Cheap or free things to do to make your town a better place

A guide by a punk hippie that loves community, the environment, and keeping stuff accessible to the masses

Support your library

One of the most important things you can do for your community is help it keep its library, the hub of free, community supported knowledge and resources. Some ways you can do this are.....

1. Just get a library card - Free

This helps the library's numbers go up so the government will give them more sweet, sweet funding. Encourage your friends and family to do this too, hell, shout in out in Walmart. Go door to door if you have to. GET A LIBRARY CARD!!!!! You don't even have to check anything out (but that helps too, as you'll see in my next point)

2. Check crap out - Free

Of course, the library has books, but a lot of people don't know that it also has a buttload of other stuff you can check out too. For FREE! It depends on your library of course, but they can have CDs, DVDs, fishing gear, gardening tools, normal building/repair tools, instruments, and even telescopes. All. For. Free. This also helps their stats for, again, that sweet, sweet funding. And did I mention it's totes free?

3. Attend library events - Free

Again, it depends on your location, but most libraries hold a bunch of events and you can usually see the schedule on their website. I checked my local library's website and I was blown away, socks blown off and all, at how many events they had, and I live in Buttass Nowhere Midwest, so it's not just a city thing. Legit, check out your library's calendar.

I know I sound like a library propaganda machine, but it's something worth propagandizing. Seriously, libraries are important. Read Fahrenheit 451.

Help your environment

Gotta nurture the world we live in mannnnn (hippie voice.) But seriously, environmentalism is punk rock as hell.

1. Diversify your lawn - Free to cheap

The enemy of the ecosystem is the flat, green, grass lawn. It might look nice to Suburbia Brad, but it isn't nice to the bees and butterflies that hold up the world. Some ways to make your yard more eco friendly are mowing less, planting local wildflowers in your lawn, and even planting pollinator gardens (or any type of garden for that matter.) If you have some more money and time you can even replace your grass with a different ground cover plant that doesn't require mowing, like clover or moss.

2. Compost - Free to cheap

This is a cliche one, but it really is a good one. All you need for compost is your regular trash and a bin (or just a place to put a pile, but most people use a bin.) Throw your food waste, leaves, paper trash, etc. into your bin/pile and just let it do it's thangggg. All you have to do is keep it moist and stir it around every once in a while and then you have a nice fertilizer for your (hopefully eco friendly) lawn or garden and less trash goes in landfills.

3. Seedbomb - Cheap

Seed bombs are little balls of seeds, compost (if you followed my second tip, hint hint nudge nudge), and clay that you can throw in your yard or in unused plots of grass or dirt around town (Make sure it's not Suburbia Brad's flat lawn... He's being an enemy to the ecosystem, but he can still make his own choices... *I say spitefully with spite*) to plant local plants that help pollinators, increase biodiversity, and just create a better ecosystem overall.

Heres a handy little tutorial for making seed bombs!

https://www.wildlifetrusts.org/actions/how-make-seed-bomb

4. Pick up litter - Free

Pretty self explanatory I think. Pick up litter, man.

Other crap

The island of misfit toys community tips

1. Support local businesses - Okay, this one might be expensive. Sorry!

This one is pretty obvious, but a lot of people ignore it. DON'T!!! The town is the people, not Walmart, not Starbucks, not Dominoes or whatever. Whatever you need, there's almost always a localized way to get it. Remember kids, there's no ethical consumption under capitalism, but there's definitely more ethical and less ethical consumption. Local consumption is always more ethical. Small coffee shops, local farmer's markets, that guy that owns chickens and sells eggs Straight from the Ass. There's always someone for everything you need, I promise.

2. Volunteer - Free

Looks great on a résumé, does great for the communité. Some good places to volunteer at are animal shelters, homeless shelters, soup kitchens, or like, local dinner theatres (is that just a my town thing?) It's helpful and also... fun!

3. Get involved in local politics - Free

Seriously, learn about who's running for office, what's happening, and what you can vote on. Then, vote your ass off. Vote your heart out, baby. This is IMPORTANT!!! Of course you have to wait until you're 18 to vote, spring chickens, but you don't have to wait until you're 18 to get educated! Learn about what's going on and you can still campaign for what you believe in. You can even organize protests. Political activism is really accessible man, you could even just stand by the street with a sign. Easy peasy pumpkin peasy, pumpkin pie MFer. (There are some kids that do that near me BTW, sign-standing is the hip new thing)

That's all! Now go forth and IMPROVE the WORLD my beautiful SpaceHeyliens!!!!!

P.S. This list is an ever-growing work in progress. Tell me more things in the comments and I'll add them!