A Few more Living Green Tips

Happy Eve of New Work Week. A few more tips-

1.Take classes; new skills and ideas make you creative and encourage by their nature saving and recycling. Art fairs are great, Group Picnics, Trade and Outdoor Shows of all kinds, Folk Art Schools, even Potlucks and all clubs of like minded people are wonderful places to network and get ideas.

2. Read Hints from Heloise to get you through the housework. Read Erma Bombeck and Judith Wax to make you whistle while you work.

3. Be patient, and be spiritual, whatever that means to you. Yet, no matter one's faith, St. Augustine, Sta. Teresa, Buddha, Boethius, Lives of the Saints, The Rabbi Akiba, all of these people of faith comfort us and give us spiritual peace when we read them.

4. Use leftover scrapbook paper as stationery, even other clean scrap paper can be made into paper pads or used to write letters. We used old dept. announcements and fliers in grad school to write to teach other and take notes, and one of my profs used the backs of these papers to print our tests. Make sure it is not confidential, and clean, but use, recycle, then toss as a last resort.

5. To paraphrase George Orwell, break all of these rules, disregard all these tips, before doing something monstrous.

6.Go to public schools; tuition is free, there are more laws to protect children, diversity and multiculturalism are cherished and encouraged, and your children learn to be citizens of the world.

7. Get a library card.

8. Recycle your junk mail, or learn to use it in crafts or to make papier mache. I bought a gorgeous swan made of tiny folded sheets of paper from the Sunday ad glossies this weekend. Cool stuff, and cheap, and it re-uses things around the house.

9. Keep a doodle journal for ideas, swatches of color or paint you like, postcards, favorite quotes, ideas for living green, recipes, etc. Let yourself go, and learn to organize by familiarity because you use it often and find great inspiration in it.

10. Find some happiness in each day; be grateful, and think, "there but for the grace of God go I."