Playworks sells toys that invite play and enhance development in children from birth through age five

By Alice Debbaudt

So the saying goes. Where did it come from? Certainly we don't walk around asking ourselves if we had one today, or go to the grocery and think "I need 28 apples this week for my family of four"! So, was it meant as a reminder to just think about eating apples, or was it some attempt to remind us to eat fruit every day? Or does a daily consumption of an apple really keep the doctor away?

I personally think the meaning was a combination of all the above reasons, altogether creating a good habit, or discipline, about keeping healthy versus being prone to sickness.

The daily practice of choosing a healthy lifestyle is a discipline, one that is harder and harder to show our children by example as we rush to work and back again. We all know it's important, but we can't always help ourselves from skipping essential parts of a healthy regimen.

It reminds me of how hard it is to follow the recycle-reuse-rebuy cycle. I know I recycle, I try to reuse, but I'm never sure about the rebuy part. What am I supposed to rebuy? Things that have been used before? Only things made of recycled parts?

I am convinced of the necessity and I feel I practice a fairly disciplined attitude towards the green effort. And I think the majority of people practice the same thing. However, I'd like to see more corporations practice a "green" habit of encouraging employees to spend at least fifteen minutes a day outside their cubicles or offices. Outside in the open air, maybe doing a very small chore related to their office building's immediate environment.

I work with schools, helping them start or expand their gardens. There are vast differences between the schools and their efforts. But they have a basic thing in common: they need maintenance! Someone has to occasionally do a little work and if they don't, the work gets really hard. And hardly anyone wants to do it. Everyone says "organize the parents, get some volunteers" Easier said than done these days. If every administrator who wanted to (you can't make people do manual work) did a fifteen minute job a week, then they might find out how rewarding it can be outside observing nature and enjoying the fresh air, or as fresh as it can be in a sprawling urban setting. This might sound outlandish, but if you think how habits can be changed once enough information has been circulated, then just maybe this thought could change the example we set for children towards the environment. Just maybe, if all working people started showing an interest in the outdoors at work, and they found that it was enjoyable, and they started thinking clearer, and they found themselves doing a little more at home in their own yard, and they got sicker less, and they set a good example for their children, and their children started going outside, and the children started thinking clearer, and the children started getting better grades, and the children started exercising more, and children suffered less from diabesity... well, need I say more?

So, a new adage is created: fifteen minutes a day keeps the weeds away!

Alice Debbaudt
Farming's Future an eco-educational non-profit organization