Two Steps Forward, One Step Back

In the last few days I’ve been wrestling with something and I feel this is a great platform in which to tackle it.

First, let me say that I am very happy about my new heat pump and the energy savings that it will bring me. My high energy bills in the winter were negating all of the green things I was doing. It was a terrible feeling and one I could do little about until recently. As the name of the blog implies, I am far from rich. We get by with a little extra on some months and other months we are just scrapping through. With the combination of our tax returns and savings we were able to switch out our heating/cooling system this time around. This change could knock about 20% off of our electric usage/bill. It is a great feeling to have that monkey off of my back.

Here is the problem (if you want to call it that). We have to make some cut backs in the meantime in order to save up the money that was spent on the new heating/cooling system. We run a pretty tight ship without much leeway. But one place where we’re going to have to cut back is buying organic food. We have been very happy and seemingly healthier since switching, but it is not cheap. We are going to start our own garden box this year but we know that it could partially or completely fail. Here is a website on what you should prioritize organic. For us, as of now, we are going to stick to organic milk and eggs, though we will be switching to a cheaper version of organic milk.

These kinds of setbacks happen in almost any endeavor one undertakes. They can be discouraging and make one feel hypocritical. But going green is about finding balance on the way. For example: we just came back from a vacation. We only took a few days off and we had ben planning the trip for months. We had most parts paid for before beginning. Now, we could have canceled the vacation to prevent the current struggle, but the memories we obtained far outweigh the struggle.

This brings me to another point that I have been thinking about for a while now. Originally I wanted to green up my house as much as possible. I thought that everyone should green as much as they can before moving on so the next person would get a tightly sealed efficient house. I’m not against this idea but I think now that it has to be done more within reason. The heat pump is great but it would have been better to get a geothermal heat pump. It would have cost us three maybe even four times as much. It would have taken us years to save and our old system would have long died out. I wanted to spray foam the attic as well. But for a third of the price I can ad some spray-in insulation myself and start getting the savings right away.

Here is where I need to find the balance between what is best and what is reasonable. In going green or shifting to a greener lifestyle I need to look at what I can afford verses what is possible. The more small changes I do now will start adding to the overall picture.

I’ll still dream big, but I’ll start picking the lower hanging fruit and compound the small savings into larger ones.

Share your thoughts.