There, I said it. Ms-Trying-to-Be-a-Greener-Parent served her son’s birthday dinner on paper plates.  If you’re at all interested in my rationale, here it is: I have been incredibly busy and stressed out, between nursing strep throat (my five year old’s), cooking and hosting Rosh Hashanah meals, and tackling a never-ending list of work commitments, my house has taken a backseat on the priority list.  To wit: My sink is practically sinking under the weight of dirty dishes. 

So, when it came time to sit down to dinner last night, I couldn’t even wrestle up seven clean plates. Which is why I copped out, grabbed the last of our disposable stash and set the table with paper plates and plastic cups.

Of course, the convenience of the disposable plates quickly got overshadowed by my eco-guilt. As Tree Hugger said back in February, eco-guilt is a powerful force — akin to Jewish mother’s guilt (at which I am an expert), but worse.

Every choice, from diapers to dishwashing, can leave parents with the stress of finding the greenest choice and the guilt of not going far enough with environmental efforts to keep your loved ones safe.

My list of guilt-inducing decisions doesn’t stop with disposable plates.  In fact, just today I managed to feel guilty about:

• Ordering a cup of tea at Panera and taking not one, but TWO, styrofoam cups. (That hot water burns right through the single-ply.) I did vow to bring my travel coffee mug the next time I visit Panera.
• Washing my dishes with Cascade gels, rather than an ecological tablet, like the ones Ecover makes. Those gels tap into my whole dilemma between living frugally vs. living green.  Many times, these two goals line up in perfect sync. But other times, I’m still choosing to use a mainstream product that I can get practically for free (thanks to advice from couponing geniuses like the Money Saving Mom).  Perhaps I’ll try making my own detergent.
• Putting my cottage cheese containers in the garbage bin rather than the recycling bin. My justification was that the sink was overflowing (remember?), so I couldn’t reach the faucet to rinse the containers out. That said, I have noticed that since implementing a home recycling program, we throw out significantly less garbage.

Tree Hugger suggests that the antidote to eco-guilt is taking action. Maybe I’d better go fish those cottage cheese containers out of the garbage.

Do you suffer from eco-guilt, too?  What trips up your green conscience?

I had a very limited budget ($2,000) and of that amount, I had to allocate several hundred toward new mattresses. Thanks to hand-me-downs from my parents, Craigslist deals and garage sale steals, I was able to pull together a comfortable, attractive apartment. No, it’s not a page out of Better Homes, but it’s no mismatched bachelor pad either. My favorite finds: A beautiful pecan-wood china cabinet and six-seat dining room table for less than $250, a less than 2-year old Maytag washer and dryer for $250, and matching Pottery Barn quilts for the boys’ beds ($20 for both, including the matching shams).

In addition to scoring home furnishings deals, I have also come to prefer shopping for my kids’ clothes (and mine, too) at garage sales and thrift stores. I’ve found some unbelievable deals: All cotton GAP PJs for $.50; Tommy Hilfiger tops for under $1.00.  There are a few items that I won’t get second-hand, namely underwear, socks and shoes.  But everything else, including the kids’ winter coats, goes on the garage sale list.

Now aside from the really good bargains, I like shopping at garage sales because they are a much more earth-friendly way to accumulate new (to us) goods.  First, there is the fact that so much of the stuff that gets sold at garage sales would otherwise end up in a landfill somewhere.  By buying it and using it as is or re-purposing it to fit our lives, we’re extending the life of that good and reducing the amount of waste in our garbage dumps. I recently read that Americans generated 246 million tons of municipal solid waste in 2005.  That’s a 60% increase since 1980.

Second, making new stuff is incredibly resource-intensive. There is the electricity and natural gas that goes into manufacturing, the petroleum that is the basis of some many of our consumable goods (think anything plastic), and of course the fuel that is used to transport these goods to our mega-malls and big box shops.  Buying the kids’ t-shirts for a quarter at a garage sale eliminates my small part in this massive energy suck.

For more on avoiding the consumer trap of new goods, check out this article from GOOD Magazine about the San Francisco-based group called the Compact. Back in 2006, Bay Area friends committed to not buying anything new (outside of food, medication and a couple other exceptions) for one year.  Their pledge sparked an international movement, which I will admit has been a real source of inspiration to me.

So, are you a seeker of second-hand deals and steals?  What’s your inspiration?