If you are not ready or unable to make a big change to your life, you can still make smaller changes for a big impact. Tracey Smith from Downshifting Week provides some useful tips:
1. Analyse your time and finance budgets
2. Cut up a credit card.
3. Donate a bag of clothes, toys or useful items to a local charity shop, refuge or recycling centre, or Freecycle www.freecycle.org them.
4. List your usual weekly purchases and eliminate 3 non-essential items.
5. Plant something in the garden to cultivate and eat and start a compost heap.
6. Cook a meal using seasonal, local ingredients, preferably organic.
7. Enjoy the enormous benefits of keeping a few chickens, preferably ex-battery.
8. Hand-make a simple card for the next birthday or event on your calendar.
9. Tonight, turn the television off, switch the radio on and play a few games and talk.
10. Book a half-day off work to spend entirely with someone you love.
For more information on downshifting or downsizing please visit:
Stepping Off
Downshifting Week
Choosing Voluntary Simplicity
