Yesterday, I posted a shout-out to anyone who visited my blog from Stimey’s DC Metro Moms post. She had linked to me because I suggested that she donate her wedding dress to a charity like Brides Against Breast Cancer or The Brides’ Project.

It would be easy to donate a dress to a thrift shop - it would be out of your way, and someone else would appreciate it and use it. I suggested donating to a charity instead, because it’s a simple way to make a difference in someone else’s life with very little effort on your part.

The majority of my work experience is in the not-for-profit and charity world. I love the people, the atmosphere, and most of all, I love knowing that the work I’m doing is helping another person breathe a little easier. The thing is that I am capital-B Broke, most of the time, which means that I don’t have much disposable income to direct at charity donations. Instead, I seek out other ways I can support charities in their missions, and trust me, there is NO shortage of non-monetary ways to help!

The bonus to supporting charities or not-for-profits in non-monetary ways is that these ways tend to be either great decluttering opportunities and/or great for the environment! So, with that said, here are some easy things you can do to support not-for-profits in your community.

Donate time. If there is a cause you support in your area, consider becoming a volunteer. Most organizations will have ongoing opportunities for volunteers and one-time gigs. I volunteer as a Brownie leader, which takes up about 8-12 hours a month, not including the occasional camping trip. I also volunteer occasionally at fun events or festivals, which can often take as much or as little time as you’re willing to give. Don’t just volunteer for the fun jobs - envelopes need to be stuffed, too! Volunteering could be anything from taking tickets at a one-time event to being a once-weekly helper to sitting on a Board. There’s truly something for everyone!

Donate clothes, furniture, old electronics, etc. Most communities, but especially big cities, will have a variety of charities which will pick up your old belongings or have drop-boxes for used clothing. Once they’ve picked things up, one of two things will happen: they’ll either sell them at a per-pound rate to a company like Value Village, or they’ll use them to stock their own thrift store. Either way, you’re helping the environment by recycling your items, and the charity is making money. In Vancouver, Big Brothers and Developmental Disabilities Association both offer pick up, and DDA has drop-offs across the Lower Mainland.

Donate supplies. Is your office moving or closing, and you have a variety of office supplies to get rid of? Did you buy the wrong printer paper? Do you have an old filing cabinet you don’t use? Did you buy a new computer monitor or video camera? Try calling a local charity office and see if they can use them. This is especially effective with smaller charities.  Did you pick up a hobby like knitting or drawing, and then realize you didn’t like it? Your local Guides or Scouts group would probably be happy to take the yarn, pencil crayons, or other supplies off your hands.

Talk about them to your friends, family, and coworkers. Sure, almost everyone in Canada and the US will know about events like those weekend-long walks to end breast cancer, or the big charities like LiveStrong, SPCA, Amnesty, etc. Those charities don’t need much word-of-mouth support, but smaller-scale charities do, especially if they are connected to an illness or event that people are embarrassed to talk about. Tell people why and how you support their mission.

Come to events. Most charities will run special events, and they are only successful if they get butts through the door! Keep an eye on your community newspaper’s event listings, and take an hour or two to attend the events.

Remember them in your will, and tell them that you’ve done so. Okay, so we aren’t all rolling in cash, and we often want to leave our estate to our loved ones. Leaving a donation - whether cash or assets - to a charity in your will can get you a bit of a tax break and support your favourite cause(s) even after you’re gone. You can also ask that your loved ones ask for donations to a charity of your choice in lieu of flowers.

Write letters. This could be a letter to the paper saying “hey, I think this cause is important and you should do a story on it!” or a letter to your legislator asking for their support of the cause. (More on this tomorrow!)

If you do choose to donate money, consider just writing a cheque to the charity, rather than donating to a specific project. General donations are so useful, because they provide unrestricted funds. So often when we donate money, we want it to go towards specific programs or resources; however, without unrestricted funds, charities can’t pay rent or the utilities, buy paper to print on, or any of the other little staples they need to run programs and develop resources.

Many of the things I’ve mentioned will take you under two hours a week, if not less, but they’ll make a big difference for the staff and volunteers of the charity. They can take your donation of time, supplies, or support, and turn it into more effective programs and resources. Try one or more of them out, and see what happens. Some of these things will improve your mental health, and some will reduce your environmental footprint. In short - everybody wins!

Hi to anyone who has come this way from Stimey’s post on DC Metro Moms. Thanks for the link, Stimey!

This is probably one of my favourite restaurants in Vancouver. The prices are reasonable and the food is unbelievably tasty. Rangoli is owned by Vikram Vij, and is next to his more well-known restaurant, Vij’s. Every time I’ve tried to go to Vij’s, the wait has been far too long, so I’ve popped next door to Rangoli.

