly buy fair-trade items made in Third-World nations.
• We keep the thermostat turned to seventy-eight in the summer and sixty-seven in the winter. Maybe you live in a smaller house that doesn’t use as much as electricity as ours to heat and cool it.
• We use junk mail envelopes for grocery lists and recycle everything that can be recycled. Maybe you donate clean trash to your child’s art teacher for special projects.
• We compost, rarely using the garbage disposal. Maybe you feed the neighborhood raccoons at night. ;-)
• We use handkerchiefs instead of facial tissues. Maybe you use facial tissues made from recycled paper.

Bottom line: we are doing our part if we are making green choices that fit well and with relative ease into our personal situations right now. I think God understands our need to maintain our sanity.

I also think that God couldn't care less that I'm not a green diva.

After all, I live in a house. And I like it.