I was once on over the top, organized, anal-retentive freak. You know, to the point where it was quite annoying. I was pressed, waxed and sporting a handheld label maker with pride. My apartment was always ready for guests on a moments notice. I could have it visitor ready during their elevator ride up to my place. I recall a time when April 15th would roll around and I could pull my files out of my desk, run a report on quicken and my taxes where done. If I needed a receipt for the purchase of a battery from three years ago, I could find it in a heartbeat. My wife remembers that guy and wonders where he went. I donât know where the old JB is, but I can tell you when he left. He departed on November 26th, 2001. This was the day that I became a father and my mind warped and my priorities changed. Parents, you know what Iâm talking about. Those of you who have not yet had children or are expecting, I am about to give you a glimpse into your future.br /br /Let me take you on a little visual tour of my house. Just to be clear and avoid us coming across as slobs, my house is always clean. You could eat off the floor. It just has the distinct markings that a child lives there. Next to our front door youâll always find my daughters backpack, jacket and shoes. Our daughter can slip them off in one fluid motion when she walks in the door. Our living room is filled with extreme toys. Next to our lounge chair is an electric scooter that is charging. Next to the sofa is an electric car that is also charging. On the kitchen table is an remote control helicopter this is, you guessed it, charging. It seems every outlet is filled with a charger of some sort for portable dvd, ipods, DS Nitinendo or something. Whenever we sit on the sofa something needs to be moved, a pogo stick, hulk gloves or possibly and critter from outdoors, being held against itâs will. br /br /I always envisioned a quite office where I could find solitude. Itâs become the most chaotic room in the house. My office has become the office/playroom/family room/exercise room. The shelves meant to organize my work, taxes, books are filled with dinosaurs, board games, and puzzles. Itâs not uncommon to be working in the wee hours of the morning, the only time I am alone, only to have Squeeky the hamster cruise across my keyboard. The exercise equipment that âfolds for easy storageâ has lost its motivation to fold and store. At least itâs being used. On our tour, I can take you quickly from the family room to the bathroom because we have our choice of transportation available anywhere you look; skateboards, bikes, stilts. The bathroom is filled with gimmicks to entertain. When you pull back the shower curtain you literally canât see the bottom of the tub. Itâs a porcelain toy box of squirt guns, dolphins, mermaids and animal shaped bath gels. When I was growing up I donât recall needing scuba gear.br /br /Outside our home isnât much different. We have a small yard filled with nerfs, balls, bats, kites and inflatableâs. Not being much of a judge of size while ordering online, I apparently purchased the largest trampoline known to mankind. You open the door, walk to the end of the deck and all you see is my Ringling Brothers approved larger than life trampoline, leaving no yard whatsoever. Oh well, less mowing. Iâm not sure if our garage is organized or not. Itâs more of a magical David Copperfield sort of trick. Itâs really a mess but itâs all on the ceiling. Using every imaginable hook, shelf and pulley known available at Home Depot, Iâve managed to hang upside down every outdoor sports mechanism you can imagine; a Canoe, tent, surfboard, or fishing gear. What I basically have is an upside down REI. If you can find the right rope you are welcome to borrow anything you like. If you grab the wrong rope, they all come tumbling down.br /br /As crazy and chaotic as this all sounds, itâs also comforting. To walk into our home and find everything perfectly stowed away wouldnât feel right. I fully expect to walk up to the front door with the dog scratching at the glass, as if I hadnât been home in years, even though I just went to the mailbox. I expect the place to look as if a seven year old is loving every minute of being seven in this home, just as they did at six, five, and so on. Dinner wouldnât be the same if there werenât rubber frogs in the chair and fake poo on the table. I wouldnât know what to think if a dvd was actually in the correct case, or in a case at all. br /br /Priorities change when kids start taking those first steps. Itâs almost sad when we box up a years worth of her favorite toys and take it to our storage building, something I said I would NEVER have. We pull out a jumbo marker and write âRaleigh age oneâ and so on accordingly each year. She only gets to be a kid once and I hope she remembers how fun this house was. We always wanted it to be a creative, inspiring place to learn even if it meant mommy and daddy would have army men and jacks permanently embedded in their feet. There will always be plenty of time later in life to return to the old JB, but I donât miss him for now.br /br /I would like to make one last stop on our tour. I would like to show you my car but unfortunately melted crayons have jammed the doorlocks. But if you look inside and to the left youâll see a lovely design made of crushed goldfishâ¦
I was once on over the top, organized, anal-retentive freak. You know, to the point where it was quite annoying. I was pressed, waxed and sporting a handheld label maker with pride. My apartment was always ready for guests on a moments notice. I could have it visitor ready during their elevator ride up to my place. I recall a time when April 15th would roll around and I could pull my files out of my desk, run a report on quicken and my taxes where done. If I needed a receipt for the purchase of a battery from three years ago, I could find it in a heartbeat. My wife remembers that guy and wonders where he went. I donât know where the old JB is, but I can tell you when he left. He departed on November 26th, 2001. This was the day that I became a father and my mind warped and my priorities changed. Parents, you know what Iâm talking about. Those of you who have not yet had children or are expecting, I am about to give you a glimpse into your future.
