They’re up.

I repeat: They are up. My fragile seeds have sprouted into tiny proto-herbs. Miniature leaves unfold by the hour; little stems reach toward the sun. It’s alive, I tell you! I have created life!

Forgive me for going a bit mad with power — I’m just so excited that my very first foray into growing from seed is actually working so far. Sure, I’ve managed to keep a series of windowsill plants alive in pots over the past few years (bless you, you affable succulents). But I bought all of them as hearty young plants, already strong and bushy and requiring little more than water from me. It’s like adopting a high-achieving college kid — with all the hard work already done, you can’t exactly call yourself parent of the year.

But my recent seed-bombing expedition awakened something in me. I haven’t yet seen any sprouts from the secret seed bomb I snuck into a corner of my backyard — my cue to check on the seed-filled clay capsules I lobbed into vacant lots (maybe the dry spell of the past few weeks is to blame?). So while I’m waiting for my guerrilla gardening luck to kick in, I decided to try growing herbs from seed for the first time. (I have done it hydroponically, as we’ll see, but that’s so easy it’s practically cheating.)

Seeds are intimidating. They’re so small, so vulnerable, so totally dependent on you. Too much or too little water will fell them; mess up their exposure to light or temperature, and they’re through. I just don’t know if I’m ready for that kind of responsibility. But I received a lovely set of herb seeds for Valentine’s Day, so I took a deep breath and went for it.

First method: the seed tray. A few gardening books informed me that no, you can’t just place seeds straight into the ground and expect them to grow. You have to gently raise them in a warm, safe, interior environment until they’re tough enough to go wild (not unlike teen queen Miley Cyrus and her time on the Disney Channel). You can get quite elaborate with this — think grow lights and custom-mixed “growing media” — but simple is usually a good place to start.

My base: a seed-starting tray that cost me three bucks (you can also use yogurt containers, milk cartons, and the like). My soil of choice: individual peat plugs from a local hydroponics store (more on that below). They promised to “jump-start” my garden with their “optimum water/air ratio” and “uniform wicking,” plus they cost less than a quarter each. My preparation: Soaking my seeds of choice — dill, thyme, chives, oregano, and sage — overnight in an ice-cube tray. Then it was planting time.

Here’s something I didn’t realize about some herb seeds: They’re really small. Maybe the size of a tick or even tinier. This made precision planting in my peat plugs rather difficult. Without the aid of a pair of seed tweezers (the existence of which I was unaware until I Googled it two minutes ago — who knew?), I instead used the Clumsy Fingertip Method: Swipe finger into ice-cube compartment until some seeds stick, awkwardly wipe finger on top of soil, hope at least some of the seeds took purchase, and repeat. Add labels, mist with a spray bottle, set the tray on the windowsill, and your seeds are on their way to greatness.

Oh, and seeds need extra heat and moisture to really take root. The garden store guy tried to sell me a bulky, plastic tray cover for this purpose, but I was on to him. I rigged my own cover by slipping a clear plastic produce bag over the end of the tray. Proof it works: After just a few days, delicate green shoots started poking their adorable heads up from the soil.

How thrilled am I about this early success? I check on the tray with my spray bottle in hand, cooing and making sure the tiny herbs are comfortable, approximately every 20 minutes. I’m considering sending out birth announcements.

And then there’s the hydroponic method, from the Greek hydro, water, and ponics, insert pot joke here. My parents sent me a countertop hydroponic pod a few years ago when I lived in a dark cave of a basement apartment. This seed method couldn’t be easier: Pop the included, preseeded soil cylinders in, turn on the grow light (it automatically turns on and off in a regular cycle), and add fertilizer every few weeks when the smart little pod tells you to. I’ve used it to grow bushels of basil, cilantro, cherry tomatoes, and mini geraniums in grand style.

This time, though, I wanted to break free from the preloaded seed kit monopoly. Why couldn’t I make my own, with seeds of my choosing? Hence my trip to the hydroponics store and my discovery of the peat plugs. Wouldn’t you know it: They fit perfectly in the pod. I planted a few more herbs, switched on the light, and am now checking for sprouts every 20 minutes, too. In fact, hold on … nope, nothing yet.

With three seed methods in the works (don’t forget about the seed bombs), surely I’ll find some measure of success. I’ll report back on what’s growing and what’s not — plus more exploration into the seedy (ha!) world of guerrilla gardening — as the spring progresses.

I’ve never thought of myself as much of a rebel. You generally won’t find me smashing car windows or setting garbage cans aflame. (Let’s get real: You probably won’t find me speeding. Such are the depths of my rule-following nature.) But I realize now that all along, I’ve just been waiting for the right weapon with which to battle The Man.

Wildflowers, of course. More precisely: ping-pong ball-size globs of clay and compost laced with wildflower seeds called seed bombs (or green grenades — military nomenclature is a must). The other day, I stood in front of a fenced-off lot on a busy stretch of asphalt, fingering the tiny seed arsenal I’d packed into a Ziploc bag. I looked back and forth, took a deep breath, and let one fly over the chain links; the ball came to rest on a scrubby patch of dirt in the sun. “Take that!” I muttered under my breath.

Finally, I was beginning to understand the rebel thrill. This must be what Marlon Brando felt like.

Lobbing that seed bomb was my first foray into the worldwide movement of “guerrilla gardening,” or reclaiming underused land — empty lots, vacant yards, alleys, and other areas you technically don’t have the right to plant — for lovely and/or productive gardens. In this case, the enemy takes the form of a disinterested, wasteful society that misses out on abundant opportunities to beautify the ugly and cultivate the barren.

Sometimes it’s as simple as taking over an adjacent lot with some extra pepper plants, but often there’s more at stake. Among guerrilla gardeners, you’ll hear plenty of chatter about “land use,” “re-creating space,” and “Who actually owns the earth, man?” Make no mistake: Those petunias are political.

Some guerrilla gardening reportedly plays out like a scene from a spy movie: Black-clad growers sneak out to till and water vegetable patches in the dead of night. While that does sound fun, I had something a little less intense in mind for my first time out. Then my research uncovered seed bombs — perfect for inaccessible yards, tough-to-tend spaces, and ‘fraidy cats. Make a few green grenades, toss them all over town, and wait for the blooms to take over. This I could do.

And I did. Whipping up a batch of proto-wildflower balls is surprisingly simple — mine cost me about $10 (for seeds and clay; I grabbed the compost right from my worm bin) and 10 minutes. I picked up the native wildflower mix at my local grocery store and found the natural clay at an art-supply shop, where the clerk assured me “this is just what the Girl Scouts used to make their seed bombs last year.” (Fight the power, Brownies!) After letting the bombs sit out overnight to dry a bit, I was ready to sow some rebellion. (See below for step-by-step instructions on how to make them.)

