The Reluctant husband who went green gradually

Brian and Lil B

In honor of Valentine's Day coming up, I asked my husband, Brian, to write up his thoughts on how going gradually was going for him. I told him to be honest and surprise me. In the end, I think I need him posting monthly, don't you? You can also see his guest post on Practically Green.


My wife has always been a "greener" thinker than me. As our two separate lifestyle became one I noticed that her ways have shifted mine quite a bit. Long before it was cool, she was shopping with her own grocery bags was conscious of lights on for no reason and eating organically. "Did you really need to put that one thing in that plastic bag?" I remember her asking me standing in the kitchen back from the store. 

He fails to mention how his co-workers
busted him for drinking out of a
Dutch Brothers cup!

Over the last 6-months, with her new blog and movement to live greener there have been a few things that I've really enjoyed and others that were a little more life shifting for me. I like the worm bin in the back. It's kind of cool to be using our produce waste for spring garden's compost. I'm excited about chemical free stuff in the house for housekeeping and personal hygiene. I think the only thing that I didn't like is... hate me for saying it... coffee tastes better in a paper cup and a plastic lid you get at a coffee shop. There is something about drinking from it I enjoy. I have changed my ways though, drinking coffee out of a reusable cup (it's not the same though).

A big thing for her is recycling and she talked me into recycling the craziest thing ever... my car. Well, it wasn't exactly recycling where you tear it up and recycle the metal. It's called freecycling, where you list it on a web page in a community for people to come by and take it off of your hands for free. The idea is to keep things out of
the landfill, or in this case the junkyard.

I mentioned earlier that she had to talk me into it. This car, a 1995 Toyota Tercel that I made payments on while starving in college. The car that took me all over the west coast in the US without any problems (aside a huge carbon exhaust cloud that exploded out of my car while driving in the heat of Death Valley). It was the car that
had a busted out passenger window which I never replaced because it cost too much and I secretly liked the Dukes of Hazard windowless-look.  It was the car that was buried in snow up at Mt. Bachelor parking lot that I had to dig out both outside and inside (because the tarp didn't do its job), and took me home with ice on the inside of my windshield from my breath because my heater went out. Then, on that last drive from the mountain it stalled out the exact moment I pulled into its space at home and never started again. After all of that loyal running with my lack of gratitude and care aside oil changes and a spark plug change out my wife suggest giving it away?

I agreed to it and the car was immediately snatched up by a local who wanted to get is 16-year-old boy a "beater" for his first car. He picked it up while I was at work, commenting to my wife that from the looks of it I really didn't like this car that much. Well I did... well at least the first 75,000 miles of it. We learned that all the car needed was gas a few days later. He said the tank was bone dry and the fuel gauge was broke. That explains why it died the way it did. To this day I see it putting around Bend, Oregon.