The morning’s SNOWSTORM didn’t stop a few local moms who gathered to BRAINSTORM. The topic?Holidays, stress and ways to simplify for the planet’s sake.(It could not have been a more appropriate day, considering inlu was mentioned in the ecomom alliance holiday guide. Click HERE to download some great ideas.)
What we discovered very quickly is that planet-saving ideas are woven with stories and context, memories and challenges—from hints to hassles to innovative thinking. Here’s our list.
PLEASE CONTINUE to ADD YOUR OWN IDEAS! on FACEBOOK, TWITTER or HERE!
(Oh, and a SUPER-special thank you to HEALTY LIVING MARKET!)
STRESS
- Bake fewer cookies. Don’t make a ton of cookies “just because that’s how mom did it.” You’ll feel less maxxed out.
- Don’t runaround for a million gifts– look right in the stationary closet. Make coupons or special notes and offer to do projects for parents and relatives. (If you’re tech, offer to set up a blog or make a website for that person you’ve been meaning to help out!).
- Make it fun- gather a group to make a new, simple tradition. This creates community. For example, an ornament making party—pooling crafty resources makes it fun and less expensive.
- Pick a “wasteful” tradition that just seems to cause more stress than fun and let it go. This includes homemade recipes that you feel you “must” make.
- Allocate duties at parties. Ask each person to bring an organic or healthy treat. This lightens the load yet keeps people together.
- Go to YOGA.
MESS
- Ask the kids to fill a box with GOOD CONDITION toys to give away to make room for new goodies.
- Skip wrapping big gifts. Leave clues to where it is hidden OR tie a string to follow back to the gift. This saves paper but keeps it really exciting!
- Pick gifts that LAST. Go for the nicer quality—it will last longer and stay out of the landfill. For example, buy a quality luggage piece or a handwoven rug.
- Use cloth from an old sheet as “wrap” – tie with ribbons. Get creative. Find scraps. You never, know, family members may continue re-using the printed cloth year after year.
- AVOID throw-away cups. How? Hit the local recycle shop and pick up a dozen or two GLASS DRINKWARE. You’ll find odd sizes and shapes— I hit RECYCLE NORTH for cocktail, juice cups and flutes…for CHEAP! (really cheap!)
EXCESS
- Save those holiday bags and ribbons and favorite papers. Use them next year! You can also make gift cards from old cards, artwork and other “household” paper items and wrapping paper from newsprint, mail and magazine pages. (I wrap the boys stocking stuffers in CAR & DRIVER pages).
- Switch to LED lights this season. Less energy….bright idea.
(HIT THE JUNK DRAWER, HARD.)
- Swap with other moms. Literally, organize an am coffee session while the kids are at school/napping and say, bring a box of old, gently used items- from wallets to plastic robots to beads to marbles—other mom’s trash is another kid’s stocking stuffer! Be mindful of age/choking hazards. (This can apply with clothing too!).
- Use junkdrawer items to create holiday decorations: ornaments, wreaths and community projects.
- Draw names and commit to buying for fewer people.
- USE INLU.COM to round up funds from all around the country/globe and BUY LOCALLY!
SNOWSTORM!
If YOU are interested in a Brainstorm Session or would like to join the EcoMom Alliance, all you have to do is this or VISIT ECOMOM.COM and sign up (PSSST….BTV / Vermont needs a chapter leader!):
Supplies: Pens, poster, paper (can be reused or recycled post-its) and snacks. (Wine works too!). Prompts: Problems. Solutions. Categories (Stress, Mess, Excess). Directions: Leave the prompts up around the room. Provide resources (guides, sites, stats, resources, checklists, whatever!). Ask moms to discuss the topics and post solutions / questions / ideas / concerns, etc.
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Thank you so much to everyone who attended – and everyone who was there in snow spirit – sending ideas in. Eco Mom is such an amazing organization! Lets keep working on getting a Vermont chapter in place.
And BIG thank you to Nina & Katie at Healthy Living for letting us use the beautiful Education Room (wish MY kitchen looked like that!) and donating the coffee. Healthy Living is the perfect place to keep the Eco Mom meet ups happening – even crayons & paper for the kids!
Happy GREEN Holidays everyone!
As a child, I had a very prophetic dream. It was of the Earth, as a beautiful luminescent “pearl” and then suddenly it would shift and turn into a black fuzzy, scratchy, buzzing, hot ball. This dream would reoccur many times through my growing years… however I never understood what it meant until now. Now, it all makes perfect sense…and somehow, as a small child, I was able to foresee this very time of critical global crisis for all of us. Apparently, even then, I was being shown my own responsibility to act.
We have done more damage to this planet since the advent of the Industrial Revolution, just slightly over 100 years, than collectively throughout the entire existence of man. This is staggering to think of. With knowledge comes responsibility to act. It is our responsibility to have a thorough knowledge of our modern day “inventions” before we unleash them for the masses. We have not done this…and the result has been disastrous to say the least.
