Last spring, we provided some eco-friendly activities to help your teens get out, get active, and get green. Now with spring almost here again, we want to help provide a few more simply, environmentally-friendly activities you can share with your kids once the warm weather arrives.
With today’s technology, kids and teens don’t get outside as much as they should. In fact, researchers have found that today’s kids play for about four hours a week. This is much less compared to the 8.2 hours their parents played outside when there were kids. And after being cooped up all winter long, it’s time to get outside and get active!
One of the best places to get active is at your local park or nature trails. Whether you have little ones or teenagers, there’s plenty you can do at a nearby park. Whether it’s playing on the playground, having a scavenger hunt throughout the nature trails, or even picking up trash along the way, there’s no excuse to not get outside. And if you’re one of the owners of the 770,000 drones that have currently been registered with the FAA, spring is a great time to put it to use. Flying it around the park can be a great way to get some fresh air and cool pictures or videos.
Another great activity to do with your family is visit your local farmer’s market. This will not only allow you to purchase some fresh fruits and veggies for home but will help you teach your family about healthy, locally-grown food. Knowing where food comes from, and the benefit of eating fresh foods, can start your child off on an eco-friendly path early on.
Or instead of visiting a farmer’s market, why not try growing your own goodies at home? Having a garden at home can be an ongoing project and can teach your family about responsibility. Whether you’re planting fruits and vegetables, flowers, or some small herbs, the entire family can get involved in learning how to plant, care for, and harvest your new crops and plants. With some supervision, your kids can learn the responsibility of taking care of their very own garden.
Along with gardening, you and your family can get started on some sustainable gardening practices. Setting up something like a rainwater harvesting system can teach the whole family more about sustainable practices. Furthermore, your kids can see the direct impact when they get to use the rainwater to help their garden grow.
Whether you’re getting your hands dirty with some dirt, picking up trash at your local park, or simply getting out and enjoying nature, there are plenty of ways to get your family outside and doing eco-friendly activities everyone can enjoy.
As the spring season approaches, it’s easy to start thinking about the warm weather and longer daylight hours, but it’s important to also think about the earth. Earth day falls on April 22nd each year, but it’s important to think about how to be eco-friendly year-round. Below are a few ideas of how to keep your family entertained and environmentally conscious this spring.
Make Recycled Crafts
Making fun crafts can be a great way to spend time together and make something fun. To add an eco-friendly spin to crafting, challenge your kids to create something that is entirely made up of recycled or reused materials. Depending on their age, you can give them a handful of materials to choose from, or you can let them loose to find things in your home and yard that are going to be discarded that they can use to make something new. This can help them develop their creativity as well as see that new things don’t have to be made up entirely of new materials.
Garden Together
Gardening is a great family activity that is also very eco-friendly. As the ground thaws in the spring, it’s a great time to get outside and get started on your gardening for the year. Your kids can help you with many gardening tasks, just make sure to take into account their age and ability levels when you’re asking them for help with different tasks. Plant some fruits and vegetables to be a little extra eco-friendly!
Find Ways to Save Electricity
There are many ways to use less electricity in your daily life, but if you work as a family to brainstorm ways to use less electricity, it can stick better in your kids’ minds. There are 5.5 million miles of local distribution lines for electricity in the United State’s electrical grid, and taking some of the stress off of that system can help it work more effectively and save energy. Something as simple as unplugging a device once you’re done using it or making sure that you turn the lights off when you’re the last one to leave the room can help save a lot of electricity over time. Figure out some specific ways that your family can decrease your electricity usage to make sure that you can actually cut back in your daily lives.
Bike Around Your Town
Once the weather is warm enough, start taking weekly bike rides to explore your town and the surrounding areas. It’s a great way to have fun family bonding time without worrying about polluting the environment. You can find new places that you might not have noticed if you were driving around your town, get some good exercise, and bond as a family. That makes bike riding one of the best eco-friendly spring activities for your family.
Cut Back on Your Water Usage
Similarly to saving electricity, talk as a family about ways that you can use less water. Only 1% of the water on earth is suitable for drinking, and while we can take that for granted in developed countries, it’s important to think about conservation. Some easy ways to cut back on your water usage include taking shorter showers, turning off the water while brushing your teeth or washing your face, and using a dishwasher instead of washing your dishes by hand. Ask your kids what they think they can do and try to achieve those water-saving efforts together.
Do a Park Clean-Up
Litter is a big problem everywhere, but especially in the places that see a lot of foot traffic, like popular parks or walking paths. Every time that you go to a place like that, challenge everyone in your family to pick up a certain number of pieces of litter. If you’re worried about what’s on the litter, you can pack gloves to use to pick up the litter as well as hand sanitizer. Over time, your family will be responsible for picking up a lot of litter and making the earth a little bit cleaner of a place.
