Marla Esser Cloos (aka The Green Home Coach) is the founder of Everyday Green Home, a weekly podcast where she and occasional co-host Tony Pratte, of The Sound Room, talk all things residential green. Marla is a NAHB Master Certified Green Professional, LEED AP, and Wellness Within Your Walls certified professional, who works with individual consumers, homeowners, builders, remodelers, and realtors. She is a frequent writer and speaker on the topic of sustainability. Her online shop, Everyday Green Home, offers a curated set of products for a safer, healthier, and greener life.

What you’ll learn

The Three R’s and Your Stuff

It can be a fun challenge to bring more stuff in your home following the three R’s: reduce, reuse, and recycle.

Reduce

Anytime you can reduce the amount of material you use, you win. This not only simplifies your life, but also reduces the amount of materials and how much it costs to put those things together for your home. For instance, maybe instead of putting flooring down, you may just want to finish the concrete. The simpler you can make it, maybe even by using a system, that can work to your advantage.

Reuse

There are secondhand stores everywhere, so this is pretty easy. Have you checked out Habitat for Humanity’s ReStores? They have so much stuff in there, and it changes all the time. It can be an adventure to search for used furniture and household goods for building materials. You might even be able to reuse components from homes that are being torn down, remodeled, or redecorated. How about taking an old door and turning it into a table or transforming a tabletop into a barn door?

Recycle

This is probably the one R we see the most. A lot of us have curbside recycling bins, so we feel like we’re constantly feeding the system. And we’re giving those materials a new opportunity for a new life when they’re recycled. Unfortunately, we don’t have enough places demanding those recycled materials, and a lot of our recycling efforts are not coming to fruition. But you can make a difference when you put new stuff in your home that has recycled components, such as flooring and paper.

What Is the Stuff in Your Home?

You’ll get all kinds of ideas on how to get the right stuff in your home in this podcast. Be sure to check back for new information regularly on how you can make your home greener by using the three R’s plus other ideas!

If you want to learn more about why green matters to you, your family, and the planet, subscribe to the Everyday Green Home podcast. Marla and her guests share tips and trends in sustainable building.

Find additional insights in Marla's book Living Green Effortlessly: Simple Choices to a Better Home on Amazon.

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