My conscience is my baby brother. He lives in California, land of the conscience shamers. He has embraced this mission. So much so that he lives in a place called The Mission. Subtle but effective, which he always is. He never says to you, “you’re doing it wrong.” If he did you’d say, “what am I doing wrong?” and then he would have to sigh and just say, “everything.”
He wouldn’t be my conscience if I didn’t believe him. There in lies the problem. When you do have a conscience, it’s those things that challenge it that make you know it’s real.
Yes, Earth Day made me do this. All the posts on social media about what a terrible person I am for plastic bottles, toothbrushes, cups. I agree. This is terrible. We all have to work harder to be better. Not for us for our grandchildren. Now that I have one, I have two consciences. Ugh.
Why do I hate all my consciences? Because they make me try to be better. And that’s a bad thing? Because better always means harder. But is that really true? Is better harder?
Is it harder to say ‘no thank you,’ to a straw? Is it harder to drink from your own water bottle? Is it harder to use cloth napkins? Is it really, really harder to recycle when they come to your actual house to pick up the stuff in three different bins? All those conscience people are making it easier and easier every day for us to be better.
I promised you a bit of learning every blog. So here we go a few tips from this great article by Lani Seelinger:
- Wash your clothes in cold water. Lani recommends this but so does my friend, Terri who turned me on to this just a year ago. It’s fine. Your clothes are clean.
- Use those water bottles and hot travel mugs you have cluttering your house. I know you have 32 of them from every conference, 5K walk, and charity event you ever went to. They fall out of my cabinet and on to my head all the time. And as an added bonus here, recycle the ones with no lids!
- Buy LOCAL produce, and anything else. But as spring turns to summer get to those farmer’s markets. Or, and this is why it isn’t hard, my big chain grocery store has a ‘local produce’ aisle. But that stuff.
- Use your reusable bags. The magic is putting them in the car, isn’t it? Heres’an idea: Put a dozen in the car. Take six into the store. When you take those six full bags into your house and forget to take them back out to the car, you still have six bags in there. Then when you get home the next time, twelve bags in your house are really gonna’ piss you off, so you’ll probably put them back in the car.
- Use that revolving door! Isn’t this nuts? But if you do, it keeps cold air in or out depending on the season and actually makes a difference. Now you know why they want you to have fun twirling around and around. Tell the truth, you’re a twirler, and you miss it.
Here’s the full article:
https://www.bustle.com/articles/196245-21-little-things-you-can-do-to-help-the-environment-that-are-super-easy-will
Let your conscience be your guide. Or I can give you my brother’s phone number so he can sigh at you, too.