2012 Wrap Up

It's been nearly four years since I started this blog. I find it amazing that I haven't run out of things to say (my husband would probably find it surprising if I did). More than anything else, I have strived to keep this blog useful and inspiring, and hopefully even entertaining. I have some new things planned for the blog in the coming year. In addition to an effort to add more hands-on projects, practical parenting solutions and recipes, I will begin a new personal challenge (one that has my family already panicked), and write about it weekly as we progress. You'll have to click back over on January 1 to hear what the new challenge is - see I'm adding mystery to the blog also!

I've been contemplating pulling together some of the information on this blog in to a book format. I'd love your help on this project. There are almost 275 posts here, so willowing it down to what's most useful/helpful/interesting will be a challenge. If you have thoughts on that, please share. Also, Kid Friendly Organic Life is a mouthful and I'm searching for a simpler title. Ideas?

Wrapping up this year, I've decided to go with a top ten blog post list. These are posts that either a) generated a lot of discussion, or b) are ones that dealt with important issues or information that I want to be sure you didn't miss, or c) they are posts I thought were really great. Hey, it's my top ten list so I can choose it any way I want!

Happy Holidays dear readers. I can't thank you enough for honoring me with your time each week. KFOL is up to over 300 hits a week and should reach it's 100,000th hit this spring. May not seem like a milestone for bigtime bloggers, but for me and my little blog it is. Enjoy!

Top Ten Blog Kid Friendly Organic Life Blog Posts for 2012

10 Stop Junk Mail

9 Chicken Keeping Anyone?

8 Vinegar as Herbicide

7 Eating the 1%

6 Look at Those Bubbles Hon

5 It's Not What You Eat, But What you Eat Ate!

4 The Fly War

3 Me Thinks Thou Dost Protest Too Much

2 Home Ec Circa 2012

1 Families That Eat Together

Less Holiday Hassle and More Christmas Calm

This week’s post is supposed to be about keeping calm and peaceful during the holidays. Maybe that’s an unrealistic goal, but I do believe it’s a worthy one. In light of the past week’s events, perhaps it’s something more of us may strive for this year. 

Most of the pressure we feel at the holidays is expectations we put on ourselves. We want to create a perfect holiday. But sometimes we’re so busy pursuing that perfect holiday that we never get to enjoy it. Here are my suggestions.

 

1. You don’t need to bake every Christmas cookie your mother did. I pursued this at one point in our family history. And you know what? I’m the one who ended up eating all those cookies and berating myself for it. The kids don’t like the ones with nuts on them anyway. Pick a couple everyone likes and stick with that. Or – don’t make any at all! Or better yet – let your kids do the baking (and cleaning up). 

2. You don’t need to put up every holiday decoration you own, every year. Tone down the chaos and pressure a little. You can put everything up 'next year.' And if someone misses a particular decoration, direct them to the appropriate storage bin or shelf. At the end of the holidays make a separate box of all the decorations you don't really like. Mark it "Goodwill Holidays 2013". Next year, without opening it, take it directly to Goodwill. I finally remembered to do that last year and this year it felt awesome to show up at Goodwill with the box (actually boxes!). Decorating was simpler because I wasn't making faces at the things I always put up but never enjoyed. 

3. Cut down on presents. No one needs all the stuff we give them. A few good gifts are much better than a ton of meaningless ones. And anything you run out to buy desperately from Rite Aid two days before Christmas most likely is not something anyone will want. I remember sending my husband on such a mission many Christmas Eves ago when I had finally finished wrapping and realized one of the kids have far fewer presents than the others. It was Rite Aid or the grocery store – everything else was closed. (These days that’s probably not the case, but I’d still avoid the last minute panic shop.) 

4. Give stuff that doesn’t need to be wrapped – experiences and gift certificates can go in a nice card. If it comes down to the wire and you haven’t got a gift ready to go, create a coupon for an experience like a hike + lunch (for a friend) or a movie night with five friends at our house (for your kids). Most people will enjoy time with you more than anything you might buy and wrap. 

5. If you need to wrap – used reusable wrap to make next year easier. See my post on this one. It truly revolutionized wrapping in this household. 

