Our dishwasher is broken and we’re on a inflation, summer-camp-rocked limited budget. Very limited budget. These are good dilemmas. That’s the beauty of mindfulness, the prosperity of it, I believe. The how we view something is the variable.

The broken dishwasher reminds me: I use too many glasses in one day.

Coffee, water glass and maybe a new one as not to wake the family while I write to you – grab a freshie. Another glass for bubbly water after three o’clock in the afternoon. Maybe another, by evening, for my (don’t-worry-trending-downward) red wine habit.

The budget is teaching me how quickly I reach for cash for freshie art supplies, when my kid and I have boxes of “awaiting rainy day” trinkets. Beads, we opened last weekend – neglected since last holiday season. Boxes: we manipulated into canvases rather than a quick run to the store to…consume, consume, consume.

On my sister site: @JessHonig – we are celebrating the marvelous book “The (Almost) Zero Waste Guide,” this month as a Mindful Book Club Selection. The read has invigorated my brainstorm – alongside our dishwasher and budgetary circumstances – to practice renewable, less wasteful ways. Here are my personal pivots thus far, and I’d love to hear what others are considering for a world with more renewal and less waste:

• Rinsing my one hot, one cold glasses – using it all week long
• Boxes with sharp angles, cut to attach to flat cardboard, naturally creating framed canvases
• Scraps from school-year kid masterpieces, collaged into Mod Podge abstract art
• During an alleged paper shortage, worried for the future of trees and the carbon drain of mass produced books – perhaps we rethink book production into local, repurposed paper works of art (not yet ready to let go of tactile, non-tech art of the book)
• Share books! Novel…and support the local library
• Nature, as the most wondrous of artistic masterpieces – engage, in impermanent play; sand castles by the sea, muddy puddle hearts, water to pavement. Marvel, let go…
• Turn your non-recyclables into 3-D sculpture magic.

The possibilities are endless. When I was in college, my dear professors at Bryn Mawr – in the Dance Department – Cantor and Caruso-Haviland deserve credit for the roots to my adult artistic perspective. One lesson, I was asked to create a dance in a confined space. I chose a bathtub. Movement choice shifted, a bit less extravagant than open and endless large studio space. Yet, the piece was no less intricate. Perhaps, more so.

I will show you something different from either

your shadow at morning striding behind you

or your shadow at evening rising to meet you…

TS ELIOT, The Waste Land

When we pause long enough, to become aware of our automatic patterns…so many drinking glasses, frivolous consumption, and endless spirals or indulgent sprints to take and take and take and consume…we lose the art of reimagining. I hope to revive my own and do a small part to mend our breaking world.