Our Home: Before tour and Our Sustainability Plans

@gceldridge Our house tour!! this house was a lot of things when we first saw it (after closing 😱) but growing up in a home just like this one, I'm confident we can put our stamp on it and make it the perfect space for our family. it was built in the 60s-70s and pretty much has not been touched since then so it needs a ton of work! head over to my blog for full details on that merakikaiagapi.blogspot.com #homedecor #homereno #renovationproject #housetok ♬ Our House - Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young

Hi! Wanted to share some before pics (and a video) of our home, and also talk about our goals for making our home sustainable, weather-proof and low waste wherever possible. In many ways these goals are intertwined, as things like hurricane-proof windows and doors are also better at sealing in heat or cool. 

This is it! A pretty typical style for our neighborhood. My favorite part about the location- it's right across the street from where I grew up.

A major goal of our renovation was to do things as low-waste as possible, but also within our budget. I had a lot of ideas about this, some of which we had to put off or abandon all together, but I think we’ve reached a point where we are getting the best renovation we can within our price range, and have a plan for future renovations that we’ll work towards doing every 1-2 years. 

Our living and dining space had some pretty interesting color choices.

One of the four bedrooms- the house is pretty small by square footage but has lots of great usable space.

The kitchen hasn't been updated since the home was first built.

A look back from the entryway into the 'family' room, with the kitchen to the right.

Our kitchen with this awkward low ceiling that was apparently popular at one point- it's all demolished as of today!

The bathroom is very pink! We debated keeping the color, but ultimately decided to go with a clean white look.

It’s hard to see from the photos, but while our home doesn’t have the most practical layout (looking at you, entryway pantry-closet!), it does have really good bones! So as much as I’d love to change things up with a full remodel, we’re really just updating existing structures for the most part. This also feels less wasteful to me since we won’t need to destroy and rebuild things that are working pretty well as is (again, just a guess.) Once we finish with this round, we also plan to keep things more or less the same with a few exceptions. Here’s a few ways we plan to make this renovation sustainable:

Sourcing materials secondhand or recycled when possible: For items like fans, ceiling lights, and bathroom vanities, this makes a ton of sense! Unfortunately we don’t live locally yet, so it was difficult to hunt things down leading up to our renovation on places like FB Marketplace and local secondhand stores. I have my heart set on furnishing the space slowly after we move in, so hopefully we’ll have better luck in this area when we buy our furniture, since we plan to gift and sell the few pieces we have in Massachusetts.

We had some big dreams to use recycled products when possible (I had my heart set on recycled glass countertops or this super intriguing material made of recycled paper- more on that here!), sadly it just was not in the budget as it would have cost us at least 25% more than traditional countertop choices such as quartz. We are saving for another big chapter of the renovation next year that we think will be a huge step toward a low waste lifestyle (see below!)

Weather-proofing the house. This actually started before we purchased the home. We had been looking for a few months at the time and already knew we didn’t want to buy in a high-risk flood zone, given Florida’s risk of rising water levels (more on that here.) We ultimately got lucky enough to find a home in a low- medium risk flood zone away from any canals or large bodies of water. 

Apart from this, we chose to install a tile floor rather than wood. Wood is a great look, don’t get me wrong- but tile will sustain water damage much better in the event of a flood. There are other options too, as you can see on this website, but we were happy to go with tile as it has the added benefit of helping to keep the house cool.

Decrease energy and water usage: I lumped all of this in one category because while the approach is different it’s ultimately the same end goal: reducing reliance on the grid. Florida Power and Light is notoriously difficult to deal with and has no plans for divesting in fossil fuel energy, which is pretty wild to me considering we live in the sunshine state. So our next big ticket item is going to be a new roof and solar panels! The newest Federal Laws around climate change have extended the 30% rebate on solar panels for several more years (yay!), making this change a bit more affordable. You can find more info on solar panels in Florida here.

We also plan to swap out older appliances for high efficiency-grade ones. The biggest saver here will typically be the fridge, but toilets, washer-dryers and dishwashers can also make a difference. There are also smart sprinkler systems that help avoid unnecessary watering (more on that later, and a link with some info on energy efficient appliances here.) 

The garden- we're very excited to start planting here!

The house has a pool that was just about the only thing that had been updated in recent years. 

Eco-friendly gardening. This might be the part of our new home that I’m most excited for- the garden! We live in a sub-tropical climate where planting can go on year-round. I don’t want to be too ambitious because I haven’t had much luck with gardening in the past, but lucky for me Peter has a pretty green thumb! In addition, we’re hoping to eventually adjust our landscaping to add more native plants and flowers that will benefit the local flora and fauna and attract some native pollinators, add in a smart sprinkler system like this one, and start composting! UF has an amazing website and app about native pollinators and sustainable landscaping- here is their about page for more info.