6. Make time for quiet. I know you’re busy. I know your kids are noisy. I know you’re exhausted. But find five minutes of quiet to reflect each day. A great place to do this is in a dark room with a lighted Christmas Tree. Or outside. Or with an animal in your lap. Or standing in your children’s room while they are sleeping. Call it investing in Christmas Spirit. I promise it will make Christmas feel more like Christmas. 

7. Make time for your kids. Read a Christmas book (even if they’re big kids – they’ll probably still love being read to). Ask them what holiday activity happened at school today. Go for a walk, shoot baskets, play music with them. Just be with them. Kids have more down time at the holidays. Take advantage of this. Your presence is the best present. 

8. Enjoy your holiday food. Let go of the guilt. Make a moratorium on stressing over calories. Enjoy a Christmas cookie – slowly, savoring it. Don’t do anything else except eat that cookie. Or sip some eggnog. Yeah, I know it has sixzillion calories, but this is the only time of year you drink it. Even better – warm it up and add Bailey’s! Focus on the taste, the extravagance, and the sheer pleasure – or don’t eat it at all. 

9. Sleep more. Go to bed earlier. Take a nap. Close your eyes for five minutes (not while you’re driving). Rest your soul. This is the darkest time of the year. If you were a bear, you’d be burrowed in your cave, so give in to your body’s natural inclination to sleep more and – sleep more! 

10. Exercise every day. I know, I know. But do something. It’ll relieve stress, keep your guilt in check (remember how you’re savoring those cookies?), and give you energy. You need this. Make it a priority, even if it’s only ten minutes. Can’t find a parking place at the mall – perfect opportunity to get some exercise. Kids making you nuts? Take a time out on the treadmill or put on your sneakers and go for a hike. If nothing else, make more trips up and down the stairs.

 The holidays are a rich time of year. But it can also be a stressful time of year. Let go of some of that stress this year. Don’t worry so much about how the house looks or the kids look or the number of presents or the perfect holiday. Instead enjoy the holiday you’ve got. Truly enjoy it. Instead of wishing everyone a Happy Holiday, actually have one.

 

Postscript from previous blog: We decorated our Christmas Cookies with all natural dyes. There was much weeping and gnashing of teeth, but in the end they still looked great and, more importantly, tasted wonderful!

Dye-Free Christmas Cookies

Many moons ago when food dyes
 roamed free in our house

No holiday is complete without Christmas cookies. My children devotedly subscribe to this theory. Last year, somehow amongst the guests, gifts, and chaos of Christmas, we never got around to making Christmas cookies. You know the kind- cut in to bells and reindeers and stars and loaded with icing and sprinkles and candies. The store-bought decorations were so chock full of artificial ingredients, food dyes, and preservatives they last for centuries (I know this is true because we still have a container of silver ‘bullet’ candies that I purchased before I had kids).  

Early last January, my youngest child pointed out the travesty and accused me of depriving them of Christmas cookies! You’d have thought I’d sold off his legos and barbequed the cat. As soon as Thanksgiving concluded this year, maybe before the pumpkin pie even, he began his lament, “Last year we didn’t even make Christmas cookies!”    

This year we’re going to make Christmas cookies, I promised. We aren’t going to forget. But there is this part of me that doesn’t want to make them. I don’t want to watch as my children load up their delicious homemade whole-wheat sugar cookies with artificially colored and sweetened candies. I’m not that naïve. I do realize the toppings are the whole point of Christmas cookies. The cookies themselves are simply a conveyor for the forbidden candies that I never buy for my children the rest of the year. They revel in the colored sprinkles, M&M’s, and jimmies strewn atop dye-laden brightly colored icing.

So what’s a mother to do? I’ve made organic pop-tarts, cheezits, and chocolate chip cookies. I would find a suitable alternative. Chocolate chips, yogurt covered raisins, chocolate covered pretzels, and organic candy coated sunflower seeds are all well and good, but the real problem, the sticking point in all of this is the food dyes necessary to color the icing. My spoiled children are accustomed to having five or six different brightly colored frostings to choose from. How would I do this? It’s not like Easter when you can use onion skins for pink and yellow. Somehow I suspect they might complain if I dyed their frosting with onion juice. 

But what about cherry juice? Or apple juice? Grape juice? Blueberry juice? I turned to the internet and discovered there is a whole plethora of suggestions out there. So I commenced experimenting. I whipped up a huge batch of homemade buttercream frosting and I started coloring.  

