It’s easy if you do it right…

For some reason we have a tendency to hang on to things even when we know we don’t really need them. But those who have embraced minimalism know the feeling of relief and freedom attained by detaching yourself from “stuff”.

The biggest key to decluttering is to stop it at the source. It’s crazy how easy it is to accumulate stuff you don’t need and it’s even crazier how hard it is to get rid of.

In my decluttering I find it most helpful not to concentrate on stuff. Instead, focus on the habits we have that cause us to accumulate stuff. If you change your habits, denying and decluttering meaningless things will become second nature and you won’t even need to think about.

So here we go…

Start today.

If you aren’t willing to start today, you won’t be willing to start tomorrow. The first step is a baby step, so starting today is no biggy.

Slow and steady wins the race.

Drastically changing anything in your life is really hard and therefore the result is a cycle of intense dedication followed by failure to reach your goals. Example: gym memberships of the new year. Changing at a manageable pace will take longer, but you’re much more likely to succeed in reaching your goal.

Remind yourself that this transition isn’t going to happen overnight. Take baby steps and you’ll see how far you’ve come after a few months. If you want to go nuts and clean out your whole house in one weekend that’s fine. If you want to do a room every weekend, that’s fine too. Just remember that it’s more important to be consistent than aggressive.

Tracking.

We do a lot of things unconsciously and accumulating stuff is one of them. We pick up something here and something there, not noticing that our garage has slowly turned into a junkyard of sorts.

Tracking what you buy is one of the easiest ways to make yourself conscious about these decisions and it’s really simple. When you buy something write it down. This act will make you think about what you buy and when you do that you’re much more likely to make better decisions. Within a few weeks your shopping habits will change and you can leave the pen and pad behind.

Your Action Plan:

Actively declutter

Get a box or a bag that you already have at your house. Find 5 things you can live without and put them in it. Do this every day after work or every Sunday before bed… whatever schedule works best for you. Set an alarm on your phone and spend 5 minutes a day/week getting rid of shit you don’t need.

When your box gets full, donate it and don’t look back. If you start rummaging through that box before you donate, you might second guess yourself and reclutter (yikes!).

Passively shut off the source

Get a small notebook and start carrying it with you. Write down everything you buy, whether it’s a stick of gum or a new car.

This will trigger you to think about everything you buy and in doing so will help you make conscious shopping decisions. After a few weeks you’ll have formed your new habit and you can ditch the pen and pad, but you should dedicate at least three weeks to tracking your purchases.

When tracking you’ll probably be shocked at the amount of stuff you buy and be pleasantly surprised with the money you’ve saved.

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Some trees love (and need) salmon…

Organisms are complex beings made up of hundreds to millions of units working together to form a whole. If one unit goes down the whole organism can be impacted. The organelles of a cell, the cells of an organ, the organs of an animal… the species of an ecosystem.

We generally don’t think of ecosystems as living organisms, but scientific research continues to convince me we should.

To understand the link between salmon and the growth of a forest we need to dig into the story of an unexpected player: fungus.

The invisible underground network

An unbreakable bond: Fungus and Trees

Trees and fungi form a symbiotic relationship that has been evolving for over 400 million years. Without each other, neither would be able to survive, but together they thrive.

In the temperate forests of Canada, biologists have been researching this relationship and its role in the health of this wooded ecosystem as a whole. You might assume that studying some of the other native species such as the bald eagle or grizzly bear would be more interesting, but what they’ve discovered underground is pretty 😲  !

Amongst the tree roots lives an almost invisible fungus (about 1/10 the size of an eye lash), which forms an extensive underground labyrinth. Tiny fungus tubes intermingle with tree roots, branching out in a vast network of tunnels like an elaborate subway system.

This hidden transportation hub is remarkably vast. One study found up to 7 miles of this threading in just one pinch of dirt, and it spans the subterranean soil connecting trees and shrubs like an internet for plants.

Why do the trees and fungus need each other?

On the surface, the relationship between fungus and plant is a simple exchange. The tree has carbon (the sugar of life), the fungus provides valuable nutrients. But underneath this basic principle of symbiosis scientists lies an impressive level of complexity.

