Go green - that's easy for you to say

It's true confession time. Last night I threw away a plastic bag - the kind from the grocery store - without reusing it. It will be in the landfill when my great-great-grandchildren have grandchildren. It still bothers me.

This "going green thing" is full of pitfalls. I like our Earth and want to be kind to it but don't know all the rules. Can I reuse a plastic bag and then throw it away? Or do I have to reuse it until it won't function as a bag anymore? How many points do I lose if I take the plastic bag in the first place?

I know that paper bags are made from trees grown for the pulp. My brown paper bags were never giant Sequoias. But I don't know how much energy goes into growing and harvesting these trees and turning them into brown kraft paper. Should I feel more guilt when I use paper - or plastic?

It's not just bags. I will never remember to turn off the faucet when I brush my teeth though I don't water our grass. It just goes brown in the summer.

We recycle. I put all cans and bottles, both plastic and glass, in a bin, and my other half takes them to the recycling section of the county landfill. He laughs at the "we" part of the "We recycle." It is getting to be more of a problem though. I have to put on my glasses to see the recycle symbol on the bottom of plastic containers.

My pencil is made from recycled currency, and I have one made from recycled denim. Very clever except the denim one doesn't write very well. My other half suggested that it might be the user - er, writer. Where did they find enough old denim to recycle? When I look around, kids are wearing the jeans that should be recycled.

I recycle my old towels as rags and moving blankets. We don't move - one of our offspring moves often - 15 times in 13 years. I've gotten better at his moves. The last move I carried towels and pillows and ran out and picked up lunch for his other volunteers.

We have acquired books through the years that will never be read by anyone, would be rejected by the used bookstores and left unsold at yard sales. We kept them all. But then I watched a show that turned old books into journals. Just cover the front and use the pages like scrapbook pages, decorating them with pieces of old jewelry, a little decoupage (recycled magazine pages and tissue paper) and using potatoes past their prime for "potato prints."

Now how do I get rid of the journals? My friends said no thanks, the kids have decided to "go lean" and mimic the minimalists - nothing bigger than a postage stamp. I could pass on the guilt and leave my "treasured" journals to the kids in my will.