We had cherries, strawberries, and blue berries in the freezer, so that was an easy start. I thawed them out and drained the juice. Pink! Lighter pink! Purple! But no red! The blogs on the internet claimed you could make red from beet juice. No beets in the cupboard. And really how red are beets? They’re really more a chartreuse. Cranberries crossed my mind, but it was time to move on to another palate.  



From top clockwise- strawberry, cherry,
spinach, blueberry, and carrot/orange (yes that
speck in the green might be an errant piece of spinach!)

Next I shredded carrots in my food processor and dumped them in a colander with some sugar (to draw out the juice) to drain. Orange was a big disappointment. I added real orange juice squeezed from an orange I found in the very back of the fridge. It was hard on one side, but it did have juice. The icing turned only a faint shade of peach which didn’t look orange at all unless you put something stark white next to it. The bloggers claimed that if you drained the juice from golden beets, you could get a bright yellow-orange. No beets here. They also suggested saffron. What?  

Green was the big challenge. I have a friend who makes smoothies with spinach and swears you can’t taste the spinach if you mask it with enough fruit. Would spinach juice work? I retrieved a bag of frozen spinach, thawed it and chopped it to oblivion in the food processor. Then I drained juice from the spinach and added it to the frosting. It created a lovely muted shade of puke green. One of the kids wandered through the kitchen during my spinach activity and passed the word. No one would try the green frosting besides my husband, who did so under duress. He declared it “tastes like frosting.” 

My colors do seem more appropriate for Easter, but at least we now have options beyond white without the help of artificial food dyes. My colors were pretty, if muted. And the bonus is that the icing is even yummier with strawberry juice! A note to anyone thinking of trying this at home – you’ll need to add more confectioners sugar when you add the ‘dyes’ or the icing becomes too runny. One more note – if you purchase juice for your dyes, be sure to check the labels because many commercially processed juices add food dye to achieve the optimum color. 

The success of my icing inspired me to make colored sugar. I had on my shelf some coconut and raspberry sugars I purchased from a local shop, so I figured I could mix any of my ‘dyes’ above with white sugar and make some of my own. I made some blueberry sugar, but decided against spinach sugar or carrot sugar. 

The real test will come this weekend when we apply my concoctions to our Christmas cookies. Personally, I think these will be the yummiest ones yet, but my children are skeptical. Sugar has the power to win over even the stubbornest child, so I’m taking bets on whether this year’s cookies will be decorated or not. To be continued….

Holiday Decorating on the Cheap

I have to begin this week’s post once again with a disclaimer: I am decidedly NOT a decorator. It’s not just that I don’t have any knowledge of decorating and have never even perused a decorating magazine; it’s that I have very little interest in the idea of decorating. Don’t get me wrong – I completely appreciate someone else’s ability to decorate a house or lawn or child. It’s just that I take no joy from my own efforts. In fact, I have nearly no interest in the idea of it.  

Occasionally, I do rally the troops hidden in my brain and carefully choose a new paint color or arrange a few flowers, but for the most part there is no theme, style, or strategy to the way my house, lawn, or children look. Although I do wish the lawn were decorated with a lot less garden jumble and child flotsam. The children prefer to decorate themselves without my assistance. (And they do seem to have a unique “style” all their own. My oldest was even a trend-setter in kindergarten when the zip off pants were all the rage. Each day at some point during the day, he would zip off the bottom portion of one of the legs of his pants. Not both, just one. This made him look like a pirate because his little white leg resembled a peg leg. It was cute until other children started doing the same and parents complained when pant legs were lost. That was the first call home from a teacher.) 

When it comes to holiday decorating, I’m even worse. Most of the time I just don’t see the need for it. I stick to minimalist efforts for the most part. I used to only put up Christmas decorations (most of which were wedding presents – what’s with that?). But then my children guilted me in to buying Halloween and Easter decorations. And then my youngest visited a friend who decorates as if her home is a finalist in Extreme Makeover: Holiday Decorating Edition. He came home incredibly disappointed in his mother’s meager efforts. Since then, I’ve tried to step it up a bit.  

Here are the guidelines for my holiday decorating:

1. It has to be cheap (as in expense, not value).
2. It can’t take up much room in the off-season.
3. If it’s made of perishables, all the better.
4. It has to be tasteful and/or meaningful.

