How to Stick to Your Eco-Friendly New Year’s Resolutions
/I never feel there is enough time between Christmas and New Year's for me to actually plan for all I want to accomplish. So, this year, I'm getting ahead and beginning my planning this week!
If you are finding that you want 2024 to be a green year, here is a few recommendations on how to add in some eco-friendly habits or changes that can make you feel good this coming year.
The first thing that that you will need to do is set aside a time to plan. That can be really difficult around the holidays. Many people find the few days between Christmas and the New Year the best time to plan. Sit down with a drink and a snack and whatever you prefer to set reminders and goals up with whether that is a paper planner or cellphone and get comfy for a couple hours to plan your year.
Before you put any other dates on your calendar, plan to end this year with a bang and start 2024 on the right foot by making plans to attend "Bring One for the Chipper." This event will take place on December 30th at 9:00 a.m. till 12:00 p.m. at Home Depot on 875 Shugart Rd. and here you can drop off your live trees to be mulched along with your electronics and cardboard for recycling. This clears out the house to make your goals easier and it does it in a way that is helpful for our environment and our community. Plus, the smell of the pine trees being mulched is a heavenly way to say goodbye to 2023!
Now that we are cleared out and ready for the year, you have to decide what exactly is going to make you the proudest to accomplish by the end of 2024. There are plenty of ways to green your year. You may want to tackle composting for the first time, you may want to make some home improvements that will make your home more energy efficient, or you may want to start regularly using a reusable water-bottle instead of a single use one.
Once you determine what you want for your year, list all the action steps it will take to get there. That might look like needing to buy a reusable water bottle, or getting quotes from contractors, or checking for air leaks around the home. If it will take multiple action steps, list them in order that they need to be completed or by priority level.
The next step is one that we often leave out when setting New Year’s resolutions. Write down all of the obstacles that will make it harder to reach your goal. That might be the fact that you have to wash your reusable bottle every night, that you hate going into the store for home improvement tools, or that you are likely to forget to turn your compost for airflow.
It is really important not to skip this step because this is where you are going to plan ahead for things to go wrong and figure out what you can do to limit or handle those obstacles ahead of time. Dealing with the obstacles as they come can be distracting or demotivate you so any time we can get ahead of them, we want to. Some ways you can handle these obstacles may look like getting five water bottles to reuse so you can clean them all on the weekend when you have more time, seeing what home improvement items you can order online instead of going around the store, or setting reminders on your phone to alert you when it is time to turn your compost.
By the end of your planning session, you should have a clear idea of what you are going to do to make 2024 meaningful for you and helpful to our environment along with an action plan for how to deal with pesky obstacles that lead to so many forgotten resolutions. Remember as you go through the year that we don’t need one person to be perfect to improve our environment, we need everyone doing it imperfectly. If you fall the wagon at any point in 2024, it will never be too late to hop back on!