I remember a store associate telling me once "you have to preserve yourself" pointing to a neck cream that she was trying to sell to me. I found that phrase so funny and odd at the same time. I though it was accurate of me in so many aspects, but not about how I viewed my neck. So I thought well, what do I do in my every day habits that create a small environmental contribution in my everyday life? What things can I offer the next generation to use as a guide or a tool to be conscious of their existence and every day habits. The root of this is to reduce my carbon footprint. Already, as a human and existing, my carbon footprint is huge. I wonder in our every day existence, are we just rearranging the decks on the titanic? Can we as a species live an evolutionary conscious life while helping to evolve our seeds (kids, or the next generation)? Can we help them to get on board with some simple and affective environmental savers? I think we can. I think that if enough people have the knowledge to contribute to practical methods, it shouldn't be too hard for people to join in.
My first suggestion is to capitalize on all the natural energy. The sun is free. With that I don't see any shame in utilizing some of the older and affective methods of energy usage like line drying our clothing. I hand wash as many of my clothing and hang it on a line to dry and that probably saves a lot of energy as well as saves a lot of clothes as dryers tend to shred fabric.
I believe that every human being should own no more than five underwear at a time. The method that I use is that I always wash mine when I'm in the shower and hang it to dry and alternate that way. There is no shame in hang drying your clothes, especially in the house. NONE at all and please don't let anyone tell you otherwise. I find that some apartment owners in LA don't want to make their apartments look cheap and thus will not allow their tenants to utilize the balcony space to line dry but that's okay, you can develop other strategies and make the hot air work for you.
One of my favorite brand of jeans is Levis. I've loved them for years and when I think back and remember why that was it's because the ones I had lasted me for a good decade at a time. Another reason why I love Levis is because of this small label, "Care for our planet. Wash less, wash cold, line dry, donate or recycle." What is not to love about that? I would like to add to that "Please buy quality and and it's okay to ware the same clothes more than one day and it's okay to air it out a couple of times before you wash it."
You can donate your old sheets and old bedding to a local veterinary hospital. If you have cotton sheets and bedding, you can reuse them as rags. You can also patch up clothes by learning simple hand sewing and patch up holes, you can even go the ultra mile and learn to machine sew and make quilts out of a lot of things, but that may be a stretch for a lot of people. What I'm trying to say is that before you toss it please reconsider some creative uses and if something is just too small or too big you can always donate it to a shelter. Let's all make an effort to limit waste products created in mass manufacturing of clothing that just ends up in heaps of trash.
Preserving myself doesn't mean sealing my neck from the processes of time, to me. I've found my own take on the phrase and I've come to enjoy the meaning from having discovered how I have been practical in my own way.
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