Exercise Outside
When the weather starts getting nicer, it can be easy to want to spend every moment possible soaking in the outdoors. It’s a great opportunity to encourage some healthy habits with your kids by finding new ways to get moving outdoors. Depending on the size of your family, you can arrange games like soccer or basketball, or you can try for more solitary forms of exercise, like yoga. 28% of Americans have tried yoga at some point, and doing yoga outside is a great way to soak in the good weather and take care of your body at the same time. Getting outside to enjoy the weather while also getting out some energy and helping your body is a great way to spend the spring.
Go on a Flower Hunt
A flower hunt is a great way to spend time outdoors and keep your family entertained. Next time you’re at a park, challenge everyone to find as many different types of flowers as they can. If you can, have everyone take pictures of their flowers instead of picking them so that you aren’t disrupting nature too much. After you’ve found as many flowers as you can, go home and do some research to find out what kind of flowers they are.
Play in the Rain
Spring means a lot of rain in many climates, and playing in the rain can be a very fun activity. You don’t want to get sick from spending time out in the rain, so make sure that you’re being smart about it and properly layering up in raincoats and boots, and not spending too long outside. Once you’re done, dry off and warm up with a nice cup of hot chocolate or tea and watch a movie to get the full rainy day experience.
Being eco-friendly and bonding with your family can go hand in hand with these springtime activities. Teaching your kids about the importance of being eco-friendly is a great way to help prepare them to have eco-friendly habits as they grow up.
Navigating through fluctuating emotions can feel like solving a Rubik’s Cube blindfolded. Understanding that our moods aren’t random but are affected by numerous internal and external factors is the first step to mastering them. Like an experienced mariner who knows how to steer their ship through stormy seas, mastering mood management involves learning to steer your emotional vessel safely through tempests and calm waters.
Identification of Your Triggers
Knowledge is power in terms of managing mood. Recognizing emotional triggers may range from people or places, situations, thoughts, or habits you may have developed over time can help. Patterns will emerge by carefully noting the circumstances that precede emotional highs and lows, like mapping the terrain of your emotional world. Through careful observation and reflection, you may soon learn not only to predict emotional storms but also to prepare for them in advance or even prevent the most disruptive ones – giving control back into your hands while keeping reactions thoughtful rather than impulsive.
The Nutrition-Mood Connection
Did you know your gut is like a second brain regarding your emotions? Eating processed food will only serve to feed your mood monster, while including more omega-3 fatty acids, whole grains, and leafy greens in your diet can act like natural mood stabilizers. Natural food sources like salmon, walnuts, and spinach can reduce inflammation for improved mood regulation by the body. When adjusting for nutrition-influenced mood changes, we must listen and adapt appropriately: do sugary treats have any positive or negative effects? Consider how different foods affect your mood, and make informed choices.
Exercise: The Natural Mood Lifter
Physical activity has long been recognized for its health benefits and impact on mood. Engaging in regular physical activity releases endorphins, which act as natural stress fighters and mood elevators in our bodies. Exercise can play a powerful role in alleviating feelings of anxiety and depression while simultaneously cultivating feelings of well-being. Exercise doesn’t need to be intense workouts – even moderate physical activities like walking can make a profound difference over time. Finding an exercise routine you enjoy and can stick with is key – this ensures exercise doesn’t become just another chore but instead becomes part of your lifestyle, supporting both physical and mental wellness simultaneously.
Mastering Mindfulness
In an age of multitasking, mindfulness is the art of unplugging from technology. Mindfulness involves remaining present in each moment by acknowledging your thoughts and emotions without judgment, such as meditation or deep breathing exercises or simply gazing upon nature. Mastering this technique will clear away mental clutter while improving mood dramatically.
Sleep: The Foundation of Mood Management
Underestimating the power of quality restorative sleep can be like fighting without armor. Sleep and mood are intimately interlinked – poor restful slumber may cause and compound negative emotions. Establishing an enjoyable nighttime ritual can pave the way to restful slumber, resulting in improved well-being and better mood management.
Conclusion: The Journey of a Thousand Moods
Mastering mood management takes time – it is more of a marathon than a sprint. Making small, consistent changes over time will have an incredible cumulative effect and may make life much less of a rollercoaster ride! While you may not always be in control of every wave life throws, learning to surf them can turn even those into exhilarating experiences! Here’s to navigating our emotional seas one mood at a time in life’s journey. May your moods be nothing less than masterpieces that reflect intentional composition with passion and performance and are enjoyed joyfully!
If you are thinking about trying to grow your business, there are so many ways that you might want to go about doing that, and the truth is that it might be easier than you think. However, suppose you also have a strong conscience. In that case, you might also be aware that the growth of a business very often relies upon an increase in the use of natural resources to the extent that it can actually be harmful to the planet. So, what you might be wondering is whether it’s possible to grow your business in a more sustainable way.
