You’re singing our song!

When my husband and I ‘found’ our little piece of paradise (a 500 sq ft cottage on the southeastern shore of Lake Huron) we were elated because we love the place and stoked because the move meant a huge reduction in our footprint in one fell swoop.

We went from a 2600 sq ft suburban home with all the urban bells and whistles to cottage life. Today we have:

- no A/C (it’s lake breezes, the odd fan or nothing - amazing how you acclimatize!)
- no central heat (a propane fireplace heats the whole place in a snap when we need heat - and clothing layers do a great job of reducing our usage)
- no dishwasher (and use biodegradable cleaning products)
- no washer/dryer (like you, we wash clothes less often cause it’s such a pain - and when we do laundry we’re using high efficiency/big load machines, and spring/summer/fall we hand our clothes to dry).

Because we work from home - and because we love being home - we drive way less, eat out less, eat more local (and organic) foods (love our farmer’s market) and eat less processed stuff.

Too boot, we have a low flow shower and a new composting toilette (an adjustment we feel good about).

But when we moved we made one purchase that’s always had me a bit torn: we traded in our Toyota Corolla and bought a Nissan Pathfinder to make winter driving out here safer and whatever commuting we did do less claustraphobic. Love the SUV but the emissions have always bugged me, and I’ve often wished for a size/capacity equal option that didn’t produce the same polution.

I was thrilled to see Toyota’s coming out with a Fuel-cell car next year (its only a matter of time till there’s the perfect SUV for us!), and I’m looking for any feedback on converting a combustion engine to a fuel-cell hybrid from anyone willing to share…

OH, and the occassional ‘grrr’ between Randy and I is made a lot easier when there’s the ever present soundtrack of surf and birdsong soothing things over: it’s hard to stay crunchy when you live in paradise. Not impossible but hard…:)

Lissa