Projects for further down the line: While I’d love to have more room in the budget to accomplish all of our goals, like most folks, we’re going to wait a couple years on a few things, including our primary bathroom, adding insulation, and adding hurricane-safe windows and doors. We’re not entirely sure how long we’ll be in Florida, but it was important to us to reduce our carbon footprint since we are privileged enough to live in an area with so much potential for sustainable living. Do you have any questions? Better yet, any advice- drop them in the comments! Would love to hear from you if you’ve had experience with eco-friendly and low-waste renovation :)

Low Waste Mama: Cloth Diapering

We have been at this cloth diapering thing for over a year now, so obviously I have some THOUGHTS. Too many thoughts for one blog post. I tend to be horribly long-winded when I write, so I’ll probably break this down in a couple of posts. This one will just go into how we decided to go for it, what we took into consideration, and how we came to the final decision that it made sense for us as a family, because we were definitely on the fence initially. I also want to acknowledge that although there are some workarounds, I also recognize that choosing cloth diapering is a privilege made easier for us by living in a very sustainability-minded community, our income, our work schedules, and a number of other factors. I hope none of this comes across as ‘cloth diapering is easy! And everyone should do it!’ Because cloth diapering is great, and I want it to be a reasonable option for everyone, but it may not be for you or your family, for a number of reasons, and that’s ok. Ultimately I hope it becomes something that is accessible to all families who want to give it a go. 

Now that that’s out of the way, let’s dive in!

Like a lot of parents, Peter and I must have spent hours researching the ‘best’ of all the things for those first months of life: the best stroller, best way to sleep train, best parenting books…and yep, the best diapers. We didn’t personally know anyone who cloth-diapered and had heard conflicting info on whether it was the most eco-friendly way to go; some argue against it because of the cost, or because of the amount of energy used washing and drying, when you could buy compostable diapers instead. We ultimately decide to try cloth diapering (CD) for a number of reasons: 

Composting diapers is…complicated. Many sources offer compostable diapering as a reasonable eco-friendly alternative to CD. The reality is much more complicated. For us, it was very difficult to compost- pick up compost organizations will not accept human waste, and our sibling/roomies ultimately veto’ed a backyard compost for our home, so that was out. Which meant that in our situation, any fancy, expensive compostable diapers would just really just be expensive, single use diapers going straight into a landfill. That didn’t feel great to us. 

We found ways to mitigate cost. Depending on how you calculate things, yes, cloth diapering can be very expensive. Just like any capitalist venture, people will try to sell you the newest, the best, the most advanced/easy/convenient system, etc. If that brand new, high tech system is what you go for, then, yes- cloth diapering is going to get expensive. 

But- there is another way. We ultimately bought one new set of newborn diapers, large and small wet bags, and a couple of other items along the way, and purchased everything else secondhand. Larger sizes of diapers included. This may not be appealing to some, I get it. But having done this several times, I feel pretty comfortable diapering our kiddo in secondhand diapers. They were always perfectly clean when purchased, and we washed them before using them with E. As far as I can tell, she has never had an infection related to diapering. I never felt that we were compromising on hygiene. (Actually, I feel like her skin hygiene is better in cloth than in disposable diapers- more on that later.) 

We found ways to maximize usage and decrease waste. A super common argument against cloth diapering is that it’s not as energy-saving as folks tout it to be, and that can be true. Think of it this way: what if we bought 24 brand new cloth diapers and inserts, used them for 6 months, then ditched them for disposable…we really aren’t maximizing that product’s use, are we? Now think about using the same diapers twice, for 2 kids, over the course of 18-24 months per kid, and then selling, gifting, or donating them to a charity like this one that refurbishes old diapers and gives them to folks in need? You’re certainly getting a lot more bang for your buck.

Similarly, people like to point out that you use a lot more energy washing them- and yes, it’s true, you’ll do a ton more laundry. There’s no way around that. But you can line dry, you can maximize your load usage, you can throw towels into the second wash (cloth diapers require a hot a cold wash)- basically, there are ways to be more efficient with your energy use. 

I also want to throw a note out there on another common and pretty strong argument against CD. It is time consuming. It basically triples your laundry. Easily. This is true- I can’t argue against it. We wash our child’s diapers about 2-3 times per week. Peter washes. I reassemble. I don’t have a great argument for this one. We both work and choose to spend a lot of our time cleaning our child’s cloth diapers. You might decide you’d rather dedicate your time to something else besides doing cloth diaper laundry 3 nights a week. No judgment. If money were no object I might have looked into sending our cloth diapers out for cleaning, which some local companies do in our area. It’s getting more common to see cloth diaper services like this all over the country, which I think is great. 

Lastly, if this sounds intimidating to you and totally not your jam, I want to add that just like anything in life, this is not an all or nothing game. We do not use cloth diapers at night. We have taken breaks from them- like when we traveled to England and South Dakota, and when we were going through a TFMR with our second child. We’ve gone as long as a month using no cloth diapers at all. There is a quote by Anne Marie Bonneau that I really like: 

We don't need a handful of people doing zero waste perfectly. We need millions of people doing it imperfectly.

I think that applies so well in the parenting space.

This isn’t a race, nor is it a competition. This is the long haul effort to consume less and reduce waste, ultimately to improve the future for our children. Which is why I’m perfectly happy to sit on the sofa at 8 at night watching netflix and shoving cloth inserts into cloth diapers multiple nights per week :) 

That’s all I’ve got for part one of our experience with cloth diapering! What else would you like to know? Leave questions in the comments, and I’ll share my answers or any other takes in the next part of this post!