It's not easy being green, but it's a good thing to do for you and your family. Here are 10 ways that your family can live green. How many of them are you currently doing? How many do you think you can do?

I do 5 1/2 of these. I am so bad at remembering to grab the cloth bags from the car when I go to the grocery store! The only time I don't use my dishwasher is when I wash baby stuff because I'm afraid they'll melt or something. And we wash some pans by hand. We always wash our clothes and Mia's in cold and have never had a problem getting them clean. We always clean our lint trap because we know someone who had a house fire and that was the cause. I use a stainless steel water bottle for two reasons besides the environmental reason, it keeps my water colder longer and it looks cool because there's a fun design on it. After reading through the list there are I can do all of them, however, I'll have to do laundry a lot more often if I'm using cloth diapers and wipes!

1. Make your fridge energy efficient. The single biggest energy sucker in your home is your fridge. And you know how much kids love to stand there with the door open and stare into it. Cleaning the coils every six months will help make your current fridge a little more efficient. (flip up the toe plate and vacuum with a brush)
2. Stop standby waste. What's that you ask? When you leave phone chargers plugged in with no phone charging or TVs or computers that aren't being used plugged in all the time you are pushing thousands of pounds of carbon dioxide out into the air.
3. Use diswashers. Many people believe that you use less water by doing dishes by hand, but that is not at all true. You can save up to 20 gallons of water per day by using a dishwasher when it is full. If you have a new dishwasher save water and skip the prerinse.
4. Wash in cold. You can save 500 pounds of carbon dioxide in our air by using cold water to wash your clothes. If cold water doesn't cut it for the stains you're dealing with use warm instead of hot water. Use the twice worn once washed rule on jeans.
5. Clean your lint trap. After each load of laundry clean the lint out of the lint trap on the dryer. Not only will you save energy, but you could avoid a house fire.
6. Pump up tires. Keep your tires filled to recommended pressure increases fuel efficiency by up to 40 percent.
7. Drive smart. Plan your errands all in the same trip. If you are waiting for any longer than 30 seconds turn the car off.
8. Cloth diapers are good enough for some parents how about cloth wipes. Both cloth diapers and cloth wipes make an extreme impact when you think of how many diapers and wipes a parent uses in a day. Get some old wash clothes or t-shirts and cut them into squares put them into a container with baby wash and water. Then wash them.
9. If you are tired of high gas prices bring your own bag. It takes 12 million barrels of oil and 14 million trees to make all the plastic bags Americans use in a year. 
10. The glass is half full. At the office use a glass or a reusable water bottle. Dump the bottle of water because not only does it cost more to buy bottled water, but it's no better for you than tap water. In fact in a recent test 40% of bottled water comes from a tap. If you're concerned about quality get a filter you can install under your sink or even on your tap.