I'm No Treehugger

Now, I'm fond of the environment and don't wish to die in the next ice age or be cooked like bacon on a frying pan as I try to walk down the sidewalk due to the depletion of the ozone layer, but there's only much that can expected of a person. Case in point: biodegradable laundry detergent. Over the summer, I came to embrace line-drying clothing, doing loads of laundry with other people, and turning lights off when I leave a room.

I figured that I was ready for an upgrade. That upgrade was to be biodegradable laundry detergent. Admittedly, its nice, lavender scenting leaves my clothing infinitely sniffable, but I think I'm perhaps too much of a five-year-old boy for it to be reasonable detergent for me. Now, I'm not referring to myself as a five-year-old boy in the sense that I am inclined to pull my pants down at inopportune moments and make revealing comments about my parents' sex life, but in that five-year-old boys are experts at getting clothing dirty.
Inexplicable spaghetti stains on white shirt? Check.
Grass stains on the knees? Check.
Dirt-encrusted pant ends? Double check.

This situation it only aggravated by the fact that I am still of the belief that jeans are excellent substitutes for napkins/a towel. Given this, I discovered that I was not, in fact, ready for the upgrade. I need the good, old, environmentally-unfriendly laundry detergent, like Tide, to get the job done. But I couldn't shake the feeling of guilt as I poured it into the machine. There was a brief time where I would use my biodegradable laundry detergent, and then add a bit of Tide to make sure that my clothing came out clean, but that seemed to defeat the purpose of using biodegradable laundry detergent in the first place.

I have compromised and started using Tide on my dirtier loads, and Seventh Generation on my cleaner loads. By my reckoning, I therefore only end up mutating half a frog ten years down the road, as opposed to an entire frog. Though I battled with guilt, I have come to the conclusion that while I'm certainly no treehugger, I do pretty well. I therefore assure you that while of course it would be excellent if you could make a minimal negative imprint on the world, you're human, too, and it's okay to want clean clothes.