Baby Surprises
Amongst the many things I didn’t expect about having a child, there are two things I want to talk about today as I’ve decided everyone out there should know.
- Our water and electricity bills have drastically increased. I had no idea that 3 human beings and 1 dog could consume so much water and power. When I think rationally about the water, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised – we now do more loads of laundry, seem to wash more dishes, give frequent baby baths and wash bottles like it’s going out of style. But the electricity bill increasing, I just don’t get it. It’s not like we are using more power to run most items in our house, like our fridge, stove or computers. Those are consistent regardless of the number of people in the house. And if we factor in the fact that I rarely blow dry and/or flat iron my hair most days, I figure we should actually see a drop in consumption! But, I guess, not enough to off set the baby monitor or our dishwasher, or washer and dryer which all claim to be energy efficient.
- The amount of garbage we produce has skyrocketed. Like seriously, we now fill our recycling bin and our garbage bin every single week. And some weeks the lids don’t even close! The only time we’ve ever done this in the past is when we’ve done home reno projects. Usually we barely filled our bins, and now it’s insane. I am absolutely amazed at the amount of packaging baby products all seem to use, and the fact that we shop on amazon clearly doesn’t help as we receive so many things in amazon boxes. But, at least those are recyclable. I’m most astounded at the amount of waste that we now create – diapers are insane, I get why people choose not to use disposables. Given that we’ve both been working nearly full time since Baby MPB was born, we decided to go with the convenience of disposables. But seriously, I cringe whenever I think about the damage we are doing to the earth on a daily basis. I’ll also admit that the amount of garbage byproducts for formula feeding also surprise me – everything is purchased in boxes and we use about 2 tins of concentrated formula per day – it adds up very quickly! But, regardless of this, what gets me is that it’s not like our garbage has just increased by the equivalent of one more person – our garbage/recycling has easily increased 3-4 times. It’s ridiculous! Thank god for recycling to help ease my conscious, but seriously, I am struggling with all the garbage. It’s beyond ridiculous.
If you like this post, please feel free to share and please click the follow button on the side or return to myperfectbreakdown.com to follow my journey.
My Perfect Breakdown 
I’ve thought about how these things (among others!) will change once the baby comes, especially the garbage thing! We barely fill our bins each week either, and really only put recycling out every couple of weeks. I’ll have to let you know how we do in a few months!!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Lol seriously. Out where we livr they collect garbage and recycling every alternate week. Two kids in diapers with one producinf adult like poop, can you imagine our plight?? We are v excited when its garbage week :))
LikeLike
Ha! Can you get Honest diapers in Canada? They are disposable and biodegradable! We did a subscription with Lettie and loved it.
LikeLike
The garbage/recycling thing is one of the things that worries me so much when we finally add more people to our house! We also do a lot of ordering on amazon, and one of the things I’ve been doing to keep our recycling bin less full is to break down the boxes and offer them for free on craigslist or freecycle. People are usually pretty happy to get better-quality boxes for moving (just a thought – I hate recycling all that perfectly good cardboard).
LikeLiked by 1 person
Oh my gosh, the garbage is insane! And we don’t even use disposables!
LikeLiked by 1 person
The disposables tug at my conscious too! We use Seventh Generation diapers, which makes me feel a TAD better. But not sure how much better it is to use environment-friendly diapers when they’re in a diaper genie bag, which is not environment-friendly! Might have to look into getting compostable bags. Sigh.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Wait until he’s a toddler- we fill our trash can about twice a week! And we also blow thru paper towels..
LikeLiked by 2 people
🙂
LikeLiked by 1 person
I totally agree on both these!
LikeLiked by 1 person
One of the things that my dad told us when we had the kids was, “anything that you plug in, whther it’s on or not, is draining energy and costing you money!” So, we unplugged the lamps when we weren;’t using them, the coffee machine, the tv’s, the phone chargers, the computer and printer, all of that stuff that’s always plugged in. Surprisingly enough, our bill dropped pretty significantly (from about $90 average to about $60/month!!!) Little tricks. It’s possible you have MORE things plugged in than usual, and also, more laundry means more energy!
And holy CRAP, the garbage! We take the trash out twice a day! One after dinner and the other first thing in the morning after 3 stinky diaper changes! We went from just us, to 3 kids in one year and 4 kids in two. The volume of garbage making at our place is absolutely UNREAL!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Yes! For us, I’m pretty sure that the increase in electricity usage has come mostly from increased air conditioning usage. We didn’t use our central air much the first two summers that we owned the house, but it’s been a very warm summer and we want to make sure that the baby’s sleeping environment is not dangerously warm. It’s hard to get decent air circulation in his room without using the A/C, because of the number of naps he takes (still four a day), the fact that we want to keep his door closed to minimize noise, and the fact that we want to keep using the blackout shades/curtains to help him sleep better, which makes it difficult to open the window. So, A/C it is, almost every day this summer! I tell myself it’s only temporary and it’ll be easier to deal with the heat in future years when he’s bigger and sturdier and isn’t napping as much.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Oh man us too! It’s so hot in NC and when Luke is in the carrier or napping on me I am HOT! So we’ve definitely turned down he AC. I have to admit I’m over the heat of the summer
LikeLiked by 1 person
Omfg yes. Yes. Yes. Ugh.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Oh boy, I better get another garbage can and recycling bin bc we fill our so quickly as is!!
LikeLiked by 1 person
I’m embarrassed to say that while I’ve noticed an increase in these things I haven’t “thought” about the impact.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Blame the electricity bill on your hot water heater. It takes a lot of energy to heat water and keep it hot. Baths take some of that, but laundry and the dishwasher need lots of hot water, in addition to his “energy saving” amount of electricity they use themselves.
LikeLiked by 1 person
PS: Heating bottles and baby food takes lots of energy, too.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Our dryer just broke….but after the amount of laundry we’ve done in the past 9 months, I can see why!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Oh I hope mine breaks! I desperately want a new one but I won’t buy a new one until it becomes a necessity. I hope you are able to get a good new one that can keep up to the laundry! 😊
LikeLike