Busy Bees Can Still Save Trees

Image by André Santana Design André Santana from Pixabay

Busy Bees Can Still Save Trees

You know that feeling – you’re already late for the appointment, you have fifteen minutes to get groceries before your toddler screams or drops something, the older one wants only marshmallows, and you get to the checkout line – only to find you’ve forgotten the reusable bags on the front porch.

How can a busy parent be eco-friendly? And should they?

On the one hand, there are more important things: keeping your kids fed, safe, and giving them all the wonderful enrichment that life and schedules offer. Not to mention your own work and fulfillment.

On the other hand, you want them to be truly safe, to love nature, and to show the importance of things bigger than themselves. Not to mention having a world to grow up in.

It’s an endless dilemma, one that has been raging among parents for what seems forever: What’s more important, now or later?

If you focus on now, you might just do what’s convenient, or quick, or wasteful, like buying the heavily packaged squeeze packets the kids guzzle but which cost ten times less than the organic refillable ones.

If you focus on later, you will miss out on time with your kids, play, and money while you are blending fresh, organic, local smoothies and milking cows.

But there’s a secret no one tells you: you don’t need to pick one. You can have both.

Kind of.

They key to going green, actually, is to just slow down. And slowing down, contrary to what you might believe, can help you go faster.

You know it already: the child insists on putting on their own car seat buckle and will not let you help. When you help, there are tears and tantrums, and you have to let them anyway. Might as well start that way.

Here are some things that have helped me be a more eco-conscious, and not so busy, mom.

Make it easy for you to be green. If you’re always forgetting the bag, just put ONE in your purse, or stuff it in your wallet. Better than zero. And you’ll save ten cents. Find similar opportunities in other places – buy the organic version on sale, stick a reusable straw and cloth napkin in your glove compartment, put the baby in a bucket for a bath (it saves water, and they can’t fall over!).

Don’t try to do it all at once. You don’t need to make everything at home, by yourself. Sometimes we think it has to be everything or nothing. Instead, go for small wins. No time for cloth diapers? Start with compostable ones, or the pesticide-free ones, anyway. Buy the frozen vegetables but look in the organic section. Let the kids taste everything at the farmer’s market (that’s lunch! and shopping!). Fill the water an inch lower in the bathtub. Pick one thing for the week or month. When it becomes a habit, you can add something else.

Save money. My grandmother was so so dark green, mostly because she was cheap. Nowadays it can be hard to be green and thrifty, but there are ways, like borrowing that movie or book from the library instead of buying it, dropping the kids off at the gym parents’ night out or asking a neighbor instead of hiring a babysitter, accepting all hand-me-downs.

Make use of friends and neighbors. And family (if you like them). Need pants patched? Hit up that friend who is always on the sewing machine. Your child just outgrew all his pants? Ask the parent with the older boy. Worried your child will be too tall? Check with an older neighbor.

Be with them, really. We all say we work hard and do things so we can spend more time with the kids, but then we end up doing household chores, or checking socials or sending one more email. Instead, cuddle. Ask questions. Really listen. Have a tickle fight or a dance party. Find things you can do together that help the planet: gardening, going camping, picking up trash on a walk, even just watching a nature show together, or having ice cream in a zero-waste cone. It’s all quality time, or as Jerry Seinfeld says, "garbage time."

Let them be kids. You’ll save tons of money and help them out when you just stop most of the activities and lessons. Let them spend time with neighbors (see above, even older ones work) and laze around and build things in the park. They don’t need to learn Arabic and hip hop and advanced math and act in plays all at once. Instead, they’ll get bored and daydream, get good bacteria to help their immunity, they’ll regain their childhood, and you’ll get a break to relax. While you’re at it, say no to some of your commitments, too.

Spend time in nature. In addition to building their immunity, they can get sunshine (good for eyesight and vitamin D), make new friends, calm down, get plenty of sensory play. Most of all, they’ll learn to love this planet enough to want to save it. You don’t have to go on special hikes – just head to the park, or woods near you, or any nearby back or front yard (with permission). Sort laundry outside, do work there, or just read a book while kids play – it’s good for you, too. You’ll find that time slows, and you feel like you have plenty of it.

Do these all work? Sometimes. I still find myself frantically busy once in a while. But mostly there are breaks in the day, a kind of slow, syrupy, summer feeling that I remember occasionally from my own youth – and I think my kids do, too.

You’ll have to ask them yourself. But right after we finish these homemade popsicles made from garden-fresh blueberries (just kidding).