Rethink. Repot. Rebuild.
While scrolling through my instagram feed I saw an advertisement from a gardener, Ron Finley, who exclaimed that composting was one of the sexiest things you could encounter. In a nutshell, compost is decomposed organic matter and composting is a natural process of recycling organic material such as leaves and vegetable scraps into a rich soil amendment that gardeners fondly nickname Black Gold. This sexy black gold gave me the idea to buy a few plants for my studio and get started on building something, even if it were just little leaf shoots. Compost is the foundation for a plants home.
Plants, even little leaf shoots, clean the air through the process of photosynthesis. One of my goals along with just building something was to give myself an environment that felt serene. I did just that. Walking into my apartment was like walking through the southern bayou on a warm day. These little plants soon became large significances of love, creation, and beauty all at once. It takes a little bit of reading and a hunger for a self-created vibe in your home. Make no mistake, at first 100% of my plants slowly died like jack from the movie titanic fading away in the water. However, failing is how we learn so I was not discouraged. I researched my plant types and added #planthealth to my social media feeds. All in all, I learned that plants simply love sun, water, and compost. Plants need a good foundation if they are going to live a long life and so do you.
Author Jacob Riis of the book How the Other Half Lives: Studies Among the Tenements of New York, said
“By far the largest of crimes against property and against the person are perpetrated by individuals who have either lost connection with home life, or never had any, or whose homes had ceased to be sufficiently separate, decent, and desirable to afford what are regarded as ordinary wholesome influences of home and family.”
This statement speaks volumes about the importance of having a home and how it sets the foundation for your life. Access to housing ensures access to fundamental necessities that lead to overall health and wellness. For example, housing provides a tenant with access to basic human rights, such as clean water, heat, and fire for cooking. It also provides a safe haven from environmental factors. Thus, housing is partly a basis for good mental health, providing peace of mind to an individual whose basic human necessities are met. Homeless shelter representatives will tell you that “housing can go a long way toward producing a psychic level of comfort that would allow someone to open up and begin examining their life” (Smithsonian).
So in the same way that compost adds longevity and health to our plants, a good home adds longevity and health to your life. Build a foundation from the ground up. If your current living situation is unhealthy, deal with it now and repot those floors.
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