I'm not the sort of person who considers spending a Sunday afternoon talking with 25 other adults, mostly strangers, about sustainable ways to go about keeping house to be a good time. But last month, I did just that—and enjoyed myself and learned a lot to boot. At a Home-Eco Party, held at the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Poughkeepsie, party-goers discussed everything from nontoxic drain unclogging and mold removal to the carcinogenic ingredients in shampoo to making your own truly biodegradable laundry detergent using Dr. Bronner's Castile Soap. We learned that baking soda, vinegar, and essential oils go a long way—and shared a lot of laughs, along with earth-friendly household hints.

The party was facilitated by Barbara Corona, who was trained to hold Home-Eco Parties through Northwest Earth Institute, the 12-year-old Portland, Oregon-based organization that has introduced Americans to the now-popular trio of group study courses: "Voluntary Simplicity," "Exploring Deep Ecology," and "Discovering a Sense of Place." The Home Eco-Party is a two-hour interactive event that is designed to be "an enjoyable way to examine household practices and consider alternatives that reduce impact on the earth" and provide "opportunities to make homes more earth-friendly," according to Northwest's Web site (www.nwei.org). Corona, a Dutchess County psychotherapist, is offering to facilitate Home-Eco Parties free of charge to any group of eight or more people who would like to look at their own home practices. The hope behind the parties is that once people get it together at home, they'll spread the word on sustainability to their workplaces, relatives, and friends.

Prior to the party, Corona gave me a checklist asking some tough questions about the way I live. The list outlined practices related to energy, water, solid waste, and household chemicals, and a few of the questions frankly made me balk: How high is the post-consumer recycled content of your toilet paper? How many items do you purchase in bulk using your own container? Do you compost food scraps in a worm box? Do you hang your clothes to dry at least one-third of the year?

Although I've tried to keep up on my sustainable household practices—taking pains to recycle, keeping the use of plastics low, and planning to take advantage of New York State Energy Development Authority incentives to have solar panels installed on my roof—I have to admit that certain items on the checklist put me to shame. I mean, I've never kept track of how many miles per gallon my car gets, for instance, or compared my winter and summer electricity readings, or considered a flea collar as a pesticide. So I approached the party feeling a tad guilty for my sustainable infractions, imagining that everyone at the party would have traveled much further along the sustainability path than me, and wondering how much of a "party" the event would actually be.

But not to worry: the atmosphere was nonjudgmental and friendly. "Everyone has to go at their own pace," says Corona. "If not, you'll probably end up miserable, especially if you try to make changes in a drastic way. And it's easier not to make them by yourself." Seated in a sun-filled room that afternoon I joined in a few lively discussions inspired by a talk given by Ann LaGoy, proprietor of Clearly Natural cleaning products. "A lot of times when you're talking about things like making changes and becoming more eco-friendly, you start thinking along your own track about what to do, and then someone else comes up with something that really surprises you. These parties are about sharing ideas, and finding out you're not the only one who cares about this," says Christina Serviss, owner of The Rustic Bohemian in New Paltz, who gave a talk on natural body and bath care at the January gathering. (Both LaGoy and Serviss are members of Sustainable Dutchess Business Network, an organization of local businesses committed to "creating businesses that are more ecologically sound and plugging into what customers need and want in the way of earth-friendly products," says LaGoy.)

Some of what I learned at the party about earth-friendly domestic maintenance was quite surprising—like when the group passed around a clear plastic bottle filled with LaGoy's Velvet Hammer, a creamy foam scented with eucalyptus and spearmint that's as much about moisturizing your hands as it is about scrubbing clean your tile, fiberglass, or butcher block. The rest of the nontoxic household hints I picked up were fairly commonsense (like using baking soda, vinegar, and hot water for whatever ails your kitchen or bath), but then again, as a woman seated near me remarked, "Who has time for common sense anymore?"

Barbara Corona will host a Home Eco Party on April 10 at 12pm at the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Poughkeepsie, 167 S. Randolph Street. Admission is free. To host a party, free of charge, in your home, workplace, or faith center, contact Corona at (845) 297-6814 or Sustainable Hudson Valley at (845) 679-9597; check out SHV's Web site (www.sustainhv.org) to download a "Home Eco Party Checklist."