The joy of Christmas is too often accompanied by over-consumption of presents and plastics. Neither is good for the soul. Over the years I’ve written a number of blogs on simplifying Christmas. Click here to review some of them. This year I offer you Joshua Becker’s list of How to Restore Gift Giving Sanity. BUT, […]
Living Lightly
Susan Vogt on living more simply but abundantlyBrowsing Posts tagged Recycling
PRE-CYCLING: Before I address the topic of recycling, it’s worth starting at the beginning. Remember the classic “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle” mantra of the early earth friendly movement. Too often we jump to the third “Recycle” option when the “Reduce” and “Reuse” steps would reduce the overall need for recycling. Some call this “Precycling.” Evaluate a […]
I spent the past 10 weeks going Room by Room to discern additional household items to give away. I then spent 2 more weeks researching where to take all this stuff. Some were easy but some took a lot of searching and time. Here is an outline of my methodology and resources so you don’t […]
Lent starts next Wednesday, March 6. This will be my 10th Lent of trying to do something in addition to giving up sweets – such as actions that will help me be a better person by sharing my stuff, my money, simplifying my life, spending less, wasting less, eating less, and being less critical. All […]
Before I reveal what “BVG” means, I’d like to share a letter to my grandchild. See if you can guess the BVG. Dear grandchild, Once upon a time, a long time ago, BVG, you may wonder what families did for fun. In my own family we played GAMES. Lots of them were board games. We […]
There are several layers to Recycling Christmas:I’ll start with the traditional religious and gift-giving concepts and the go on to those that fit the more classic ecology dimensions. 1.The SUPER-SPIRITUAL: This approach goes back to the basics and reminds us that Christmas is about the Christ coming into the world as a human being. It […]
My last post on giving away socks was easy peasy. This one took some homework and research. We’re all familiar with the environmental slogan, “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.” This is good; but I sometimes rant about how folks often jump to the Recycle part and overlook the more substantive Reduce/Reuse aspect. After all, we wouldn’t have […]
Sometimes life gets busy. A relative dies. Emergencies come up…and this blog is overdue. That’s when it’s nice when an opportunity falls into one’s lap. That’s what happened today during my walk. I saw a sign at a neighbor’s house soliciting coats, sweaters, socks etc. for homeless people in the community. It’s getting cold. I […]
Yea! A couple days ago our new solar panels were activated. This is probably the opposite of my recent Keep it Simple post, because it wasn’t a simple or cheap endeavor, but it was worth it. Over a year ago we started thinking about getting solar panels for our roof. We contacted an installer, got […]
Sometimes life gets messy, complicated, too busy, or painful. We, who like to think of ourselves as responsible hardworking people, can beat ourselves up thinking we’re not doing enough. It might be missing deadlines, not recycling enough, being lazy, or not living up to our values as fully as we would like. This week was […]
Plastic items are light, easily cleaned, and often cheaper than cloth, wood, metal, or brick. Maybe the three pigs should have built their homes out of plastic. But, of course most plastics do not biodegrade easily or quickly which make them anathema to environmentalists like me. They can, however, be recycled. Conscientious citizens already know […]
Now that one office file cabinet is pretty much pruned and reorganized, I decided to tackle my two bookcases which hold work related books. I had a happy conundrum. Friends who were moving out of town offered me one of their bookcases. It matched my main bookcase in size and style so I was happy […]
I’m in a time warp. Easter was over 2 weeks ago but I’m still finishing up my Lenten resolve to prune my file cabinets. By Easter I had pruned 2 drawers of my first cabinet. (See here ) Once started, I was motivated to keep going. I have now finished the final 2 drawers of […]
I had a good two part plan for Lent this year: *Clean out my work files and shelves *Clear my mind of the political funk that was crowding my spirit The process seemed logical: Step 1: Clear off the ping-pong table, aka my extended desk of papers that were “in process.” Step 2: File papers […]
December 26 is celebrated as “Boxing Day” in some countries. The name comes from the tradition that on the day after Christmas well-to-do families would give a box of money or presents to their servants or customers. I remembered this as I was cleaning up after Christmas and was struck by the extraordinary number of cardboard […]
In the spirit of end of the year lists, I offer you my 10 Best Living Lightly Tips of 2016. The first 6 are my own. The last 4 come from other bloggers I respect. Most can be read in under 2 minutes. The Beauty of Empty – 8 practical steps to unclutter any part of your […]
I recently ran a little contest among colleagues to find out how folks commonly or creatively tackled the environmental trio of Reduce-Reuse-Recycle. Out of 222 responses I was especially impressed with the clever, albeit human energy intensive, submission of Therese Brennan. She saves the used shampoo bottle, buys the same kind again, then pours ½ […]
A success I couldn’t fit anything more into the file cabinet drawer assigned to NACFLM, my professional family life association. At this same time, a NACFLM committee I was on decided to archive former newsletters. For many years I had been the newsletter editor. Hmmm. I decided to bite the bullet and go through all […]
I like to think of myself as a pretty decent recycler. I put paper, bottles, cans, and appropriate plastics out for curbside recycling. I decline plastic bags at stores and use my cloth bags instead. I take a reusable water bottle to meetings. I take #5 recyclables to Whole Foods. I compost. I even collect […]
My next several blog posts will cover various angles of recycling (Recycling, The Multiplier Effect, Paper Pruning, and Precycling.) Let’s start with the easy one – recycling plastics. 😉 This will be a refresher for many people but I’m throwing in some trickier items for the hard core recycler. The Usual: Most municipal curb-side recycling […]