There is one very serious factor to global warming that no one is looking at. We all know that we need to cut back on the amount of electricity we use for many reasons, primarily to conserve resources… however there are other aspects to the electricity problem that dramatically impact the climate and our incessant, obsessive “need” to use electricity with nearly everything we do these days. It is as simple as this…. Electricity is made of what? FIRE! and each electrical transmission, whether it be for lighting our way, a simple quick phone call or an hour or two in front to the television, those transmissions are electricity and electricity is fire! Every electrical transmission is a “line of fire” from point A (the electric company provider) to point B (to your equipment)… when that single transmission or line of fire is multiplied exponentially through global use… we end up wrapping the planet in an enormous “blanket” of electrical transmissions flying at “break neck” speed around and around the entire globe. This presents a picture of our beautiful blue lady wrapped in a fuzzy grey haze of electricity that is fire and fire is HOT… and we sit back and scratch our heads wondering why everything is heating up so dramatically and whole lakes and streams are evaporating like never before??? Has anyone seen the North Pole lately??? No, I mean has anyone SEEN it… it is not there anymore…as seen through Google Earth! Yet no one seems to be talking about this. The bottom line is that we need to turn off the electricity. This is something we all can do and thus, we can create an immediate global impact for the better! It can be this simple, with the awareness and sincere caring of every single person! It IS going to take everyone.
I personally, would love to see a 24 hour period of mandatory global “blackout” with only emergency services, hospitals and health care facilities allowed to be excluded. We NEED to dissipate the electromagnetic fields and allow for the dramatic rapid cooling that could then take place. An even longer period of time with little to no use of electricity would be even better… Furthermore, the enormous amounts of electromagnetic fields are not only “magnetizing” the planet, throwing off the natural magnetic balance of the Earth and all living creatures upon Her… contributing to enormous amounts of dis-ease from the stress and impact of those massive EMFs. Again, this is not rocket science! Magnets attract and hold things together… are we not understanding that the very electromagnetic fields we are creating, are holding in all the heat that is building up around the globe? The collective of fields is staggering to think about, yet we float about in our daily lives, oblivious to them and their severely damaging impact… because we cannot “see” them.
We can’t see “love” but we know if it is there or not! These fields collectively are enormous “waves” of electrical current that are creating further imbalance as they “pulse” across the globe and they are also holding in all the carbon emissions that are also causing such a stir. What is carbon? Are the carbon emissions by their very nature like tiny charcoal briquettes? Would they too not get “charged” or heated by all the electricity in the air? Thus, further contributing to overall global heating. In addition, these carbon emissions are not able to be expelled and escape from the earth’s atmosphere through normal weather patterns due to the magnetic fields being created that are holding them in.
I know for certain that a simple television cable box or a wireless computer router throws out electromagnetic fields that are 12-15 feet in diameter… that is enormous and a profound over use of electricity. We can accomplish the same transmissions by using about half the electricity that we are currently using to convey the same transmission. This gross overuse is another factor in global heating…and simply, is just a way for the electrical providers to use and make more money on the services they are providing. We CAN use much less electricity to accomplish the same tasks. The technology does exist!
It is going to take every single human being to contribute to this global problem… no one is immune to our collective climate.
I imagine a week where everyone on the globe goes “home” and spends a week with family and friends and does not go anywhere, using little to no electricity the entire time. Have we forgotten the soft lovely beauty of a candle lit evening? This is NOT “rocket science” people… this is very simple and the solutions are simple if we can step back far enough, extricate ourselves from our sick systems, and begin to think for ourselves. It is not “rocket science” to understand that the whales are beaching themselves because their sensitive and delicate systems are being disrupted and impacted by the military’s underwater communication devices like sonar and radar… again, this is electricity and the magnetic fields are harming the whales and their ability to communicate with one another and other animals. This is the equivalent of taking a fine silk gossamer thread and running it through a web of electrical fire…that fine thread would be disintegrated in a matter of seconds. It is the same with the whales and the sonar and radar pulses are hurting and harming their systems. Those pulses and the electricity carrying them can enter the whales body and brain, and the tones and frequencies can be very damaging and intolerable to endure…thus, to “make it stop” the whales are forced to beach themselves in order to get out of the electrical pulses and magnetic fields we are broadcasting across the oceans. Has anyone ever thought to compare the frequencies, velocities, densities of these sonar and radar pulses, to that of whales and other creatures of the sea? Does this not stand to reason, a good place to start in understanding our misuse of electricity. Electricity is NOT a natural element of the ocean and the life there… we are WRONG to put it there!!!
Nothing is as it was, and nothing that is coming will be anything anyone is expecting… that is the beauty of the Great Spirit…it is full of surprises and I guarantee that very Spirit is alive and well upon the planet… and greater and greater manifestations of this will begin to become more and more clear in an accelerated time line. I find it very hard to believe that the “Creator” would allow such an extraordinary creation as our Earth and all her “children” to be destroyed… the very “parasites” that plague Her will be washed away before She will ever surrender to man’s mindless destruction.
Turn off the electricity!!! NOW! And I thank you for your consideration… of ALL!