The Green Home Coach

BY MARLA ESSER CLOOS

MARLA ESSER CLOOS, NNAHB Master Certified Green Professional, Wellness Within Your Walls Certified Professional and LEED AP, is the principal of Green Home Coach where she uses her "superpowers" to help home professionals and inhabitants to discover and create better homes for healthier, more comfortable lives. Making simple swaps to green and sustainable choices helps create better homes – a bit at a time in existing homes or all at once for new and remodeled homes. Find more at GreenHomeCoach. com and @greenhomecoach on FB and IG

Uncluttering Life ne of my favorite fall

Omemories of the last few years was meeting dear friends for a fall bicycle ride on the Katy Trail. It was a beautiful, out” has been key. To help me achieve this, uncluttering has been a key action. It has not been easy and is an ongoing experience which I continue to learn from. The emotional part of uncluttering is the hardest for me, yet also the most rewarding. The more sunny day – perfect for being outside. We rode to one of the wineries and spent the afternoon on the picnic grounds listening to one of our favorite local music duos – Rogers and Nienhaus. Great friends, great wine and a great time! We have chosen to appreciate the many gifts all around us and our glorious falls offer the simple pleasure of time outdoors enjoying life! In the many aspects of health and wellness, I find myself focusing on 3 in particular – physical, mental, and spiritual wellness. These are part of a 10-step Healthy Living System™ (https://wellnesswithinyourwalls. com/10-step-approach/) from Wellness Within Your Walls™. As a WWYW Certified Professional, I’ve learned ways to improve our health and wellness in and with our homes as part of this system. For mental and spiritual health – which are closely connected – having space in our home where I can get away and “Zen we unclutter, the freer I feel.

JUNK – DONATE, UPCYCLE, AND RECYCLE

So back to our great outdoor experience. To enable us to have our bicycles for this great outdoor experience meant creating easily accessible space for them. And that meant uncluttering space in our garage. We worked hard to organize needed items and then figure out what to do with all the stuff we no longer needed. One persons’ junk may be another’s treasure, yet all too often, we just set our junk out for the trash collection. That junk may be full of items that can have a second life. Some may be able to go to a secondhand shop, such as clothes, household items and furniture. Some may be disassembled and used for parts, like a broken bicycle or power tool. And others may be able to be repurposed into something new, like a table made from an old door. As a last resort, items can be recycled – made into something new from the materials, such as a t-shirt made from recycled water bottles. All of these are ways to make our junk serviceable and keep it out of the landfills. There are many resources and organizations to help. JunkLuggers is a company that has offered environmentally friendly junk removal services since 2004, and a locally owned JunkLuggers will begin booking appointments here this fall. They upcycle, recycle, and donate as much as they can, rather than letting unwanted items add to ever-growing landfills. JunkLuggers makes a green guarantee to donate first, recycle second to extend the life of “junk.” Had we known about JunkLuggers, we would have saved ourselves a lot of research and effort. As it was, we found places to donate and recycle our stuff. It took some work, yet it was worth it to know we weren’t adding to our landfill. I swear I could hear my grandmother’s voice in my head “Use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without!” (a New England proverb I heard often growing up!)

A+

Getting junk out of your life, keeping it out of landfills.

$25 OFF

ON A 1/4 TRUCK OR MORE

Booking appointments starting in the fall of 2021.

Limit one per household. Cannot be combined with other coupons or discounts. Tax not included.

HERE’S HOW WE DO IT:

1. SCHEDULE – Call or visit our website to schedule same or next day appointment. 2. ARRIVAL – We’ll arrive within an agreed 2-hour window and call when we’re on our way.

3. ESTIMATE AND GREEN GUARAN-

TEES – We’ll provide a free no-obligation quote for what you want moved. 4. IMMEDIATE REMOVAL – Upon agreement, our team will remove your items immediately.

5. DONATIONS, RECYCLING AND

UPCYCLING – We will donate as much as possible and send you a tax receipt. We’ll try to recycle or upcycle the rest.

Our service includes:

Residential, commercial, offices, storage units, warehouses, real estate and property management, construction, curbside pick-up, help for hoarders and more! We remove furniture, appliances, household / office items, e-waste, and construction materials.