Personal Progress Comes in Tides

Sometimes, it's nice to discover that there's no going back. I find this happens a lot for Greening. It literally hit me in the face today. Or, more exactly, in the olfactory. I, the Good Green Witch, am an apartment dweller, and, as such, I share a laundry room with a handful of others. We're a small building... we don't get in each others' way much. I only needed one machine this morning, and loaded in with my soap nuts and cold water. Upon going down to check on the progress of said laundry, I realized someone was in the other machine before I even got to the doorway. The chemical-laden smell of fresh mountain flowery Tide hit me like... well, a tide. (Maybe THAT'S why they call it that!) It wrapped me from head to toe. It enveloped me. I think my clothes got the smell by proxy, just by being in the next machine.

I won't get started on the fact that this neighbor uses HOT water. HOT water?? In this day and age? With the super-almighty powerful Tide doing the work already? I have accepted that's a battle I cannot win with that neighbor. (It might be evil that, once, I actually changed it to warm after Neighbor left the laundry room, but I was hoping Karma was looking upon the real justification and wasn't going to punish me TOO badly....shh, don't tell anyone) I can't knock on Neighbor's door and lecture on detergent choices. (Can I?) No... all I can do in this case is make sure I'm doing what I need to do. I can try to teach by example. I can accept the fact that marketing works on some people and that I can't change everyone.

What I CAN enjoy is the fact that I need never go back to using those chemicals. Our laundry has been smell-free for months, and we love it. We don't miss dryer sheets, we don't miss soapy residue, and we most certainly do not miss shelling out way too many bucks for so-called concentrated detergent, for which they charge more even though they are SAVING money by not filling extra space with water and have lower shipping charges because the product weighs less.... BUT I digress. These things, I can enjoy. And I do. I like that I am not contributing to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch with yet another plastic bottle. There is no going back for me, and I am great with that. This is my Progress... to reject other people's idea of progress with their bigger badder more concentrated super-smelly stuff....

I wear my preferred essential oil. My clothes do not need to be perfumed too. My bedsheets are fine. I don't need to breathe deep into my towels. And, I laugh at commercials for these products. I laugh, because I am NOT falling for it any more! I'm as free from their mind-games as my laundry is from chemicals!

That feels pretty good.