Experienced guerrillas recommend seed-bombing right before rain is forecast. This usually wouldn’t be a problem in Seattle, but we were just about to enter an unusually warm and sunny period. Still, I couldn’t wait to dip a toe into the movement, so I loaded my bag with a handful of seed bombs and went out in search of abandoned space begging for wildflowers.

My destination was a busy thoroughfare near my apartment with a slightly, ahem, seedy reputation. Pocked with cheap motels and overgrown, weedy patches that don’t clearly belong to anybody, I figured it presented a prime opportunity for my “floral attack.” Plus, it’s close enough to let me check in on my gardens’ progress as the weeks go by.

I found my first site before I even reached the intended street: a plowed-over slope strewn with trash and construction detritus that’s lingered, untouched, for months. Nobody was around, so I chucked a seed ball into the expanse. (I don’t know who would object to a few blossoms here and there, but these days you never know when tossing an unidentified object — one you’re calling a bomb, no less — might get you tackled by a SWAT team.) “Good luck, little seeds,” I whispered.

Next up: A weedy patch near a lonely bus stop. Then a clear, empty dirt meadow. The fenced-in lot next to a boarded-up house. I strode along that eyesore of a road like a modern-day Janie Appleseed with safety pins in her ears, spreading flowers and righteous garden activism with every step.

I reserved the last ball in the bag for a quiet corner of my shared backyard. The lawn doesn’t need it, as neighbors have planted plenty of flowers, herbs, and veggies around the periphery, but I wanted to keep one seed bomb close so I could check on it every day. Hell, I might even water it. You might point out that cultivating flowers in my own backyard hardly counts as guerrilla gardening, but hey — like a true rebel, I totally did not ask my landlord first.

I’ll report back on my illicit wildflower patches and other excursions into guerrilla gardening as the spring goes on. ‘Til then, happy planting, everyone. Keep it on the downlow, and remember — if you get caught, you didn’t hear this from me. It was the Girl Scouts.

Homemade Seed Bombs

Materials:
5 parts clay soil/potter’s powder
1 part wildflower seeds
1 part compost/worm castings

1. Combine the seeds and compost in a large bowl; stir well.

2. Add the clay soil. If you’re using a dry clay, slowly add water, stirring as you go, until you have the consistency of thick mud (you don’t want it too watery to mold).

3. Shape the mixture into golf ball-size globs.

4. Set seed bombs in a tray and let them sit in the sun for a day or so to harden.

5. Get bombin’!

Source: Guerrillagardening.org

A little more than a month ago, I expanded Team Greenie Pig to four and set out on a month-long challenge to eliminate animal products from our diets. Would we discover an entirely new way of eating? Experience a miraculous increase in vitality? Or crash and burn spectacularly over an irresistible salumi plate? And would any of us end up converting wholly to veganism?

One thing we all agreed on: We learned a lot. Now it’s your turn: I encourage — nay, dare — you to try the vegan experiment yourself. It’s challenging, surprising, and utterly worthwhile. But before you do, here are some of those lessons we learned along the way.

It’s hard.

Surprise, surprise: Departing from the eating and cooking habits you’ve developed over decades — particularly if you developed them in contemporary, fast-food-lovin’, steak-and-potatoes-havin’, pizza-partyin’ America — is challenging. I normally eat meat sparingly and front-load my plate with veggies anyway, and still I found the strict vegan thing to be hard.

It’s the little things: I missed butter and cheese (way more than meat). A bunch of my favorite whole-grain products were blacklisted for their honey content. I struggled with suddenly becoming the “difficult” guest at dinner parties and evenings out. Convenience foods got a whole lot less convenient. And eating well requires research: “The real start-up cost to veganism is a massive increase in the amount of time it takes to evaluate, plan, and execute great food,” notes my fellow vegan-for-a-month, Matt.

I’m sure this gets easier with practice. But insisting that a paradigm shift in dietary habits isn’t hard is a real disservice to anyone who’s struggling to adjust to it.

But not that hard.

People generally reacted to our experiment in one of two ways. One, “Oh YAY! Being vegan is the best!” or two, “I could never be vegan.” As a former member of camp two, I can honestly say: Yes, you totally can. Sure, there are roadblocks. But the food can be sublime. And while I missed some taboo items, I didn’t miss them as much as I expected. More importantly, the requisite scrutiny of what you put in your belly is enlightening. Forcing yourself to think harder about what you’re eating and where it comes from is habit-forming. And that’s a very good thing.

Don’t do it all at once.

For the sake of this experiment, we quit animal products … precipitously. (Ha! You thought I was going to say “cold Tofurky,” didn’t you?) If you’re serious about veganism sticking, don’t do this. You need time to learn new recipes, stake out the best vegan restaurant options, spread the word so your friends won’t tempt you with pork burritos, and allow for the occasional indulgence (all the better if it’s a local, organic, and humane one). Dip a toe, maybe wade in and splash around a bit before you do that cannonball.

Vegan does not necessarily = healthy.

Fries, fake fried chicken, Oreos, straight-up shots of coconut oil: all vegan. If you’re looking to eliminate saturated fat or processed foods, veganism isn’t foolproof. But I don’t point this out as a deterrent. On the contrary, it’s wonderful. Everyone needs a treat now and then — perhaps never more than when the majority of your diet consists of squeaky-clean, nutrient-dense, health-halo components. Rest easy: You can eat vegan and still chow down on fatty junk food. May I suggest coconut non-dairy frozen dessert? It’ll keep you sane.

The food can be delicious.

All four of us already appreciated a good crisped chickpea salad or the simple union of black beans and guacamole. But being forced to seek out still more magical combinations was one of our favorite parts of this quest. Without it, I’m not sure we would have hunted down this pizza. Or these grits with “creamed” cashews and mustard greens. Or this mushroom soup …

You’d better like cooking.

Going out to eat is fraught with peril: lack of inspiring options at your typical restaurant, saturation with the limited number of places that do have options (Thai is great, but it’s not every-night great), and the smell of non-vegan foods promiscuously wafting about. Plus, you might have to get demanding: Ted’s low point of the whole endeavor was “masquerading as an actual vegan and bending a restaurant to my iron will. I wanted to bury my face in sunchoke.”

Easier and better is to cook at home most of the time, and host those dinner parties yourself.