Let me take you on a little visual tour of my house. Just to be clear and avoid us coming across as slobs, my house is always clean. You could eat off the floor. It just has the distinct markings that a child lives there. Next to our front door youâll always find my daughters backpack, jacket and shoes. Our daughter can slip them off in one fluid motion when she walks in the door. Our living room is filled with extreme toys. Next to our lounge chair is an electric scooter that is charging. Next to the sofa is an electric car that is also charging. On the kitchen table is an remote control helicopter this is, you guessed it, charging. It seems every outlet is filled with a charger of some sort for portable dvd, ipods, DS Nitinendo or something. Whenever we sit on the sofa something needs to be moved, a pogo stick, hulk gloves or possibly and critter from outdoors, being held against itâs will.
I always envisioned a quite office where I could find solitude. Itâs become the most chaotic room in the house. My office has become the office/playroom/family room/exercise room. The shelves meant to organize my work, taxes, books are filled with dinosaurs, board games, and puzzles. Itâs not uncommon to be working in the wee hours of the morning, the only time I am alone, only to have Squeeky the hamster cruise across my keyboard. The exercise equipment that âfolds for easy storageâ has lost its motivation to fold and store. At least itâs being used. On our tour, I can take you quickly from the family room to the bathroom because we have our choice of transportation available anywhere you look; skateboards, bikes, stilts. The bathroom is filled with gimmicks to entertain. When you pull back the shower curtain you literally canât see the bottom of the tub. Itâs a porcelain toy box of squirt guns, dolphins, mermaids and animal shaped bath gels. When I was growing up I donât recall needing scuba gear.
Outside our home isnât much different. We have a small yard filled with nerfs, balls, bats, kites and inflatableâs. Not being much of a judge of size while ordering online, I apparently purchased the largest trampoline known to mankind. You open the door, walk to the end of the deck and all you see is my Ringling Brothers approved larger than life trampoline, leaving no yard whatsoever. Oh well, less mowing. Iâm not sure if our garage is organized or not. Itâs more of a magical David Copperfield sort of trick. Itâs really a mess but itâs all on the ceiling. Using every imaginable hook, shelf and pulley known available at Home Depot, Iâve managed to hang upside down every outdoor sports mechanism you can imagine; a Canoe, tent, surfboard, or fishing gear. What I basically have is an upside down REI. If you can find the right rope you are welcome to borrow anything you like. If you grab the wrong rope, they all come tumbling down.
As crazy and chaotic as this all sounds, itâs also comforting. To walk into our home and find everything perfectly stowed away wouldnât feel right. I fully expect to walk up to the front door with the dog scratching at the glass, as if I hadnât been home in years, even though I just went to the mailbox. I expect the place to look as if a seven year old is loving every minute of being seven in this home, just as they did at six, five, and so on. Dinner wouldnât be the same if there werenât rubber frogs in the chair and fake poo on the table. I wouldnât know what to think if a dvd was actually in the correct case, or in a case at all.