Trees contribute carbon > fungus contribute minerals and nutrients

Trees soak in sunshine, carbon dioxide, and water, and through photosynthesis they extract the carbon and release oxygen. Trees turn this carbon into sugar which it uses to make its trunk, branches, and other critical tree parts.

Carbon is an essential building block of life, but alone it’s not of much value to vegetation. To achieve their great might, trees also need minerals like nitrogen, phosphorus, magnesium, potassium, copper, etc., all of which can be found in the soil. Without these critical nutrients trees would struggle to grow taller than a foot.

But trees aren’t as good at absorbing these vital nutrients as we all believe. Trees can only soak up these minerals and waters through the tiniest tips of their roots which isn’t nearly enough to meet their needs.

Enter fungus.

Fungus has mastered the transportation of nutrients and water with its vast network of tubes (and as we’ll see in a bit, they’ve also mastered mining, hunting, and scavenging for nutrients). But fungus can’t just live on soil nutrients and water. It needs the sugar of life too.

Because fungus can’t photosynthesize, they rely on trees to do the work. So, in an underground economy of sorts, trees and fungus trade sugar for water and nutrients. (We are almost to the part about salmon!)

The great exchange

To initiate this essential relationship fungal tubes stretch up toward new tree roots and start a chemical conversation of sorts. The chemical signals emitted by fungi prompt a tree’s roots to soften, allowing the fungus to intertwine itself into the plant’s foundation.

This interconnectivity of the two species allows them to exchange packets of sugar, water, and nutrients on a cellular level. One sugar for one nutrient. One nutrient for one water. And so on…

How do the fungi get the minerals?

Symbiotic relationships are awesome, but this one gets even better. The most fascinating part of this story lies in the way fungi hunt, mine, and scavenge for the nutrients they need in order to hold up their end of the deal.

Mining

Fungi are expert miners. Their tubes worm their way back and forth through the soil searching, until they bump into some soil particles – packets of minerals. Once they strike rock they secrete an acid that starts to dissolve the mineral.

The fungus continues this process, tunneling inside the rock to reach little packets of minerals they can then mine and transport. When you look at these rock particles under the microscope you can actually see the little tunnels bored out by fungus.

Hunting

Fungi are hunters too. Their main target (in this northern temperate region) is a small insect called a springtail. Springtails are flea sized insects that spend most of their time munching on leaves of the forest floor. They get their name from their curly appendage on their backside that allows them spring themselves into the air… really high. Fun fact: their self-catapult is equivalent to a human jumping over the Effeil tower.

Springtails also eat is fungus, however, which is what prompted an experiment in which scientists gave springtails some fungus to eat. Their results were unexpected. Instead of eating the fungus, the fungus ate the springtails.

With closer examination, the scientists saw little tubes had grown within the springtails. Furthermore, several of the springtails that had the tubes inside them were still alive! Fungus were mining nitrogen from the living.

In a similar study scientists found that 25% of the nitrogen from springtails ended up in the trees. But springtails aren’t the only source of Nitrogen.

They’ve also traced nitrogen in tree rings back to salmon, which is why scientists also refer to fungi as scavengers.

Scavenging

Bears on the northwest are famous for their salmon fishing abilities. After a catch they often wonder into the forest and find a place to sit and enjoy their meal.

Bears can be pretty picky eaters when they have a plentiful supply of salmon. They’ve been observed peeling the skin off fish to reach the fillet and even opening the stomach to reach an egg sac, leaving behind the rest of the fish.

The result of this seasonal feeding frenzy is a transportation of salmon from stream to forest floor (and eventually up into the canopy).

This is where fungus comes back into the picture.

After the carcass has seeped into the soil from decomposition the fungus sucks up the nitrogen into its network and distributes it to the trees. Salmon are such a rich source of nitrogen for vegetation. In some areas up to 75% of the nitrogen in the trees originated from fish.

If you take away the fish, you take away an essential building block for vegetation.

Closing remarks

The more I learn about our earth’s ecosystems, the more I see our world as one big organism. As with any organism, whether it be a cell, organ, or species, if we neglect the health of it’s components we neglect the health of our planet.

This story of fungus, trees, and salmon is quite simplified, but even a broad understanding of how our world helps us make conscious decisions in our daily lives. Are we going stop to contributing to the problem or just keep ignoring it? I don’t suggest we stop eating fish, but maybe it’s time we widen our perspective and be more aware of the impact our decisions have.

