Eileen's Challenge

It's the last day of the challenge, but I have chosen to keep my commitments until midnight. It's getting harder and harder as the seconds tick by though. After walking the mile from school to my house in 85 degree weather, I wanted so badly to take a long cold shower. (Actually I needed to at that point, I was GROSS!) But I stuck by my commitments and only took a 5 minute shower. (And no I am no longer GROSS!)
I'm really sad that tonight will be my last organic and local meal. Well, I'm sure it won't be my last, but my mom is super excited to have me eat the same thing as the family for the first time in two weeks. My family isn't into the whole..eating healthy thing. They say would rather eat rubber. I know it's partly not true, my mom loves veggies as much as I do. But she isn't one to eat a healthy meal every night. So I've been cooking a separate dinner for myself for the past two weeks. I think my mom saw it as a stab at her cooking. :)
My latest contribution to reducing my paper use, came a few minutes ago when instead of filling out a survey and mailing it in, I took it online. That way is so much more convenient! Not only does it not use paper, but it saves me 47 cents for a stamp and I don't have to remember to mail it in, I just hit send!
Overall this project has been fun. I've learned a lot and had some pretty interesting insights, but I'm definitely okay with it being over at midnight! I can't wait to see the films though!!!!

Eileen's Challenge

So I guess limiting your showers to five minutes, gives your family the right to hog all the hot water! Hello, just because I'm limiting my shower time doesn't mean I want to die of hypothermia from a freezing cold shower!!! In all seriousness everything is still going really well. My showers are short and waste minimal water and I haven't relapsed into being a shopaholic. I try to use as little paper as I can and I'm trying to eat locally and organically.
It's been a crazy journey and I can't wait till it's over. Although I do very much enjoy not being yelled at for taking a 15 minute shower. I rediscovered how much I love organic and local food. Although the food that I've been eating is different then I'm used to now. When I can back from Woolman I had been eating California produce for the past four months, and I was thrown from that back into the fast place food of Western Massachusetts and my life. However eating the food I have lately has really shown me that this is the food I love, tons of veggies, grass fed meat...etc. I think that this part of this assignment will stay for as long as I can afford it.

Eileen's Challege

Everything is coming along very nicely. It's definitely not the easiest thing in the world to do, but I didn't really expect it to be. The easiest part of this has been cutting down my water use. My showers are down to roughly five minutes again. I think that was the easiest part because I had been doing it for four months early this school year. On the other end of the spectrum, the most difficult part of this assignment for me has been eating locally. Sure there is the Greenfield Co-op, but it would be a lot more helpful if it were the summer where the farmers market was in full swing; or the fall when it was harvest season. Eating locally is hard when its not peak growing or harvest season.

Eileen's Low Impact Commitment

It's one of those assignments that some people get excited about and others question the relevance of. For me, I think it's a cool idea, yet I ultimately see it as overly time consuming due to Senior Expedition and trying to pass math. Despite my personal thoughts on this assignment I'm giving it my best and trying to make the most of it. That's why for my low impact challenge I have chosen to: Eat only local and organic foods, work to conserve both water and paper and try to break the cycle of consumerism by only buying necessities.
Eating organic and local food has been something that I have advocated for since I returned from Woolman, where we were on a strictly vegetarian and organic diet. We also focused a lot on water conservation at Woolman, having time-limited showers and allotted amounts of water for things like watering the gardens and washing the dishes. Choosing to try to conserve paper comes from the massive amounts of paper that this school wastes daily. It's sad but I'm glad Mrs. Plath has found a way to reuse some of it. Last but certainly not least, my decision to try to cut back on consumerism had a much more selfish reason behind it. (In complete honesty.) Not only is consumerism a disturbing problem around the world, but I thought that if I tried to cut back on consumerism for a school project, I could force myself to stop spending money and save more than I would otherwise to put into my car fund.

I started the challege yesterday when I left school with a trip to the Greenfield Co-op. I knew that my famioy didn't have anything local or organic in our fridge or cupboards so I knew I had to go grocery shopping if I wanted to do this. Since buying things that were local and organic was necessity for the success of my challenge, I didn't see it as unecessisary consumerism. Other than that, I went back to time-limited showers starting at 10 minutes. (This will decrease over time.) In a strange move, I pulled the sheets, blankets and pillows off my bed and replaced it with my sleeping bag. This is partly because I can wash my sleeping bag less often than I would wash and change my sheets and pillow cases. Also, My sleeping bag is not machine washable, you have to hand soak it in water. This way I cut down on water from the washing machine. (The other part of that was I missed sleeping in my sleeping bag, which I slept in every night at woolman.)
So everything is in place and ready to go! It's been fun so far, but we will see how long it takes to start waring on me. The blogging everyday part will be the hardest part of this project I think for me. I'm terrible at keeping up with things on a day to day basis, which is why I failed at keeping a diary when I was little. We will see where this leads me...hopefully it's somewhere good.