Wipeaholic

I know there are worse offenders then me, but in my circle of friends I’m pretty much an environmental monster. For starters, my intention of having a ‘green’ baby went totally out the window when she arrived early and caught me unprepared. I quickly waivered on my insistence on using cloth diapers when I managed to fall in love with disposables in mere hours. Same goes for the sample of wipes that came free with said diapers and leave her tush smelling of springtime. Wait, make that newborn babies in springtime. You’d be surprised at how pleasant a chemically manufactured smell can be. Each day I repeatedly thrust the potent diaper/wipe combo into my clever little Diaper Genie without so much as a passing thought at the environmental consequences. Furthermore, her formula is neither organic or soy and I’m pretty sure my quest to keep her adorable is causing far more laundry then is entirely necessary (does a baby really need to change clothes three times a day?). Unfortunately that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Every appliance I own is plugged in twenty-four hours a day and there are certain light switches in my house that have never seen the off position. If I’m honest I don’t understand the concept of composting and I’m not entirely sure what is and is not recyclable. I mean, I throw my cans and bottles into boxes under my sink, but that’s about the extent of my effort. I wash my hands about a hundred times a day, which is good, except for the fact I dry them with paper towels, which is bad. More often then I’d like to admit, while running errands in a gigantic SUV, I lengthen my journey by miles to avoid the stop lights that may startle my baby from her mid-afternoon nap. Yesterday I kicked a tree... for fun. (OK, so that never happened. I love trees and you know, all that nature stuff, even if I’m not too great at showing it.) Sigh. I know. Really I do. But all of that is nothing compared to what I believe to be the worst of my environmental sins. In the name of convenience and the fact I really, REALLY hate to clean, I go through at least twenty Lysol disinfecting wipes a day. A DAY. And that’s just for everyday cleaning like wiping the counter after making a meal. On the rare days when I go all out and clean, say, my bathroom I’d say that number doubles, if not triples.

My name is Risa and I’m a wipeaholic.

Today while having coffee with a friend I shared my dirty little secret. Isn’t admitting you have a problem the first step towards recovery? After her initial judgey shock, which she made no attempt at hiding, she offered up a challenge. I’m never one to back down to a challenge so tomorrow I’ll say goodbye to my wipes once and for all (after using what’s left of course... I wouldn’t want to be wasteful after all). With my newly acquired environmentally friendly cleaner in one hand and rags (made from recycled t-shirts no less) in the other I’m going to clean my bathroom wipes-free for the first time in my life. It’s all about baby steps.