Let us keep our Sweet Home Rome clean
As I started writing this article, I was so unsure whether to finish it or submit it for publishing, but because I love Rome and its community, I decided to complete it and hoped that our local newspaper, the Rome News-Tribune, will publish it, so all the readers can follow my approach in this article.
Two decades ago my family and I moved to Rome to settle and lived in an apartment. An incident happened during the first few months in Rome. I got a flat tire two times in our apartment parking lot. I often wondered what the cause was. After some searching, I found out that there were some few nails in our neighborhood parking lot. After that immediately I started my journey which was to pick up any nails, trash and litter to keep our neighborhood clean and neat! For the last several years I bought a bunch of cheap garbage pickers, but they did not last long. Last year I went to Home Depot to buy some good quality garbage pickers when I heard a gentleman chat with a Home Depot employee near the garbage pickers’ tools. After I greeted them, I asked whether that was a good quality tool and how long it could last. The guy informed me that garbage picker would last for a long time and the lady next to him nodded for agreement.
So, I knew that would be what I was searching for. Then the man inquired why I wanted to purchase that tool. My answer was that I would like my neighborhood area to be very clean and I also told him that I usually spent about 15-20 minutes per week to clean up my front, back, sidewalk, and the street surrounding my house and sometimes I go beyond that. He smiled at me, shook my hand and told me that we needed more people like you in Rome!
Keeping our community sanitary, clean and well-kept could be easy and simple if all of us (Rome residents) set up a small portion of our time and clean it. It will help the environment! Sometimes the smallest things we can do for our city can have the biggest positive impact on economic and tourists who visit Rome. If every one of us spares 5 minutes a week to clean the neighborhood, classroom, school, parking lots we use, we can keep our sweet home Rome clean! Dilshad Akrayee Rome