Thanks, Mother Earth! (Easy Family-Friendly Ways to Celebrate Earth Day)

In celebration of Earth Day, I thought it might be nice to come up with some ways to give back to the Earth that gives us so much. (Don't worry...these are really easy! And remember, we're not striving for perfection!)

In today's episode, I have 10 Things we can do to celebrate Earth Day (5 of which are particularly great for families with young children, but really anyone can do any of these regardless of your status, and most of these are at zero cost! Yay!)

I know not everyone is going to click "play" on an episode that sounds like having to do work, but these ideas are simple and fun (like candlelight dinners and nature scavenger hunts), so I hope you'll take a listen and find a way to appreciate our wonderful world, and that you'll share it with anyone looking for ideas to celebrate Earth Day this year.

You can also check out my related blog post on ThatBlissfulBalance.com


Here are the items mentioned in this episode, in case you're interested:

• Gardyn Indoor Garden (Use Code: THATBLISSFULBALANCE for $100 off!)
• Lomi Countertop Composter (Discounted for Earth Day! Save up to $188 with no code needed!)
• My Friend Earth book for kids (This is the best price I found, though you might be able to find at your local bookstore)

Thanks for letting me be that low-key tree-hugging friend inside your ear this week. 

Transcript

Hey there. Welcome to the Friend in Your Ear podcast. I'm your host, Luna Smith, and I will be that friend inside your ear. Well, we explore all things self-improvement. I'll share tips, motivation and positivity to help you live your best life. From health and wellness to career and relationships. I've got you covered because that's what friends are for, right?

So tune in every week for a friendly chat to brighten your day. And let's make every day a little better together, shall we, friend? And now on with the show.

It's almost Earth Day, and although technically, every day is a day on Earth and should be Earth Day. Oh, with the holiday coming up, I thought it'd be great to go over some ways that we can give back to Earth and make Mother Earth proud.
 
So here are some ideas of things you can do to give back to the planet that does so much for us. I have five ideas you can do with young kids, as well as some ideas that you can do with no kid. And you know what? You can mix and match. I'm sure either of them really works, but some of them are particularly family oriented.
 
So here are some ways to involve young kids with Earth Day. But again, you can do this even if you don't have children. Number one, plant a tree or garden, because let's be real here. Kids love to get dirty. I mean, a lot of adults do, too. I mean, it's really good for you on many levels to get your hands dirty, to feel the earth.
 
It's a great learning experience for children to watch things grow. And planting a garden is a fun way to teach about the importance of taking care of the earth and it's great for grown ups, too. It's just I just think it's a really neat experience to see the cycle of life at your own hands by growing something. And if you are not able to grow, like if you don't have access to a yard or dirt, sometimes you can find a community garden in your area.
 
Or if you really want, the ability to watch things grow without getting your hands dirty, you can look into a hydroponic system for indoors. I recently got one I think I mentioned in a previous episode called A Gardyn, but spelled with a Y and it's been really cool to watch it grow from nothing to little seedlings to now it's starting to grow into like actual little vegetable oils.

And that can be great for children too. It is, you know, a long process, but it's a nice way to teach sustainability and I think there may be a discount going on right now. If there is, I'll put it in a link in in the show notes anyway, if you want to check it out. Number two, go on a nature scavenger hunt.

This is really simple. You can just write up a short list of various things you might find outdoors and then go to a local park or nature reserve, or even just your own backyard and have your kids find these various items like pinecones and daffodils, the pine tree, you know, etc., etc.. A big rock kids love. We have a lot of rocks in our house.

Oh. Anyway, item number three or idea number three is to make recycled crafts. This is a great one for reusing, you know, items that would normally go out in the recycling bin like cardboard boxes, paper tubes, bottle caps. You can make bird feeders, binoculars, musical instruments. We have all sorts of recycled, handmade things in our house. Another fun one is like a wind chime.

And my son got the idea actually from a Daniel Tiger episode and we used a paper towel tube and he decorated it with paint and stickers. And then you just punch some holes and hang string or twine and glue bottle caps to the end of it. And it's like it's obviously not super water safe because it's made out of cardboard, but we have them in the house.

