Your mission, if you choose to accept, is to change or add one holiday tradition this year to make your celebration either better for the earth or better for your health.
Yes, this is a pretty broad mission. It’s hard for me to tell 6,000 people to make one specific change, so I’m letting you figure out where you can handle some improvement.
I’ll give you some ideas this week on how to “green up” your cards, wrapping, and toy storage. I talk all the time about how to cut down on the unhealthy foods and focus on the real food. Certainly you’ve got some ideas for direction!
Choose One
What’s your vice during the holidays? Do you use disposable dishes because you get too busy? Do you make 50 compromise foods, like sugar cookies, Christmas ham with nitrates, rock candy, and more white flour/white sugar treats and still call them “compromises” instead of “routines”? (That was my own list of temptations/realities, by the way, just so you know that the author is most certainly writing to herself, too.) Do you forget to reuse in the midst of the hectic wrapping fests?
Take a moment to consider where you let your guard down the most on your good stewardship intentions, just because it’s December.
Make a commitment. Mine is to work even harder to reuse and repurpose when wrapping gifts. Even though I don’t like to create waste, I still default to the rolls of wrapping paper populating my basement, but I know I can do better. I’ll share some ideas over at Simple Organic this Wednesday, if that’s something you want to focus on, too.
If food is more your weak spot, consider revamping your favorite (or maybe second-favorite; let the very favorite be a compromise, doggone it!) Christmas dessert recipe, much like I tweaked the St. Nicholas Spice Cookies last week. Use less sugar, a less refined sweetener, part whole wheat, something.
Or, you could go proactive and pledge to include yogurt every single day this month as a snack or lunchtime side. You might start taking fermented cod liver oil or elderberry syrup, or just get more sleep and drink more water.
On that note (the drinking note, otherwise entirely unrelated), tomorrow I’ll share that recipe for homemade Irish Cream, which will not really help you make a positive change for the holidays, but it will close out the Whole Foods for the Holidays Real Food Progressive Dinner with a bang!
What area are you going to focus on for a December upgrade? Share your commitments and help inspire each other to take a great big, little baby step this season!
What a great post! This time of year is the time of giving, and you reminded me about the importance of giving back to myself, and the world. Thanks!
[Reply to this comment]
One thing I’m trying to improve this year is using all the holiday food and special ingredients instead of letting things go bad! We always make cheese-stuffed shells for Christmas dinner and have no trouble eating every delicious one, but the recipe uses fresh parsley of about half the amount the store bundles together, so we need to plan a meal that uses the rest of the parsley before it goes slimy. Ditto for the lettuce we buy to make a salad to go with the shells–we’re not big salad eaters and tend to forget it’s there, and you can’t freeze lettuce!
My meal plans for the next two weeks are using up some of the things in the freezer to make room for freezable leftovers.
Our church has a big reception after each of the Christmas Eve services. Leftovers from those will get served at Sunday coffee hour, but after that coffee hour I’ll be making sure nothing edible gets thrown away! I have recipes for leftover random vegetables and leftover random fruit, and I’ve used odd bits of cheese in recipes with melted cheese and made dregs of crackers into breadcrumbs.
[Reply to this comment]
Jen@FrugalFreebiesandDeals Reply:
December 6th, 2010 at 4:35 pm
use the parsley for pest0- then freeze it in ice cube trays!!
[Reply to this comment]
Jen@FrugalFreebiesandDeals Reply:
December 6th, 2010 at 4:36 pm
oh and make lettuce wraps for dinner one night
[Reply to this comment]
Katie Reply:
December 7th, 2010 at 1:35 am
Becca,
Awesome goal! You could make chicken stock with the parsley, and you CAN freeze lettuce, if you’re willing to make it into green smoothies!
[Reply to this comment]
Thank you for this post! My goal this year is also to figure out some more “green” ways to package and wrap gifts.
The bags of wrapping paper that get tossed every year has bothered me for a long time, even before I ever thought about recycling or being “green”.
Looking forward to your post on Wednesday!
[Reply to this comment]
What a GREAT Monday Mission!
I’ve been saving any paper bags I get at the grocery store (instead of immediately recycling) and am planning to use those for wrapping paper this year – no from-the-roll-wrapping-paper allowed. Frugal and green, and actually very easy.
Besides, what’s not to love about brown paper packages tied up ith string? (even if they do have “Trader Joe’s” printed on the back…)
[Reply to this comment]
My goal is to quit coffee all together and drink water instead. I drink water, but not enough as when it gets cold out I would rather have a cup of coffee. I have been working on this for a couple weeks, it is a challenge.
For Christmas wrap if you are doing gifts how about reusable clothe bags that you can make and keep year to year. Make them of holiday fabric or fabric t hat are generic enough that you can use them year around for gifts.
[Reply to this comment]
Jen@FrugalFreebiesandDeals Reply:
December 6th, 2010 at 4:34 pm
what about organic decaf tea? might be a good stepping stone and there are some teas out there great for the body.
[Reply to this comment]
This is not crazy “green” but I just save and reuse giftbags- year after year. I don’t really enjoy wrapping presents all that much- so this kills two birds with one stone- it simplifies things and reduces waste.
[Reply to this comment]
Last year after Christmas, I stocked up on discounted Christmas fabric and ribbon, which I am using this year to wrap gifts. At first, I was sewing drawstring bags but then realized that was going to be very time consuming. I switched to using pieces of fabric similarly to paper but no tape and holding it all together with ribbon. I LOVE how it looks! It’s also easier to wrap lumpy, misshapen gifts too, I think. And surprisingly, I have a ton of fabric and ribbon left over for future years’ gifts that are different sizes from this year’s.
[Reply to this comment]
Katie Reply:
December 11th, 2010 at 4:07 am
Brilliant, naturally!
Katie
[Reply to this comment]
Thanks Katie for getting us thinking about this!
I think my commitment for this month is to set up a routine of Bible learning each week.
It’s so easy to get lost in all of the other daily responsibilities and tasks and I honestly miss spending dedicated time learning.
I’m thinking of learning a chapter from Prophets (from the Old Testament) each Saturday. Any suggestions for where I should start? Am thinking of re-reading Joshua.
[Reply to this comment]
I’m actually ok with full-gonzo white flour/sugar treats as long as they stay in the several days of the Holiday realm rather than several weeks – as in, not making appearances October 15 through the end of January as is so often the case. My goal is to make sure that I don’t overdo the cookie/pastry affair (why do I feel I need to triple and quadruple EVERY recipe?), and I am using more organic ingredients and limiting the artificial icing/sprinkle concoctions to one batch of sugar cookies. Hopefully our usual post Christmas wind-down won’t include sugar detox this year
.
[Reply to this comment]