"a dangerous pastime." "I know."
Does anyone else have problems with hearing Disney musicals over and over again?
Anyway
I've been inspired by a couple really amazing, somewhat extreme, families lately. The first one I found in January's edition of Sunset Magazine. The Johnson family doesn't 'do' garbage. No garbage can outside their house on garbage day. Now, I am not an environmentalist. But I do try to live conscientiously. It bothers me that people complain about how much space diapers take up in land fills, but that some people with only households of two collect much more refuse than our family, with two children in diapers.
Anyway, I don't want to fill our planet with junk. And not only that. So much of our resources are wasted making junk that will never be used and just placed right back in the garbage.
I adore the Johnson family's motto of REFUSE, reduce reduce reduce, reuse, and then recycle. And I am trying to be a little more like them. Just because we have the opportunity to have all sorts of things, does it mean that we should?
And then I've been reading a very interesting book called The Power of Half A fifteen year old girl made a very normal observation one day. A homeless man was pan handling on the side of the street just as a Mercedes drove by. "If that man had a less nice car, that man could have a dinner." (One little detail that I really loved about this family is they carry $5 McDonald's cards with them to give to pan handlers. I think I'm going to start carrying Subway cards. James thinks we should just always have lots of fruits and vegetables...)
The amazing part of their story is that, from this small observation, the Salwen family decided to sell their dream home. Purchase a home half the size (still pretty big to my standards, but not luxurious, of course). And use the leftovers to help people in need. Less nice house to give lots of people food.
Now just think, what if we could combine these ideas? Saving money, waste, people.
Let's save the world! And I think we'll talk about it next week at Family Home Evening.
5 comments:
In one of my college classes, we talked a lot of how we have too much "stuff." I have one of the books we used in class, I'll have to dig it up and you could read it if you want.
You have a visitor from Littleton, Colorado! We're making a stop there when we move...in honor of Little Britches. I think they have a statue of Ralph Moody or something.
Disney musicals. Optional. Stop listening to them! They're kind of cheesy anyhow. If you read enough real fairy tales, your kids will be irritated by their lack of authenticity. :)
That article from Sunset was amazing! I can't imagine living like that. I thought about it as I was taking my garbage out. I definitely produce too much garbage. I loved how they sent the plastic strip back to NetFlix. I have too much stuff...I should downsize.
I'd love to show you how to make MuShu sometime. It is easier to show than to write a recipe. Maybe you and James will enjoy it more than my children. The kids can have P and J and we can have MuShu. Consider that an invitation:)
I love it! Thank you for sharing. It's making me think of what we can do right now.
I really think those bums need to try and help themselves before someone helps them....or we're just enabling them to take handouts the rest of their lives. We don't know if that man who drives the mercedes worked his butt off to get it...and we don't know if that bum decided to drink instead of be a productive citizen....just a thought. I'm interested in that Sunset magazine, though. How did they manage to not produce trash??? I want to try...we produce WAY too much, for sure.
Post a Comment