And the cute gift idea for grandparents idea number four is to read books about the earth. There are a lot of children's books that teach about the importance of the Earth and how to take care of it and get them thinking about how big the world is and how much we rely on it and what it provides for us.

And, you know, reading these books can spark some deep conversations with kids or inspire them to care more for our world, which I think is very much needed. A book that I found that I thought was really beautiful is by Patricia McLaughlin, and it's called My Friend Earth. And it has a beautiful illustrations and has like peekaboo pages.

It's very engaging. So that would be a great gift idea for Earth Day. Another really fun idea that you can do with or without kids is you turn off the lights and have a family picnic by candlelight. And it's a way to, you know, teach kids about conserving energy, but also just a fun thing to do. I think every once in a while and kind of just changes things up and makes things interesting, but also, you know, gives you a teaching moment of using less power, less energy and, you know, giving them a demonstration of how things used to be back in the day before electricity, which is, you know, kind of crazy how new

electricity really is in the grand scheme of things. So these are five ideas that are great for young kids to help instill a lifelong appreciation for our environment, hopefully, and inspire them to become responsible for our planet. Because we you really you know, we only have this one. So we really need to appreciate it. And give back what it gives to us.

I think, you know, and starting when they're young is just like a great way to instill those values. So you can, of course, do any of those ideas, regardless of whether you have children or not. But those ideas I thought were nice to do as a family. But of course, they work even solo or without kids. And these next five ideas are ideas that you can still do with kids, but they're, you know, a little more adult oriented but still would be great maybe for older kids.

I guess the first ideas are more for younger kids. These ideas, older kids could take part in idea number one, start a compost pile. Composting is a great way to reduce waste and to create nutrient rich soil for your garden or indoor plants. You don't even need to have an outdoor garden. Some people just use the compost with their indoor plants or you can give back.

A lot of times like town drop off centers might have a like a big compost pile that you can contribute to, or you might have a neighbor that has a garden that you can give it to. But either way, it's it's a great way to reduce your overall waste that you would be otherwise putting into the trash. I recently it was a must when a year ago or so I got this indoor composter called a Lomi, which I liked because it just sits on your countertop.

And I thought that would be like such a great convenient way to be able to just quickly put food scraps into it. And then once it's like the bucket's full, you turn it on and if you want really rich soil, it's like it might be like a 12 hour run time, but there's like a speed settings too. But it is cooks it down like this big old bucket, like it kicks down to such a small amount of dirt.

But it's really crazy to see all this a waste turn into dirt. So that may even be a really great teaching experience for kids too. And then we just kind of collect all the dirt into a big bucket to use for, you know, various outdoor gardening things, but also indoor plant food. Do you have plants? And of course you can do composting the old fashioned way.

You don't need a device. I just thought for me personally, I'm not someone who is going to keep trudging outside in colder weather to put food scraps into a compost bin. So when I saw the Lomi advertised, I just thought that was such a a cool idea and that convenient way to you know, turn your food scraps in the door, like right on your countertop, which I think there might be a discount for that too. 
 
Again, I'll, I'll put all of the items that I've mentioned in the show notes if you want to check them out and I'll have this list on the blog if you want to see it in text form. But anyway, cool invention another way to celebrate Earth Day is to support local farmers. I know, you know, depending on where you're located, there may or may not be year round. 
 
Farmers markets, but you can go to a local farmer's market. Like they say, it's always good to buy local when you can and you know, and then you know where your food is coming from too, which is like such a cool experience, I think, to to meet the farmers who are growing this, the food that you're about to eat, it just kind of brings you closer to the source. 
 
And another thing that you can do when your kids do any number three, clean up your neighborhood. You can either do this on your own or a lot of times I found that our town and other surrounding towns seem to do a community cleanup event in April, probably because of Earth Day or just spring in general. So you can find a community cleanup event, I'm sure, in your area or, you know, just take it on your own, such as go to a park that the out there and clean up trash should you find it. 
 
