Waste Less Live More-Share It

Crikey, it’s Friday already!
Waste Less Live More Week is flying by…!

Today is all about sharing:

Some children at BigSmall’s school have clearly been working hard on this, and have very kindly shared their chicken pox…! Fortunately, (or unfortunately, as everyone keeps telling me he’ll get it again) BigSmall has it very mildly, but having him home from school has thrown a spanner into my schedule for blog posts and book writing!

Other than sharing bugs, there are lots of ‘things’ we can all share, but I think the most valuable things to share, aren’t things at all, but are skills, and time.
I firmly believe that every single one of us has something valuable-a skill, some free time, a smile- to share with someone else.
I learned last week at the Handmade Fair, that the most common reason for clothes to be thrown away, is because a button has fallen off. Just think, if everyone who knew how to sew on a button, shared that skill with just one other person (and they shared it on, and on, etc) how much clothing we could save from landfill!

If you’re not brave enough to proposition random people with offers of sharing your skills (!) there are some great schemes around to help you do so:

• The Transition Network has a skill sharing section on it’s website, where you can ‘offer yourself up’! Local transition groups often have skill share mornings or evenings as well-find your nearest group here
• The Good Wardrobe has a fabulous Sew It Forward initiative-you can print off a gift voucher and give it to someones instead of a more traditional present-I love this idea!
• I mentioned Streetbank in the Borrow It post earlier on this week-as well as facilitating borrowing things from people in your community, it also enables people to post any skills that they have that they might like to share
• If you want to volunteer your time, and share in that way, then ncvo, Volunteering England, and do-it are all great sites to check out to look for volunteering opportunities nearby
• Save the Children launched a Born to Read campaign to get more helpers into schools to hear children read-you can volunteer here

And talking of sharing, I wanted to share something with you 🙂
Last night, I was fortunate enough to be invited to the Waste Less Live More week screening of the film My Stuff in Hackney.

This is a fabulous documentary, by a very talented chap called Petri Luukkainen-he basically puts ALL of his stuff in storage (including clothes. And pants) and is then allowed to take back one item a day for a year. It’s fascinating, and I would totally recommend you watching it. Before I left to travel up to London, hubby made me promise that I wouldn’t come back and want to put all our stuff into storage. I said I wouldn’t. But do you know what, I kind of do (well, maybe not the pants…)