I Have an Apple Crisis! Help!

No, not APLS, but there's another topic that I have been lagging behind on. Whew, between kids, jobs and being sick I am really behind! Anyway, make sure to check out the APLS blog to find out more about our local Great Lakes APLS. I plan a quick post later today welcoming everyone back to our region for fall. And, I need some local answers for THIS:

What do I do with all these apples? See, I was hoodwinked. Tricked. Scammed. By my own sister! My mother, yes the one of peaches fame, was kind enough to bring us a couple of bushels of apples from Northern Michigan. My sister was supposed to take half for her family. Does that look like my half to you? I didn't think so. I think she took five apples out of the bag and sent the rest to me!

I will can applesauce, I will freeze apple pie fixin's but how in the heck am I going to store the rest? I don't have a root cellar, we unplugged our extra refrigerator over a year ago and I don't really want to plug it back in just for apples. Help me create a root cellar or rent me a storage space somewhere! I am drowning in apples. Thanks, sis.

Affluence attacks suburbia!

An alien has landed! It's taking taking root across our society! I used to think I was the only one who thought living lighter was affluent. But, I see the aliens. They walk among us. There are APLS everywhere and I bet their world looks a little like mine...

photo: ****b/c**** on Flickr

My grass is brown. We don't water it or even have a sprinkler system.

My laundry hangs outside, draped willy-nilly on racks, thrown over patio furniture and hangs from umbrella frames

My children wear thrift store duds, often found with tags still attached and quite often brand name.

We host garage sales, sell and buy used items on craigslist and have been known to Freecycle.

We don't buy juice boxes, Gatorades, ice cream bars, Popsicles, cookies, waffles or pancakes.

We don't drive big, fancy cars or SUVs.

I don't have a housekeeper, landscaper or dog-walker.

I can't remember the last time I had a Starbucks, went to the mall or ordered fast food.

And the list goes on... We walk to the corner store. We turn the tap off when we brush our teeth. We pour leftover boiling canning water over the weeds in our driveway. We are an affluent family.

To many in suburbia, this is truly a strange and unusual concept. I must be an alien to consider myself affluent. Isn't going without all the conveniences and comforts available today a signal of hardship, low-income or thrift? So, in the midst of all of the suburban drones, how does one alien living lighter, when she could afford more, still define herself as affluent when others describe her lifestyle as just the opposite?

Why? I have the luxury to choose my lifestyle. It's as simple as that. I am privileged to have education, an income and career. I am blessed to have options. I am lucky to have multiple sources for food I deem healthy and nutritious to feed my family. I have electricity, running water, comfortable clothing, top-notch doctors and hospitals, an excellent school system and most of all - four healthy children. I am most certainly not going without and isn't it my responsibility to spread my affluence around?

I choose to continue to educate myself and my family. I choose to conserve the resources that we have so others may have a little more. I choose to go the extra mile to support my local farmer and buy his eggs, produce and meat so that not only I can feed my family a healthy meal, but he can feed his family a healthy meal. I choose to educate others, volunteering to share my knowledge with schools, our government and my family. I am an affluent alien walking this planet, attempting to infect the world with my thoughts on lighter living.

As an APLS who once thought she was the only affluent alien living lighter, I welcome all of the APLS to suburbia. I see more of you aliens every day. Hanging out laundry, walking to the store, buying farmer's market produce and most importantly - influencing others. Affluence is catching! It's attacking suburbia! It's not long until affluent aliens take over the planet. Welcome to earth, APLS, we're thankful you're here.

Have you been infected by the lighter living affluents? If you have, join us in the APLS bushel basket. You'll find many of your kind, and like me, you'll find some right in your own neighborhood!

This is my post submitted to the September APLS Carnival. If you want to submit your thoughts, however alien and strange they may be, to the APLS Carnival, please hurry! The mother ship departs on September 10th, so get on over to the APLS blog for more info.

Are you Affluent?

What do you think? Can you be an average, middle class working family and still be affluent? Does green living and sustainable practices increase your feelings of affluence? Have you taken the Global Rich List test yet? Where do you score?

If you want to weigh in and debate the term of Affluence and what it means to you, make sure to participate in the September APLS Carnival. You can read the specifics on the carnival, find out where to send your blog submissions and if you missed last month's carnival on Sustainability, you can read all about it over at the APLS blog.

Are you living in my local APLS area? If you are an APLS growing in the Great Lakes area (Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota & Ontario, Canada) make sure to join the Great Lakes APLS group over at the APLS blog. We are planning all sorts of local fun to help APLS connect on a local level - swapping recipes using locally sourced food, sharing canning supplies, helping each other find those out of the way APLS orchards with the perfect bushel of APL-y goodness. So, don't miss a moment, join us today!