But yeah if we all work together, we can make the world a better place. And if you aren't doing this already, idea number four is to reduce, reuse and recycle. If you aren't already recycling, definitely look into your community's recycling options. I know some places take something some don't. Typically, the best things to recycle are cardboard and glass. 
 
Plastics are iffy, and there's a lot of places that won't even take plastic at all. But if you can at least do cardboard and glass, those are definitely taken on tin cans, I believe. But if you don't have, you know, roadside pick up for recycling, a lot of times your town will have a recycling drop off center and you can just collect these things and drop them off and feel better that you're not filling your trash so quickly because a lot of things are recyclable and you should recycle as much as you can, You know, use reusable bags, containers, water bottles, try to just, you know, reduce as much as possible so that we can 
 
limit the amount of things we're putting into landfills. You know, any little step. I mean, it's not don't get hard on yourself. It doesn't have to be perfect. But like, you know, every little step you can take can still have such a big impact. So just even starting with small steps, small things like idea number five, going paperless. 
 
So pay your bills online, change it to all, you know, online paying so they don't have to send you the bills in the mail. Use electronic tickets and, you know, doing all of those things. You can also like catalogs. I know there are numbers that you can call to get yourself removed from those catalog lists, which I really need to look to. 
 
So anyway, that will be my Earth Day project. That way you can reduce the amount of, you know, paper consumption or that is like coming to you unnecessary early. I know some people prefer to have certain things in paper, but if you can make small changes again to go paperless when possible, that limits paper consumption. So those are ten ideas to help celebrate Earth Day and appreciate our Earth and to lessen our burden on it. 
 
It doesn't matter. You know, obviously, like the whole message I have with this entire podcast is it's we're not striving for perfection here, but we are trying to be a little bit better every day, or at least that's what I'm aiming to be. I hope you are too, and any little step you can take to reduce your footprint, we're just trying to lessen the burden that we're putting on Mother Earth. 
 
I guess. And in light of that, this week's mantra, I thought it would be appropriate and this is a good one you can have with your kids if you're celebrating Earth Day together as the mantra. "I am grateful for the gifts the Earth provides and I treat them with respect and reverence." Bonus Way to to appreciate Earth Day or to celebrate Earth Day is really take some time to look at the beauty of the earth of the buds that are starting to grow. 
 
The the plants that are starting to erupt from the soil. Just take time to look at the wonderful, beautiful earth that we live on. I know obviously not everything is beautiful, but if you can just find the small things that make it beautiful, that's a great way to help appreciate and celebrate our earth and just really let that gratitude sink in. 
 
Like at the very least, I think we should all be doing that for Earth Day, because when we have gratitude in our lives and this is such this is such an ongoing theme for this podcast, but the more gratitude you have for what's in your life, the more things you have to be grateful for. That's just the way it seems to work out. 
 
So if you just take the time to be grateful, to notice all of the wonderful things that we have available to us that the Earth is providing them, you just feel even more gratitude and realize even more abundance in your life. Although this isn't a mantra. Another wonderful quote that I found by Chief Seattle, "The Earth does not belong to us. We belong to the Earth."

I think a lot of times we do seem to think that we control the Earth, but really we're just living on it. And thus we should be treating it with respect and reverence and giving back as much as we can for all it does for us. So I hope that these ideas give you some inspiration, and those is kind of a different episode. 
 
But I love themes and I was just trying to think of what to do for this week's episode. And then I thought of Earth Day coming up and how great it would be to come up with some ideas that help us to recognize all the wonderful things we have because of Mother Earth and to celebrate that. So let me know if you plan to do any of these. 
 
I would love to know if any of these ideas spoke to you and you're going to use one of them to celebrate with your family or even just yourself. Thank you so much for listening and for letting me be that friend inside your ear this week. I guess I'm the friend that is raving on to you about how we need to do better for our Earth. 
 
But we all have friends like that. And I guess I'm that friend for you this week. Well, I hope that it inspires you regardless and that we can inspire each other really to do the best and to be the best that we can. So thank you so much for letting me be that friend for you this week and for listening and I hope you found some inspiration and I hope you have a great two weeks and I'll talk to you soon.