Kae Nestor

For my challenge this week I wanted to push myself to meet some of my neighbors. I haven’t been in my new place for very long so I figured it was a perfect time to try and introduce myself to those around me. I am also in a perfect position for this because I now live in a very nice and quiet little community that I intend on staying in for a while. I was able to meet both my neighbors closest to me and was even able to exchange some items that I don’t use for things they no longer needed too. I was really grateful to have branched out and was able to reuse some items that may have gotten thrown away. I will definitely have to keep pushing myself to say hi to some of the other neighbors around me.

For my Eco-challenge this week I decided to try and collect rainwater. The reason I chose this is because I figured the rainwater would be an easy and effective way to use water for things like watering my plants or washing my car. Not only would this make my water bill a little cheaper but I can be more sustainable by using the water that was already available to me if I collected rain water. I was hoping to get a little more than I did, but with the time of year and the weather we have been having I wasn’t able to get much. The amount I did get was enough to water all of my plants at least! Overall collecting rainwater is something I think I want to continue doing since it is easy for me to do where I live.

For this week I tried to tackle eating more whole foods. This is a goal I have been wanting to do previously and I have never quite had the time to, but I figured now is better than never. For this week I tried to think of what meals I could do first so I would have an easier time later on. One issue I already had was the time it took to make things from scratch. Not many foods I was able to buy premade because many of them were very processed. I have a limited amount of time in a week to get what I need to done since I work full time and do school full time as well. Since I tried to plan things ahead of time though I tried choosing things that might be easier. I stuck to things like vegetables and potatoes for sides since they would be simple and easy to accomplish. For my main dishes I kept things simple as well with chicken cutlets in various ways and some salmon since there wouldn’t be much more I would need to do with them outside of throwing some seasonings on them and baking them. Pasta is one of my favorite go-tos for dinners so I also made a batch of homemade pasta for the first time in a long while. Super tasty and I felt much better mentally about what I was consuming!

For my second eco challenge activity for the energy catagory I chose to try and naturally heat and cool my house naturally. Since it hasn't gotten too hot yet I was able to keep my windows open at night which kept my place cool enough through the rest of the day. I also used some energy efficient fans to pull extra air from outside and to help increase the airflow inside. I don't think it was a massive leap from what I normally do which is run a window AC unit in my room and hole up in there, but I am sure it helped reduce some power consumption as a whole.

For my first Eco challenge activity for the waste category I chose to do 'using a reusable water bottle'. I chose this because over the last few months I have been bad about buying single use water bottles to drink at home. I primarily started doing this because I like to have cold water and I found it easiest for me to have a bottle already set for me to grab and go. For some reason I found that I would actually drink water this way which I normally have a bad habit of not drinking as much as a should. I tried to remedy the waste I created by at least getting the gallon jugs of water to dispense into cups. This worked for a little bit before I started to not drink as much water again. Using reusable water bottles also wasn't working because for some reason my brain had a problem with how it tasted. What did work however was simply reusing the plastic ones I did have and use. You can see with the picture attached me reusing one of my drink bottles to hold a new drink rather than buying a drink from the store that I would later throw the bottle away from.