Leilani Felan

I decided to challenge myself with carpooling. My roommate and I decided to plan our schedule our so that we can do as many activities together as possible. We were able to go to the grocery store, an event, and the gym together. Instead of driving separately and it was nice to have someone there to do basic chores or necessities together. We have decided to keep this going forward and realized that it was helpful to hold us both accountable to our budget and completing tasks.

I forgot to submit last weeks*
I checked out the farmers market that PSU has and it was so nice to pick up some local products. I will say that they tend to be a bit more expensive which can be hard to justify when I have a lot of graduating expenses coming up. But I do know that these choices are having a better impact on our planet. I love shopping locally, in terms of getting to know the business itself and seeing how passionate they are about the specific item. Whether its flowers, coffee, or cute handmade crafts.

With the weather being sunny and a bit warmer, my friends and I decided to do some exploring in Portland. We got to walk around the city, discover some thrifting pop up shops and meet more of our community. I think the more we connect with those around us the more we care about our shared environment. It was so much fun not driving to a specific location but enjoying the experiences that were around us.

I volunteered through Target to go to a local park with a few other of the team leads and spend two hours trimming plants that were cutting off the water supply to some of the older tress. We had a lot of fun and the park has this cute bridge with a little stream. Its in a quite neighborhood and it felt great to support the trees. It's part of a larger company wide motion that target is doing. Our store has recently got a new compost bin and making strides to be more sustainability. Even though target is such a large company and ship everywhere their system is set up that when a customer purchases an online order, it comes from the closest store that carries the product. This is also part of their initiative to reduce their carbon footprint. Additionally, all volunteer hours that employees record in their personal time, Target will match with a monetary donation to a specific cause.

This week I chose to eat more vegan/vegetarian meals! It wasn't that hard to be honest and I do feel like though this week was just as busy as my previous weeks I did have more energy and was able to push myself harder in the gym and run longer before I felt too tired. I will say that I did plan based meat that doesn't come in plastic packaging so I'm not sure what the weight of pros and cons are for that. But it was one of my favorite meals of the week and I felt like I could use less of it and really load up on the veggies so I was able to use it for a few meals. I didn't have that heavy full feeling after that I normally get on the few occasions I have meat. Lastly, I think my meals looked prettier with all the colors and variety. I don know why but it just put me in a better mood and I felt like I was really enjoying my meals.

This week I didn't purchase any unneeded items. I didn't buy any clothes, beauty products, or miscellaneous items which I will admit is typically pretty hard for me. It was a little hard to not buy anything when I was running errands with my sister but I did stop and think if an item was useful and practical in my life and I found that most of the time the answer was no.