Almost exactly four weeks ago, we moved into this house. And today I realized that I haven’t bought a single roll of paper towels–nor a package of napkins (okay, except for the napkins I sent to school with Isaac’s birthday treat)–in that entire time.

Before we moved, I’d been working on cutting back on our consumption of paper products, focusing on those pesky paper towels that are so easy to grab in larger quantities than you really need and so very…disposable. But I always had a roll of paper towels on hand for “emergencies”. Well, you know how THAT goes. One day you can’t find a towel and you’ve got a little mess on the counter so you pull out the roll…and then you figure that since it’s out you may as well do a good wipe-down of all the kitchen surfaces…and then you leave it out during dinner and the kids each rip off a full square or two.

So during my inaugural visit to the local grocery store to stock up on staples, I grabbed trash bags and toilet paper, but then paused in front of the paper towel selection and thought.

What if I just…didn’t buy any?

What mess could be so hellish that a regular dish towel (or, in an extreme case, a bath towel) wouldn’t do the trick? How hard could it really be to make sure there were always a few cloth napkins in the drawer for hand-wiping? How likely would it be that we’d actually have an emergency that would require the use of paper towels?

So I didn’t buy them. And haven’t since.

And guess what? We have all survived just fine. We have a drawer in the kitchen stuffed with dish towels and washcloths, and just grab whatever we need for the job at hand. I’ve delegated all the holey and orphaned socks to a bag in the pantry, and use them for cleaning the bathroom and kitchen surfaces. When a napkin or sock has been used, we toss it in a basket that’s in an inconspicuous corner of the kitchen. When supplies run low, I dump the basket in the washing machine and wash it on hot, sometimes along with other items that need a hot wash.

It’s so easy not to use paper towels, I can’t believe I never committed more firmly to it before. In fact, I’d say that I’d now be more annoyed by the amount of hassle it would take to carry a bulk-size package to the car and then into the house, than I am by the very minor amount of extra work it takes to wash the towels. I guess it’s just a matter of getting in the mindset and sticking to it (like meal planning or cloth diapering or anything else that takes only a teeny amount of discipline, but a good amount of preparation.) The nice thing is that now that we have a system, there should really be no reason we’d need to break down and get paper towels. You can get cloth napkins and dish towels at the thrift store for a song and a dance, and with four boys, I’ve got a steady supply of holey socks heading to the rag bag.

Have you made any changes lately that you thought would be a pain, but were surprisingly easy?

Remember these? I’m proud to say that by early June, those twelve little seedlings had grown up into ten healthy broccoli plants (I misjudged the location for a couple of them and had to tear ‘em out) that have given us a steady supply of this:

At least twice a week–and honestly, we’d be getting more if I hadn’t forgotten to get to them before the stalks grew too long and flowered a couple of times. (It happens faster than you might think!)

I’ve always had a love-hate relationship with all things domestic. Love, because I love to garden and bake and concoct my own cleaning supplies and sew buttons on and read Martha Stewart Living…when I can find the time. Hate, because many times my life has gotten in the way, or my scattered personality has gotten in the way, or some new shiny hobby or time-suck has gotten in the way and thwarted my best efforts and most dearly-held ideals. And, as you can see from the community garden story in my previous post (above), I also suffer from an inability to do anything halfway. Whether it’s overhauling our diets, meal planning, gardening or crafting my tendency is to start out with big expectations and big plans and then crash and burn when I don’t meet my own expectations.

But the nice thing about being–gasp–31? I’m learning a lot about myself, I recognize all those little habits, and even though I can’t always fix them at once (though it would certainly be in my nature to try) I can make little changes. And one of the little changes I made this year? Focus on one crop. Sure, I planted some tomatoes and peppers and zucchini later in the summer, just to see what would happen (so far not much), but I focused the majority of my attention and time on those little broccoli seedlings. And I was rewarded for that single-minded focus–so hard for a girl like me to acheive–with a steady crop of fresh broccoli.

If the tomatoes redden up and the zucchini keeps me in bread until Christmas, that’s icing on the cake. But that broccoli was my main objective, and there it is, helping me feel just a little bit better about our place in the world and the food I’m feeding my family. Even when I pair it with this:

Speaking of inspiration and focusing on one thing at a time, check out this fantastic article by Michael Pollan, author of The Omnivore’s Dilemma.