Priorities change when kids start taking those first steps. Itâs almost sad when we box up a years worth of her favorite toys and take it to our storage building, something I said I would NEVER have. We pull out a jumbo marker and write âRaleigh age oneâ and so on accordingly each year. She only gets to be a kid once and I hope she remembers how fun this house was. We always wanted it to be a creative, inspiring place to learn even if it meant mommy and daddy would have army men and jacks permanently embedded in their feet. There will always be plenty of time later in life to return to the old JB, but I donât miss him for now.
I would like to make one last stop on our tour. I would like to show you my car but unfortunately melted crayons have jammed the doorlocks. But if you look inside and to the left youâll see a lovely design made of crushed goldfishâ¦
It's been out for about a month. In case you missed the a href="http://www.austinmonthly.com/amonthly_home.php"Austin Monthly Home/a "Green Issue". Here is what I had to say about growing up green:br /br / p class="MsoNormal"Before everyone reading this starts handing out awards, commending each other for their green efforts and setting up a luncheon with Al Gore⦠I am here to tell you that you are not as Green as you think you are. I came to this reality when I was taking my own green home inventory. I realized that compared to when I grew up, we are total greedy, indulgent, all consuming mashers, yet we pat ourselves on the back for recycling and putting in double pane windows. You want to hear about true âgreen home living?â Let me tell you how it was when I grew up. We didnât have a name for it at the time and there were no city rebates. We were just green out of necessity. I canât tell if our green living came from those times or our modest economic status. Try reflecting on your own upbringing and you may too realize that you grew up greener than you could ever be today./p p class="MsoNormal"o:p /o:pspan style="" /spanLetâs start with our obsession with square footage. This has got to stop. I love a cozy comfortable home with low ceilings. Am I the only one who likes this? Do we really need a separate room for every kid, their own playroom, attached kids bathrooms, a home theater room, a billiards room, a walk-in wine cooler, an office, a home gym, an art studio, a music room, a Riverdance Rehearsal roomâ¦? You get the idea. Most master closets are bigger than the rooms we grew up in. I have a friend with a treadmill that he uses in his master closet! Growing up kids shared rooms. It was part of the growth process. You had to learn to cohabitate with your siblings. We learn patience and understanding from clothes stealing and hair pulling. More importantly, think of all the massive square footage we are heating and cooling. I think it would be neat to have a specially lit eyebrow plucking room, but enough is enough./p p class="MsoNormal"o:p /o:pAn energy efficient home is a good green home. When I was growing up, there was one stereo, one tv and the amount of time they were on was limited. Now, when I walk around my house I am shocked and amazed at just how many things are plugged in and sucking up power. I counted four computers, two cell phones, two digital cameras, four stereoâs, 5 tvâs, multiple dvd players, ipods everywhere. Iâm sure your house looks the same. I opened a closet and found an vacuum, an electric tile floor cleaner, a dustbuster and an electric swiffer. Weâve gotten too lazy to even use a traditional mop. Do you have the pre-soaked Clorox wipes in your kitchen? Weâre too lazy to spray a counter today or a paper towel. This is pathetic. Weâre creating massive amounts of additional trash to save ourselves an extra 20 seconds here or there. When we were kids, even paper towels were a luxury. I donât remember paper towels in my house when I grew up. We reused wash cloths until they smelled like a dead hamster. Our kitchen sponges would last through an entire presidential administration. I remember thinking people who had Brillo pads or st1:place st="on"Dixie/st1:place cups were rich. We had a pretty fancy dishwasher when I was growing up. I believe the brand was called JBNikkeStephanieChris, oddly named after me and my sisters. /p p class="MsoNormal"o:p /o:pAre you starting to get the idea of what massive consumers we are today? Letâs just look at the exterior of your home. Think about your tool shed today. You have a chain saw, electric pole saw, leaf blower, electric edger. This will freak you out. Did you know that your gas leaf blower running for 30 minutes puts out the same emissions as driving your car 2,000 miles! Your rake, zero emissions! I remember raking leafs through half my childhood. In fact, itâs difficult to find a photo of me from my childhood without a lawn tool in my hands. You know the famous âAmerican Gothicâ depression era painting of the old man with the pitchfork? I was the pre-teen version of that. My sisters and I would edge the lawn with a pair of hand clippers. Donât get me wrong, we are not looking for accolades or anything, we pretty much bitched about it the entire time we were growing up. We were well compensated with dinner on the table every evening and a bad case of poison ivy on our crotch every spring. I canât complain./p p class="MsoNormal"o:p /o:pAs you continue to dig into this, just as I have. Think about your childhood upbringing and compare the two. No one I know today carpools. Heck, we were even carpooling on bikes back in the day. Every memory of riding bikes as a kid I either had a friend on the handlebars or I was sitting on the bars getting âpumped.