Alarm beeps. Wake up. Shower. Get dressed. Rush off to work. Work. Eat donut at desk. Work. Eat salad at desk. Work. Rush to the gym. Work-out. Swing by grocery store. Pick up dinner. Drive home. Eat Dinner. Watch TV. Fall asleep. Alarm beeps…

Ever feel like life is rushing past you? It's tough to get off of the consumer train when you never stop running around. It also leaves you feeling quite disconnected from this earth of ours. Where does food come from? Uh, the store? Clothes? A different store. It sounds like we all need to slow down, and that's today's Tip o' the Day!

Learn how to do things slowly: we want you to get your hands dirty and find out what it means to make something on your own. This may mean that you should plant an herb garden on your windowsill. Start them from the seeds, you'll get to see the whole process from the beginning.

Perhaps you should try making your own bread, juice, or meal from scratch, instead of using packaged & processed foods. If you never make any food from scratch, start with something simple and fun like cookies or muffins. Get the kids involved. You'll probably be surprised how easy it is to make cookies, and that we probably could have survived without "break & bake".

You might even want to try your hand at "slow clothing" and learn to knit, crochet, or sew. These are wonderful and useful pastimes that are being lost in our generation.

Any of these slow activities will help you remember that food and clothes don't come from the store, but from farms - often far, far away. By learning to do things on our own, we'll start to feel more connected to the earth again. We'll also realize that maybe it's not necessary to ship cheap items from the other side of the world just so that we don't have to do it ourselves. In fact, we'll probably learn that so many "cheap" things are really quite expensive when considering their impact to the environment.

So go on! Hurry up and go slow!

Rebecca says: It's funny how all of this fits together like it does. Often when we hear the term "environmentalist", we think of treehugging hippies. We don't all have to go to that extreme, but once you get into some aspects of helping the environment, so many other pieces follow. Part of it is that by doing things on our own and avoiding typical consumerism, we can make a huge and positive impact on the environment. I once lived a very fast paced, "break & bake" cookies kind of life. Now I make almost everything from scratch. I even learned how to knit recently. The environment wins. The sense of accomplishment is a bonus.

Tell us in the comments section: How do you go slow, or plan on going slow?

(Photo credit weeabby's Flickr)

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