
In my real job (non-blogging) I am finding that more and more people are interested in building a more environmentally responsible and healthy home. Leaving political discussions and arguments about “climate change” behind (I don’t like being preached to and I don’t like preaching), I believe there are many common sense reasons to build a “Green” home. Here are two pretty good ones:
If you want to build a Green Home there is an abundant amount of information available to you. But start investigating Green and you begin to realize there can be a daunting number of decisions to make – and they all impact your construction budget in some way. Building Green can start to look incredibly complicated and expensive - and neither of these notions is inherently “Green”. Well it does not have to work that way.
So what I want to do, starting with this posting is to help you simplify things. I am starting out with a top 10 list of green things to do. This will give us some focus for more detailed discussions to follow. Those discussions will provide more detail on my top 10 list. So here goes.
Top 10 Green Things to do! – When building your new home.
So that’s my Top 10 Green Things to Do list. You may notice that I don’t specifically mention solar panels, photo-voltaics or geo-thermal systems. Well those items might be a great addition to an overall sustainable building plan, but the initial costs are high and the payback is longer. I’ll discuss more in future postings.
By the way, if you want to buy a “green” house plan that you can build. You might start at Simply Elegant Home Designs. All of the plans in their portfolio have been designed keeping many of the green principals listed above in mind.
Saw this photo and Chloe's interview about she's wearing in today's New York Times and it reminded me that 1) sometimes this girl can create the most perfect ensembles, and 2) I need to start hitting up thrift stores again. I used to be a thrift store regular and while I was, I took a lot of fashion risks and really embraced my own style. Since moving to Ottawa and taking on a job that requires office/ professional attire, my style has gotten really conservative (I said my style, not my political leanings!). I love how Chloe chopped her vintage dress up to turn it into a short, pixie-ish look. That's the great thing about thrift store shopping (or having TONS of money - her idea of vintage is probably way different than my idea of vintage :) - you can chop and adjust and manipulate to your heart's content because your clothes didn't cost half a paycheque. Thrift store shopping inspires creativity and demands vision. So, another one of my 'living lightly and saving money' practices this year will be thrift stores over glitz stores. I just wish that Ottawa had more in the downtown area - a bit tough to get around to them when you're car-less and there's a bus strike. Oh yeah...what was that I said about winter biking? Right.