Don’t expect any miracles.

Perhaps you need more than a month to fully reap the purported benefits of the vegan diet — amazing skin, hair, energy levels, etc. But none of us experienced noticeable improvements in any of the above. “Have you noticed any changes?” my friend, Heather, asked over Lebanese food during week four. When I said no, she took another bite of her beef kebab with visible relief.

There is one side effect you should be aware of (reported by two of the four of us). Let me put it this way: Say you’re a zookeeper, and you’re accustomed to cleaning the antelope cage. You’ve just been promoted to elephant duty, my friend.

The perfect is the enemy of the good.

Yeah, yeah, great lessons. What you really want to know is: Are we vegans now or what?

No.

Before you can say, “I told you so,” dear readers, let’s unpack this. Four out of four of us declined to continue the experiment when the 31 days were up. “The relevant issues for me are sustainability, nutrition, and the enjoyment of food,” Matt mused. “Although veganism has useful things to say about all of them, completely eradicating animal products seems an overreaction to a complex problem.” Laura agreed: “Eggs from your neighbor’s chicken seem far more animal-conscious and environmentally friendly than tofu made from vast fields of soybeans and processed who knows where.”

But: Four out of four of us also realized we wanted to raise the bar for the animal products we did eat. “I pay attention to foods in a way I never have before,” Ted reported. Matt and Laura dedicated themselves to finding local meats and cheeses. We all understand now that we can survive perfectly well without animal products — so why wouldn’t we consume less of them, and make sure the ones we do eat come from ethical sources?

So we all went off the vegan wagon. But on night 33, Laura texted me: “We totally just ate a vegan dinner anyway.” Last night, Ted and I had roasted veggies over lentils. “Oh, hey, this is vegan,” we said, halfway through preparing it. I’d picked the recipe simply because it sounded good — and I’ve only gotten to a fraction of the vegan meals I’ve earmarked to try so far. We’re keeping up the vegan dinner parties; hey, they’re fun.

In the end, it turned out just as I expected: I’m not going to be a vegan, but I will be more vegan than I was before. The problem with all-or-nothing thinking — especially in a country where 98 percent of people are not vegan — is that if you demand all vegan all the time, you’ll probably just get nothing. During the course of this experiment, I heard from and spoke with many more people who are “mostly vegan” (i.e., cop to eating cheese once in a while, or eat vegan at home but not necessarily with friends) than who are “really vegan.”

So my challenge to you: Be more vegan than you are. Even if you don’t want to take me up on the month-long experiment, maybe you can eat a vegan dinner three times a week. Or do like New York Times food writer Mark Bittman and be vegan until 6 p.m. every day. Or hell, keep eating meat, but make it ethical meat. Whatever you’re doing, try doing it a little better. Who knows where it’ll lead you?

There comes a time in every would-be vegan’s life when the question arises: to fake it or not to fake it? I’m talking about meat, and not meat meat, you guys — fake meat: various slurries concocted from beans, soy, mushrooms, and vital wheat gluten and shaped to resemble burgers, hot dogs, meat loaves, and sausages. And we mustn’t forget the other substitutes, either: vegan mayonnaises, butters, eggs, milks, and (shudder) cheeses.

So, to fake it or not to fake it? Do I need them as a protein source? Do they taste remotely like my ham ‘n’ eggs from the days of yore? Or is that missing the point of these convenience foods entirely?

Before I set out with three friends to eat a strictly vegan diet for a month, my position on fake animal products was mixed at best. I’ve been known to order a veggie burger just because I didn’t feel like beef that day, and I actually like pretty much every variety of milk substitute out there. But imposter hot dogs? Tofurky? What’s the point? I’d rather just enjoy the essence of grains, beans, and fungi for themselves. Otherwise, if you’ll pardon the expression, it’s like putting lipstick on a pig, then also putting that pig in a pair of Spanx and a sequined dress and making her trot around on Dancing with the Stars. Is it any wonder if she doesn’t make the final round?

Why not just stick to tofu, that agreeable slab that soaks up coconut curry and barbecue sauce with equal aplomb and cannot be mistaken for anything other than what it is? As my fiancé, Ted, put it: “It’s kind of like the uncanny valley. The closer these foods get to the real thing, the creepier they seem.”

But then we jumped into vegan month, and I started to appreciate the place of the imitation meat slab. As much as I was enjoying the newfound prominence of plant-based proteins on my plate, something was just … missing. A certain texture, maybe, or that umami savory flavor so central to meats. I found myself wanting something more than lentils and quinoa. Something familiar. Something like sausage. Maybe this desire goes away after a longer stay in Veganville, but at 3.5 weeks in, I was still feeling it.

So, for a closer look, I took a spin around the Field Roast Grain Meats headquarters, which happens to be right here in Seattle. Field Roast’s meat-free sausages, roasts, frankfurters, lunchmeats, and gravies have so routinely cropped up in the raves of other non-carnivores this month, I figured that if anyone has this fake-meat stuff down, it’s these guys.

Malcolm Lee, the company’s vice president of operations (and son of its founder, David Lee) cheerfully suited me up in a white jacket and hairnet for a closer look at the whole endeavor. We stepped into the main processing chamber: It was clean, bright, sweet-smelling, and nothing at all like a set from an ’80s-era slasher flick called Slaughterhouse II: Return of the Meat Hook. That day was sausage day. In one corner, machines mixed a huge batch of vital wheat gluten (the plant protein behind seitan as well as many of Field Roast’s products); in another, a hot tub-sized vat churned a mixture of apple chunks, sage, and Yukon gold potatoes. An employee walked by and tossed in a bowlful of aromatic chopped garlic. Yum.

“We’re really half meat plant, half bakery,” Lee told me as we moved on to another vat containing the union of the previous two containers. From there, the, er, meat-dough gets squeezed through an extruder (tee-hee) and into plastic sausage casings, then cooked, cooled off in a gentle shower, and packed up for shipment. On a good day, about 86,400 grain meat sausages are born right here and distributed to the vegan population at large (and plenty of non-card-carrying vegans, too).

I asked Lee why the company opted to imitate common meat products rather than striking out in its own bold direction (Gluten Bites®? Chewy Not-Meat Nuggets®?). “I think people are just more familiar with them,” he said thoughtfully, noting that sometimes, hey, you just want to cook a hot dog. Customers already know how to deal with meat loaf and roast and sausage. If you’ve grown up eating meat, like so many of us have, these pinch-hitters slip right into the brain space we’ve already reserved for, say, when and how to make a Bolognese sauce.

