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This article about one family’s downsizing journey is itself nice and detailed. And furthermore, it includes links to numerous separate posts and podcasts where they offer additional details about the different aspects of their downsizing (exactly how they approached downsizing; what they kept & left behind; how they have maximized storage in their new place; description of their much smaller kitchen setup; etc. etc. etc.). Truly a gold mine!

They went from having a big house and three rental properties, to having one modest-size house and no rental properties. And they moved from Virginia to Florida to be in a warmer climate so they can spend more time outdoors.

Lots of practical tips and insight here. Enjoy!

If you’re partway through your own downsizing journey and getting bogged down in the sheer enormity of the task, here’s some encouragement from the authors: “… I don’t think many people blink their eyes and find themselves majorly downsized and living with less – it felt like a really huge life pivot to us, that took a lot of intentional (and hard) work. So if you’re there in that not-fun zone right now, I’m here to tell you, when we came out on the other side, it felt amazing and still does. The novelty hasn’t worn off in half a year, and might not wear off ever. Worth all the effort and then some.”

I posted this on my DEEP GREEN Facebook page as “quote for the day,” but I think they’re worth keeping for the year and beyond.

Climate is just a symptom. By addressing the roots, we can help stabilize the climate of our lovely blue-green planet, and increase the odds that humans will get to keep living here. May the stark facts quoted below help us keep our focus.

Climate quotes for the year and beyond:

“Last year was the sixth in a row to have 10 or more separate billion-dollar disaster events, said Adam Smith, a NOAA climatologist.

“‘For 2020 to have more than doubled that standard, at 22 separate billion-dollar disaster events, shattering the record of 16 events that happened in 2011 and 2017, was really breathtaking,’ Smith said. ‘It’s hard to believe.'” …

“The effects of climate change appear in the increasing weather extremes that might fuel a billiondollar disaster.

“‘I think of the atmosphere as a pendulum,” Glisan said. “We’re seeing that pendulum start to swing farther up and down, from side to side, the wets getting wetter and the drys getting drier is very concerning.'”

(From “Midwest suffered $11 billion in damage from August derecho,” by Morgan Greene, Chicago Tribune (published in Daytona Beach News-Journal, January 22, 2021.)

With the major gift-giving season behind us, Valentine’s Day looms, bringing with it the obligation (for many parents of school kids) to put together “goodie bags” for each one of their children’s classmates. I did not realize this had grown into such a thing, but someone on the “Zero Waste, Zero Judgment” Facebook group posted about it asking people for ideas.

When we were kids, we were expected to bring a Valentine’s card for each of our classmates, but back then those were small, thin little pieces of paper. Not a waste bonanza of plastic junk and wrapping and bags.

Nowadays, at least in some places, it’s full-on bags of candy and other stuff. If the child has 20 classmates, each kid has to bring 20 goodie bags to school, and then each kid comes home with 20 goodie bags. Yikes. It’s easy for me as an armchair parent to advise greenminded parents to just refuse to participate in this, but then the kid ends up feeling left out and possibly being ostracized.

I’ll share a few thoughts. And also am linking an article someone shared on ZWZJ about this. She has lots of good tips.

One obvious idea is to communicate with other parents and see if they feel the same as you do. It could be that’s all it takes to make a shift. You could also approach the teacher.

And talk to your child too, of course. Find out how they really feel about the goodie-bags custom. Is it fun for them? Or stressful? You may find that the kids themselves aren’t as into it as the grownups are. (I really have no idea about this though. Armchair parent here.)

Further Reading:

Low-Waste Goodie Bags, Prizes, and Stocking Stuffers (from ZeroWasteChef.com). The author went on Instagram to crowd-source goodie bag ideas. She got lots of “goodies”!

Electric cars are much talked about as a way to reduce our transportation footprint. The transportation sector has been said to be the top source of carbon emissions in the USA, and electrification of automobiles could surely be a significant component of the solution.

But cars have a footprint beyond the emissions themselves. There’s the manufacture of the cars, for one thing. I haven’t yet researched it but I assume electric-car manufacture has a footprint comparable to manufacture of gas-powered cars.

And then too there is the footprint of the roads, parking lots, and other car infrastructure. Cars take up a lot of space, and their infrastructure is chewing up forests and wetlands, as well as creating big wide patches of asphalt in cities.

And car-dependence is contributing to obesity, social isolation, and other serious public-health problems, which themselves generate a carbon footprint in addition to the immediate, grave human cost.

Not to demonize cars — they have their place. But electric cars are not the total climate savior some might want to believe in.

We need to add bicycle and pedestrian amenities, and public transit. Electric-powered buses maybe?

