Silvie+Maryl – Holistic Living, Plant-Based Diet, Recipes, Love & Relationship, Healthy LifestyleTips

Some people seem to think that recycling means two things: taking your plastics to the recycling bin and/or giving up style. We need to step outside of our mental box and think of recycling, not as a single act, but as a conscious and positive lifestyle of creative expression, unlimited style, and self awareness.

Recycling doesn’t stop at bottles and cans when it is part of a conscious lifestyle. You can find creative ways to incorporate recycling into your daily life in so many more and different ways that it almost becomes a fun game. We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: In the Universe, nothing is ever destroyed; everything is recycled and transformed. We apply this law of conservation of energy in our everyday life. Be creative in your application of the principles of recycling; you are a creative being, so exert this power while making your life and the planet better. From your home to your activities and thoughts, there is much recycling and transformation to be done on a daily basis, a lot that maybe you’re not aware of, but with a now expanded view on recycling and an idea of what the options are, you can take this and transform your life in ways you never thought. Here are a few tips, ideas, and recommendations on how to include recycling as part of your fabulous conscious lifestyle:

Home Decor: One of my favorite hobbies (besides singing and dancing, of course!) is decorating spaces.  My taste is high-end and transitional and for my husband and I, comfort, aesthetics, high-end decor and consciousness go hand-in-hand. So, how do I recycle and stay Palm Beach mid/century glam with a New York contemporary flare? Vintage, baby. Besides painting, gold leafing older items or hand-me-downs, buying vintage is the best eco-friendly contribution for recycling with style. Not only are we resurfacing iconic beauties from the past, and immortalizing their classic style (like my fave – 60′s mid-century, modern, stacked chrome ball lamp, sitting on my home office desk) but we are recycling an item that might otherwise have gone to a landfill.  Many styles return with a twist anyway.  Yes, it can get a bit expensive, but if you know what you are looking for, and search with patience, you will find the items you want for less.  The key is to look through some great decor magazines or catalogs and know what you’re looking for beforehand.  Then, just know where to look. If you are in the Los Angeles area, I can recommend a few of my favorite places, some a little pricey and some very reasonable (the following are in descending price range):

• ✼ m[E] (Material Environment) – If money is no object, this is a fabulous vintage and modern store owned by the amazing Ramon-Maynes, a wonderful spirit with a masterful eye. M[E] focuses on Art Deco, mid-century, and Hollywood regency designs, as well as contemporary, eco-conscious pieces for your home and office.

• ✼ 45 Three Modern Vintage Home - This place is deliciously addictive to us, lovers of home decor.  Founder Stacy Cain has impeccable taste and does the search for you. Her showroom is constantly changing, because her prices are just right.

• ✼ Revival Furniture – Here, they literally revive and restore older pieces very nicely with paint, artistry, and an eye for classic beauties. They only have a few pieces at a time, but it’s worth the trip because you can always go across the street to Saint Vincent de Paul.

• ✼ Saint Vincent de Paul – If you like going to garage sales, you don’t have to wait until Saturday or Sunday.  This thrift store is constantly getting new furniture and home accessories of all types. It’s hit or miss here, but once in a while you’ll find your classic wing chair or 1940‘s tufted sofa ready to be upholstered to the faux suede color of your dreams (and a girl’s gotta dream)

Fashion: Besides going through your grandma’s closet (or your husband’s grandma’s closet) for those classic vintage purses, jackets, and sometimes even dresses that might fabulously fit you (they actually keep them for ever!) how about a clothing swap party? I was recently invited to a clothes swap event created by my colleague and green “it” girl Rachel Avalon, where a whole bunch of women of all sizes and ages get together and bring stuff that has been sitting in their closets for more then 6 months and recycle their own stuff by trading for another gal’s stuff. You can bring a variety of dress-wear, including shoes and accessories (no bras, panties or socks), have fun, laugh, gain a few goodies and newbies for free, Spring-clean your closet, and keep all the clothes out of the landfills. My mom always says, “One man’s garbage is another man’s treasure.” Check out this video where Rachel explains in detail how to create your own clothes swap soiree.

Food: If you follow the HKitchen, you will notice that, in the spirit of Earth month, we have been implementing some “food recycling” techniques, like the use of the leftover mix from the delicious Silvie’s Sea Veggie Cakes in the wonderful Faux Tuna Tartine. Another way to recycle food: When you cook veggies in water (asparagus, for example), save the water and use it to cook something else (like brown rice, which requires water to boil).  This is a great way to save water by recycling, as well as recover the water-soluble minerals that the vegetables lost in the boiling process. You can also recycle leftover garbanzo beans by making them into a favorite snack: hummus. Any of your extra legumes or beans can be recycled into creative spread ideas, like black bean hummus. Recently, I’ve started to save any glass jar that comes my way, to be used at some point as a container. So, every time I make homemade sauces like pesto or hummus, or before and after I soak my nuts and seeds, I put them in my “new” glass jars.

Thoughts: Did you know your thoughts are recyclable? This is a powerful tool to help your health and the planet. How so? Your thoughts emit a frequency, an oscillatory vibration that goes out of you and contributes to the planet’s energy frequency, and then comes back to you at some point. If you consistently have negative thoughts, the amount of negative energy that you emit and that you will receive in return will be detrimental to your health and your planet. We need to recycle our negative thoughts by transforming them into positive ones. Remember, life is a projection of yourself: you are either in a frequency of harmony or distortion.  So, now that you know this concept of recycling thoughts, the next time you have a negative thought, do this: 1) Let’s say your thought comes in the form of an image of something negative that will happen. Say “stop,” stay still for a minute, and then say “cancel” or “delete,” as if you were deleting that image from your mind, 2) Identify the negative feeling (envy, fear, anger) that is attached to this negative thought/image, 3) Create the opposite feeling inside of you (happiness, love, trust), breathe in, and feed from it, and 4) Create a positive thought/image in your mind to replace that old image. This way you didn’t just recycle it – you completely transformed and transmuted it, and transcended from a negative to positive state of creation. This, my friends, is a form of recycling and the truest, oldest healing practice for evolution and elevation.

Remember: You can take these recycling practices and apply them to any area of your life. Just get creative and keep in mind that nothing in the Universe is waste – what seems to be the end of something is the potential beginning of something else. Happy Earth Month!