How to live cheap and green: Difference between revisions

This page may require cleanup.Please discuss this issue on the talk page.

Comment: This is taken from an open licensed blog post. It needs to be culled and adapted to a wiki article, and split or rearranged if appropriate. The links to images need their text fixed.

Read more...

The 5 Principles of Living Green on the Cheap (as demonstrated by Nicole and Kevin)

File:3743787302 d829af12d7.jpg File:3742994337 8a209b4121.jpg

Kevin and Nicole are good friends of mine, and pretty amazing people. When I visited them in Louisville, Kentucky, I was completely impressed at how well they live. In the few years they’ve been together, they’ve created a lifestyle that’s creative, comfortable, and rather fabulous—but cheap and environmentally conscious too. In short, Nicole and Kevin’s little world is an excellent example of how we can all approach green living on a budget. So I took notes, and now I give you:

How to live green for cheap!

1. [[# Live in your neighborhood]
2. [[# Make your work fit your life]
3. [[# Grow/build/make/do your own fun]
4. [[# Pick up the pieces]
5. [[# Share.]

File:3742998391 e1a02f675c.jpg

Kevin & Nicole’s backyard

Live in your neighborhood.

One of the easiest ways to live more sustainably is to find a neighborhood you’ll want to spend most of your time in. If your work and your home and your grocery store are all close together, you’ll spend less time, money, and fossil fuels running all over town.

Nicole and Kevin used to live in another part of Louisville, but they like their new place much better. Both of them work within a couple of miles, so they can easily share a car: one drives to work and the other bikes. And there are restaurants, stores, theaters and bars within walking distance, so they can go out without driving anywhere.

Next time you’re looking for a new place, check out the area. Where are the stores? How far away is your work? Can you get to public transportation easily? What resources are within walking/biking distance, and is the area safe enough that you’ll actually want to walk/bike around?

File:3743791958 fb99a535a0.jpg

Nicole & Kevin rent a big two-bedroom in this neighborhood for $600/month

If you’re already established, take another look at your neighborhood. Next time you’re bored, go exploring on foot. Odds are, there are local resources you don’t know about. Is there a farmer’s market nearby? Restaurants, cafes, movie theaters? A public pool and/or park? Do any of your neighbors work near you and want to carpool? Do you even know your neighbors?

Try walking everywhere you can; get a bike and use it. Ride the bus to the farmer’s market. Buy your meat at the corner carniceria; get bread from the bakery.

If you live out in the suburbs with no resources nearby, or someplace where the weather’s always hot/cold, think about what that means (both to your wallet and to the environment). How much time do you spend at home, and how much commuting? How much cash are you spending on gas, A/C and heat? Would you consider spending that amount to live in a more central location, in a city with better weather?

Which brings us to the next point:

File:3743793660 d924ee1525.jpg

Make your work fit your life.

Nicole and Kevin are both dedicated to environmental responsibility, and have taken that dedication further than just recycling (though boy, do they recycle).

Nicole works in a branch of the local health-food chain. The store is only a mile or two from home, and she earns a good wage while promoting natural and eco-friendly products. Kevin invented his own job: after visiting Cake Flour (a local, natural, gourmet bakery), he convinced them to start selling their baked goods at farmer’s markets. He now works six days a week at an outdoor table, selling organic cookies to kids.

They aren’t earning the same pay as executives, but they’re earning enough to live on—and both Kevin and Nicole are working for businesses they actually feel good about. They have good, steady hours that don’t cut into their social lives, and they’re able to pay the bills. By thinking creatively about how they want to spend their waking hours, they managed to find positions that pay off in more than one way.

If you’re looking to be more environmentally reponsible, think about where you work. Your job shouldn’t dictate your lifestyle; it should be the other way around. So, does your job fit your values? If not, how can you take steps toward a career you believe in? Can you switch companies, or start your own business? Can you make your current workplace better by beefing up the recycling regimen or instituting volunteer days?

Weigh your income against your satisfaction. You might not make the same choices as Nicole and Kevin have, but you can always change your job to suit your needs.

Kevin and his art

Grow/build/make/do your own fun.

There are plenty of ways to entertain yourself without buying anything. Kevin and Nicole are experts at it. Their work schedules leave them enough time to do what they want… and what they want is to create, play, explore and build. Here are some of the things we/they did for fun while I stayed with them:

• Helped set up a local art show!
• Drew our own pictures for the art show!
• Went to the show, climbed onto the roof with an overhead projector, and projected the drawings on the wall!

