Runner Insight

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Baby Steps

 We have always made changes in our lives by taking baby steps.  We did this when we wanted to start eating healthier, when we switched over to drinking more water by getting re-usable BPA-free plastic water bottles, and more recently here, we have done the same thing with our desire to be more environmentally conscientious.  One of those “baby steps” was to buy reusable shopping bags.  Now the ones we bought to put our groceries in, we keep in the van.  And they are easy for us to remember when we pull up to the store.  But we also use the bags to haul in stuff from the van, such as mail and other items we have accumulated while out running errands. For example, if I have to go to say, maybe the running store to buy a couple of things, for example maybe a new running shirt!! (Yee-ha!) and some energy gels, we don’t have to get a bag from the store, we just drop them into the re-usable grocery bag on the back seat. In fact, sometimes we refer to it as “the errand bag.”

When it was light enough out for me to start running home from work in the morning, I needed to bring my lunch and running clothing to work with me.  I was using a backpack during the months I would walk or take the bus home, but I didn’t really want to run home with a backpack on.  So at first I started using plastic grocery bags. But since we were trying to cut down on our use of plastic bags, I thought I would get several tote bags to take to work.  Later during the week, when we were out running errands, we could swing by the hospital and pick them up with all my re-usable lunch containers and work clothes. 

So off we went in search of tote bags.  My plan was to buy four, one for every day I worked during the week.  I found some small tote bags that would work, but then T pointed out a nylon re-usable grocery bag that folded up into a little pouch with a small carabineer on it.  It seemed perfect, as I could just get the one bag instead of four, and bring it home each morning clipped to my running shorts.

So that’s what I got and it’s worked out great!  I no longer use the plastic bags to carry all my stuff to work.

It’s just one more baby step we are taking to go green.

How ’bout it?

-Vision Runner

 P.S. Way to go Robin! Robin won the Runner’s Edge running socks that we gave away in the donor’s drawing over at my fundraising project for Guide Dogs for the Blind www.RunOverToEllens.com. If you haven’t donated yet, go to www.FirstGiving.com/VisionRunner and donate your $1 to be entered into the future drawings…and once you donate, read your email for the special private donor’s only access link to be able to watch the daily video blog.

 Thanks!

If you’re getting value out of this blog, you can do me a favor by linking to us and mentioning my Run Over To Ellen’s fundraising project to friends and co-workers. Here’s the link information for this article:
Title: Baby Steps
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Without being excessively rigid about any of it, over the past few years we have been working at practicing everyday healthier habits.  Our latest endeavor was sparked by my chiropractor.  He was discussing the health benefits of drinking water and he recommended that every day we drink half our body weight in ounces of water. He said 1/3 of your body weight in ounces was a good place to start, but working up to ½ was better for you. I had heard this before regarding the health benefits of drinking water, but hadn’t really internalized it. But this time, since I was recovering from lower right back pain which turned out to be sciatica, I was in a place in my life where I was more willing to take on the challenge. 

While I was mentally prepared and ready to do it, my problem became finding a safe and convenient drinking container.  I had a couple of stainless steel water bottles, but they made the water taste metallic.  We had been buying a case of water every week in the disposable plastic water bottles, but if we were going to increase our consumption that much, using that many throw away plastic water bottles was a really bad idea, environmentally speaking.

So, we found a BPA free plastic water bottle with built in straw that holds 32 ounces, and bought four of them.  We then dug out our Brita water filter pitchers.  By having two Brita water filter pitchers of cold water, and 4 BPA free plastic water bottles, we always have fresh cold water on hand, making drinking it easy.

So that’s nice, but how does drinking water save us over $1,000 a year? Well, let’s calculate…

We had been consuming (conservatively speaking) two 12 packs of Diet Coke at an average of $3.50 each for a total of $7.00 per week.

We were drinking a little over a case a week of Talking Rain juicy flavored beverages at $10.00 a case. (And yes, it had the artificial sweetener in it: not very good for us.)

And we had been buying a case of bottled water a week at $6.00 a case.

That’s $23.00 a week on cold beverages! Cutting them out saved us $1,196.00 per year. When I added it up, it astonished me how much we were saving by switching to water. And that’s with just two of us in the household. How much more could you save if you have more than two people in the household making the change? Even if you can’t get your kids to completely eliminate the sugar and artificial sweetener-filled fruit flavored beverages and sodas and Red Bulls, if you could instill in them the health benefits of drinking water and get them to cut their consumption of those other calorie-laden and sweetener-filled beverages in half and replace it with water, think how much healthier they will be.  

At our house, we have always taken baby steps when making these healthy changes, and we did the same with drinking more water.  We still buy milk and orange juice of course, but other than that, we weaned ourselves off of all of our other cold beverages, simply by buying four BPA-free water bottles at $4.00 each. And it took less than a month to make the change-over. 

Doing something healthy for your family and saving over $1000 bucks a year…what’s not to love? And why don’t you take one of those dollars and donate it in that little green-bordered FirstGiving box in the right-hand sidebar? We will thank you with lots of special secret surprises and private access to our Donors Only page at www.RunOverToEllens.com…

How ‘bout it?

-Vision Runner

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