Sustainability in a Disposable World

Living with four children in a materialistic, self-absorbed world sometimes feels as if it's the opposite of sustainable. It's disposable. Mechanical pencils, last year's worn-out baseball cleats, laptops with a three-year life expectancy, video game cartridges, DVDs, empty juice cartons, abandoned musical instruments, half-inflated soccer balls, outgrown bikes, too-small clothing, granola bar wrappers and torn lunch boxes.

What is a mother to do with all of this stuff? If you asked me a few years ago, I would have responded that I threw things out like a mad woman or bagged it all up for the Purple Heart pick up. But, then I bought more stuff. I would have also rushed out to the store the very instant I felt that I needed a new spatula, shirt, snack, dish, candle, towel or cookie that I felt I must have right there and then. It wasn't a sustainable life and it really wasn't much of a stress-free life either.

The burden of stuff kept me running. To the store. To the school. To the mall. To the warehouse club. To the sporting goods shop. I was tired.

As the awareness of our environment grew in our family, we recycled more. Then we realized we were recycling too much. Why have a bin full of empty glass iced tea bottles, plastic milk jugs and aluminum cans when you could make your own tea or lemonade and have your milk delivered to your doorstep in returnable glass bottles? And so ended my need to run to the store to buy tea the very minute we ran out. I simply opened the cabinet and made some more.

That felt good, so we thought about what else we didn't need to rush out and buy. Why not make your own cookies, waffles, pancakes and lunches? Why not mend the lunchbox, patch and re-inflate the shrunken soccer ball, donate the DVDs to the school, take the unwanted video games to a resale shop to trade for new ones, hand down the bikes to neighborhood children and scout Craigslist for new ones? And we did.

Then we got excited. What else didn't we need? Trading stuff for time was like a drug and I was hooked. Making cookies with my son was better than shopping for cookies with a crabby toddler. Showing my older boys my 'mad computer skilz' when laptops need fixing is more rewarding than dropping them off the store to be repaired. My husband teaching my sons how to use tools to fix broken household items, sports equipment and cars will provide them skills for their future and memories of time with their Dad.

Sustainability has been a journey. Sustainability at times has been a challenge. More often than not sustainability has been a compromise. With middle school aged kids sometimes you allow the iPod, but shop for clothing from the thrift shop, buy used video games and find hockey skates on Craigslist. And that's the key.

My sons are learning how to live sustainably in a disposable world. They think twice before tossing away a mechanical pencil that can simply be refilled with lead. They appreciate a better quality used hockey skate from Craigslist over a poor quality new hockey skate from a discount store - for the same price. They consume less, yet expect more. That doesn't mean they don't want a new iPod, I'm sure they do and a whole lot more. They have just learned to value what they have, buy only what they truly desire and make a smaller impact on the planet.

Living sustainably is for me, a learning curve and sometimes a challenge. For my sons, it will be a way of life and their benchmark for normal. Knowing that I have passed this practical sense of living on to my children to in turn pass it on to future generations means sustainability is achievable. One small step at a time.

Note: This is my post for the August APLS Carnival, if you want to submit your post on sustainability, you don't have much time! Post by Aug. 12th and email your post to aplscarnival (at) gmail (dot) com. Or, if you simply would like to be added to the bushel basket and prepare a post for next month's carnival, that's OK too. Hop on over to the APLS blog and hang around awhile!

What Sustains You?

There is a lot of hub-bub around the blog-o-sphere these days. Green moms are taking action tackling major global warming and green issues, uniting for a common cause to rescue our planet, protect our children and sustain our environment. APLS all over the country are gearing up to discuss how living affluently and sustainably can go hand in hand to create a greener community. Bloggers are writing congress, growing their own, signing petitions, buying nothing, organizing campaigns, eating locally and raising awareness all over the world. But, at what cost?

With all this marching, blogging, meeting-up, organizing, canning, taking back filters and general super-hero-ness, what is sustaining you? Have you been too busy to get a good night's sleep? What about taking the time to eat an entire meal, from start to finish without answering the phone, cutting someone else's food or rushing out the door for a commitment? Are you feeling over-extended, tired, cranky, headachey or burnt out? Or maybe all of them at once?

Yeah, me too. So, what sustains you? Sometimes we are so busy sustaining our world, sustaining our children or our household we forget we need a little support to sustain ourselves. For me, that's where all of you come in. At the end of the night, I switch on my computer to find bloggers who lend a sympathetic ear, offer advice, recipes and thoughtful comments that sustain me.

And then, that's where the APLS come in. Yes, there is an upcoming APLS carnival post about living sustainably, but this isn't my submission, that will come later. The APLS blog is a place to find someone to lean on, someone to offer a helping hand or someone to sustain you when you need it most. Jump on in to the bushel basket to connect with other APLS, find your regional group to talk to local APLS (If you're a Great Lakes APLS, join me here) and chances are you will find another APLS who will be someone you can count on, someone to guide you or someone to help you along your journey. There is strength in numbers and when we support each other, we sustain ourselves.