This week, a friend was visiting from out of town, and we needed a restaurant that could feed two vegetarians, one flexitarian (me), and one meat lover. We ended up at Rangoli, and we were all delighted. We shared samosas, warm little bundles of goodness with just the right amount of spiciness. I had a chicken dish which was perfectly balanced, spicy and tender. Even better, it was made with locally-sourced chicken!

As I was doing my morning scan of the paper online, I came across an article written by Vij. He writes about eating less as a means to lessen our impact on the world, and shares two recipes that sound yummy. In the context of global warming and food shortages, perhaps this is one more small change we can all participate in. I don’t take this to mean dieting - far from it. Rather, I see it as an approach to food that involves choosing to take only what we know we can finish, and then going for seconds if we are still hungry. To me, that is one more argument for a shift to more intuitive eating and listening to our bodily cues.

So if you’re in Vancouver, and you are either too impatient or too broke for Vij’s, just walk next door and eat at Rangoli. You won’t be disappointed.

The first week of The Great Unclutter is over, and was a great success. I met my goal of 35 items easily, and got one room of our apartment whipped into shape. All that remains in there is a quick wipe-down of the tabletops, and a run through with the vacuum, and the living room will look like a whole new space.

Here’s what was removed during Week 1:

• A huge stack of colouring, potato-print gift wrap, and other paper-crafts from a Brownies camp we did in the fall. I counted this stack as 1 item, and it’s all getting recycled.
• A variety of magazines, also recycled and also counting as 1 item.
• 5 different packs, puffers or bottles of embarrassingly expired medication. I’m talking 2005, people. That means that the expired meds have moved with me at least 3 times since they expired. Yikes! Also, 3 old puffers that are used up and have been kicking around the bathroom cupboards. These are heading to the pharmacy, where they will be recycled/disposed of safely through the Medications Return Program.
• A giant candy cane we were given at Christmas. I think we were both just candy-caned out by the time we got it, so it never got eaten, and now is just looking sad and out-of-season. This was trashed.
• At least 15 bottles and cans that are heading for recycling.
• A mirror I used to hang when I lived in the dorms at UBC, but don’t need anymore. It’s seen better days, and it’s made of non-recyclables, so it’s going in the garbage.
• A bag full of red ribbon, from an old World AIDS Day project, which is going to go to the craft cupboard for my Brownie group.
• The giant piece of cardboard in which my grad photos were mailed.
• Two phone books from 2005/2006, which were here when we moved in. Since we moved in, we’ve received 4 more. The remaining extras will go in NEXT week’s count, only because our recycling bag is full.
• One stack of duplicate photos destined for recycling.
• One stack of duplicate photos to be offered to the subjects of said photos, and then recycled if not taken.
• Three pairs of sandals which are dead and need to be thrown out before I’m tempted to wear them when the weather gets better. They look nasty and they’ll hurt my feet, so the garbage can is calling their names!

Total items removed this week: 36/35

Last night, I had a reminder of why this is an excellent time to get decluttered in Vancouver. We live in a basement suite, and in the spring and summer, that means that we get invaded by house spiders. They are gross, speedy, and scare the living shit out of me, even though they aren’t particularly harmful. My reaction is still as swift as last year - I literally FLEW off the couch, grabbed the closest shoe and smote that little fucker. The cleaner and less cluttered our apartment gets, the less hospitable it will be for the house spiders. I will GLADLY trade less “stuff” for fewer spiders - it sounds like an excellent deal to me!

The decluttering also inspired me to get cracking on some other chores and unfinished tasks, which is how our living room got a thorough tidying up. Here’s what else got done, just on Sunday:

• at least 3 loads of laundry - this may not sound like much, but it is for me. I HATE doing laundry and have enough clothes to keep me going without laundry for a LONG time.
• rearranged our DVDs and Wii games so that our DVD and CD binders and board games can fit safely on the same shelf.
• found my GST cheque from January, which I thought I had cashed. Yay for a surprise $60!
• emptied all the garbage cans in the apartment and got most of the recycling ready for garbage day. (Note: need to find out if Vancouver will accept shredding in the recycling.)
• finished labelling a huge stack of photos, and got half of them put away into a photo-holder box.

All in all, I’d say Week 1 of TGU was a great success, and I can’t wait to see what I accomplish this coming week. My focus this coming week is on this strange little area behind our living room - we have a couple chairs kicking around in that area, but it isn’t really useful for anything - and on our kitchen table. They’ve both become dumping grounds for random items, jackets, purses, shoes, etc. I have a feeling that Week 2’s 35 items will not be a challenge, if I work through these two areas.

