Yeah, yeah… I know, such a clique right? The Circle of Life?!?!?!? What a Disney rip off - but hear me out. I have been thinking a lot of this lately, the whole circle of life thoughts and not wasting anything.
I recently took the kids a few weeks back to go see the new Chronicles of Narnia movie: Voyage of the Dawn Trader as our “Friday Fieldtrip Day” day out activity for homeschool. Like all the Chronicles of Narnia movies, the main story starts out with the main characters, children, deep in the middle of World War II. This movie, just like the others, really showed just what they people of this time went through. The constant sound of bombing and what it was like to go to the store during a time of rations. It made my kids ask “What was that all about? What are rations?” Let me say, for a movie, to get my kids to wonder and ask such questions, well, let me say, I was impressed.
In our homeschool studies, we are learning about the past in our History lessons and it takes me back to stories that my grandmother, on my dad’s side, told me of the depression. Like the movie, many had very little, if anything. So, what little they did have, they did not waste ANY of it. My grandmother was taught as a child to save everything and waste nothing as everything had value. Looking at life now, I think some have forgotten what it means to waste nothing and value everything and I personally want to go back to the old days. I hate waste. Wasting makes me feel selfish somehow. Yeah, I know, I’m nuts, what’s new? If you didn’t love me, you wouldn’t be reading this blog now, would you?
Now, granted there are some that take this to the extreme (the show “Hoarders” comes to mind), but overall, we tend to be a generation of waste. We toss out a lot and buy things that we don’t need. But, with that said, we are also becoming a generation that realizes we have too much stuff. We are starting to recycle the stuff we don’t need anymore, even recycle our trash. We are starting to take it even one step further and asking ourselves “Do I even really need that?” Even from a business standpoint, I learned this back when I was in the corporate world with a program called “5S” (you can hear the people working in the corporate world scream with terror if you listen really carefully) LOL. Some love it and some love to hate it. So what’s your point woman? I know, I know… I’m getting there!
My dad and I have really taken the “5S” mind-frame to heart, embraced it and brought it into our homes. So what is this “5S” thing you talk about? The 5S’s are: sorting, straightening, systematic cleaning, standardizing, and sustaining. Let me tell you, those Japanese folks have something going here! It really helps fit in the waste not and circle of life mentality. Still have no idea what I am talking about? Let me explain how we apply the whole 5S, circle of life, waste not ideas here on the farm:
Sort: I love this part as I feel like when I sort, I am getting rid of the chaos in my life. My husband and kids, not so much. That’s when you hear the whining and “but, Mom” and “but, Honey”s. I like to sort usually about twice a year – in late winter/early spring during the seasonal “spring cleaning” and again in August, during the “prep for school” and “here comes the fall/winter/holidays” time. I am also a organize freak so honestly, I get a high off of organizing my closets – I’m nuts I tell you, NUTS! LOL. I usually accomplish this by going through closet by closet, room by room getting rid of stuff we don’t need. Our rules: If I haven’t worn it in the last year, chances are, I am not going to wear it next season either. For the girls, if it’s too small for the oldest, try the youngest. If it doesn’t fit the youngest, it has two options: 1) if worth saving, ask family and friends if they can use it for their girls, if not it goes to charity or 2)if it’s not worth saving it has two option 2a)can we make something of it or 2b) trash. We also go through getting rid of stuff that is broken; and the girls’ room is where I spend most of the time doing this. Broken toys that are beyond super glue repair go in the trash. Sometimes I let the girls and my friend’s boys take it all apart to build some kind of contraption before it goes in the trash for one last “hurrah”. I am also one of those mean and horrible mom’s that take all of my kids toys, dumps them into pile in the living room and lets them pick out 2 toys to keep for every 1 they get rid of. Then, the unwanted go to charity and the girls learn a valuable lesson of “do I really need or want that”.
Straightening: The coined phrase “a place for everything and everything in its place” covers this explanation. My love of organizing really gets used here too! The idea here is to organize, organize and organize! For me, I like to label things. That way, with all the hands touching everything throughout the house, everyone knows exactly where things should go and more importantly, where everything is. In my house, even though this is truly the house of my dreams, it falls short on storage space. I have to really use my creative skills to overcome this one. This subject will definitely have to be covered in a separate post one of these days…
Systematic: This is purely the simple fact of cleaning and keeping it all organized. I make the girls clean up their homeschool mess from the table before they are allowed to go play. Putting the dirty dishes in the sink as you use them during the cooking process. I have a “to be filed” basket so that I don’t lose papers between the time I receive them and I actually file them away. Just stopping and spending the time to clean and continue the organizing.
Standardizing: Think of this as setting the law, that the process that we setup and take place each and every time. The girls know that before they can watch their cartoon at 8:30am, all chores must be done and they must be dressed. If not, homeschool starts at 8:30am instead of 9:00am. When we feed the animals, you wash the feed bins first, then supply them the feed and then clean up any mess in the garage before closing everything up for the night. Stuff like that.
Sustaining: Maintain and periodically review the 4 previous steps. Like the two times a year I “review” what we have and see if I need to change the way we organize in order to incorporate what we keep. I also like to ask myself when I am in the stores “do we really need this?” before I even buy so that why it’s just one less thing to 5S someday and to keep our savings in check. Just because it’s on sale or I have a coupon, do I really, truly need this?
Enough of 5S. Let’s summarize the topic that I seem to keep side tracking here. In order to complete a “circle” of use here at the farm, we like to keep it lean with what we have. We also like to reuse things and that brings me back to my first thought of not wasting anything at all possible. To coin another phrase “cleanliness is next to Godliness”. With the animals, I try really hard not to be wasteful. Whatever hay the goats don’t eat (for whatever crazy reason they have, hey, their goats) and the hay that gets tossed on the floor from when we break up the bales, we save and use for bedding in the goat house and chicken coop. I am really nuts about keep my garage floor clean so that there’s nothing nasty that gets swept up when I collect the hay trimmings.
I only stock up the house from October 15th – March 15th and only buy what I know we could use in that time frame. Even now, with it being a little early in mid-February, we have already started to stop the “stock up” process and go through what we have. Eat what’s in the pantry and freezers before I buy anything else. I have only been buying the perishables the last two grocery trips (like milk, fruits, veggie’s).
But, my favorite way we complete a “circle of life” if what we have started to do recently. Did I tell you I love chickens and goats? I really, really do. When I make my human family’s meals, the animals take care of all the food waste. The “compost” clippings get fed to the animals: the goats get first pick of the veggie parts and the chickens take care of the left overs and meat stuff. I do occasionally give Carla, the dog, some scraps, but with her being the inside dog and on top of her having a sensitive tumtum, it’s in everyone’s best interest to limit Carla’s treats.
So, food goes to humans. Left overs go to the animals. Even when I go through the fridge before every shopping trip, all the leftovers and the stuff that is getting kinda nasty and old go to the animals (mushy apples, that left over soup we forgot to eat).
The leftovers feed and fuel the animals.
The animals grow. The chickens produce eggs (eventually, my babies are not quite there yet). The animals fulfill their lives by feeding the humans. For this example, I am using the stock from my January chicken chop in tonight’s stew.
Thus, MY CIRCLE OF LIFE. Yes, I know, I could have shortened my story to get to the point, but what fun would that be? I love to know that by making us reducing our waste and reuse what we can, we are living leaner, less materialistic. I would like to think that we are doing God proud and not taking for granted what he has given us.
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