Does it take a lot of greenbacks to live a green life? Not necessarily: if you have ingenuity and dedication, you can modify your life choices today, and over your lifetime, to be sustainable, ecological, and healthy.

A green makeover can happen all at once, or it can be a gradual process. Start by bringing cloth bags to the market to buy locally grown foods, using a clothesline to dry your laundry and riding a bike instead of driving. Work up to solar water heaters, wind turbines, strawbale additions and living “off the grid”. If you decide to invest in sustainability, and install green appliances, alter your home with green construction, or establish an organic garden, the initial cost can be large. Yet, in the long run, green living pays for itself with energy efficiency, invigorating health, beauty, and quality. It doesn’t matter whether you rent or own an apartment or single-family home or live in the city, suburbs or country. What it all comes down to is a new way of thinking—and a new way of living.

Living green is about understanding a way of life that is purposefully healthy, using the locally unique forces and resources of the Earth efficiently, and considering the consequences of your actions on your self, humanity, and the entire web of life, including the future generations. Simply stated, it’s having quality relationships of integrity with all things.

In this series of articles, my husband and I will illustrate the Why, What and How of Green Living. We have life experience in green building and remodeling, organic gardening and wild foraging of foods, medicines and useful supplies, solar electricity, vegetable oil conversion of a diesel engine, wind generators, solar water heating, passive solar heating, radiant heat, wood heat, and basic homestead animal care and propagation.

We welcome your topic inquiries and can be contacted at: McKeesConstruction@yahoo.com.