OK, OK, but how does it taste? That night was our last dinner/support group with our friends Matt and Laura, so I decided to serve a few fake meat samples along with our regularly scheduled main dish, baked ratatouille. First up: vegan pate, made from a base of walnuts, mushrooms, and wheat gluten. The consensus: “Rich,” “Smoky,” and “Pretty good!” The chunk disappeared fast. Second: the hazelnut cranberry roast wrapped in a puff pastry, seemingly designed to make vegans feel less left out around a festive holiday table. Again, “Pretty good!” I don’t know if I’d ever crave something like this, but then again, I don’t usually go for meat wrapped in pastry anyway.

And those sausages: They’re certainly greasy. Chewy and crumbly, the texture is about right. “Field Roast comes very close to satisfying that deep savory craving,” said Ted — “and they avoid the quivering, squishy artificiality of a lot of fake meats by playing up the innate strengths of their ingredients.”

Still, he added, “Without the pop of the casing, the complex interplay of fatty-meaty textures? It ain’t sausage.”

Alas, it’s true. But for newbie vegans, I’m coming down on the side with more protein options.

Today is day 29 of the 31-day vegan experiment. Tune in next week for lessons learned, highs and lows, and most importantly, what happens next?

Over the past 20 days, my vegan challenge team and I have had a fantastic time. Everything is great. Everyone’s feeling fine. No worries. OK, I’ll check back in next week.

Ha! Not so fast. Did you really think four people doing the vegan equivalent of zero to 60 in six seconds wouldn’t run into a few potholes? Week three of our monthlong vegan experiment brought frustration, temptation, and outright rebellion for Laura, Matt, Ted, and me. Deep-seated weaknesses were exposed. Closely held beliefs were tested. In other words: Things got real.

Not that the exercise has been all struggle — far from it. Among the top benefits for all four of us: the expansion of our cooking and dining horizons. Who knew cheeseless pizza could be so satisfying? It probably wouldn’t have occurred to me to try it without being compelled to, but yum. Laura and Matt found vegan enlightenment in a pine-nut spread. “Thinking of it as a cheese replacement is no good,” Laura warned us. “But as a pine-nut spread that’s delicious on everything, très wonderful.” Other surprises: portobello burgers with guacamole, non-dairy chocolate shakes, and vegan carrot cake that was pronounced “the best I’ve ever had” by four out of four samplers.

At a happy hour the other day, after I explained why I wouldn’t be joining the group in an oyster slurp, an acquaintance asked if I felt any different after 20 days off the animal train. “You know, not really,” I told her — a sentiment Ted, Laura, and Matt generally echo. Our energy levels are pretty much the same; the shiny vitality of our hair remains stable (although skin clarity has dipped noticeably for two of us since this shindig began — who knew?).

But that’s the sunny side of the story. Four of us pledged to eat vegan for 30 days, but only one — just one proud, lonely paragon of discipline — remains pure. What brought the rest of us down?

INATTENTION

The most forgivable offense: Laura’s lack of vigilance on day 20. The story, just as we heard it, in a series of text messages:

Laura: The mighty have fallen L
9:37 pm

Laura: It was an Andes mint. I bit into it before I even realized what I was doing.
9:37 pm

Laura: It came with the check at a Thai place.
9:38 pm

Laura: Then I ate the second half because, fuck it, it was amazing.
9:40 pm

EXASPERATION

It pains me to report this, but I, too, faltered, after withstanding some of the most difficult temptations to date. I spent last week visiting my parents, who, though more than accommodating to my little experiment, also made me watch them devour cheesy pizza and accidentally put chicken in a tomato-polenta dish (it was supposed to go on the side).

But the worst came on Sunday morning, when I woke to the aroma of buckwheat pancakes on the griddle — pancakes full of off-limits ingredients like milk and eggs. It wasn’t a craving so much as the memory that got to me: The smell brought me back to countless lazy mornings of childhood, lounging around with nothing to do but read the comics and snarf mounds of buckwheat swimming in maple syrup.

I found myself thinking, Is it really so bad if I have a few pancakes for old times’ sake with Mom and Dad? Why pass up this rare chance to share a traditional weekend ritual? After all, food is so much more than a convenient package of calories to keep our bodies humming. It’s history, community, connection, a tie to the past, and a bond in the present. And damn if it wasn’t making me drool.

I went downstairs, almost ready to surrender. But my dad said, “You’re more than halfway done. Seems like a shame to give up now.” And then I realized I could probably veganize the pancakes with almond milk and a mashed chunk of banana instead of egg. So I whipped up another batch: delectable. The Sunday morning ritual, saved.

Which is why it’s so frustrating to confess that, after withstanding all of that, I put a splash of half and half in my coffee last Tuesday morning. I tried not to, I really did.

INTERIOR: AIRPORT, EARLY MORNING.

We open on a frantic sea of travelers rushing to their flights. Our heroine, laden down with a duffel bag and messenger bag, buys a coffee. She’s wearing a down jacket because she couldn’t fit it in her carry-on.

She heads to the counter for sugar and soy milk. But an employee beats her to it and whisks away the soy carafe for refilling. She waits. Minutes tick by. She glances at her watch. Her flight is boarding soon, and she still has to pick up some vegan snacks for the ride, because those Lorna Doone packets sure won’t cut it.

She rushes over to another coffee shop to see if they have soy milk. It’s crowded. She’s sweating, thanks to the jacket. As she peers around the other customers to see the counter, her duffel falls off her shoulder, jouncing her arm and splashing coffee all over her bag, sleeve, and floor. Time is running out. She frantically cleans up, then runs back to the original coffeeshop. Still no soy milk. No employee in sight.

I hit the same wall Laura did: Oh, fuck it. I’ve had enough. I hate black coffee. Half and half it is.

GRATITUDE

The third domino to fall: Ted. He was on tour with his band last week, and had amazingly managed to stay vegan on the road (thanks to a lot of Subway Veggie Delights). But then, before a show … well, I’ll let him tell it.

“Knowing we were hungry, our bassist showed up with smothered pork burritos as a surprise. Upholding my vegan values would mean 1) refusing his kindness and 2) wasting food. Sorry, I just can’t be that kind of dick.”

Ted accepted the burrito graciously in the spirit in which it was given (the bassist hadn’t been briefed on the vegan experiment). He ate the burrito. (“Pork is much more filling than I remember it,” he reported.)

