Don't Ring My Doorbell!

It's been awhile since I turned on my clothes dryer. When it's hot in the summer, I'm loathe to make it even hotter in my house by using it. I used to just do it at night once it's cooled down, but with the washer and dryer sitting right between the wee ones' bedrooms, and Little Miss especially being a light sleeper... well, that was a little hard.

I started out just not drying certain things. Swim suits are never dried to keep them from getting yucky. And I don't dry pjs to avoid removing the flame retardant. Oh and team jerseys should never be dried. In fact, they should rarely be washed in my mind.

But this summer, my house has started looking like this on laundry day.

And this:

And this:

And yep, even this:

I just stopped drying more and more things, and then it seemed so silly to run the dryer with so few clothes in it. And we've been so busy that I rarely had time to run more than one load in a day, so the clothes would sit waiting to be dried. This just seemed better.

And then I started thinking about the energy I was saving. I felt a little green. And then I saw a little more green as my gas bills were a bit lower -- or at least the usage was lower; gas rates have gone up a lot this year! That made me feel a little better.

My husband started questioning it when he saw the assorted laundry. He brought out the redneck factor, which I repudiated with the cool green factor. And really, I do sort of tend to get my way in the house. Especially since he's banned from doing laundry after ruining enough of my clothes. Have you ever seen a silk blouse after it's been through the washer and dryer?

My plan has been to get an outdoor line drying something. But I can't find what I'm really looking for. I don't want the lines that attach to the house and pull out because I don't want anything attached to the house. I don't want the ones that are out in the middle of the yard because I want to be able to put it away when I'm not using it (and I don't want to have to pour concrete in the yard). I need something bigger than the normal line drying racks, as the sheets need enough space to be hung. Really what I think I want is something like the one that gets planted in the middle of my yard but that sits in my patio furniture umbrella stand and folds up and goes away when I'm done.

Really, I'm probably not looking hard enough. I have searched a few times, in my defense.

So in the meantime, my house looks like this when I do laundry, and I'm ok with that. Fortunately, we have a lot of bannister space. The only time we have a problem is when I realize that the mom of a friend of Mister Man's is over to pick up the pirate hat her son left behind after a playdate and will be standing in my foyer staring at my whole family's laundry. Whoops.

Green Is A Popular ... Color

So my company is going green. It’s quite proud of the fact that its new building is carbon neutral. In fact, there was an article in the paper about it recently.

Going green is a good thing, and I’m all in favor of it. But some of it seems a bit hypocritical.

For example, apparently our clean desk policy is green. Yep, the fact that we can have no paper on our desk at the end of the day or if we are leaving our workspace for more than 2 hours apparently makes us green.

I finally decided it’s because the paper collects dust if it sits on the desk, which necessitates the use of cleaning products which aren’t green. Forget the people who throw things away only to reprint them the next day.

And I learned tonight when a friend of mine was over that apparently the building gets power from appropriate sources, which means that there is a lack of power. So for the multiple thousand of people who work there, we have six microwaves. They’re all in the cafeteria, and when I was there for the first time today I saw the long long LONG line. But apparently we have enough power to have flat screen tvs throughout the building everywhere brainwashing us about how great the company is.

Surprisingly, the cleaning materials tend to be more harsh chemicals, too. I know this simply from the smell, let alone the containers that I can see them using. The interesting part of this to me is that Illinois recently began requiring that all school use environmentally friendly cleaners, so you know they’re out there.

But there are good things that they’ve done, too. Although the office is further from home for just about everyone I know (meaning more miles driven in traffic), they’re also incorporating working from home for many more people, which somewhat offsets that.

The cleaning staff also cleans during the day vs at night, which is a bit odd to see people polishing and vacuuming (and somewhat distracting when on a call but that’s ok) as you’re working, but no lights are needed for them to see at night to clean.

And in the cafeteria, there are no disposable plates or cutlery. It’s all white china – and sadly, I like it and am tempted to ask where they got it for when my current dish set needs replacing – and regular silverware. Less in the landfill, yay! They actually separate out the china from the paper (napkins, wrappers, etc) from the food waste. The food waste is recycled and utilized for something – sorry, I forget if it’s compost or animal food or what – and the paper products are also recycled.
But I still go back to the clean desk policy being green. It’s an audit requirement, people. There’s spin, and then there’s flat out silly. But hey, if someone can come up with a good way that no paper is green, I want to hear it!