With that in mind, I’ll share my best tips.

Supplies that can help:

-A big spool of wired red ribbon
-Evergreen branches (if you don’t have some in your own neighborhood and you’re local, feel free to cut some of ours. We have gobs of evergreen trees and I’ll even loan you my clippers.)
-A box of shiny ornaments (dollar store and walmart are good sources, although I found some at the Goodwill)
-Pinecones (These need to be collected through out the year. The ones lying around on the ground now are undoubtedly mashed and moldy)
- Christmas Cards (the ones that you receive in the mail)
- Children's Holiday Craft Projects (What? You didn't save them?!)


Tie pretty red wired ribbon on anything and it becomes a holiday decoration (including the dog). I’m pretty horrible at the ribbon tying, but this much I know – start with one end longer if you want your bow to be even and use wired ribbon because it’s incredibly forgiving and anyone can make it look good (even me).

 

 Utilize nature. It’s free. Evergreen trees and bushes are everywhere and they forgive a little trim this time of year.

 

 

Pull the dead stuff out of your porch pots.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fill it with evergreen branches arranged artfully, tie a colorful ribbon on it, and set it on your front porch.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Add evergreens and a ribbon to a wreath you already have.





 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Attach greens to porch lights, mailboxes, signs (be careful not to allow them to touch bulbs).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fill a bowl with bulbs, pine cones, candy canes or peppermints (if you use mints, tell your children they are fake or that they’re left over from five years ago so they won’t beg you for them on a daily basis. If that doesn’t work, tell them the dog had them in her mouth.). Again, add a ribbon if possible and it’s instantly festive.

 

 

Add white twinkly lights to anything – an old sled, a porch decoration you already have, a chair, a mirror, whatever happens to be lying around (not the dog).

 

 

Hang up your children’s Christmas crafts from years past. I love this one. It’s my favorite thing to put up each year. I love the fingerpainted wreaths made from their tiny handprints and get a sentimental chuckle out of their signatures on the back of each creation.

Find a clever way to display your Christmas cards. We tape them up as we receive them around the doorway in to the kitchen. You could also hang a string like a clothesline along a wall and clothespin them to the line. (no pictures because we haven't gotten any Christmas cards yet - C'mon people!)

 

One last idea that will not only decorate your house, but make you feel as thought you've got Christmas under control: Wrap the presents that aren’t for the short people in the house and place them in a nice decorative pile in a window, under the tree, or as a table centerpiece.

 

This morning it was nearly 60 degrees here. Bizarre, but lovely. I spent a half hour decorating my porch. It cost me $3 for the spool of wired ribbon which was on sale for half price. I spent $6 on a short string of white LED lights. Everything else was free. 

Bottom line: Holiday decorations don’t need to cost a fortune or take up half your basement. If I can do this, you can do this.

 

Give Them Something They Don't Have to Dust

I’ve been slacking off lately, what with the holiday preparations and all. Kidding. About the holiday preparations, but not the slacking off. In light of this realization, I’ve decided to dedicate the next four posts to holiday preparations – presents, decorating, food, and staying sane – in that order.  

What to give? I first need to preface this by sharing my philosophy that we all have plenty of “stuff”. Very few of us truly need anything. But many of us delight in giving gifts during the holiday. I would be one of them. I love to see the faces of my loved ones when they open my gifts. In fact, I even love wrapping the gifts. I keep extensive lists on my phone throughout the year of ideas I come across that would be perfect for a certain person. So I’m all about gift giving, but I’m fundamentally against stuff accumulating.

Here are my gift giving guidelines:

1. The smaller the better (in size not substance).
2. Perishables before permanence.
3. Experiences are WAY better than anything you have to dust.
4. You can never go wrong with books.
5. It is ALWAYS the thought that counts.

So, with those thoughts in mind, I’ll share a few of my favorite gifts. Feel free to copy, adapt, or ignore.

1. Charitable gifts. These are always a good idea because they are in line with all of my guidelines. But as I’ve said, I love the wrapping of objects and a small piece of paper proclaiming that money has been given in the recipients name, just doesn’t cut it. Here’s a few ways I’ve gotten around that:

-         Give used books along with a donation to any cause, one that promotes literacy if you like thematic gifts. I spent a year saving each book I read, underlining the parts I liked, making notes in it, and then affixing a post-it with the name of the person I thought would most like it so I’d remember come Christmas. I bundled the books up with a pretty ribbon and tag, with a note saying I’d made a donation in their name instead of buying new books.

