Evoking Memories of Europe, Right Here in Dunwoody

I traipsed around Europe one summer during college with my friend, Julie, from Maine. Ten countries, twenty bucks a day, including food (lots of cheese and bread on river banks) and hotels (if you could call the houseboat with the fifteen bunk beds in one room on a canal in Amsterdam a hotel!)

This trip changed my life, for so many reasons in more ways I realize with each passing year. But one of the biggest impressions made on me during this trip was from Julie herself. Julie has this belief that you figure out what you want, and then you find the way to make that happen. When our cheapo backpacks cut into our shoulders by the second day in London, she said we'd find a solution. We bought $10 luggage carriers and were the happiest "backpackers" you can imagine, easily rolling our stuff (which always seemed to include a drying towel draped over it) from city to city (although cobblestones were a bit tough!)

So, over the years, I've thought of that trip and how easily we managed to get around. When I decided years ago I wanted my children to have the experience of walking and biking to school, I not only thought of my own childhood but also of Julie and me and that magical summer.

We live a mile or more from any school my kids have ever attended. Traffic is tough. Hills are hard. Time is always at a premium in all our busy lives. Early on I decided that our walks and bike rides didn't have to be all or nothing, the whole way, every day or forget it. And my goodness, I did this in Paris and Rome and on the island of Corfu! How hard could it be here in Dunwoody?

Over the years, my commitment to walking and biking has meant things like using a sling, a jogging stroller, and a red wagon. It has involved lights on our bikes on too-dark mornings and me driving by the school mid-day to bring bikes home in the car because of after-school activities. It has meant adding panniers to my bike to carry that violin in middle school and to divide up the too-heavy books between the other pannier and backpacks. It has meant purchasing a second set of books for my teenager for at home, ordered used from Amazon. It has meant parking a mile away from the school and then walking. It has meant umbrellas. It has meant warm winter jackets and ski gloves from REI. And, let's not forget, it has meant me doing twice the distance every time since I have to then walk or bike back home.

"I've walked portions of the Romantic Road in the Black Forest of Bavaria," I remind myself. "I've walked around East Berlin, for goodness sake, when the Berlin Wall was still up. I can certainly handle Mt. Vernon Road."

The latest bump came when my younger daughter added a musical instrument to the mix. Her backpack is already very heavy and we've been struggling.

"I guess we can't walk anymore," she said.

Can't walk! What would Julie say?!

I trotted out to the Container Store with a little birthday money I received recently. I intended to get one of those shopping carts you see women pulling on Ditmars Boulevard in Astoria, Queens, but was thrilled to find several more "fashionable" options (when you get to the point where you're calling shopping carts fashionable, you start to realize you're on a different sheet of music, so to speak). And so I got the one pictured above. It holds not only every single last thing my daughter could ever bring home from school, but the seemingly lifetime belongings of her friend as well (who has decided that walking home is fun). We've taken to calling it the Mary Poppins bag. And it feels like a feather when I pull it.

And so, my point? Just think of Julie. Figure out what you want to do, and then find solutions for the barriers you encounter. And, you know what? When we walk home now, with the Mary Poppins bag, I sometimes feel like I hear the clicking of the wheels on those cobblestones and the clinking of glasses of ouzo.

Other examples:

I wanted to stop using plastic water bottles, so I got these a couple years ago:



I wanted to reduce waste in my kids' lunch boxes (we stepped out of the school lunch debate years ago, by the way, by choosing to vote with our dollars and never purchase at school). I also wanted to make their lunchtime more pleasant (especially since one of the schools insisted on having something called "Silent Lunch" almost every single day, and I hear this horrid practice is being adopted at our new school as well), so my mom stitched up some cloth napkins from remnant fabric for us:



I wanted to recycle more food waste but without attracting rodents to my compost pile (and my worms can only eat so fast in that little worm bin), so I got this:



Most of these changes ended up saving us money. There are a gzillion other little changes we've made that didn't cost us a penny to do in the first place, and also ended up saving us money. What's more, I don't think there is one change you can contemplate making for which you can't find a really good solution that someone somewhere is using. Just ask. Search on the internet. And give it a try. Share your best ideas here, or on the Dunwoody Sustainability social networking site. And consider a small change this week that helps you move closer to your sustainability goals. And perhaps, even evokes some memories of being 21 years old in Europe.