While doing another declutter of my desk recently, I found this essay that I had written while I was in 7th grade at Saint Ursula Villa that I had saved, stuffed away in a folder from a previous desk declutter:

If I could do one thing to make the world a better place, I would stop people from littering. I hate driving to school through Madisonville and seeing piles of trash all over the ground. Why should other people have to walk over trash just to get next door? If I could clean up the streets then the people might see how good the streets could look if they just took a little time to pick up the trash. It would also show people that they shouldn’t throw away their trash on the ground. God made thus world and He wanted it to be beautiful, but with all the garbage everywhere, it isn’t beautiful like He wanted.

First, I would try to get more trash cans and recycling bins around the streets. If there were more trash cans, people would throw away their trash in the cans instead of the ground.

After there are more trash cans, I would try to pick up all the garbage on the streets and throw it all away in the new trash cans. I would try to organize a couple of my friends to come clean up the streets with me for maybe one or two days a month so we can keep our city clean.

There are so many people who throw their unwanted materials out of their car windows. If I made a sign and put it on our car, then maybe a couple people would see it and start to think about what they have done to the world when they threw out their junk on the street, making them stop before they threw anything else out the window.

Next, I would try to show people that littering makes the world dirty. I would try to organize some of my friends with me to talk to people about how dirty the world is because of how many people just throw everything on the ground, because there is no where else to put it. I would tell them to hold onto their trash until they saw a trash can or recycling bin.

In the parks there is a ton of litter. I would go pick it up. Little kids are running around playing hide-and-seek, then one little boy that is hiding near where a couple of teenagers were smoking. He picks up the cigarette butt and begins sucking on it because he saw the teenagers doing it. His friends come over and find him smoking it, so now they want to try. Those teenagers wouldn’t know that from them throwing their cigarette butts on the ground, that these little kids who were watching them are now pretending to smoke their trash. Cigarettes are the most common piece of trash you’ll find on the ground, so I would tell smokers to carry a little baggie with them so after they Smush the cigarette, they could put it in the baggy instead, then throw it away when they spot a trash can. People walking dogs should also carry baggies with them. The dogs will go to the bathroom and their owners just leave the dog droppings sitting their for other kids or adults to step in.

When one kid is out with his friends he might see trash on the floor, so he decides to throw his trash right there next to it, since the other kids already did it. I would go over there and pick up the other kids trash and put both his and the rest of the trash inside of a trash can.

Most people don’t care about throwing trash on the ground because they will never have to see it again, but what about the people that live there? They are the people who will have to see the trash again. They wouldn’t have to pick up other peoples’ trash outside their home.

I am hoping people would listen to me and stop littering and stop throwing things out of their hands or car windows. There is no need for that.

Reading it made me feel really grateful to have been taught to love & care for our earth so deeply from a very young age and made me feel proud to look back and see that I have stayed true & consistent in my values in regards to my love for the earth and Mother Nature. I haven’t compromised or forgotten this as I’ve gotten older; in fact, I believe that I can honestly say I have become someone that this little girl, my younger self, would be SO proud of. Looking back, I can say that I completed the mission that I set out to do, plus so much more…. seriously, how cool is that?!

I have grown to become a steward of our earth in my daily life: growing gardens that I have had Pollinator Garden Certified through our local zoo & recognized my home as a Cerified Wildlife Habitat through the National Wildlife Federation. I have deeply instilled these values in my children: picking up litter wherever we go, even when we are laughed at or told it’s dirty to have children touch trash (although most of the people who witness us out & about do stop to tell us we’re doing a great job), as well as placing a huge emphasis on Nature Studies in our homeschool curriculum. In our home, we strongly believe in leaving the earth better than we found it. We have been learning and developing our mini homestead as a family, growing & preserving as much of our own food as we can while learning & honing down our skills as we go, learning about propagating, foraging & Natural remedies. We are fully against the use of herbicides and pesticides. We’re adding bee-hives this upcoming year, to give our already hundreds of bees a safe place to live, hopefully, in exchange for a little raw honey for our family. We do our best to eat organic, shop local, and support other farmers- something that we are very grateful and fortunate to be able to do more of with my husband back in the workforce. We consciously buy clothing made from natural fabrics and we shop second-hand, shop people’s trash, and repurpose items to keep items in use & out of the landfill. We buy in bulk and heavily limit the amount of plastics and single-use items that we allow in our home. I can truly say we are a family of environmental activists, doing our little part to make the world a better & more beautiful place.

If we want to change the world, we first have to make the changes ourselves and in our own homes. I think that any change that makes a difference in creating a better, more beautiful world, no matter how small, makes a big difference.

Until next time ♡ Mama Morozov