So there you have it: the unvarnished truth. At the outset, I promised to faithfully reveal the triumphs and pitfalls of our vegan experiment, no matter how embarrassing or silly. I was curious to find out exactly where and how we’d be tempted, and why we’d make the choices we did. I never would have anticipated the way things shook out, but I do find them revealing. And we’re all rededicated to rounding out the month; one setback does not a total failure make.

And can we get a round of applause for Matt, the last man standing? Somebody get this guy a broccoli crown!

Day 1: The month-long vegan experiment — wherein I, my fiancé, and two friends try to strip all animal products from our diets (for several reasons, primary among them “just to see what it’s like”) — is off to a running start with a three-bean salad (green, kidney, cannellini) from my new vegan cookbook for dinner. Yum!

Days 2 & 3: Strange side effect of the new diet: dramatic hunger spikes. Usually, my desire to feed unfolds like this: Hmm, I’m sort of hungry. I guess I could eat anytime. OK, now the ole stomach is really rumbling. This process typically unfolds over several hours.

Now? On a Hunger Scale of 1 to 10, I go from a 3 to OH MY GOD I WILL CHEW OFF MY OWN ARM IF YOU DON’T GIVE ME THAT CARROT RIGHT THIS SECOND in about 10 minutes. I’ve been trying to get enough calories and pay attention to protein, but clearly something is off.

Ted and I also sample a few local veg joints. At the first, we try vegan pizza (read: no cheese) and a dense, tomato-saucy pasta. At the second, we feast on Thai curry and stir-fry, both starring tofu. “Best Thai I’ve had in the city,” Ted declares.

Good thing, too, because he’s off to a rougher start than I am. He suffered a major blow on morning 2 when he realized his favorite meat alternative, MorningStar Farms Sausage Links, contain eggs and therefore couldn’t shepherd him through the month. “Vegetarians always ask if you’d be willing to kill your own meat,” he mused. “I’d say, hell yes! Right now, I’d wrestle a deer to the ground and stab it to death with its own antler.”

Day 4: Morale skyrockets at our first dinner/support group with Laura and Matt, fellow explorers of Veganville. We kick things off with bread, quince, and tapenade for an appetizer, then a main dish I picked mostly for its fancy presentation: a bed of French green lentils, topped with a tower of polenta, in turn topped with a sauté of mixed mushrooms, hazelnuts, and figs, and crowned with arugula and pomegranate dressing. Consensus: damn good.

Matt finishes us off with bananas foster cooked in vegan butter substitute and soaked in a healthy dash of rum. The meal could go toe-to-toe with our finest animal-product offerings.

We compare notes: no uncontrollable cravings or digestive hurdles worth mentioning. We’re riding so high, in fact, that nobody thinks to check if the Guinness is vegan. Dammit, apparently not. Our first slip.

Day 6: I successfully brave a social outing with the non-vegan crowd: book club. Luckily, our host finds my experiment intriguing and serves lentils with slow-cooked squash; I add a mango salad to the mix and only have to skip the naan (offender: buttermilk). Once again, no one at the table missed the meat. Energy and mood remain at normal levels.

Day 7: It was bound to happen, I suppose: my first strong craving for a verboten foodstuff. The temptress isn’t bacon, nor cheese, nor even bacon covered in cheese, as I thought it might be. Instead, I catch myself staring longingly at a bakery case full of flaky, butter- and egg-infested pastries. But luckily, finding vegan cookies and donuts in Seattle is as easy as running into a skinny-jeaned hipster with a vinyl collection. And there’s always dark chocolate, tea biscuits, and my ironic tub of vegan animal crackers to help with the sweet tooth.

Day 8: OK, OK, this vegan thing has been great, but today, I’m overcome. Not with fiber-fueled gaseous emissions, not with a vitamin B12 deficiency, not even with the slavering lust for a ham sandwich at all costs. It’s just … boredom. I open the pantry to take stock: lentils, beans, tofu again? I’ve heartily enjoyed all our vegan dishes so far, but it feels like my culinary world has gone from Technicolor to black and white. Ted feels the same way (though he’s registering much higher on the Ham Sandwich Lust Index).

We make one of our old standbys, a noodle bowl that’s mostly vegan already, depending on your protein source. And I realize we’ve got to try harder. There’s no way we’ve exhausted the vegan smorgasbord after just eight days. It’s time to think outside of the box.

Day 10: Our stiffest challenge to date: going out to dinner with a group of new friends. Oblivious to our experiment, they squirreled reservations at a fantastic place with a chef who’s just won a Food & Wine The People’s Best New Chef award — a place renowned for morsels like mussels, collar of salmon, pork chops, and duck terrine. I just can’t bring myself to ask everyone to change their plans on account of my little “experiment.” “I don’t know if I can do this,” Ted warns as he looked at the menu.

To make matters worse, we worked up a righteous appetite snowshoeing all afternoon; gnawing hunger teams up with the delectable scents coming from this rock-star chef’s kitchen to weaken our resolve to critical levels. Still harder: The group wants to do the tasting menu — of course, who wouldn’t?  — and the whole table is supposed to sign up. “Can just the four of us do the tasting menu?” our dinner companion asks. “Unfortunately, it’s got to be the whole table,” our server replies.

Moment of truth: Will I cave, overcome by peer pressure and my embarrassment at being the kind of fussy, look-at-me diner who goes to a decidedly non-vegan restaurant and demands special vegan food? What are we even doing here? This is a disaster! We’re not even real vegans!

I take a deep breath and say, as politely as I can, “We were actually hoping to do a vegan tasting. Is that okay?” The server checks with the chef, who immediately agrees to serve two versions of the menu. Everyone is happy (except Ted, who I catch absentmindedly buttering his bread as he stares at the specialty dishes floating by en route to other tables).

And the food? Fantastic. Off the top of his head, the chef presents us with two delicate miner’s lettuce salads, rapini with preserved tomatoes, a kimchi-like soup, and a main course featuring fried chickpeas and smoky sunchokes. “And this one is for our ‘special guests,’” he says at one point, coming out of the kitchen to serve a course himself. I couldn’t be more impressed, not even if he’d wrestled that rapini to the ground out back and strangled it with its own leaves.

Ten days, four people. No cheating, no lapses of willpower, four inadvertent consumptions of fish bladder. I’d say we’re doing all right.

I’ve only been a vegan for 12 hours, and already I’m running into trouble.

There’s the honey, for one thing — lurking in my breakfast cereal (ingredient No. 3) first thing in the morning. And then glycerin, an ingredient I’ve never before considered threatening, in my midmorning trail mix. (Simply Almonds, Cashews, and Mango, Trader Joe’s? Ha! Not quite.) Turns out the stuff may or may not be animal-derived, and there’s no easy way to check. Who knew? Surely my all-time-favorite, five-ingredient crackers would be a good substitute … Dammit, honey again.

