The economy is on a diet

No one likes a diet. Or feeling the need for one. But we need one when we’ve been excessive; when we didn’t measure our pleasure. Like me of late.

Until recently I escaped middle age spread. Ah but it was cocky to think I could eat anything I wanted! The bathroom scale measures my displeasure.

So, for Lent, I’m giving up sweets. I already gave up smoking (yay me!) while my supportive boyfriend gave up broccoli.

And while I give up chocolate, I know the economy is with me. Giving up on growth and letting go of the excess. Deflating as fast as my RSP.

The economy is using a pretty mean points system (a la Weight Watchers), though. The economy is shedding pounds as fast as an auctioneer talks. Or is it? Maybe its not that bad. Could it just be the media selling frugality the way the beauty industry sells thin?

Run relief

In 1997 I started three love affairs. A sport, a city and a boy. The first, running, has been on and off, the second persists – I’m homesick for Edinburgh lately – and the third – well we went our amicable ways eventually.

Tonight I ran again. Like my dog Boston, I go squirrely without exercise. Since moving to the suburbs my activity is between cars and doors and a few dog walks a week. Not the hour walk I have been used to for ten years.

My ’squirrels’ are gone and I’m sitting still. It’s a relief. I can tell when Boston feels the same way. When the weather warms up we are going to do more running together. Then sit still.

For those of you who’ve met Boston, you’ll be relieved too.

Four steps to an organized closet

Eminem’s got a song where the plaintive refrain is about cleaning out his closet. It’s a mournful and annoying exercise for many people, especially those who don’t count organizing among their relaxing activities like a Virgo does.

I,Virgo, like to organize, sort and tidy. Recently I helped a friend with her closet and we discovered a bunch of great professional outfits for her to wear. We even matched them with jewelery and took photos of outfits for easy reference. She was required to hide her previous usual workday wear in her drawers and keep the closet only for work clothes.

She’s a a night owl and hasn’t the morning energy to root around in drawers. She used to pick up what was on the floor and wear that. Now she says she hangs up her clothes at the end of a day. With her closet as tidy as a packed lunch in Superfriends lunchbox, she is on her way with speed and style each morning.

Here’s how we cleaned her closet – steps you can follow too.

1. Hang everything you own on hangers in the closet, all seasons (except your underclothes).
2. Sort the items by colour in this order: black, grey, blue, green, red, purple, brown, beige, yellow and white. I’ve experimented with different orders and this works best for me.
3. Sort items by type of clothing is this order: coats, blazers, dresses, pants, skirts, long sleeved collars, long sleeved shirts, short sleeved collar shirts, short sleeved shirts.
4. Separate fall and winter clothes from spring and summer and remove other seasons  i.e. if it’s winter, remove spring and summer. If it’s summer, remove fall and winter. Spring and summer always together. Fall and winter always together.

Optional steps:

7. Dump your jewelery on your bed.

8. Create 5 outfits from your closet for the current season. Lay each out with jewelery and snap a picture.

You notice that I didn’t list steps to create piles of save and keep. If you’ve got the resolve, do that before step one, and continue to cull as you proceed through the closet cleaning.

Four Easy Ways to Ditch Paper Waste

When it is easy to perform an act of green, most of us will, most of the time. The reusable shopping bag is becoming a habit and slinging the newspaper in the blue box is by now a natural reflex. Are there many more simple things we can do?

Yes. Here are four ways that you may not have thought of to reduce paper waste.

Replace facial tissue with handkerchiefs. Twelve hankies cost $10 at a big box store, enough to get you through to laundry day. Greenpeace tells us that a box of Kleenex takes 90 years to grow. If every Canadian household bought one less box of virgin facial tissue we’d save16, 300 trees a year. (Source: Natural Resources Defense Council).  And as for the gross factor – be honest. Don’t you already keep your dirty tissues in your pocket or purse? And don’t you already use those tissue once or twice before you toss them?

Use a cloth napkin to add some elegance to your lunch at work. A lovely, fresh, seasonal one is less than five dollars. That’s an inexpensive treat next time you walk through the house wares section of The Bay.

Resurrect the rag pile to use while cleaning. What’s the advantage of spending money on one-use paper towel? Not to mention the environmental impact of making them (see handkerchiefs).

Does your toilet paper need to be soft enough to sacrifice 42,930 trees? Because that’s how many trees Canada could save if we all replace just 500 sheets of virgin toilet paper to 100% recycled content.

            That’s four ways to stop ditching your paper waste. Try one to see how little thought and effort it takes to make another positive environmental choice.

Students give the Jan 20 speech a B

Talk about a great year to study communications and PR. A Canadian election, a Canadian prorogue, a listeria outbreak and of course a new President of the United States of America.

In classes today we talked about President Obama’s inaugural address. We gave it a B in  Speechwriting mostly based on delivery. Our PR Writing instructor’s comment resonated with me and is likely to be how I will remember the speech. She said that the speech was the anti-thesis of MLK’s I Have a Dream speech because Obama’s was about managing expectations.

My comments in class were about the speeches emphasis on values; ones that he and the nation share and will need to share to move forward. I like the values upon which their success depends, and I’m going keep them in mind: hard work and honesty, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiousity, loyalty and patriotism. (Maybe not the last one).

His tone was less motivational than earlier speeches, but he established who’s the boss and how seriously he takes that role. Come to think of it, I never got that impression from George W. Bush.

In four years time it will be interesting to review his major addresses and assess how he repeats, restates or develops the values in the inaugural speech.