Decide what's important to you. Do you want to eat more organic food? Is your goal to rid your home of toxic cleaning products? Are you trying to reduce your carbon footprint? The answer is probably yes to all of these, but you need to chose a starting point so the easiest thing is going to be the one that feels the best when you reach the goal. For most people, I think it's eating more organic food. Start with the Dirty Dozen. This is actually much easier than you'd think. These are also the most readily available organic produce. I know Giant Eagle as an organic section that carries almost all of these. I was at Wal-Mart the other day and even THEY had organic apples! (Many of these aren't in season anyway right now so they're not really even going to be on the shelves!)
- Peaches
- Apples
- Sweet Bell Peppers
- Celery
- Nectarines
- Strawberries
- Cherries
- Pears
- Grapes (Imported)
- Spinach
- Lettuce
- Potatoes
Once you're used to getting these guys as organic, you can move on to other produce that you eat a lot of. The thought is that even "cleaner" produce, when consumed in mass, can cause a build-up of toxins in your system. Easy, right? Just change a few things in your grocery cart. When you're comfortable with that, change a few more. Baby steps. Each step is helping you and your family by giant steps. I read the other day that after just a few days on organic food, the levels of pesticides in children's systems was drastically diminished.
If you're goal is to clean the chemicals under your sink, I suggest tossing it all and just going with vinegar and baking soda. Vinegar is a good all purpose cleaner and baking soda deodorizes as well as scrubs. And it's SAFE. If you're not a fan of these guys you can always check out EWG's Cleaner's Database and see what commercial cleaners score an A or a B. I actually worked for awhile on this until I just settled with vinegar and baking soda. If you're like me, you kind of get attached to "your" brands. I just slowly eliminated one at a time until I was down to just these two. I love how much less I spend and that I can let Vince "help" clean the bathroom and now have to worry about him inhaling anything caustic.
Those are the two big ones to start with. You can also work on eliminate the plastic in your home, by slowly replacing your gladware with a few glass containers each time you go to the grocery store. They take up a lot more room and they don't travel well to school, but they're much safer. If you store in plastic, at least transfer to glass to microwave.
I keep thinking of other things, but this is intended to be a beginner's guide. I will add that the EWG's Skin Deep database is back up. It's a FANTASTIC reference to for the safety of your personal care products. They have tested everything from eyeliner to toothpaste.
Another fantastic resource is my blog. (Clearly some bias here!) But I have blogged on a lot of different topics. I've done over 300 blog posts so if there's something in particular you're looking for (green toys, healthy seafood, lots of other things I've forgotten I've even written about) just use the search feature. I usually like you to someone who actually knows what they're talking about.
I know it's scary and daunting. There's SO much out there to choose from and because going green is getting more and more popular, there are more and more options, not all of them good. As I say to myself when I feel overwhelmed (usually in reference to cleaning my disaster of a house) "One thing done and that done well is a very good rule as many can tell." My mother taught me that and as silly as it is, it helps put thing in perspective. Even if all you do is buy organic apples instead of conventional apples, you're doing SOMETHING. And doing a little of something is better than doing nothing at all.
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