Paper, Paper, Paper

We are so un-green at my house when it comes to paper. We probably use 30 sheets of paper a day, and most of those end up, eventually, in the trash. My kids are huge doodlers; Simon alone can easily use up a notebook in a day or two, and he gets very testy if I try to get him to use the back sides of the sheets or the edges of the page. I print things off the internet that I know I could just use electronically, but there's something in me that has to see it on paper. I go through an ink cartridge every couple of weeks. In fact, right now, I've been out of black ink for two days and it's killing me. I also have a thing for books. I love buying books, and even though I know that I'm not likely to read them more than once, I feel like I need to buy them rather than get them from the library (although we usually have at least 20 items checked out from the library at any given time). John and I have been drooling over the Kindle forever, and I have a friend who just got the Kindle Fire and refers to it as "the best homeschooling investment" she's ever made. Would this solve some of our paper problems? It would mean that we have three "computers," so Isaac, Simon, and I could all look at the same things online at the same time...that would solve some of our problems. But I'm afraid of giving myself that much easy access to Amazon.com. Would I go nuts buying and downloading stuff? I looked up some of the books on my wish list, and they are a lot cheaper as e-books, so maybe I'd save money...or maybe it would just be so easy to buy/justify things that I'd waste money. Sigh. I think I'll just daydream about it for a while. And maybe start a recycling bin for all of our doodles.