If you’ve been following along, you’ll agree that this — the green experiment, bringing me from not-so-green-at-all to whatever shade of green I can manage to get comfortable in — has been a scatterbrained journey to this point.

Researching and discovering cool green news, products, foods, and initiatives has been really key in this  ‘going green’ journey. I think my preconceptions of what it was to be ‘green’ involved things that were way less cool and interesting, and way more bland, boring, and well, a lot of work.

And in hindsight, I’m almost ashamed to admit that it takes neat videos, celebrities, yummy looking, easy to make food, cool inventions, and flashy sales pitches to catch my attention when it comes to becoming more eco-friendly. But it does — and I’m probably not alone.

Like many of you, I just wasn’t born and raised to care about the environment, to put it bluntly. I certainly don’t blame my mother, she had plenty of things to worry about, like many mothers do. But as I’m getting older — gaining knowledge, experience, observations of my own and opinions to go with them — I find I am starting to notice, with the help of this green experiment, of course, that I should care about the environment. That it’s important to care about the environment. And whatever it takes to motivate me to actually do something, so be it — why be embarrassed? That’s why companies and organizations make these flashy sales pitches, cool inventions, and neato videos featuring their products and initiatives.

So what am I doing differently? How has this experiment changed me?

Well, I can tell you honestly, my interest in green, eco-friendly things has been awakened. I notice eco-friendly things everywhere – things I’d definitely not noticed before. The buses here in Ottawa, for example — some are hybrid! You know, I hadn’t even noticed that before all this. I’m definitely more aware of things like EcoCabs, reusable cloth bags at grocery stores (and now the need to pay 5 cents for every plastic grocery bag you use), organic food and drink everywhere! But do I notice things that aren’t eco-friendly? I don’t think I’m quite there yet. I mean, unless it’s blatantly obvious, I don’t notice it much.  But I’m hoping to get there!

I hope you’ve enjoyed taking part in the journey so far, I’m looking forward to seeing what this next part of the journey holds for me.

I’m working on a post about this whole experiment and where I feel I am with it right now — how much I’ve learned, how I’ve applied it in real life, what my favourite parts are, and what the parameters are on my expectations of where I’ll be on the green scale (light to dark green, that is) at the next check point.

What I’d like to know from you is — how do you think I’m doing? What advice would you give to someone going green, like me? In other words: Advise me! I’m curious to hear from my readers.

Does someone who uses eco-friendly light bulbs count as light green or are they a wanna-be earth-lover?

What’s your take?

I know this’ll be exiting for you — drumroll please! Tonight I’ll be doing my laundry!

But this won’t be just any old laundry session, tonight I’ll be trying out the laundry detergent I got — in bulk — from Topia Greenstop (Clyde at Woodward, Ottawa). The detergent is called Nature Clean and I’m proud to say that it is a Canadian product! (Go Canada!)

Do any of you have any experience with Nature Clean? So far I can tell you that I love the smell of it and I love the fact that if all goes well, I can get it in bulk at Topia. This makes me a happy laundry… doer. Laund…

Laundress.

Stay tuned for the results!