“We have to go to the store again. I can’t eat any of my snacks after all,” I complained to my fiancé, Ted. “Honey is in everything.”

“Is honey seriously out?” he asked, incredulous. “It’s animal throw-up! The bees don’t even want it!”

But it’s a little early to start rationalizing. We’ve just begun our month-long vegan experiment, and I want to get started on the right foot. (I’m proud to report that I had oatmeal instead of cereal for breakfast, and plain old almonds subbed for that trail mix nicely.)

Why go vegan at all? Well, to be honest, I’m curious. Like most of you, I’m fully aware of the environmental and ethical issues surrounding the consumption of animal products; this experiment isn’t about diving into that debate (Sarah Miller did an excellent job of that in her going-veg series). Let’s just go with the premise that gobbling fewer animal products is good for the body and the planet and check that line of discussion at the door.

I’m more interested in the how than the why. I want to find out what happens when a couple of health-conscious-but-steak-appreciating people — including our two dear friends, Laura and Matt, who we have suckered into doing this experiment with us — make the switch to a rather, ahem, radical way of eating in a very meat-based culture. How are we going to feel? Will we all be blessed with a miraculous transformation involving glowing skin, shiny hair, and boundless energy, as I’ve heard some vegans claim? Will we be plagued with “a month of really bad gas,” as one former vegetarian warned? What will be our greatest challenges, temptations, and pitfalls? Is it possible to develop rickets in a month?

We’ve all got concerns about this scheme, mind you. Laura’s worried about avoiding all the easy-access, non-vegan foods out there, from restaurant items to those damn cookies Yvonne always brings to the office. Matt, a true gourmand, doesn’t want to compromise his favorite dishes with dubious substitutions like fake cheese, or skip butter in a butter-centric meal. “I’m just going to focus on perfecting cuisines that are pretty vegan already,” he said. (I foresee a whole lotta curries for these two.) Ted’s concerned about passing out during his daily workouts and “the bloaty feeling that comes from vegan staples.”

Me? Mostly the social complications. I’m going from “Oysters? Sweetbreads? Chili dogs? Whatever, I’ll eat it!” to one of the most restrictive dietary structures out there, and I don’t want to become that pain-in-the-ass guest who needs a separate salad dressing. Or worse, I don’t want to appear ungrateful or rude. Deserved or not, vegans have a rep for being self-righteous divas (c’mon, vegans, I suspect you know this better than anyone), and I’m a little nervous about the label.

That, and cheese. There is no substitute for cheese.

Luckily, I have a willing counselor at my disposal: my friend Rachel, an experienced vegan and blogger for Vegansaurus. Rachel is the kind of non-judgmental person who submits graciously to the third degree every time she goes out to a restaurant (Why don’t you eat meat? Aren’t you worried about getting enough protein? Don’t you really, really want a burger though? What if you were friends with a chicken and she gave you an egg, as, like, a gift? Would you eat it?), so I knew she’d be a good resource.

Rachel identified two possible plans of attack. One, eat everything you’d normally eat, only substitute stuff like textured vegetable protein, vegan pastries, and Vegenaise where appropriate. Two, aim for meals that are already inherently vegan, like quinoa, beans, rice, polenta, and veggies of all stripes. Also: “Put nutritional yeast on everything. Trust me.”

Since we already eat (and love, mind you) a lot of vegan and vegetarian meals anyway, we’re starting with No. 2. And if we wake up in three days gnawing on each other’s arms like half-crazed werewolves? There’s always tofurkey.

We’re also instituting a weekly dinner party/support group with Laura and Matt, and I’m actually looking forward to exploring Seattle’s vegan restaurant scene. (I imagine this experiment would go quite differently in, say, Ted’s hometown of Houston.) I’m not saying there won’t be challenges — we all have book clubs, social dates, camping trips, and, in one case, a weeklong tour with a band on the calendar for the month — but I like to think of changes like these in terms of what I’m adding to my life, not what I can’t have anymore.

I don’t expect to go vegan permanently by the end of this month. But I do hope to gain a fresh appreciation for veggie-forward cooking, learn some new, healthy recipes and techniques, and get into the habit of thinking carefully about what I eat. I’d like to end this experiment not exactly vegan, but a lot more vegan than I was before. But hey, who knows? A magical vegan transformation could go a long way toward changing my mind. And when you’ve got Justin Timberlake on your side, anything can happen.

Been there, done that? Any advice you can share with four rookie vegans would be much appreciated!

Moving is so much fun, except for the part where you actually pack all your crap into boxes and move. I’m not sure you can beat its potent combination of stress, mess, and backbreaking toil outside of a prison hard-labor crew, and even those guys can find where they packed their pants at the end of the day.

And then there’s the waste. With all the cardboard boxes, Styrofoam packing peanuts, plastic bags, and transport trips involved, you can certainly add trash-producing and gas-guzzling to moving’s list of charms.

So what’s a green-minded relocator to do? I asked myself this question last week as I stared down the barrel of my impending move across town. My boyfriend, Ted, and I were headed to a nearby apartment (1.5 miles away, to be exact), and we didn’t have much time to prep — just a few weeks, and busy weeks at that. But we wanted to try for the most earth-friendly, least wasteful move possible.

While plotting the move, we identified three major offenders on the green front: packing materials, transport, and unnecessary trash. Then we set goals to attack each one. Here’s our plan — and how it all went down in reality.

Packing materials

“I hate cardboard boxes,” Ted announced early in the planning process. “Let’s just use our backpacks to haul everything.” True, we do own an unusual number of big backpacking packs (a byproduct of working in the outdoor industry), but I was still skeptical. “Everything? You mean, just toss the toaster and our dishes and everything into the packs?” That is indeed what he meant.

And it worked — for a while. We got access to the new place a few days before our official moving date, so we started early, hauling several full carloads of clothing, jackets, shoes, and books, all of it crammed into our various backpacks. We’d just show up, dump the packs’ contents on the floor, and head back for a refill. But once we’d exhausted the easily smushed items, we had to face facts: Bulky, fragile stuff would waste space in the packs, and we definitely didn’t want to make any extra trips. It was time to box.

