Organization of Snow

1-12-18

TODAY’S INSPIRATION: SNOW

From the freak heat wave of yesterday to the snow storm and cold winds of today, it’s always an adventure to live in Chicago. I’m not complaining though because I love snow. I know there are so many Chicagoans out their cursing the cold and the bad driving conditions and they are right. The snow and wind and ice can make getting around in the city pretty hazards, but I can’t help how much I love that clean white stuff falling from the sky. Covering up the grass and dirt and somehow justifying the freezing temperatures. For me anyways. I always say what is the point of living somewhere so cold if we don’t have snow to at least give you the feeling of winter. I know my neighbors would be cursing me for saying it but I am kind of hoping we get enough snow to play in this weekend.

  Phew, I am actually glad I managed such an upbeat opening to this because I have been a bit down. If you have to ask why it’s because I have been reading the news this week and between the mudslides and the disturbing comments of our president I haven’t been feeling all that optimistic. At least I am making my writing goals.

As for other projects, something about the new year made me feel like I need to go through everything in the house and get rid of a bunch of useless junk. That led to the inevitable reorganization of every closet and drawer and now I am even reconsidering the cabinet arrangement in the kitchen. I know that may sound a bit crazy but when we moved in a year ago we kind of just through things wherever they would fit. We were doing some remodeling at the same time and some things never really got put back in a proper home. I am not a super organized person to begin with but every scatter-brained slob has to start somewhere.

I also got addicted to the “subscribe and save” function of my Amazon account once I realized how much of my errands I could automate and save money with. Yeah, I probably should have figured this out a long time ago and I have been using it for a while for cat food and K cups but there are so many more things that they can deliver to me. Seriously this is not an add I just get really excited about little things.

Ok this next part I have decided to ad for myself so that I can look back and know what I was into and liking at different times in my life, but if it gives anyone who might happen across this lonely little blog ideas or inspiration great.  I have decided to add this little segment once a week as I don’t anticipate my preferences changing any faster than that.

Reading:  The Mists of Avalon by MarionZimmer Bradley

Listening

            Music: Hamilton Soundtrack

            Podcast: Science vs. Birth Control

Watching:  Black mirror 

Researching: Turtle Gods (if anyone asks I’ll explain) Thrive Market, Arcadia Power, and Tribes that have no contact with the modern world. 

Gardening and Growing

My original goal was to write 500 words a day to exercise my writing skills and get me used to writing on a consistent basis. Yeah, I didn’t pull that off. So much life got in the way. Still I am trying not to beat myself up for my varied and numerous faults, so I am going to forgive myself and reaffirm this goal.

Today is my daughter’s 11th birthday. This has resulted in two mindsets. The first is that “OMG I am so Old, “which of course my mother laughs about, but really how can I possible have an 11-year-old. The second is the feeling of my baby not being a baby anymore. She has become e so independent and headstrong and I couldn’t be happier, but I miss the little girl who just needed her mommy too.

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Also, she is slowly creeping towards those teen years; An age I both fear, and am looking forward to. It is so strange wanting your child to grow and learn and have experiences at the same time that you want to protect them from everything. I’m not alone and every parent goes through this.

This week I have been channeling my parental urge to nurture and take care of things into producing my vegetable garden for the summer. After last year’s semi successful slosh into the world of gardening, I feel a little bit more confident about what I need to do. So, we made a trip to the nursery and I picked out my new little babies to worry about. (Yes, the parenting analogies are still coming.) This year I am also attempting to grow some plants from seed. I have planted carrots, spinach, and bunching onions in seed form. Other than that, the garden has my usual crop of tomatoes, peppers and kale, strawberries, and assorted herbs. I am also going to try a new gardening technique for some high intensity lettuce production. I will keep you posted on how it goes. My grape plants survived Chicago’s torrential winter and my chives of course came back like clock-work.

This year I also installed an indoor herb garden that I am hoping I can successfully keep alive. So perhaps my motherly instincts are a bit in overdrive, but at least I am not allowing them to smother my human child. Besides what a better way to celebrate the end of winter then with a garden.

The spring always brings three events that I have begun to intertwine in my mind. My daughter’s birthday, planting, and Mother’s Day. My own mother fostered in me a love of nature and growing things, and I’m trying to pass it on. My daughter sits with me in the backyard hands buried in soil as she mixes compost with dirt. We plant the strawberries that always remind me of the little townhouse in Alaska that I lived in when I was young. My mother grew strawberries in the backyard and I was always fascinated with the way the fruit would start as a flower and turn into a ripe red berry over time.

Now we live in our small townhouse in Chicago. With the equally small garden. I try to cram as many vegetables into a small space as possible and my daughter loves to water the plants. We always go to the plant nursery at this time of year to buy anything I haven’t been successful starting from seed. My husband and I agree that the expense is my Mother’s Day gift. What I don’t say is that the real gift is letting my daughter plant them in the ground. While I sit back and watch the plants and my little girl grow.

Goal for A Sustainable Future

There are so many buzz words that orbit around the enviromental movement that it can be very difficult to figure out what label you fall under when you make the decision to live in an eco-friendlier sustainable way. What do you call it zero waste, eco minimalism, Earth Friendly, eco conscious, who knows? What I do know that it is a task in which you have to be very comfortable with failure. At least for most of us. 

Unless you have endless amounts of money or lack attachments that won’t allow you to pick up and start over in a new location. You’re going to struggle to do the right thing with limited funds and limited resources and a lot of inconvenience that can sometimes be a bit to much. 

I started this journey about a year ago. My goals were simple to use less plastic, less energy, compost and a myriad of other things that could lead to a more sustainable lifestyle for me and my family. One that I could feel good about, know that I was doing what I could to contribute to what I see as the most dangerous obstacle facing the human race, Climate Change.

I confess I also imagined myself as something of a pioneer woman. Making everything from scratch, growing my own food, and providing for myself in a sustainable way. This kind of mindset isn’t something that I picked up watching reality tv or reading about homesteading. I was raised in Alaska, and this is just part of the culture I grew up with. People fished for their own food and sometime grew it. Hunting and gardening and fishing camping living off the land were something that I thought was normal and part of everyday life for the formative years of my life. 

However, I live in a modern family. While we have always been more concours then most of what we are putting into our bodies int terms of food. We haven’t been strangers to convenience and being a naturally lazy individual, doing things the hard way has never come easy to me. My family is like a lot of American families, we buy things packaged at the grocery store, we occasionally eat out, we are consumers in most ways. So, our lifestyle was wasteful and not at all where I wanted to be. 

I got rather swept up in the zero waste idea at first.  Like many people that start down this path I immediately sought to replace a lot of the things I was using on a daily basis with zero waste alternatives. I’m not going to lie this was not the cheapest part of my journey. However, it has probably led to some savings in the long run. 

I began getting rid of the most wasteful thins in my life. Coffee k cups, I replaced with refillable pods. I started using bar soap, bamboo toothbrushes, silk floss, shampoo bars, reusable silicone bags instead of plastic, composting, and generally overhauling many areas of my life which I deemed wasteful and unnecessary. This was probably the easiest thing to do but is a slippery slope of products you don’t necessarily want or need. It turns out that the zero waste industry is like any other, a for profit, consumer based industry. Just because something was sustainable didn’t mean I should or have to buy it. 

This is how I learned my very first lesson in sustainable living. Don’t buy what you don’t need. This has begun to guide my purchases from this point forward by evaluating carefully what I have and what I need to change, I can say I am making better choices and am actually getting somewhere.