Reduce

This week's topic is reducing. Last week we learned the most important step to reducing. If you refuse items you don't need, it makes the job of reducing that much easier.

So you started refusing extra items, that's Great! Now we will work on reducing what we already have. I will use my mother as an example here. She is a shopaholic, the amount of clothes she has is ridiculous, on top of that there is a second closet full of all her “Give away clothes.” These give away clothes have been sitting in that closet for over 5 years, most of them probably have not fit her in over 15. Yet she holds onto them because she “never has time to go to consignment” They just take up space and you have no use for them. Don't be like that, you deserve to live in an uncluttered space.

I am one of those people who pack away my summer and winter clothes at the changing of the season so I have more room. What I will do is at that time go through my ENTIRE wardrobe, if I haven't worn it in a year, it fits a little snug, or I just don't like it anymore off it goes. Now there are some special items that will stay, fancy dresses, vacation clothes, heavy winter clothes, and things I won't necessarily wear year in year out are spared. But the rest get packed up and donated. Now I am not talking about those Multi billion-dollar “charity centers” I'm looking at you Goodwill, Salvation Army, and Ark. I am talking about Donating them to places that actually make a difference. I personally Donate my clothing to the local battered women's shelter. Stuffed animals, blankets, and children's things go there as well. Now I'm not saying you have to find a new home for every little thing but the fewer items you can donate to big charity shops the better. I still send items to Goodwill but it is mostly things I don't think anyone down on their luck would need.

Another thing to reduce is the number of plastics you bring into your house, we talked about this last week with the bulk shopping but I am going to go over it again. By reducing the amount of plastic you bring in you are reducing the amount of plastic that goes out. Now Reduce is above Reuse, and Recycle for a reason. If you never buy that soda you don't have to send a bottle to an already overwhelmed and broken recycling system. (we will get more into that later) Now I know people think that “Well I recycle so I am doing good for the planet. I am doing my part. In reality, it is used as a placebo effect, you feel since you recycled you lessened your Eco footprint, which you did.....slightly. If you never bought the bottle in the first place you wouldn't have to recycle that bottle, which would mean the diesel-fueled trucks don't have to run to your house and back to the plant which runs more fuel. 

Now you're thinking “But that's just one bottle, it won't make that much of difference. Think about one bottle a day, that's 7 bottles a week, 30 bottles a month. Now imagine your neighbor decided to not grab that bottle a day, and his friend, and their friends, and so on and so forth. If you get 10 people to not use that one bottle a day that is 300 bottles not being sent to a landfill. That is 300 bottles that do not need to be recycled and sent through the process.

One thing I struggle with is books. I am an ashamed book hoarder. Now every book in my collection I have read but I tend not to get rid of them once I have finished them. I scour the racks at Goodwill and Ark trying to add to my collection even though I know I don't need anymore. But hey! You don't have to be perfect about everything. There are certain things you just won't budge on, and that is OK. You just want to reduce what you have along with reducing what you bring in.