On the subject of chewing up land, minimum parking requirements (which some municipalities have in their land development codes) have become a burdensome thing. They create asphalt wastelands, and they greatly inflate the cost of urban infill projects such as apartment buildings and commercial developments.

Many people are fearful about reducing or abolishing parking minimums. This article from Strong Towns, “How To Talk To a Skeptic About Reducing Parking Requirements,” gives good talking points for addressing frequently expressed concerns.

It was magnificent. (My two cents!) If you didn’t catch it live, you may be able to see a recording via The Inauguration of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris website. The website lists other channels for viewing also, and I’m sure a recording will be available soon if it isn’t already.

Fittingly, President Biden’s inaugural address focused on coming together, building unity; repairing our national divisions.

There were songs: National Anthem sung by Lady Gaga. “America the Beautiful” and “My Country Tis of Thee” sung by Jennifer Lopez. “Amazing Grace” sung by Garth Brooks.

There were plenty of firsts.

Kamala Harris is our first Black, first Asian-American, and first female Vice President. And first HBCU grad in the White House!

There was deeply stirring spoken-word poetry, “The Hill We Climb,” by Amanda Gorman, a Black poet and activist who is this country’s first-ever National Youth Poet Laureate.

And this was probably the first inaugural ceremony that most people who might’ve wanted to attend in person, were unable to do so because of restrictions in place to forestall violent protests. (Not to mention that many surely stayed home because of the pandemic.)

This was the first inaugural ceremony I have ever watched from beginning to end. I stood and sang along with the anthem; spoke the Pledge of Allegiance with hand over my heart and tears in my eyes. (Which might have looked a bit goofy since I was standing alone on the beach at the time, pointing my face north toward DC as the appointed hour 11:30 arrived while I was on my way home from a walk with new acquaintances — but who cares!)

It was not only a patriotic moment but a DEEP GREEN moment too. Armchair travel, ultra-low-footprint, via my tiny portable TV screen window to the universe AKA my phone! (A very “Meet George Jetson” moment too, I might add on that score. Growing up in the 60s and 70s, we had futuristic dreams of TV phones, mini TVs, and other such technological marvels but who knew how totally they would manifest; how widespread and commonplace our tiny telecommunications devices would become!)

Thanks to online broadcasting, coupled with the crazy events of preceding weeks and months, I would be willing to bet that more people around the country and the world were both able and eager to watch this inaugural ceremony than any previous one. And we all got front-row seats without having to leave our homes. This was a great time for armchair travel to Washington DC!

Here is the transcript, annotated, of President Biden’s inaugural speech (Washington Post).

Green hearts: The Biden White House is taking big, swift action on climate; read about it here.

(This post originated as a post I made on the Socially Conscious FIRE group on Facebook just now (Wednesday 1/13/2021). I’ve pasted the original post here for starters, and am going to be adding to it. As time passes, the post you see below may get considerably longer and more detailed than the original. To see the original-original, plus a LOT of thoughtful & enlightening posts by other people, join the Socially Conscious FIRE group on Facebook.)

Hi everyone! I have been following and enjoying this group for awhile; frequently Liking and occasionally Commenting, but this might be my first post.

Not long ago, via my permaculture/resilience circles, I learned an acronym that
was inspired by FIRE but is a bit different in orientation. That acronym is FREE: Financial Resilience, Economic Empowerment. The term was coined by permaculture teacher & designer Mike Hoag, who is also a member of this group.

It’s a wider definition that may or may not include retirement per se, and may or may not include having much, if any, money saved. There are many forms of capital other than monetary (such as social capital) — although there’s no denying money can make life a lot easier.

I don’t plan on retiring; I plan on continuing to do my work in one form or another til it’s time to leave my earthly body. (I’m a self-employed writer, educator, and activist.)

If Social Security still exists by the time I’m 67 (I’m 58 now), the cost-basis of my lifestyle is such that I can easily live on that, even in the unlikely event that I earn no other income. I have created a low-overhead (but rich in other ways) life that helps me be financially resilient.

Money is a big subject, and I sometimes feel awkward talking about it in public still, but I see how important it is to share information and experiences, so I’m starting to speak up publicly about money.

In my life, I’ve earned a solid middle-class income for a time (37k-48k a year, which was very abundant as I was living in smaller / less expensive cities) — and I have been very low-income (7-13k before taxes) for much longer periods, and even right to the brink of homelessness at one point.

Three years ago my mother passed (Dad passed in 2010), and I inherited money. I never expected to have money, and on top of grieving the loss of Mom, it took some adjusting to trust myself to use that money wisely. Used about half to buy a home free-and-clear in the city I love and have adopted as my hometown (Daytona Beach, Florida USA); now am working on investing the other half in things that will help my community and make a better world, while also providing me with some sort of return (which may or may not be money).