I’ve never in my moving life bought new cardboard boxes — why, when grocery-store dumpsters are such fertile hunting grounds? But those finds tend to be on the small size, and irregularly sized to boot. I also considered renting reusable plastic boxes from a moving company like Rent a Green Box or Karmaboxx — what an idea! But you have to shell out for that kind of service. Moving boxes often lurk in the Craigslist free section, which would have been our approach if a recently relocated friend hadn’t offered up his collection. “This will be their fifth move,” he told me when I picked them up, thus inducting us into a storied tradition of moving eco-thriftiness.

And packing materials? Luckily, I’ve saved the peanuts, bubble wrap, and crumpled-up paper balls that have come in every package I’ve received over the past 18 months, sure they’d be useful someday. Today was that day. But what really saved the day was Ted’s insistence on using towels and his obscenely large T-shirt collection to cushion our wine glasses and framed photos. These materials added some bulk, yes, but we would’ve had to pack them anyway — why not make them work for it?

Transport

Unfortunate reality: Physically hauling boxes and furniture 1.5 miles (uphill!) takes energy. Short of rigging some sort of roller-pulley system and using it to yoke the sofa to a team of obliging friends, we were looking at burning gas. But how to burn the least gas?

The one car we share, a Subaru Outback, gets 20 miles to the gallon in city driving. We’d probably need a minimum of six round trips of three miles to get the boxes and other assorted odds and ends cleared out — about 0.9 gallons’ worth of gas. But wait, we’d never fit our furniture in the car, so we’d have to rent or borrow, at minimum, a pickup truck. If we managed to fit all that big stuff into two round trips at 15 mpg, plus the driving distance to and from the nearest rental joint, that’d be another 0.7 gallons for a grand total of 1.6 gallons (and maybe more).

What if we did it all in one trip — one major, UHaul trip? Though the behemoth trucks get a wince-worthy 10 mpg in the city, we’d cover the shortest distance (not to mention time) that way. So we bit the bullet, rented the smallest U-Haul we could, and drove it a grand total of 7.2 miles, or 0.72 gallons of gas. Surprise win!

Trash

I face the third significant hurdle — the creation of unnecessary trash — about three hours into any move. It’s the inevitable moment where, scratched, sweaty, and tired, I look around at my worldly possessions lying helter-skelter around the room and say, “The hell with it, let’s just toss all this s*#% out and start again.” The loveseat? Ugly. The dresser? Hate it. The photo boxes full of precious, irretrievable memories? Help me prop open the dumpster, will ya?

Ridding yourself of excess stuff without tossing it — by donating, selling, turning it into an adorable upcycled shelving unit — is a laudable goal, and one I pursue when not crazed by moving day. Doing it right takes time: You need to list items and show them to prospective buyers, or figure out how to transport stuff to Goodwill, or find a screwdriver and a hot glue gun. Not the kind of activity you have time for in a few harried weeks before a move. I should’ve cleared out the unwanted stuff well before the big day.

Yeah, well, we didn’t. But neither did I give in to my urge to throw it all away. Instead, we gritted our teeth and moved everything, even crap we bought fourth-hand from a college kid’s moving sale; we’ll find new, non-dumpster homes for it from the new place. And there’s nothing like moving to reinforce the less-is-more principle. Now more than ever, I’m going to ask of any prospective acquisition: Is this something I’d actually want to transport on another move?

In the end, we made it — sans new boxes, packing material, or trashed loveseats – and are settling into the new neighborhood for the foreseeable future. The legacy boxes are flattened and ready for move No. 6. And the extra stuff? You wouldn’t be interested in a deal on a fifth-hand lamp, now, would you?

I’ve got the home improvement bug. See, we’re moving — nothing major, just across town — but our new place finally boasts some shared garden space in the backyard. After years of yearning for an outlet for my green thumb, I’ll finally be able to dig into the soil and call forth a cornucopia of vegetables. In fact, I thought, why don’t I celebrate my first real garden with a nice building project?

I’m not much of a carpenter, true. But isn’t that what community is for? Seattle has several tool libraries where you can borrow drills and saws and all kinds of stuff more immediately recognizable to me as horror-movie torture devices than whatever they’re actually meant to be. And this town is bursting with eco-friendly gardeners. Surely someone can give me some tips. I can totally build something cool — I just need to pick a project.

Luckily, I discovered just the ticket: a volunteer-led, community-based skills workshop right here in town. Among tutorials as diverse as soapmaking, backyard goat care, and mushroom cultivation, I found the perfect class: how to build a cold frame from recycled materials. A cold frame, for those of you who don’t know, is kind of like a mini greenhouse — a glass-topped, open-bottom box that shelters tender seedlings or allows you to start cold-tolerant plants, like cabbage or kale, early in the season.

A DIY garden accessory! Recycled! Perfect! So last weekend, I attended the workshop, taught by a local farmer who wore an air of assured experience in organic plant cultivation and a hemp necklace. After witnessing him whip up the cold frame in less than an hour, I’d like to pass along the lessons I learned. (Actual results may vary.)

How to build a cold frame from recycled materials

Step 1: Gather your materials: some scrap lumber you found lying around the farm (or at a salvage shop or Habitat for Humanity worksite, that’s OK too), an old window with hinges, and deck screws …

Step 2: Take your two 2 x 10 boards and attach them by screwing on a post. This forms the back wall of your cold frame. Use self-tapping deck screws, because they’re easier to screw. Oh, and you should have already sawed the top edge of one of the boards and the posts to a 30-degree angle.

Step 2b: Wait — you have to pre-angle the wood? How did you do that? A saw?

Step 2c: Realize that you don’t have a saw. In fact, you haven’t worked with any type of saw since building a mousetrap car in seventh-grade woodshop. You got an A on that mousetrap car, you recall. So you should be able to handle a cold frame. You got this.

Step 3: Next, attach two long, skinny pieces of wood to the back wall; drill two short leg posts to the skinny pieces to form the front of your cold frame. (Oh, didn’t you remember to prep those, too?)

Step 4: Now you screw on the plywood side panels, which of course you’ve already measured and cut to fit exactly. Try not to think about how geometry was your toughest subject, and how you really hate to perpetuate gender stereotypes, but spatial reasoning has always been challenging, to the point where your younger brother used to beat you at Tetris — which was really embarrassing — but it’s fine because we’re all gifted in different ways, right?

Step 5: Attach the old window to the top of the back wall with the hinges. Put sticky weatherstripping all around the top of the frame to cushion the window, which is really heavy. At some point you should have added insulation to the cold frame in the form of Styrofoam wrapped in duct tape, too. Oh, and a piece of wood for the front. Don’t use particleboard.

