Creating a sustainable home takes time. I know everything takes time, but there’s a lot of learning and, at times, there’s saving up to happen.
Our home was built in 1925 (see the before/after of our bungalow house flip). With the flip came many (MANY!) modern upgrades – many of which were far more sustainable than what previously existed.
In our home, they replaced most of the single-pane windows with double pane to help with air flow and installed a Google Nest to help with air flow (did you know they have a sleek copper one now?!).
But since moving to Sacramento two years ago, we’ve slowly found the imperfections and learned about decisions we can make in and around our home to live more sustainably.
Creating Your Sustainable Home
Smaller Home Size
So, no matter what you do, the most sustainable decision you can really make regarding your home is size – the smaller your home, the lower the impact on the environment. But what does small mean?
I have no idea. Well, I do, but I don’t have a specific number or answer. I’ve read that small home living is fewer than 1,000 sq feet, but then how many people can live there? Just one person in 1,000 sq. feet is astronomically different than a family of four!
Do you work out of your home? What’s your job? You know. Lots of things, so I’ll just say smaller is better. Trying to embrace smaller (and preexisting) as much as possible.
At the moment, we live in a 1250 sq. foot house, but we plan to convert the garage to a living unit for guests.
When we bought our house, I assumed it would be a bit of a struggle to live in such a small house. After two years, I can tell you that it’s absolutely plenty for our family size and needs right now!
Heating, Air, & Ventilation
As I mentioned before, we have a Google Nest in our house. While it offers economical learning of your practices, we do it all manually, but we keep a very close eye on temps, costs, etc.
With a bigger house, heating and air requires more gas and electricity. Thankfully our house isn’t too big and, in the summer, our big oak tree helps us keep the heat out quite well.
For better or worse, we do still have single-pane windows in two rooms in our home. Not only does the glass allow for heat transfer in and out, the wood frames create gaps for air to flow freely as well.
So while it doesn’t take much to heat or cool our home, it’s not perfectly energy efficient solely for that – something which we plan to fix in the coming years.
Sustainable Appliances
And, of course, part of that conversation includes appliances. We have one tv in our house and much to my husband’s chagrin, it isn’t huge. I can’t always tell what inning it is from my seat on the couch, but for the most part, it’s fine!
Our kitchen appliances are all energy efficient, however, they’re all full-sized and still use a lot of electricity. Because I don’t have a clothesline (yet!), we try to hang dry a fair amount of our clothing, but we still run the dryer fairly regularly.
Our refrigerator is also energy-efficient and our gas range works wonderfully, but we are absolutely considering an electric range at some point to work toward a gas-free home.
A problem we currently have, however, is that because our house was built so long ago, Sacramento limits the size of our electric panel.
Since adding a charger for our Tesla Y electric car, we’ve fairly maxed out is capacity, so the switches from gas to electric aren’t something we can do at this time.
{Shown here: stovetop air fresheners to naturally deodorize (and scent up! our kitchen)}
Home Landscaping
The outside of your home is an important consideration as well. We do have standard grass (a total water-suck that’s not native). It was installed before we moved in and we haven’t changed it yet.
As we fix up our backyard, we are hoping to opt for a California-native grass and then drought resistant (and native) landscaping. This is all in addition to my side garden where I’m learning to grow some of our food – nothing stupendous at the moment, but it all helps and it brings me so much joy!
Purchases
And finally – purchases. I’ve covered some of this before, but we are trying to shop local and small a decent amount.
I’ve been hitting up our farmers market almost every week buying all the eggs and produce we need in the summer and most of what we need in the winter!
I also frequent my refill store for home goods and try to shop a combination of local markets and local groceries (like Raley’s). Learn how to shop bulk bins and refill stores!
Cleaner Products
Buying and using cleaner products has also been a big one. With a kiddo in the house, I really didn’t want to have a stash of items I desperately needed to keep him away from – namely cleaning products.
So while our switch to clean home products began a while before he joined our world, it picked up after that.
Cleaner products are important because they wash down the drain into our water supplies and they keep our air cleaner (including candle burning – something we really don’t do much now and only with beeswax or very clean candles).
Sustainable Home Progress Report
So all in all, we’re making small steps. I’ve never claimed to be an expert at sustainable living or making our sustainable home perfect, but we’re making small, baby steps that are slowly coming together!
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