-         Give a gift of animals through the Heifer Project along with cookies in the shape of the animal given or a drawing or clay figure representing the animal.

-         For teachers, give a bundle of pencils or package of paper clips (or just about any school supply, they can always use them) with a donation to an organization that promotes education. I did this last year for the I Have A Dream Foundation, and the teachers were truly touched. I did something similar for the music instructors with a charity that promoted the arts. 

2. Family Picture gifts. These work because relatives, particularly grandparents, are happy to get updated pics. Besides the lovely framed photos, you can:

-         Make a bookmark with pictures, notes, illustrations of the kids, yourself, whomever would delight the receiver. Laminate it, punch a hole in it and add a decorative ribbon (you can add beads or charms to the ribbons for extra flair)

-         Calendar of family photos. This can be simple using an online service like snapfish, or fancy if you have the time to scrapbook each page. I’ve been doing this for years and since it easily eats up multiple days, it’s a gift of my time as much as the pictures. I enjoy the process and reflect on the faces in the pictures and the people I’m making them for as I create.

-         Family Picture Book. My sister-in-law gave my kids a small spiral bound blank book filled with pictures of their cousins doing all kinds of activities. Simple things like cooking, playing sports, and making funny faces. It was narrated and laminated. My kids enjoyed reading that book nearly every day for years. We still have it but it’s so mashed and stained, I didn’t want to post a picture because it wouldn’t do the idea justice. 

3. Baked gifts. This is an old standby, but people always appreciate it, especially single, young, or elderly people who don’t have the inclination, time, or energy to bake holiday treats themselves.

-         Truffles are easy to make and always impress. Here is the recipe for Oreo Truffles (although I coat mine with white chocolate - much better). Every year I have given these, people beg me for the recipe. Disclaimer: this is in no way a healthy or organic gift!

-         Granola is a healthy alternative to cookies and candy. It is easy to make. I’ve posted my granola recipe in a previous blog post. Fill pint jars and cut a small piece of fabric or decorative paper to dress up the lid.

-         Bread is a simple and much appreciated gift also. I started doing this instead of candy for a friend who is diabetic, but everyone who has received a fresh, homemade loaf of bread has loved it. Easy to do, especially if you have a breadmaker (but I take the dough out and bake it in a traditional bread pan so it’s a normal shape and not that odd hat size loaf)

-         Infused Oils and Vinegars. This requires that you purchase an appropriate bottle, but they are relatively inexpensive and you can be fancy and paint on them or just dress them up with a ribbon. Recipes for simple infusions (rosemary olive oil, raspberry vinegar) are all over the internet, but most require only that you leave the additive in the oil for a period of time, so get started on this one soon if you want to give infused treats! 

4. Experiences. These are my favorite gifts because they take up no space and they force us to go do something, sometimes things we’d never do if someone else didn’t pay for it.

-         Tickets to see plays, musicals, concerts given with a flyer for the venue or a small trinket that goes with the theme or a bag of popcorn (white-chocolate covered is my favorite!)

-         Gift certificate for bowling, ice skating, laser tag, mini golf, whatever floats your boat with a box of twizzlers, mittens, golf tee or something useful that is in keeping with the activity.

-         Prepaid lessons – guitar, sailing, archery, drawing, painting along with a guitar pick, sunscreen, pencils, etc.

-         Subscriptions to magazines, wine-of-the-month club, flowers-of-the-month club, or better yet a CSA membership!

5. Homemade gift certificates. I add this one trepidaciously (I think I invented that word!) because I am aware that many of these well-meaning certificates or coupons don’t ever actually come to fruition. I am in possession of coupons for clean rooms, dishes done, etc. which I’ve never been able to use because there always seem to be fine print involved (“I’m too tired,” “but I have homework”). Still, these are great stocking stuffers. I use them in our advent boxes (25 little boxes they open each day of advent).