â We were so green we would conserve energy amongst friends, which in turn took fewer calories and less food consumption to sustain our energy. Howâs that for green? We would walk to school, few kids do today. Have you seen the line of moms in giant SUVâs heading in and out of the schools today? My dad drove a beetle with four kids. I hated sitting in the middle. I have a funny walk to this day because it was a stickshift. /p p class="MsoNormal"o:p /o:pReduce, reuse, recycle seems like such a new thing, every since the City of st1:city st="on"st1:place st="on"Austin/st1:place/st1:City handed out those blue bins. We were on it a long time ago. My mom could stretch the life out of clothing like no other. She would buy them big, hem them, slowly let them out and put patches on any tears in the clothing. My mom had a bit of a nautical fetish, so I was often seen sporting ships and anchors on my jeans that I had torn in skateboarding accidents or Evel Kneivel reenactments. There was nothing cool about going to school looking like the president of the Popeye fan club. Our kids would be appalled at the thought of wearing their cousins hand me downs. How about thisâ¦why donât you suggest to your kids that they share the bathwater before they drain it? See what kind of reaction you get. Try hanging your clothes our on a clothes line to dry for on monthâ¦just try it. Howâs this for recycling, one year my great aunt made us Easter baskets out of empty ivory snow containers./p p class="MsoNormal"o:p /o:pIâve really got to rethink my lifestyle. My dad was always bitchin about wasted electricity back then. At this very moment, half the lights are on in the house. The dishwasher is running, laundry is running, the landscape lighting just kicked on and the sprinkler system just finished. Iâll never forget the sprinkler system we had when I was a kid. My dad would stand in the middle of the lawn and spray in all directions til his 40 ouncer of Schlitz ran dry. Which didnât take long. I could go on and on with my list of how we lived green back in the day. Iâm not belittling those of you who just spent massive amounts of money on solar panels, rainwater collection or quadruple pane windows. I applaud those things, but really, really think about your total consumption. By the way, did you know Al Goreâs house has 8 bathrooms?/p
It's been out for about a month. In case you missed the Austin Monthly Home "Green Issue". Here is what I had to say about growing up green:
Before everyone reading this starts handing out awards, commending each other for their green efforts and setting up a luncheon with Al Gore⦠I am here to tell you that you are not as Green as you think you are. I came to this reality when I was taking my own green home inventory. I realized that compared to when I grew up, we are total greedy, indulgent, all consuming mashers, yet we pat ourselves on the back for recycling and putting in double pane windows. You want to hear about true âgreen home living?â Let me tell you how it was when I grew up. We didnât have a name for it at the time and there were no city rebates. We were just green out of necessity. I canât tell if our green living came from those times or our modest economic status. Try reflecting on your own upbringing and you may too realize that you grew up greener than you could ever be today.
Letâs start with our obsession with square footage. This has got to stop. I love a cozy comfortable home with low ceilings. Am I the only one who likes this? Do we really need a separate room for every kid, their own playroom, attached kids bathrooms, a home theater room, a billiards room, a walk-in wine cooler, an office, a home gym, an art studio, a music room, a Riverdance Rehearsal roomâ¦? You get the idea. Most master closets are bigger than the rooms we grew up in. I have a friend with a treadmill that he uses in his master closet! Growing up kids shared rooms. It was part of the growth process. You had to learn to cohabitate with your siblings. We learn patience and understanding from clothes stealing and hair pulling. More importantly, think of all the massive square footage we are heating and cooling. I think it would be neat to have a specially lit eyebrow plucking room, but enough is enough.