As for me? My gardening confidence has definitely gotten a broccoli-boost, and next year I’ll be ready to bite off a bigger project. Like growing broccoli AND tomatoes, perhaps.

And now I’m feeling inspired to go pull out my needle and thread and sew on some missing buttons. But just one or two, mind you. Just one or two.

We’ve been making an effort to drive less lately. As it is, I go through less than a tank of gas every other week–I simply don’t go anywhere outside of a 10- or 15- block radius of our home more than once a week or so, and even then we’re usually talking a 10-15 minute drive, max. So the sky-high gas prices aren’t pinching us too much yet.

But since you never know what could happen ($10/gallon gas? Sudden complete breakdown of the family minivan with no room in the budget for a new one? Both entirely possible) driving less seems like a good thing to get used to. And that means tweaking my own personal definition of “within walking distance”. When we moved here, I mentally wrote off the train, grocery store and many restaurants (besides the strip on Devon Ave, which is fantastic if you’re in the mood for Indian, Pakistani, or other South Asian food, but doesn’t really seem like the place to find a club sandwich or croissant) as “too far to walk”. Many of those things were ten or twenty blocks away, which just seemed really…far.

But then I took a few minutes to Google-map the distances, and learned that Target and Jewel are exactly one mile away, while the Metra is 1.3 miles. Should I need to get somewhere not on the Metra line, the EL station is just .5 miles further, or 1.8 miles total. Not a hop, skip, and a jump, but about a 35-40 minute walk…not torture. Especially considering that it doubles as exercise.

So lately I’ve been walking a lot more. To the Metra when I need to get up to Evanston (it’s a 5-minute ride); to Target, to the grocery store. Jon and I went out to dinner last week, and we walked 1.4 miles each way to this fantastic Mexican restaurant on Clark street–with a cheap bottle of BYOB wine and $7 entrees, it was a cheap night–and as we chatted while we walked on a beautiful early-summer evening, it didn’t seem like a long walk at all.

I’m finding myself stretching my idea of walkable distances further and further as I think of places outside of the radius I’ve become comfortable with, and realize that driving is often more of a hassle than a convenience. After all, it would probably take me about 7-10 minutes to drive to the same places I can walk in 20-25, but I have to find a place to park, watch out for pedestrians, and feel the da-DUMP of a hundred speed bumps. Where else can I get on foot? To the beach? Exactly 2.0 miles–easy. To the yoga studio? “Only” 3 miles. What about the indie bookstore? Just 3.7!

The biggest obstacle right now is that my kids are all relatively young. I love a weekly or so outing sans kids, but on the whole, it’s not really practical or desirable for me to spend hours away from them running errands. And two of them still have to be carted around at least some of the time on longer trips after their little legs give out, and pushing two kids in a stroller can make a nice stroll downright exhausting. The bus ceases to be a cheap option when you take four kids on it with you, and it’s not exactly quick, either.

Maybe when all the kids are big enough that taking two hours away from them just to get to and from where I’m going isn’t a huge issue, I’ll walk, train, or bus it everywhere I go. For now, I’m just doing what I can and doing my best to toughen up. For instance, today I walked the two-mile round trip to Target and Jewel for groceries and a few odds and ends. My double stroller is fabulous, but when I’ve got both the little guys loaded in there, the thing easily weighs 75 lbs. And before I left, I forgot to factor in that adding:

a gallon of milk
a 16-oz container of yogurt
a 10-oz container of sour cream
two bags of dense granola
Applesauce
And various bags ‘o carbs

would mean I’d be pushing 100 pounds for a mile. As we left the store in the 2:30 sun and I struggled to steer the stroller, stopping every few minutes to refill Owen’s pretzel ‘tup’ and take a swig of water, I cursed my silly notion, but after a few blocks we steered onto a shady street, a breeze picked up, and I got into a groove. Twenty-five minutes later I was home: sweaty, but triumphant, and I think I may even have beefed up my triceps a bit. Sure, what might have been a quick run to the store took about an hour more time and a lot more effort. But hey, my pants have been fitting a little tight lately, and I’d rather walk to the store than hit the gym.

Going by this calorie burn calculator, I probably walked off 250 or so calories today, and I figure that earns me an extra glass of wine with dinner tonight. And if that’s not an incentive to hoof it, I don’t know what is.