Living my 80/20 rule

It's easy to get swept up into a green lifestyle, or any lifestyle for that matter. But keeping that momentum up and letting it be a blessing, not a curse, is not the easiest thing to do.

Bake your bread. Grow your garden. Drink organic milk. Make your laundry soap. The list goes on and on--and if Itracked and tried every little green thing I could do, I might go insane.

There are only so many hours in the day. About 10 are lost to work, driving my children to school, and my commute. Another eight to sleep. If my math serves me right, I'm left to cram the most living in my life in a meager six hours a day. That's six hours of making meals, of playing with my kids, of doing laundry, of trying to have a great relationship with my husband, of making time for prayer.

Six hours to squeeze in any other green bits that might possibly extend my stewardship of God's resources.

I can certainly devote my day to breadmaking, or gardening, or learning to make soap, which I still think would be fun to try. But I don't have the time resources or the financial investment to try all things. And if I focused on that, then I might miss out on those magical moments making trash trucks and giraffes out of Legos, going for walks in the park with my family, sharing moments with my daughter as a Girl Scout leader or simply sitting in solitude early in the morning.

So these days, I make more careful investments. I buy laundry soap from the man at our farmers market. I grow what I can and buy locally next. I've just resigned for a produce delivery service, as our city's primary winter farmers market is 30 minutes away and packed most weekends, tough to take children to. And I'm left in the day with a few mninutes to savor the miracles of the season.

As Stephanie at Simple Organic writes:

There will always be ways that I could be healthier and greener, and much as I may want to, I simply won’t be able to make all of those changes. No one can do it all and live the “perfect green life” because I’m pretty sure it doesn’t exist (and if it does, I don’t think I want to know
about it).
Letting go of perfectionism in natural living is one of the things that has most freed me to continue to do what I do, without guilt, without obligation, and with a whole lot less stress.