Hey Everybody!!
How’d you like that attention grabbing title? Did it work?
Some of you mentioned to me that my blog was having issues with the “like” button. Nothing like some technical issues to welcome me back. 😉 I contacted the Happiness Engineers and they got me all fixed up. Now you can like away!
I wanted to share a few July challenges with you in case you are interested in participating in them.
First, did you know that it’s Plastic Free July? You can read more about the global movement here. But a quick overview is that it is a drive to reduce single-use plastics during the month of July. If you’ve been around my blog for a while, then you know that the first month of my year of “this is 40” monthly challenges was about single-use plastic. Here’s the post about that plastic-free month.
I know that we often hear about the evils of plastics and how only 6-9% of it truly gets recycled and tons of it ends up in our waterways and in the bellies of sea creatures. I’m aware that many places are stepping up their game and reducing single-use plastics but we can all add to that with our choices.
Second, if you are a fan of minimalism or just want to have a little push in decluttering, The Minimalists are doing a challenge. I have recently done quite a bit of purging and am not sure I’ll be joining in fully…but I do love a good challenge.
In keeping with the compounding daily theme, I threw out expired grocery store coupons on day one. On day two, I threw out an old pair of socks (funny story there) and some junk mail. Today, I’ll be shredding some check books from an account I no longer have and I’ve deleted some iles from computer, so that more than covers three. I’m traveling to the beach later in the month (yes, again) so I will be counting extra removals for those later dates.
Oh, you want to know the funny story about the socks? Well, even if not…
A teen child of mine had an extra set of socks in the back floorboard of their car some time ago. And by some time ago, probably 6 months to a year ago. After a hiking excursion, a water bottle spilled on the said floorboard and the pair of socks were saturated. They spent the next segment of their life on the floor of the garage near the shoes people wear to mow the yard. I finally picked them up and placed them on the stair railing that leads from the garage to the house. I wanted to make sure they didn’t have creatures from the garage living in them before bringing them inside.
And there they sat…for months…until yesterday…when I decided to throw them out. Now you may be thinking that throwing them out was wasteful. However, I know based on the brand of socks (because I buy all the socks) that these are anywhere from socks. They’ve served their purpose. And it’s likely that if I’d taken the time to unroll the crusty, formerly waterlogged pair of socks that the heels would have been ripped and the elastic wearing out.
Now, on to the third challenge. Also as part of my “this is 40” year of monthly challenges, I spent a month meditating daily and wrote about that as well. For the first three weeks of that challenge, I participated in a 21-day challenge led by Light Watkins. There is another meditation challenge starting on July 15th. This one is led by Deepak Chopra and Oprah Winfrey. If this is something that you’re interested in, you can find the sign-up at this link.
So those are some of the challenges that I’m aware of that are taking place during the month of July. Did any of them catch your fancy? Do you know about any others that are just so intriguing that you want to share them?
To all of my readers in the USA, I hope that you have a wonderful and safe 4th of July celebration. Do you have any big plans? I’m not sure what we’ll be doing yet (it’ll probably involve food), but both of my sons have to work in the evening.
To all of the rest of you readers around the world who won’t be celebrating Independence Day tomorrow, I hope that you have a fabulous 4th of July.
Let your light shine!
Amy