In this post, we are going to discuss exactly that. The good news is that there are certain things you can do to mitigate the harm that might be caused by a business growing fast. As long as you are thinking about some of the following, you should find that this is actually quite easy and straightforward, so let’s take a look at what’s involved.
Slow It Down In a general sense, one thing you can do is try to adopt a position where you don’t feel a need for the growth to be incredibly fast. If you get caught up in the idea that you need to pursue relentless growth, then that will almost certainly be at the planet’s expense to some degree or another. However, if you can simply slow it down a little and grow a little slower, the effect and impact you have will be greatly reduced. That is something you should certainly be aware of here as it’s a really simple basic change to approach that can greatly help with this specific goal.
Plus, it doesn’t mean that your business is not still going to do well. You can still grow your business and get a lot out of it – you’ll just find that you are keeping things slightly less hectic. It’s a really useful way to ensure you are growing your business without harming the planet too much.
Manage Waste Another thing that tends to happen as you grow your business is that more waste will be produced. There are so many kinds of waste, and your business probably produces quite a few of them, so this is something that you might want to be aware of if you are going to try and keep your business on the up and up without harming the planet as you do so. As long as you find a way to manage your waste, you should find that you are following in the right footsteps here – but what does it really mean to manage your waste effectively?
First of all, you need to try to reduce how much waste you are producing in the first place. There are a thousand different approaches you might want to take here, so it’s something that you are going to want to think about if you are keen on achieving this as well as possible. The fact is that as long as you are reducing how much waste you produce, that will be helping things along a lot.
Beyond that, you should consider how to deal with whatever waste you produce. One of the simplest ways to make sure that this is dealt with in as sustainable a manner as possible is to find a waste removal service that is dedicated to being as green as possible. If you take a look at https://www.junkluggers.com/gainesville-va/woodbridge-junk-removal/ you will see an example of just such a service. All in all, this is going to help a lot.
Then, it’s just a case of continuing to grow your business as you try to manage your waste as well as you can.
Balancing It Out All of this effectively comes down to being able to balance out the goals of growth with the goals of sustainability. As long as you have a focus on that, you will probably actually find it’s easier and simpler than you had thought. It will be something that helps the planet while also helping your business along. And the fact that you are focusing on this is something that customers will pick up on, meaning that they are even more likely to want to support your business. In that sense, it all works out for you well anyway.
All plants are natural, but not all are ideal for a sustainable garden. For environmentally-conscious gardeners, one of the best things you can do for your garden space is to grow sustainable or eco-friendly plants. These plants are mostly well-adapted to local environmental conditions, reducing your need for artificial fertilizers, pesticides, and excessive watering. Using less water and chemicals in your garden creates a healthier soil and ecosystem balance, starting with picking and growing the right plants. Here are some sustainable plants worth adding to your garden.
Carrots and leeks planted together.
Consider planting carrots alongside leaks. Why this unlikely duo? Because leaks help ward off carrot flies, carrots can prevent leek moths – creating a mutually beneficial partnership. But that’s not all; carrots have a relatively low carbon footprint compared to other vegetables. They also produce fewer carbon emissions than other types of garden foods or plants and are more sustainable. Cucumber, for example, produces 5 times the carbon emissions of carrots, and salad vegetables need more resources to grow, creating a higher carbon footprint.
Marigolds
Marigolds do great in any planting display. Aside from their beautifully vibrant appearance, these plants can ward off blackflies, greenflies, and other aphids. They do this by secreting limonene, releasing it to ward off uninvited pests. That means you’ll reduce your reliance on artificial pesticides if you have more marigold plants grown in strategic parts of your garden. These plants are also super effective against the fast-working (ironically) snails and slugs. When left unchecked, snails can quickly multiply in your garden, and before you know it, they’ve punched holes and chips in your plant leaves, harming or even killing them. If you’ve noticed these little pests in your garden and don’t know how to get rid of them, start planting some marigolds.
Fireweed
Planting fireweed is not only sustainable but also considered excellent for wildlife in general. In areas where it grows, this plant helps a wide range of pollinators while acting as a host plant for different pollinating species like butterflies. So, if you want to improve pollination in your garden, plant a few fireweeds. But their benefits don’t end in the garden. Fireweed is acclaimed for its immense health benefits. Research has shown, for example, that it has potent anti-inflammatory properties with many therapeutic qualities. That means not only will the plant benefit your garden, but you can harvest it for its health benefits for the body. You can learn more about the fireweed health benefits, including how to use it outside the garden.
Herbs
Thyme, rosemary, mint, and basil are versatile herbs that need little garden space to thrive. But one of their greatest benefits to your landscape or garden is their sustainability. Herbs are also natural pest repellants and need little water to grow, making them an ideal choice for water conservation. Outside of the garden, you can use these plants for their flavor and many health benefits.
Smart plant selection is a great way to make your garden more eco-friendly. These sustainable plants will be great additions to any garden space.
