*Live Lightly

Hi there. My name is Tracy and I’m a closet tree-hugging, barefoot, hippy creative. Last month I turned 40. ‘The Big Four Oh’. ‘Life begins ... ,’ and all that.

Now, I’m not one to worry about getting old and I’m not prone to major epiphanies and the like, but something about this birthday has set me thinking about life, the world and my place in it. Do I really want what I think I want, or do I want it because I’m supposed to? I must want these things because that’s the way it is and you have to work many, many hours, make some money and live in a 3-bedroom house with two children, two dogs, a cat and a bond - regardless of what it will cost you, your children, your neighbors or the Earth.

Well, I don’t want that. As it turns out I want to live simply. I need to live lightly.

My husband Tom and I already try to be careful about bringing home plastic shopping bags, we turn off lights when we leave a room and we compost our perishables. We talk about taking our own containers to the butcher, or getting another bin so we can separate recyclables easily, but never really get there. I want to see if we can do more, so I am starting an experiment to find out:
Is is viable, affordable, healthy and sustainable to live lightly in the real world?

What do I mean by live lightly? The main idea is to have as little negative impact on the world as possible. We will try to reduce, reuse and recycle as much as possible. We will make do and mend. We will try to support local business if we have to buy new.  We will try to buy only fresh local farm produce instead of  shipped-in, plastic-covered, factory-made perishables. We will try to find alternate energy-saving sources of power (we don’t have much of a choice with this one anyway, what with load shedding every other month). We will try to live in a way that works for us, the planet, and our community even if it goes against the accepted norm of things. That’s kind of the fun part.

We are planning a few big changes to start with. I have no doubt it will be hard and we will cheat a bit along the way, maybe even come close to giving up. I hope not. I look forward to the challenge and hope you’ll come along with us on this adventure.