Hmmmm, so and so told me this, I read that in xyz book, I heard about such and such at a garden supply store, I learned this in an online course…. What to believe and where to start?
Firstly, work out what exactly (or as near as you can) you want to achieve in terms of sustainable living. Is your goal to have a veggie garden and eat healthier, reduce you water and power bills, reduce chemical use in your house? You need to start being as specific as you can and form a picture of what you want in your mind. Use a photo board or journal to help you visualise. Keep a small notebook or open a note on your phone or electronic tablet to jot things down when you think of them. Write down the things that you are not happy with currently but make sure to write down the things you are doing well and have made a start on. It’s very easy to get bogged down in all the things we do wrong or don’t do right and forget about what we have achieved so far.
Once you have an idea of what you want to achieve, you need to factor in the things in your life that will have an impact on your goals and how you go about working towards them. Things like house or apartment, are you on a large block or a small unit space, family, work and weekend commitments, time availability. It’s not much good me saying I want to make my own dairy products and spin my own wool from my own cattle and sheep when I live on a small unit size block and have heavy family commitments that only allow me an hour a week of available free time. We don’t want to be so caught up in struggling to do all the things to maintain our sustainable lifestyle that it becomes a chore with no time to relax and enjoy. Make sure you factor in self care time, family time, social time, whatever it is that you do to switch off and recharge.
Start one step at a time and work on that so it becomes habit and you are happy with the way it’s working. You may need to tweak things sometimes or you may find ways of improving on what you are doing. I started with veggie gardens because they were the first priority for me. I wanted to start growing my own food to enable my family to eat healthier, reduce my food miles and impact on the planet and save some money. I started with straw bale gardening because I had read it worked really well and I was curious.
Setting up a worm farm and composting system might be more important to you so you can reduce your waste going to landfill. Whatever it is, Just Do It! Make a start. If we all changed just one thing, thing of how different our world could be. 🙂