The security of outright homeownership has made my life so much easier. And made me an even stronger advocate of housing security for all, and a wide menu of housing options to serve all kinds of people’s wants & priorities, than I was already (which is saying a lot).

Recently I became a co-investor/owner in a permaculture farm and education center in rural Florida. Also, I gave a friend, who has helped me a lot, some money to help them buy a house. (Originally had planned it as a loan but decided to make it a gift for various reasons.)

I’m a big fan of Laura Oldanie’s writings on Rich & Resilient Living. (Laura is a friend and fellow member of this group who I met via permaculture circles.)

I will have more to say but will stop for the moment and see if this post sparks any resonance in other people.

Thank you all for being here. I appreciate this group a lot.

The language we use affects how we treat the world around us. It works the other way too of course: The way we think of and treat the world around us influences the language we coin to describe it. Since it works both ways, we can’t go wrong no matter which direction we start from in our effort to shape a kinder and saner world. Today’s post is focused on reforming the language we use to describe trees and other plants.

A caveat: My home state of Florida appears to attract a particularly virulent strain of anti-plant-ism. Can humans just not handle any other species being lavishly abundantly successful? Does fecundity freak us out? Who knows. Anyway, the following language may not be used so much in your part of the world as it is in mine. I’d be interested to hear from any of you, to compare notes.

Here are some phrases I’d love to see disappear:

• “Clean up those trees” (as in “Let me clean up those trees for you, Ma’am.”) — Nope! My trees aren’t dirty, and I’m certainly not going to pay you to give them a buzzcut. This phrase gets used a lot to describe the bizarre Floridian landscaping practice of scalping palm trees so they look like green-tipped matchsticks. It also gets used to describe yards and lots in general: “Clean up that lot.” Again, Nature isn’t dirty. Biospheric collapse, on the other hand, is pretty foul.

• “Lot clearance.” — Sounds like a sale at the Dollar Mart. Or a used-car dealership. Not like something that city personnel who have not been provided with any training about plants or local ecosystems should be doing to a piece of ground that’s supporting pollinators and other wildlife. Back off and let the shrubs and meadow plants grow, unless you actually have an immediate use for the piece of land.

• “Trash tree.” — No such thing. The “trashiest” (according to the colonizer-anthropocentric view) tree does far more to benefit the earth than the human labeling it thus. Get thee behind me, chainsaw-wielding agents of destruction! Learn the tree’s proper name, and learn or discover its place in the ecosystem.

• “Invasive.” — This word has a legitimate place in horticulture and land management. However, it gets overused to mean any plant that grows lushly. Check your county agricultural extension, or regional or state ag university, for accurate information on which plants are actually invasive. You know what’s invasive? Colonizer culture.

• “It just TAKES OVER.” — No, a tree or other plant does not take over. Sore losers took over the U.S. Capitol last week (or tried to, anyway). Shopping malls and yucky cookie-cutter residential developments take over the landscape, leaving no forests. QAnon conspiracy theories about lizard people and pizza pedophiles are apparently taking over a large share of our collective neural mass that formerly had been available for critical thinking. But plants do not take over. They’re just … growing. Being plants. Serving a function in nature. Yes, believe it or not, something other than humans actually gets to grow and thrive on this earth. We humans need to just deal with that and get over ourselves.

• “Weed.” — All plants have names. Learn them, and learn about the plants. You might be blown away to find out how many free vegetables, herbs, and medicines are growing wild right around you. “Pardon the weeds; we are feeding the bees,” says a yard sign employed by well-meaning gardeners trying to appease their turfgrass-tyrant neighbors. But we should never apologize for wildflowers! They are part of God’s magnificent creation. The word “weed” is just a word for the fact that most modern humans, and even some nursery and garden professionals, have not bothered to get to know the plants around us, and their characteristics, and their irreplaceable niche in the ecosystem. I prefer two other up-and-coming yard signs: “Our native flowers and trees feed the local birds and bees”; and “Native plants add life to this landscape.” We need to stop legitimizing the idea that there exists a horticultural hierarchy in which turfgrass or other manicured ornamentals are above wildflowers and other wild plants.

Oh, and there should be a special place in the eco Hall of Shame for the many “mow, blow, and spray” landscaping services who, apparently with no irony intended, name themselves after various birds and other wild creatures. If I were Queen-Mayor of the world, that nonsense would definitely be prosecuted as false advertising.

I know there are more examples of this kind of trash-talk that need to be called out; I’ll add them as I think of them. And please feel free to drop me a line with your suggested additions!