An energy efficient home is a good green home. When I was growing up, there was one stereo, one tv and the amount of time they were on was limited. Now, when I walk around my house I am shocked and amazed at just how many things are plugged in and sucking up power. I counted four computers, two cell phones, two digital cameras, four stereoâs, 5 tvâs, multiple dvd players, ipods everywhere. Iâm sure your house looks the same. I opened a closet and found an vacuum, an electric tile floor cleaner, a dustbuster and an electric swiffer. Weâve gotten too lazy to even use a traditional mop. Do you have the pre-soaked Clorox wipes in your kitchen? Weâre too lazy to spray a counter today or a paper towel. This is pathetic. Weâre creating massive amounts of additional trash to save ourselves an extra 20 seconds here or there. When we were kids, even paper towels were a luxury. I donât remember paper towels in my house when I grew up. We reused wash cloths until they smelled like a dead hamster. Our kitchen sponges would last through an entire presidential administration. I remember thinking people who had Brillo pads or Dixie cups were rich. We had a pretty fancy dishwasher when I was growing up. I believe the brand was called JBNikkeStephanieChris, oddly named after me and my sisters.
Are you starting to get the idea of what massive consumers we are today? Letâs just look at the exterior of your home. Think about your tool shed today. You have a chain saw, electric pole saw, leaf blower, electric edger. This will freak you out. Did you know that your gas leaf blower running for 30 minutes puts out the same emissions as driving your car 2,000 miles! Your rake, zero emissions! I remember raking leafs through half my childhood. In fact, itâs difficult to find a photo of me from my childhood without a lawn tool in my hands. You know the famous âAmerican Gothicâ depression era painting of the old man with the pitchfork? I was the pre-teen version of that. My sisters and I would edge the lawn with a pair of hand clippers. Donât get me wrong, we are not looking for accolades or anything, we pretty much bitched about it the entire time we were growing up. We were well compensated with dinner on the table every evening and a bad case of poison ivy on our crotch every spring. I canât complain.
As you continue to dig into this, just as I have. Think about your childhood upbringing and compare the two. No one I know today carpools. Heck, we were even carpooling on bikes back in the day. Every memory of riding bikes as a kid I either had a friend on the handlebars or I was sitting on the bars getting âpumped.â We were so green we would conserve energy amongst friends, which in turn took fewer calories and less food consumption to sustain our energy. Howâs that for green? We would walk to school, few kids do today. Have you seen the line of moms in giant SUVâs heading in and out of the schools today? My dad drove a beetle with four kids. I hated sitting in the middle. I have a funny walk to this day because it was a stickshift.
Reduce, reuse, recycle seems like such a new thing, every since the City of Austin handed out those blue bins. We were on it a long time ago. My mom could stretch the life out of clothing like no other. She would buy them big, hem them, slowly let them out and put patches on any tears in the clothing. My mom had a bit of a nautical fetish, so I was often seen sporting ships and anchors on my jeans that I had torn in skateboarding accidents or Evel Kneivel reenactments. There was nothing cool about going to school looking like the president of the Popeye fan club. Our kids would be appalled at the thought of wearing their cousins hand me downs. How about thisâ¦why donât you suggest to your kids that they share the bathwater before they drain it? See what kind of reaction you get. Try hanging your clothes our on a clothes line to dry for on monthâ¦just try it. Howâs this for recycling, one year my great aunt made us Easter baskets out of empty ivory snow containers.
Iâve really got to rethink my lifestyle. My dad was always bitchin about wasted electricity back then. At this very moment, half the lights are on in the house. The dishwasher is running, laundry is running, the landscape lighting just kicked on and the sprinkler system just finished. Iâll never forget the sprinkler system we had when I was a kid. My dad would stand in the middle of the lawn and spray in all directions til his 40 ouncer of Schlitz ran dry. Which didnât take long. I could go on and on with my list of how we lived green back in the day. Iâm not belittling those of you who just spent massive amounts of money on solar panels, rainwater collection or quadruple pane windows. I applaud those things, but really, really think about your total consumption. By the way, did you know Al Goreâs house has 8 bathrooms?
