When you swear, do you have swear jar that you pay money into? Some people do, and they find it is a great way to help break the habit of having a sailor's mouth. Even Homer Simpson had one, and it worked out great for him, allowing him to pay enough to buy a new doghouse (the source of much of the swearing) and a six pack of Duff.

In our household, we are going green every day for a year to prove how easy it can be done, and we came up with the idea of having a Green Swear Jar. This initiative, as part of Our Green Year, was initiated by my wife Layla and it is a great way to go green and save money. You can create a Green Swear Jar out of nearly anything, and we used a yogurt container. It needs to be strong enough to hold a lot of money, and it needs to have somewhere to put the money into. Using her creative talents, my wife created a Green Swear Jar in the shape of the a bird.

With your Green Swear Jar, you need to have a list of items that will constitute a certain amount of money. You can even print up tickets so that everyone in the house knows when they did something environmentally unfriendly, and how much they have to pay. The great thing about this is that you can use the money to save up and buy something green for the house. It could be a manual lawnmower, solar panel, or depending on how un-green you are, a personal wind turbine.

We structured our payment criteria as follows:

• Leaving Light On: $2


• Leaving Fridge Open: $5


• Leaving TV on when you are not in the room: $10


• Leaving car running or idling when you don't need to: $20


• Using cleaners that are not 'green': $10


• Using the vacuum on the kitchen floor instead of sweeping: $5


• Using the dishwasher when you could be washing by hand: $10


• Taking a shower longer than 5 minutes: $2 per minute


• Leaving the water running anywhere at any time: $5 per minute

You will be amazed by how much money you can raise doing this. You will learn to be green, save for green items and help to teach others in the house to be green, it is a win-win-win scenario.