Hanging On by a Moral Thread!

As implied in this blog title, I'm trying to live a life that balances my moral beliefs with a low income, and being practical. A year years ago I was working part-time (by choice) so I cooked properly, exercised, biked, looked into vegan cleaning products, etc. When I went back to school for a Political Science BA/MA, while still working the same hours, my life slowly (year by year) degraded in quality. This past year (first year of MA) was so bad, I even forgot to take my calcium pills, which I'm usually pretty good about.

There are many times in the past years that I haven't bought a product because it's not vegan, or not environmentally friendly, or so expensive that I just feel it’s wrong to buy! I mean, I would LOVE to buy Glad’s new smell-controlling, tear-free bags! But they’re so much more expensive than the regular kind, I just couldn’t give in. And I’ve so far resisted the Swiffer craze, because ah! ah! it seems so un-green. But then I still don’t clean my floor or whatever, so while I’m being Good, my personal life becomes shitteous. In the end I’ll sometimes give in--you don’t know how long I resisted paper towels! But then I got a third cat and hairballs became a standard morning find, and I gave up.

Well, in the end I don’t believe in Beating Oneself Up. Life is full of difficult moral choices that don’t have a clear right or wrong. Try balancing the math on buying non-leather, inexpensive shoes from Payless:
+ convenient layout, I can shop quickly
+ cheap
+ lots of non-leather
- cheaply made
- you can almost smell the sweatshops
+/- am I against sweatshops in the first place?
(subject for another time)
= I buy my shoes at Payless.

Which is what much of this blog is going to be about. The fact that trying to live morally, trying to know what’s best for The Little People of the world, trying to be happy and comfortable myself, etc. isn’t a straightforward venture. But I’m doing my best.

The few things I feel pretty sure about, or good shortcuts I’ve found to making an eco-animal-people-friendly life easier, I want to share. Things that I’m still all in a tither about, I want to blab about. Feel free to blab back.