photo credit: Samuel Mann

What if everyone vowed to do just ten green things this year. Big or small, simple or hard, once or repeated. Just made a list of ten things and began checking them off. Even if it took all year, even if the list didn’t get finished, there would still be a lot of good done.

I keep thinking about the things that I’m doing, and the things that I want to do. I’ve given up store bought shampoo for the no-poo method, but I still buy soap from the store. What if I switched to buying handmade soap from someone locally? What if I learned to make it myself? I’m making my own bread, but there are still a lot of boxes of food in my shelves that I could be making at home. Sure I recycle, but what if I didn’t buy the stuff to begin with? It feels as if there’s always something more to do. And honestly, it’s that feeling that sometimes stops me in my tracks.

So ten. That’s a nice, round number. Give myself a year to finish the list, and an A for effort if I don’t get it all done. Would that prevent the paralyzing fear that there is too much that needs to be changed?

1. Stop buying soap in plastic packaging
2. Can and store homemade foods
3. Garden
4. Stop drinking soda in plastic bottles
5. Reduce our trash down to 1 bag per week
6. Have TV-free days each week
7. Cook from scratch more often
8. Hug a tree. Openly.
9. Use less paper/print off less things
10. Walk more often.

Honestly, the list doesn’t seem so hard. Sometimes, though, even the smallest change seems so hard in the face of how much more there is to do. I know, it sounds ridiculous. How could a person who gave up toilet paper find it hard to give up boxes of cake mix? I can’t explain it either.

So there is my list to work on for the year. It’s simple, and alone won’t mean much to the environment. But with others it becomes something larger than I’ll ever know. And I like that thought.

What are your ten green things for this year? Waht are you going to try to work on, no matter how small, to make a change?