Starting month 5 focusing on the area of "waste" this entire month. I'm positive I'm one of the most wasteful people on this planet. How do I know? I can remember even as an adult with my kids still toddlers, while cleaning the house in a hurry and "accidentally" throwing away a penny or even a nickel, mostly I was too lazy to fish it out of my own trash can after it had fallen in somehow. How wasteful is that? Thankfully I've matured some since then, and now I truly appreciate all God has blessed me with. I've learned I need to be a good steward, and literally throwing money away is not being a good steward, so I don't literally throw money away anymore, but I still have a long way to go before I will call myself a good steward.
So this month I will focus on 7 habits for a less wasteful life. I need to think "Reduce, Reuse, Recycle". I wanted to garden this month, but that just never happened, previous posts explain why, but basically it was going to be too expensive for what I wanted to do... So this month I will shop Farmer's Markets instead, which I never do, so I'm actually excited about it, and since the kids will be on summer break, they will be coming along to shop with me on those days.
I will not overbuy! I do this so much!! I think, oh we'll eat that before it goes bad, and then we wind up throwing it away! Right now I have to throw away 2 bunches of bananas that we never ate! I also forgot to throw them in the freezer this time and I never got around to baking banana bread with them. It's not "literally" throwing money away, but it is throwing money away and not being a good steward! What a waster I am!!
I have a couple of reusable grocery bags, but I've NEVER used them to buy groceries with, so this month I'm going to be using reusable grocery bags.
We will be conserving energy and water more, I'm the worst at turning lights off that I'm not using. I love to have lights on all over the place, I've done a poor job at teaching my kids to conserve energy, because well I can't tell them to do something that I never do! So this month, they are going to learn, and so will I. I'm going to set up a timer with a buzzer by our showers to help limit our shower time. My kids take too long in the shower sometimes, and I'm sure I could cut some time off of mine as well. Confession time, last summer on my mission trip to DR/Haiti, we took showers out of big buckets of cold water by using a cup to wet ourselves and rinse with, so one of the things I said I was going to do when I got back home, was to continue taking showers that way by turning the water on only when I rinsed, instead of having it run the entire shower time. Um....yeah I failed miserably at that, it lasted for about a week when I got back and I tried to do it occasionally after that. The only good thing that came out of that failure, is that every time I am in the shower I think about the Dominicans and the Haitians and all those in this world who need fresh water, and I pray.
We will be recycling EVERYTHING this month. I have the 3 little red, white, and blue recycle bins still, somehow living in a gated community has kept us off of the new city wide recycling program and we have never received the huge new recycle bins where you don't have to sort any of it. So as of now, we still have to sort and our bins are usually overflowing, especially because we always miss recycle curb pick up days, so overflowing bins make me not want to add anymore recycables to it and I wind up throwing stuff away that I shouldnt. I just haven't made it a priority, but I need to, so this month, I will!
This month I will be shopping garage sales, thrift and second-hand stores for any items we need. This will not include gift items though, unless they are practically brand new! I will not be shopping online this month, I will only be buying locally. This does not include Itunes for music, I just love music!
Driving will be cut down considerably this month, one good thing is I won't have to drive back and forth to school this month since school will be over for the summer in just 4 1/2 days. I will try as much as possible to stay in my little area of town too.
So that's it 7 areas to work on cutting down on waste this month. Looking forward to new wonderful habits being established in our family. We all need to do our part in taking care of Earth, it's God's amazing, spectacular, beautiful creation, that we all call home.
1. Shop Farmer's Markets
2. Do Not Over Buy
3. Use Re-usable Grocery Bags
4. Conserve Energy and Water
5. Recycle Everything
6. Shop Local
7. Reduce Driving Frequency and Distances