For even more detail on the underground network of fungus see Radio Lab’s podcast From Tree to Shining Tree. Their half hour narrative is worth every minute.

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It’s too easy to ride the bench…

When you look at sustainability as a whole, it’s overwhelming. The scale of such an immense problem as global warming makes us, as individuals, feel powerless. I’m 1 out of 7 Billion people on this planet. There really isn’t anything I can do except wag my finger at those corrupt politicians and fat cat businessmen making money off the destruction of our planet.

That’s why, year after year, despite our desire to be involved, we hang on the sidelines.

Yes, I’m guilty too. The truth is, I don’t have the time, energy, or know how to fight every battle. If you work and have a social life and want to have some free time to do the things you enjoy, you’re not left with a ton of time to be an effective activist for more than a few causes.

But that’s okay. You don’t have to play every position and be the MVP. You can be a role player and still enjoy success.

Sustainability is a team effort that won’t be solved by one global treaty or a new sustainable clothing brand. We need everyone tackling the issues they can. Let the politicians be politicians and the revolutionaries be revolutionaries. Let’s stop wagging our fingers and start using our talents to drive change.

Yes, some things are out of our control. But we can control the things we buy, the causes we support, and the habits we form. We can make an effort to do good in the work we do. We can donate some of our free time to a good cause. We can be informed citizens that make good decisions.

We should be confident that our actions make a difference and even if you don’t truly believe that, maybe you can take comfort in the fact that you’re making an effort to be part of the solution instead of part of the problem.

If you’re ready to get off the sidelines and into the game, do two things.

1. Be generally informed. Read a few books, watch a few documentaries. You’ll learn something new and be glad you did. Understanding makes doing way easier.
2. Do what you do best. It’s not enough to just be informed, you have to take action. A common finger wag is that people think they don’t have anything to contribute. They are wrong. No matter what your job or talent is, there is a way to utilize it to have a positive impact on the world.

Here are a few examples.

• Activists – Many are weekend warriors, standing up for what they believe in by attending events and rallies in their spare time. Together, they raise awareness and promote change on a grass roots level. You don’t have to quit your job and join the Sea Shepherd crew to have an impact. Find a cause you believe in and join a group on meetup.
• Social Media Managers – SM is very influential. If you can’t get clients who are doing something good for the world, volunteer some of your time to a cause that you believe in. They need your help.
• Teachers – Today everyone has the chance to be a teacher. People around the world are sharing their knowledge over the web to collaborate and help others solve problems. You can start a blog or YouTube channel and become a teacher today. Are you making your own soap? Upcycling pool toys? Eating local? You can influence others.
• Artists – Inspire and raise awareness through your art.
• Waiters – The food industry is huge and it’s moving toward healthier, more sustainable options. An informed waiter can help educate customers about local or sustainable options on the menu and an inspired waiter may even be able to influence what gets added to the menu or where the restaurant sources its ingredients.
• Admin Assistants – Assistants make a large proportion of decisions in an office and they can take the initiative to “green” it. Initiate recycling, buy fair trade coffee,
• Researchers – Add your name to the ledger of human progress. Every piece of information we gather about our world contributes to our overall knowledge that we can leverage to make better decisions. Follow the rules of science and make your results public so others can continue to build upon it.
• Businessmen – Profit isn’t the only bottom line. Make sustainability a priority in your business or lend your knowledge to a worthy cause as an adviser/volunteer.
• Sales Reps – Work for a responsible company like Patagonia or start convincing people not to buy your product. If you get fired, go get a job at a responsible company.
• Engineers – Build sustainability into your projects. Tech engineers can join startups or attend hackathons in their spare time to help solve some of our pressing problems through tech.

Let’s get in the game. Let’s be generally aware of how our actions impact the world and let’s act on the causes we are passionate about. Just because we don’t have time to start a community group doesn’t mean we shouldn’t join one. There’s room to make an impact in every aspect of our lives, and it adds up quick.

Chances are, your actions will inspire others around you too which will further increase your impact, so you can stop wagging your finger in disappointment and start raising your fist in triumph.

Get in the game!