-         Get-out-of-kitchen chores free for one night card

-         Ride to the movies for you and three of your friends (notice this is only a free ride, not a free movie)

-         Choose your own dinner coupon (must be redeemed at least 48 hours in advance of said dinner) 

I’m sure many of you have ideas about holiday gift giving. If you’d be willing to share them, please add them as comments on the blog site (rather than responding on Facebook or in e-mail to me as most of the comments come in). That way more people can read them. I know it’s an extra step, and who needs extra steps at this busy time, but think of it as your gift to the rest of us, or to the universe in general. 

One more comment I must add: Please consider using something other than paper to wrap your gifts. I posted about our simple fabric wrapping that saves time, money, and the planet. If you have other wrapping ideas, again please share them to the blog.

Next week: Simple holiday decorations that don’t blow the bank or take up half the basement in the off season.

One Person's Trash is Another's Treasure

This Thursday is America Recycles Day. I know you’ve already got your champagne chilling and your streamers ready (made from old magazines and newspapers I’m sure), but just in case you need some incentive to celebrate, I’ve prepared a little tribute to my favorite recycling organization. 

I couldn’t let this special day go by without highlighting my favorite recycling method – freecycle.org. If you haven’t signed on to the freecycle in your area, do it right now. I mean it. You can give away (“recycle”) just about anything – and I mean anything. Everything listed is free and local. How awesome is that?

I listed a big box of broken crayons and had eight takers within hours! Plastic fish-shaped candy molds – gone! VCR/DVD player that only works as a DVD player – too many takers to count.  

Recycling doesn’t always mean sorting your trash. It can also mean giving things away, or acquiring “recycled” items instead of buying new. 

I checked today to see what kind of gems were listed on my local freecycle and here’s a sampling of OFFERS:

 Hospital bed

Brother multi-function printer

Ranger Rick magazines from the late 70’s and early 80’s

Kids wooden play set (you dismantle and haul)

web Christmas lights

breast feeding supplies

white salt and pepper shakers

Danielle Steele books on cassette (now there’s an offer I can’t refuse…)

Golf balls (gotta love a thrifty golfer)

Stanley’s Dinosaur Round Up DVD

Kid’s wagon

Toaster Oven

 And even if you’re embarrassed to list some of the items you’d like to give away, there are people asking for them every day. Here’s a sampling from the WANTED list:

 1 ½ to 2 inch pipes in six foot or longer lengths (it’s good to be specific)

6ft christmas tree (no mention of real or artificial)

Women’s jeans size 4

Items for a cat (they weren’t very specific)

Craft items for kindergarten students (teachers lurk on this site)

Christmas Sweaters (honest – this was posted in the WANTED section!)

Fanny Pack (yes, this was too)

Canning jars (woman after my own heart, wish I’d known about this site before I bought mine!)

Pushable Lawn Sweeper (not sure what this is, but I’m betting if you have one in your garage behind the bags of stuff you keep meaning to drop off at Goodwill, you do)

Arm Sling

Freezer Burn Meat (truly, it says this) 

The WANTED list is how I got one of my best bread makers. I recently asked for Pampered Chef stoneware, but that must have been the limit. Nobody responded to my plea. Freecycle is moderated for sicko people and all posts have to be approved by the moderator before they appear in the feed. I’ve rarely met the people I’ve bequeathed my junk too. Normally we arrange via e-mail for them to pick the items up from my porch.  

When I picked up my breadmaker it was in an unmarked brown paper bag in front of a garage at a house that had no lights on. When we pulled up my husband was sure this was actually a drug deal. Great breadmaker, though. 

So celebrate America Recycles Day and recycle something besides cardboard and aluminum. Get rid of the items that are just taking up space in your life and pass them along to someone who will treasure them (or at least use them).

This is a great project for your kids. Maybe they can list some items to give away and then list an item they’d like to have. I’m sure someone has the Rockem’ Sockem’ robots in their basement or a paint-by-number set that’s never been opened collecting dust in a closet. It’s worth a shot! Freecycle is loaded with kids’ items. 

This is the bike I'm listing on Freecycle this week. Gently (or not
not so gently) loved, some rust, needs handle bars straightened -
great deal for the price! (FREE)

Teach your children how great it feels to give new life to old things. Talk to them about the importance of recycling. There is enough stuff for all of us already on this earth. Any time you have the opportunity to recycle or upcycle or precycle or whatever you want to call it, you’re making a play to preserve our planet. And that’s the most important reason to celebrate recycling on any day!