File:3742996533 2b47b1d2f4.jpg

• Made a peach pie with free peaches from the farmer’s market!
• guerrilla gardening!
• Worked in the backyard victory garden (beans, squash, watermelon, cucumbers, tomatoes…)!
• Cursed the tomato-stealing neighborhood squirrels in increasingly colorful terms!
• Made a stupid anti-squirrel scarecrow out of a skull, a toy ball, and a mustache!
• Set off fireworks in the back yard!
• Made artsy magnets out of magazine cutouts, and stuck them all over the house!
• Made flower boxes out of scrap wood found in the alley!
• Found all the coolest art they’d collected, and hung it throughout the house!
• Watched classic movies on VHS!
• Cooked food, drank beer, wandered the streets, and whatever else we felt like doing!

When you stop relying on the TV and radio to entertain you, you can find endless ways to enjoy yourself (Note: this is easier to do if you have a cool job that doesn’t drain all your energy). Once you get used to creating things instead of buying them, you’ll find a whole new freedom and wealth of possibilities. So the next time you’re bored, try making something. Just for fun. See what happens.

File:3743791226 c1ffdd76c8.jpg

tomatoes and peppers from the backyard garden!

File:3743000829 1f7e796eeb.jpg

Pick up the pieces.

“You don’t need to buy furniture. You can get everything you need for free,” Kevin says. “We didn’t pay for anything in this place.”

And it’s true: in this big apartment full of comfortable furniture and cool art, basically everything was found in a dumpster or alley. None of it stinks or has fleas, either. It’s just good free stuff, collected over a few years by people who know what they’re doing.

Most of what we did for fun was free, too: you can get all kinds of arts-n-crafts materials, even food for $0. There’s no thievery involved—just resourcefulness, openmindedness, and a willingness to use other people’s cast-off materials.

For example. The local college’s science building was being overhauled and getting rid of old supplies. Kevin and Nicole scored lenses, old photo equipment, mildly inappropriate living-room art (in the form of anatomical models), a skull, weird jars and vials… and the overhead projector that we used to make our own rooftop art show.

Another example: as the farmer’s market ended, one farmer offered Kevin and I some slightly-wilted produce. It was unsaleable to picky foodies, but perfectly edible. Another farmer gave us a box of bruised peaches. We came home with enough food to feed four people for a few days—and with the addition of a pie crust and Nicole’s know-how, a delicious peach pie.

And as for entertainment: this house has shelves full of VHS movies, which you can pick up at yard sales for pennies. VHS players are often free, as are books and magazines; you can build a huge library for nothing!

There’s more, but I won’t bore you; the point is, every day holds opportunities to get great stuff for free. From Craigslist to Freecycle to Freegle to dumpsters and yard sales, there’s no need for you to buy things if you’ve got a little time and ingenuity. In the process of collecting the discarded pieces from others’ wasteful habits, you can help to curb production, conserve resources and save landfill space.

File:3742994391 0289f21022.jpg

Share

Sharing is caring, by gosh! And living communally is one of the best ways to conserve resources and keep things cheap.

Nicole and Kevin live with another fabulous lady, Kallie, who’s known them for years. Kallie, Nicole and Kevin share food, possessions, bills and supplies. By pooling their funds, they can afford a bigger place—and this way, when one person’s computer is broken, another’s is usually working.

When I came to stay, they let me sleep on their couch for two solid weeks, and not one of them expressed any discomfort at my presence. For that time period, I was just part of the household. I contributed food and chores, and tried to be a good roommate instead of a houseguest.

Living in a big house with six or eight roommates can be too much, but sharing your space with a close friend is a great way to cut down on costs (makes your home more fun, too). Many of us haven’t lived with a roommate since college, but there’s no reason why we can’t. As for sharing possessions, it seems foreign to many but totally comfortable to others.

Sharing successfully is a pretty delicate balance: you don’t want to give more than you receive, and you don’t want to take more than your share. Most of us still buy all our own stuff and keep it to ourselves, but we wouldn’t be opposed to sharing—as long as we knew that it would be reciprocal.

Are you ready to stop hoarding your stuff and let someone else use it? You’ll never know until you try. So the next time you can afford to spare something, just give it a shot: share your stuff with someone who needs it. Unless you absolutely have to keep something for yourself, what’s the harm in giving a little to the people around you? It may not turn out perfectly equaninimously each time, but the old adage is true: the more you give, the more you receive.

Ultimately, green living and cheap living go hand-in-hand. The way Kevin and Nicole see it, being “green” is less about buying environmentally-friendly products, and more about using the stuff you already own. The less you consume, the less you spend, the less you need to work, the more you can enjoy your life. It means changing your standards and looking at the world a little differently; understanding the worth of possessions, food and resources beyond their initial appearance; and getting a little dirt under your fingernails. In return for involving yourself more fully in life and making a few sacrifices, you can gain a lot of health and happiness—not to mention the satisfaction of saving the world, in your own little way.

File:3723056314 176892571f.jpg

Template:Attrib uprooted