Rose Luna

I am a very "I need this" person. Especially after the pandemic, people tend to use Amazon and other websites to get products and objects more quickly. Having this be an option, it's been very easy for me to just keep ordering things online. I have found that because I just click a button on my screen and the next thing you know it's at my house, I find it satisfying in a way. But I wanted to challenge myself this week and ask the question "is it a want or need". Because the holidays are coming I am seeing that it is very easy for me to just want so many things for gifts and decor, but with how expensive is nowadays I really think about how I already am fortunate enough to have everything I need to stay happy and survive. So this week, I did not go on amazon once, I did not go shopping randomly for things. It was a great week to just appreciate the things I have at home.

It has been a struggle to let go of social media lately. I find that when all my college friends are not around me, I need to use social media to contact them. Or when I feel bored after finishing my homework I just want to hop on TikTok or something. But this week I found things to do when things like this happen. I found that just doing craft things has helped me a lot with calming down and mental health issues. I also continued my personal journal writing that I did a few weeks ago for an eco change as well. There is so much precious time that we are losing when we are so focused on technology.

This week I had a lot of fun walking to places I wouldn't normally walk to. I know due to the rain, sometimes it is not very motivating to walk somewhere. But I was able to buy a big raincoat that made me even more excited to walk to places. My boyfriend lives about 5 minutes away from me when I am driving, but walking took me about 30 minutes which wasn't that bad. What was really fun was that I was able to see a lot of different wildlife creatures and I got to listen to my meditation podcast which helped me a lot for my meditation. I also walked to Safeway which is also like a 2-minute drive from me. I walked instead which ended up being like a 15-minute walk. It was fun bein gable to feel good about saving gas and just feeling like I just exercised.

During this week I had a fun time getting to know a lot of the people in my new school that I am working at. Usually during lunch a lot of the girls here will just be on their phones or not eat in the staff room, but a couple days ago we played a game during lunch that made us all get to know each other better. I loved seeing everyone smile on their faces because it shows that people sometimes just need people to talk to. I definitely will be bringing in more games to get people to interact with one another more. I think after covid people got too shy and just didn't speak. It feels good to bring the social aspect back up again.

Eco-Challenge Four:

This week I made it a goal to take a shower that was no longer than 5 minutes. I found it so difficult to do because as a girl who has her whole shower routine, I could not fit it all in. I found myself still needing to do the whole exfoliating. I found that within the 10-minute mark was my end goal. I started to turn off the running water when I knew that there would be a hair wash day involved. When my family saw that I was doing this, it quickly made them want to try and start doing it as well. Of course, all the boys in my house were able to keep it under a certain amount of time which ended up being some type of game at my house to see who could take a shower the fastest. This challenge has been really fun, and, not only are we saving water every day now, but we are making it like a game. The next challenge I would love to do is to save water for my dishes. That would be a fun and easy way to save water.

This week I have been trying to be better at food planning. I am so busy with my schedule. I work as a full-time cheer coach at West Linn High School, then work part-time at an Elementary School, and then I go to school full-time. So usually I do not have time to make dinner at home, and find myself getting fast food during my trip from school to cheer. I have been wanting to change this, I really want to become healthier and more better at eating. My challenge this week was to make a meal at home. Whether that was breakfast, lunch, or dinner! I am proud to say that I did, both a lunch and dinner meal! It was definitely hard to do but it only took about half an hour of my day to make. As the saying goes, if you truly wanted to you would. And so I am so excited to keep going with this change, for my own health, and my world!

Doing this eco challenge was fun this week. I had a lot of stuff to get done and that was a bit exhausting, I had to do a lot of things that made it hard for me to get into bed in time, luckily I was able to sleep in to make up for my hours last day prior. I also journaled a lot more this week which was so fun. There was a lot of rain, so it was very peaceful to write what was on my mind. This cleared my mind and also kind of made me feel more happy and spirited. Like a reset of anything bad that happened to me during that week. For the mug and bags, we went grocery shopping this week, for a family of 5 we needed a lot of groceries for the week, so we all used reusable bags as well as bringing our own mugs for coffee while we shopped! It has been fun being able to consistently change life styles, I wake up feelings excited to try something new eco-friendly.

I had a blast going through this challenge this week. I was able to set my alarm for earlier so that way I could start going to bed earlier. It helps a lot that the sunset starts going down around 7. At first, I started to add one "cleaning" duty around the house that usually takes me about an hour. This consisted of doing laundry, cleaning my bedroom, cleaning and reorganizing the kitchen. I found that doing projects like these made my body tired which made it easier for me to go to bed earlier. I found it difficult at times when my family would stay up later then i would but once I got in a routine, they would follow my lead as well which was pretty awesome to see! I also stopped using any form of electronic for the last hour of my bed time. This helped me with getting bored on whatever I was doing at the moment for example, if i was reading a book before I had to go to bed I would get pretty tired and just fall asleep. Or if I would start writing things that happened throughout my day I would tired of just thinking. It really helped my mind relax and my body. I highly recommend everyone to give this a try.