My wife Jill and I bought a house last year, fixed the obvious problems, moved in, then promptly had our first child. As any new parent knows, that means that, for the past 13 months, my life has been complete and total chaos. It also means every last bit of the free time and energy I've had to work on the house has been dedicated to staying one baby step ahead of our newly walking, exploring, opening, tearing, breaking, crashing bundle of destruction.

Did I say destruction? I meant joy.

Anyway, I'm either finally catching up with my childproofing, or else the other, neglected projects are catching up with me. Come to think of it, it's probably the latter.

Either way, at the top of my list of things to do is research and take on modifications that'll whittle away at my home's energy bills and, by extension, my family's carbon footprint. As I do, I'll talk to plenty of companies about lots of products and technologies, and I'll write about my experiences and results here.

The goal will be to use our humble abode in Truckee, California as a real-world case study on how all of us can quickly and simply reduce our impact on the planet, but to do so without a major lifestyle overhaul. Any suggestions or ideas you might have are, of course very, very welcome.

I'll state right up front that this will not be an exercise in sacrifice. I'm not moving my family into a yurt or onto a co-op, I'm not going to cram my family and all its gear into a tiny econobox car when there's three feet of snow on the ground, and I'm not going to replace things that work perfectly well with less-effective "green" versions just to feel smug and superior.

What I am going to do is seek out are things that won't break our bank now, but I can justify as investments in our future. For example: Can I really install enough solar panels on my roof to cover most of our electricity needs? More importantly, can I finance such a project in a way that'll make economic sense? What about replacing my lightbulbs with fluorescent or LEDs? How long would it take for such a project to pay for itself?

Anyway – I've got more questions than answers at this point. Stay tuned …

Next: Feelin' the Heat