Sustainability, Urban Homesteading, Being Crunchy...

... whatever you want to call it, we are working towards being kinder to the earth and kinder to ourselves in the process. My husband tends to be somewhat of an armchair survivalist and I feel very strongly that we are caretakers of our planet so all that we do works and makes sense for us.

While we have long term plans to hopefully live off-grid with the assistance of active and passive solar and potentially wind power (along with a few other associated goals), we are currently living in an suburban apartment that puts some limits on our efforts.

Currently we;

- have a small patio vegetable and herb garden in the summer. This year we are planning to try and keep the herbs going indoors year round and can and freeze and leftovers from our garden,
- are learning to cook more from scratch and preserve/store extras,
- are learning to make cleaning supplies,
- using cloth bags for shopping and recycling or reusing any plastic bags that we might get,
- moving towards a more flexitarian diet (easy for me, harder for the husband),
- opting into our energy company's green initiative at 100%,
- paying all of our bills online and/or with paperless bill pay.

Surely, I am missing other things too but these are a few of the more conscious efforts we have undertaken. In addition, we are always looking at what else we can do, given our limitations, to be more aware of impact on the planet.

This weekend's projects include shopping for seeds and starting those that have longer harvest times and starting our very first compost bin!

What efforts, small or large, do you engage in to keep yourself and our earth healthy?