Carnegie Mellon University

Excellent efforts everyone!!! Thanks for joining the People's Challenge this year! 

Trees are great to plant, and different from planting flowers or food in that they make you pause and think in a much more long term life of what you are planting. Its lifespan and growth are on a totally different scale and that is amazing thing to dwell on while putting a tree in its new home.

I am not new to composting, but am committed to throwing as little away as possible to trash. I am big on gardening at home, so I will use my finished compost (that will be ready later since I just did a harvest of it) on the beds I am planning to plant this upcoming spring.

I think it is critical to spend time outside daily and time moving daily. It is definitely a mood booster to be in the sun or in any weather really. A walk is also a good segue between work and personal time, so that I can mentally let go of the things I am thinking of and give my brain a break.

A few years ago I started to read a few books about minimalism. Cait Flanders' "The Year of Less" was my favorite in this journey, and connected the dots between de-cluttering and purchasing things that are not needed, thus not being so involved in the consumerism cycle. The less clutter I have, the more I notice I don't need that...

I was so excited to get to use my first load of finished compost from my home compost bin. I had an area in my yard that needed the soil amended, so I used a mix of top soil and home compost to prepare the bed. The composting subreddit was super helpful for helping me work through a few issues that had to be addressed with my composting awhile...

  Happiness, Appreciation, Achievement, Respect and kindness.  I had to really think what was important to me.  It has been a stressful couple of weeks so it was a good time to check in to see what is important to me.

The ecochallenge really brought this forward for me.  I have been working on reducing screen time, social media and emails after hours.  It's tempting to just pull your phone out and go down that rabbit hole.  I have been digging my heels in and having that conversation or should I say conflict in my head to take that break.  I am really...

This morning the two men who have coffee on the corner by Dana's waved and smiled - I like connecting with regulars on my route and waving hi as I bike in!