You know, it is rather strange but I’ve found that ever since our whole tent experience over the summer I’ve become far more pragmatic than I once was, especially in matters concerning what we eat and some of the products we use.  Part of this is budgetary, but there’s also a part that is just fed up with substandard products that cost more, even if they are supposed to be better for the environment.  For example, I used to use a very environmentally sensitive dishwashing detergent.  It didn’t have any dyes, phosphates, and was completely plant-based and biodegradable.  Any green buzz word that could possibly be applied to dishwashing detergent was used on the packaging of this stuff.  And I used it for months and months at our old apartment…  and I got used to cloudy, spotted glasses, a dirty dishwasher (yes, the inside of the dishwasher gradually turned a grungy brownish color), and spotted dishes.  When I moved into this apartment though, I couldn’t find what I used to use, and I had sticker shock when I went to the local natural foods store to find a substitute.  Since I used to buy directly from a co-op from the same vendor that this natural foods store uses, I know what their mark-up is…  and I just couldn’t stomach paying over 100% markup for something that frankly doesn’t work all that well.  So, next time I went to Safeway I bought a container of Cascade and I’ve been reveling in non spotted dishes, clean, uncloudy glasses and a clean dishwasher ever since.  Yes, it has phosphates in it, and yes, those will be bad for our septic system once we move.  But you know what?  I just can’t quite get myself to care enough to switch back.  Is that shallow of me to prefer clean things to something that is known to do at least some degree of environmental damage?  The same thing goes for washing machine detergent.  I used to have to examine every piece of clothing and treat it with a stain remover.  I tried environmentally safe ones, but they were expensive and useless.  Spray n’ Wash was my usual laundry day companion.  Again though, once I moved I started using Tide for similar reasons and now I don’t have to minutely examine every piece of laundry before washing it.  Everything just comes clean.  Laundry is ever so much easier to do and I’m rewashing so much less that I really doubt I will be giving this stuff up, even after we move.  

However, in the grocery area, I’m more of a pragmatist by need than desire.  We still eat very little meat, which is a decision we’ve made for both budgetary reasons and animal and human welfare sorts of reasons.  We don’t have a problem with raising animals for meat, rather we have a problem with how animals are generally raised for meat in this country - and how the workers who work with the animals and process the animals are generally treated.  Right now though the meat we do eat is no longer anywhere near humanely raised - it’s all factory farmed.  How else can you get chicken legs at 88 cents a pound and ground beef (15% fat) for $2.29 a pound?  (recent prices from WinCo)   However, this however is something I do want to try and change once the money pressures ease up a bit.  Ideally when we get into our house and have our chest freezer again, we’ll buy a half a free range cow occasionally and perhaps some pork too.  I’d also like to raise chickens for meat and eggs.  Matt really wants to raise a pig for meat, but that is a little more than I think I can deal with at the moment.  I’d also love to have a diary cow (think of all that cheese I could make!) but for a lactose intolerant family that is probably rather silly.  I think we’ll settle for goats and just get used to that goat-a-licious taste.  

As for fruits and vegetables, I’ve made that same sort of compromise as well.  About half of our fruits and vegetables used to be organic, and now it is pretty much zero.  We have a lot of concerns about what industrial scale farming does to the land in terms of pollution and erosion, and also what it exposes the workers to in the course of all the spraying that goes on.  I’d love for us to have a big year around garden where we could get a good portion of our fruits and veggies, but I have no idea how realistic that really is.  It would be great though!  Most likely, we’ll probably at most be able to provide about half of our needs in this area (due largely to time and space considerations) and I’m not sure where the rest would come from.  

So perhaps I’m not so pragmatic as I think I am, or perhaps it all depends on who I’m comparing myself to.  But I will say that I am no longer willing to pay more for stuff that just doesn’t work all that well, environmentally friendly or not.  Perhaps that seems like a no-brainer to some, but to me it is a big step in the direction of pragmatism.