We're finished

Wow, yesterday we finished our challenge. That is quite an amazing feeling. And I know that we're going to continue a couple of the items on there as well which is even better.

Having a look down our list of stickers we haven't done too badly. We've had a couple of lapses on showers and driving to work last week blew us out for that column. Just last week too. Darn. Lost a few for gardening due to extended work hours or bad weather. And lost a few on the eating organic meats too. That's been hard mostly when we've gone out. Can't control everything though can you?

So overall I'm pretty happy with how we've gone. It was a bit of an eye opener on an issue that I think we'd become a little-well, not complacent, we do a fair bit, but not proactive anymore. Not looking for the next thing that we could do to reduce our impact.

Having said that, I'm always conscious of what we're doing. Of not lighting or heating what we don't use. Of recycling, not bringing new plastic into the home where possible.

And doing this challenge has pushed us to do one more thing consistently. For us, this will be not driving to work 3 days. This means for me when I'm not going to be cycling thinking about whether catching the bus will work for the day's schedule. Sometimes it won't. Like the nights I finish at 9pm. And it won't when I need to be somewhere at the very start of the day or at the very end of the day and negotiating buses will make that difficult. For example if I end up at the other end of Canberra it's two buses and 2 hours home. I'm sorry, but right now I'm just not that committed that that's worth it for me. Not when I'm working 10 hours days already.

The 4 minute or less showers will also remain a feature in our home. We'll buy organic meats where practical, but this won't always be practical based on time circumstances and a change in finances.

One item that I'm not fussed on continuing is working in the garden daily. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy this. But it's not something I need to do daily. I get out there at least every second day on average. And this is ok for the garden that I run. When my tomatoes are out there it might be different (they're still babies and are living inside to protect them from the volatile weather). But atm, this is all it needs. I'll reevaluate this as needed.

And my final item was substituting organic products in my groceries where I didn't buy organics. I buy a lot of stuff that's local or free range and rarely buy processed foods. So while there's a few things I can buy that are organic there aren't many. Standard organic items for us are things like drinking cocoa, my tea, milk, our coffee beans are both organic and free trade for example. Of course there's more we can get as standard items. But when it comes to the rest I get some organic sometimes and some not and it tends to switch around a bit. This works for me because at this stage, we're a younger couple saving to buy a home. So our reality is that the extra expense that buying everything organic that we possibly can is quite a big difference in our grocery bill.

So I manage it as I do as a compromise. So clearly, it's not all about money or I wouldn't get any, cause let's face it, organics just generally cost more. However, I do often find myself pondering the difficult question of what the point of saving fiscally is when the alternative is a negative impact on the earth and my body.