“The most important thing in life is to stop saying ‘I wish’ and start saying ‘I will’.

Consider nothing impossible, then treat possibilities as probabilities.”

- David Copperfield

Today, I have a short PSA for all the glasses-wearers who read this blog: go get your glasses adjusted!

While we were out running errands today, we stopped in at my optometrists’ and I got my glasses tightened up. It’s probably been 6 month since I’ve had this done, which was long enough to forget how awesome it is! It doesn’t cost anything except a few minutes’ time, but it makes my glasses (and my eyes!) more comfortable. I find that if I go too long between adjustments my eyes get sore, especially when I’m in front of the computer all day at work, because my glasses aren’t sitting where they ought to.

So, glasses-wearers of blogland, unite and get your glasses adjusted this week!

I’ve been thinking on this for a while, and decided that today, Earth Day, would be a great day to start.

Here’s what I’m setting out to do: For the next 10 weeks, ending on July 1(Canada Day!), I want to find at least 5 things to remove from my home, every day. This will mean recycling, rehoming, regifting, and maybe even throwing out, approximately 350 items in a little over 2 months. We want to move, sometime in the next few months, and I cannot bear to think about moving all the things we have. Just the thought of boxing things up, hefting them in and out of apartments and trucks, and unpacking them again…. ugh. It gives me the heebiejeebies.

Part of me thinks that 350 is an impossibly large number, far more than we could possibly have in our little 2-bedroom basement apartment. A bigger part of me knows that we have far too much stuff, and that much of the stuff and clutter is mine. Too many items in our house don’t have a designated home (we’re way short on storage), and too many things have just moved and moved and moved with me without any real thought to what function they fill.

What I am sure will come from this is less clutter in our house, some great shoes and clothes for the charity clothing bins down the street, more thoughtfulness about how and why I bring things into the house, and calmer home that is more reflective of who we are and how we live.

If you’re interested in joining me, here are some good blogs to check out as you get started:

• Declutter It!
• Unclutterer
• The Junk Pyramid (the original inspiration for my project!)

Happy Earth Day!

“Ask yourself if what you believe in is bigger than what you are anxious about.”

I like it when something from my homework strikes a chord personally. This line was written in reference to being anxious to ask donors for money, but I think it works just as well out of context.

The government of Canada is set to announce bisphenol A (BPA) as a dangerous chemical later this week. The Globe and Mail has an article outlining the details.

I’ve been following this whole saga with some interest, because I’m a big Nalgene bottle user. I almost always have one in my purse, and keep one on my desk at work all the time. I watched as Mountain Equipment Co-op and Lululemon, two big Canadian “lifestyle” chains, pulled polycarbonate bottles off their shelves. I had mostly decided that, until there was more information, I would continue using the bottles I owned, and just not buy any more of them.

Now that the government is listing it as dangerous/toxic, I’m rethinking this. Maybe the time to switch to other bottles is now, not when my Nalgenes bite the dust. I’ve heard good things about Sigg and Klean Kanteen, and I’m continuing to look for other alternatives.

This is all well and good, but I have a concern that I haven’t seen addressed anywhere - what do I do with my Nalgenes now? If BPA is as much of a toxin as it seems, do I really want to send products containing it to the landfill or recycling depot? Do I want to use them as vases or planters, knowing that they may leak into whatever I’m growing and possibly eating? Basically, if this isn’t a good thing to put in my body, why should I put it into my environment?

How can I be so proud of my accomplishments and dreams, so comfortable in my personality and quirks, and yet feel so much fear, sadness and anger towards my body?

I don’t get it.

Well, tomorrow is the big day - I’m heading back to school! It’s not like it’s been very long, only four months since I finished my UBC courses. This time I’m heading to BCIT, part-time, to take a course heavily related to my work.

I’m nervous! Adam has been incredibly patient, dealing everything from “what if I’m not smart enough?” to “what if it’s boring?” to “what if everyone else is older/more experienced/cooler than i am?” It’s been a bad scene, but I really am excited, too. This course should make my job far easier to carry out, and make me more effective. Always a plus!

I’m feeling pretty organised about tomorrow, and I have plenty of time to get from work to the downtown campus. What I haven’t figured out yet is what to WEAR! Ridiculous, yes, but I need to plan for my cold office, traipsing around in the rain, and a climate-unknown classroom. I’m sure I’ll throw something together, but it’s a little bit of nervousness I could live without.