Step 5b: Don’t panic when the instructor tells you he used a window for simplicity here, but really you should use an old sliding glass door, because who wants a tiny cold frame that only holds a few plants?

Step 6: Stare at the completed demo cold frame with fear and awe.

OK, so maybe this building experiment didn’t go exactly as I’d hoped. But it’s not all disappointment: At the end of the workshop, our instructor let it slip that there are easier ways to construct a cold frame. They’re more crude, but still. Turns out you can do something as simple as arranging straw bales in a rectangle and laying an old glass door over them– no screws, no cutting. You can even toss an old apple box, minus its bottom, on your garden soil and top it with a salvaged window. Now that sounds attainable.

In the end, the workshop was hardly a waste of time. It was a valuable reminder that a woman must walk before she can run, and perhaps a woman should put the cold frame building project on hold until she sharpens her carpentry skills. Further research has already turned up a plan for a much easier rectangular raised bed, so I’m going to tackle that one first.

And even before I get going on the raised bed, I plan to employ some repurposed planters — I love the look of an old drawer overflowing with fresh garden herbs. All you need to do there is drill a few drainage holes in the bottom. And yes, even I can manage a drill. What a glorious start.

Readers: Ever gotten in over your head on a DIY project? Do tell …

Recently, a friend of mine raised the kind of question that stops you in your tracks, opens your eyes, and makes you take a good, hard look at life as you know it — a question that poses a fundamental challenge to values that date all the way back to childhood. Namely: How often do you really need to wash your clothes?

She was specifically concerned about her 2-year-old’s seemingly sparkly clean T-shirts. “There are days when his entire outfit is spotless,” she mused. “I feel weird putting it in the washer, but then I wonder if I’m being a negligent mom.”

Huh. Before this illuminating question, I confess I hadn’t really thought about it. Of course you wash most of your stuff after wearing it, right? Otherwise it’s gross … right? Dirty? I mean, “the great unwashed” is not a compliment.

But then again, who says I do need to launder my ’90s-era No Doubt Tragic Kingdom tour T-shirt after just one afternoon sitting at a desk? Could some kind of detergent mafia be operating in the shadows of my laundry room right this minute?

If I’ve learned anything as the Greenie Pig, it’s that assumptions — that you need shampoo, say, or that there’s something wrong with enjoying a donut straight from the trash — should always be challenged. So I set out to find out just how many wearings my apparel could stand, and, by proxy, how much water and energy I could save by delaying the spin cycle.

First, a quick look at my baseline. Like most people I know, I typically wash my jeans every four to five wears, a practice endorsed by many textile experts (a Levi Strauss guru actually recommends hardly ever washing jeans). Skirts and sweaters usually go two or three wears between washings, too, with my standards for cleanliness inversely proportional with how fussy the item is to clean. (Hand-wash only? Smells fine to me!) PJs sometimes carry me all the way from one episode of Downton Abbey to another. If I’ve only worn a shirt for a few hours, I’ll occasionally refold it for another go — but sometimes, out of habit more than anything else, I’ll even toss those in the hamper. Socks, undies, workout clothes, and anything stained or crusted with mud gets priority boarding to the washing machine.

My criteria for this less-laundry challenge were nonscientific and simple: Does the item smell? Does it look bad? No? OK, back in the closet. I instructed my boyfriend, Ted, to alert me immediately if I missed anything, and went on my way. Over the ensuing weeks, I received exactly zero wrinkled noses, and even a couple of bashful confessions from friends. “I wear my wool socks at least three times between washings,” said one. “Just let ‘em air out a bit.”

Here are my limits after a couple of weeks:

• Jeans: Still ready for a dip after about five wearings.

• Sweaters: Five or six wearings if I’ve worn an underlayer with them; two or three if not.

• PJs: Made it 1.5 weeks between washes with no noticeable side effects.

• Next-to-skin shirts: Two full-day wearings if I haven’t been actively sweating in them (and they don’t have a visible deodorant slick); one if I have.

• Socks: Three wearings for naturally antimicrobial merino wool socks, one for cotton.

• Outdoor clothing: Three or four uses for merino wool stuff or outer layers, like ski pants.

• Unmentionables: I can’t bring myself to double-dip on these. One use only.

And the environmental payoff for all this re-wearing? Modest, but nothing to sneeze at. The practice has increased my time between laundry loads to about a week and a half, compared to one week beforehand (all those unmentionables and sweaty workout gear add up). That translates to about three loads per month, rather than four. And that translates to 36 loads a year, down from 48 loads, which in turn translates to a savings of 180 gallons of water and 63.6 pounds of carbon every year.* Not too bad for a habit that actually lightens your chore load.

Still, my friend’s original question kept coming back to me: Would she be a “bad mom” if she diverted her tot’s clean-looking duds from the hamper? After all, exposing your kid to excess bacteria, viruses, and general body funk is grounds for admission to the Bad Moms Club (See BMC Charter, Section 11). And that goes for the rest of us, too: Does skipping a wash or two turn us into walking plague factories?

I did a little research on this, and oh man, was I disturbed. Apparently, our wardrobes are crawling with gross stuff: body oils! Dead skin cells! Mold! Bacteria! Viruses! In even worse news, one microbiologist was even quoted on Fox News saying the average load of laundry contains one-tenth of an ounce of feces . [Update: Due to an editing error, the article originally said one ounce. Whew.] (No word on who these people are and whether they have a religious opposition to toilet paper.)

For some, washing your clothes every time isn’t nearly enough. The U.K.’s slightly hysterical Hygiene Council [PDF] urges us to also wash all our clothes in hot water (140 degrees F and up), never mind that cold-water washes have been a staple of the energy-conscious crowd for years. And the Daily Mail would have us using bleach on every load and running a segregated cycle just for underwear. Otherwise … (insert skull and crossbones here).

The situation appears less dire on this side of the pond. The CDC’s website assures us that hot water isn’t necessary for every load, nor is bleach. And Real Simple magazine’s “When-to-Wash-It Handbook” touts guidelines fairly similar to my limits (with the exception of my PJs. Apparently I am disgusting in this regard, and need to be refreshing them every four wearings).

Look, I get it — if someone in the house is sick, or has allergies, or a compromised immune system — wash-every-wear could be the ticket. In hot water, even. But I’ve washed clothes in cold water for years, and my household has a better-than-average health record. And over the past few weeks of less-frequent laundering, I’ve experienced no extra skin irritations, general infections, or projectile diarrhea. I’m sticking with my multi-wear, cold-water-wash habits for now.

How about you? What are your limits? C’mon, air your dirty laundry.