Tag Archives: consumption

Empties update

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Hi all – long time! I have been working full time over the past two months to pay for some home renovations which has meant time has been in short supply. We are trying to do a lot of the manual labour ourselves so every waking moment has involved either working or pulling up slate, painting windows and thinking about kitchen plans – hardly a simple life!

But for me the opportunity is in really thinking about each living space and how we can enjoy it as a family. Our kitchen renovations will enable more food preparation space, to work with the increased volume that will come through the veggie patch that we have expanded. It will mean better organisation of kitchen items and another opportunity to purge as we pack up the old kitchen before it gets knocked down. It will mean more outside family dinners in summer as we open up our living space onto the entertaining area outside. Summer this year will be filled with beautiful family times.

In the meantime, we will be enjoying the fun of doing hard manual labour together and planning living spaces to suit our lifestyle.

I just thought I would update you on my empties that I posted about six months ago. I had this horrible obsession of responding to every gift with purchase opportunity that arrived through David Jones in my letter box and I had a horrendous amount of small cosmetics, umpteen lipsticks and many makeup items that was never going to use.

So I sorted them into things that I would use, things that I would give my teenage daughters and things to recycle/discard.

The things that remained, I committed to using. Slowly but surely over the last six or so months I have used them. I have barely anything left, except for about ten lipsticks which I will continue to work my way through. And I have committed to replacing my cosmetics and skin care products with only things ethically produced or largely natural – only when the run out.

Above is the evidence of the last six months. I’d recommend it. You don’t need to buy doubles and triples of things, or items that come with a gift. Most of the stuff you don’t wind up using and if you are like me, you forget you even purchased them in the first place!

 

 

Zero waste transition Part 1

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I think Bea Johnson is absolutely inspirational and I watch her household video that I wrote about last year OVER and OVER and OVER AGAIN. I just want my house to look that that. Now.

But of course, Bea herself admits that it has been a massive journey to get to that amazing household destination.

Here’s how we have started.  And please note, I don’t receive any commissions on any product recommendations below.

Bea’s first point is to refuse anything that goes to landfill coming into the house. Sheesh. Big ask. No-one in my household, apart from my oldest teenage daughter was into it at all, so I decided to start with refusing things that were completely in my control.

My fortnightly grocery shopping.

I’m a big cook-from-scratch kind of girl, so I thought this part would be easy peasy. I found that it was not, and I had to spend some considerable time researching in my local area to find some answers.

Firstly – the only store that provides foods in bulk, that I know of, is our local Food Co-op. There’s a new store called Nude Food, but I am a loyal co-oper.  I like their values.

So to complete my Co-op shop I either take to the shop some of these:

Breathable fruit and veg bags

Images courtesy of www.Onya.com.au and www.thehospitalityshop.com.au

Or larger bags to carry produce in (bottom right hand corner).

I’ve been unable to source some calico bags for flour and sugar, but they are on my wish list. In the meantime, I take glass jars (top right hand corner) to purchase these products.

I purchased a whole heap of glass jars from cheapo shops, but have found that their closures aren’t as good as the good quality homewares shops, so as they break down, I am replacing them with good quality jars like the one shown.

The Food Co-op then weigh the size of the jar and deduct it from your purchase.

I find at the Co-op I can purchase my bread making flour in bulk, as well as most of my dry goods like other flours, sugar, cacoa, pulses and legumes, spices and definitely their delicious organic dark chocolate covered almonds……

Then I shop at either the local farmers market or our fresh food markets. Here again, I take my produce bags, shopping bags and glass Pyrex containers to get my meat in. I find the organic meat shops are more used to these type of random requests (like please don’t wrap my meat in plastic and paper – put in my glassware instead please). Buying meat this way is a heavy job – usually I do the fruit and veg shopping first, empty my trolley into the car and then go and do the meat shopping.

That way, I can put the meat straight into the freezer or the fridge without any plastic wrapping or Styrofoam bases.

When I purchase bread (my husband doesn’t like my sour dough, even though it gets rave reviews from others!!) I go to Bakers Delight, ask them to cut up my bread and put it straight into my shopping bag. I’ve had to educate a couple of people on why I am doing it (saving the planet one plastic bag at a time) but now they joke that I am the crazy bag lady and it’s a bit of a novelty for them.

Once I come home from the fresh food shop, I do spend half an hour to an hour cutting up vegetables and making sure they are stored in glass containers in the fridge. You can’t store your veggies in the Onya bags because the bags are breathable and they go all limp….

Finally, last but least I do any other product shopping at Aldi or Woolworths. I look for recyclable packaging. Eg do you know that Aldi pasta packaging is recyclable? I finally put all of my shopping away in their containers, empty out any packets or packaging that I have begrudgingly had to purchase.

As I go around, putting my shopping away, I leave out any plastic, unrecyclable packaging that is going straight to landfill and I put it on a list to explore next time. The next time I go shopping, I look for alternatives, one product at a time, to reduce the overwhelming feeling of trying to zero waste everything at once.

zero waste list

I’m still looking for a gummy bears solution… my husband eats four packets a week…..

Anyway I hope you and your loved ones had a great Christmas break and New Year. My posting schedule will be fortnightly again this year (although I want to sneak in a review of this most beautiful book that I have been relishing over summer next week….). I look forward to hearing from you if you have any zero waste challenges or tips for me.

Quick empties update

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You might remember that I blogged here about my obscene ownership of way too many cosmetics…..

I realised that I was making great progress simplifying many areas of my life, but there were still areas of consumption that I was virtually blind to.  I really love this process of simplifying, because the new “normal” is challenged after the passage of time, a bit of adaptation and some furthering thinking about consumption.  It’s a lovely, thoughtful process.

Anyways, I thought I would post an update on my progress. This drawer contains my empties.  As you can see, in six or so weeks a little bit of progress has been made, but man I’ve got a heap to get through.

I’ve realised that in order to get through THE LOT I am going to have to think of some creative ways to use all of my cosmetics and beauty products. One idea I thought of is to use excess moisturiser as conditioner, when my conditioner runs out.

One really interesting challenge is that I have that I have plenty of half used lipsticks…Any ideas? Facial toner?

Part 3 – Where to from here now that our income has been halved

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Where has the time gone! The first three weeks of not working have been really busy – in a productive way. I’ll write about that later.

But for now, I wanted to update you on the family budget now that our income has been halved and I am not working – part 3 of my financial series.

As I mentioned, we have been to see a financial advisor on our superannuation and retirement needs, particularly now that David is nearly 50 and I am nearly 43. It’s important to understand the long game, and to understand how hard we have to work (or not work!) to ensure that we have both a reasonable standard of living now and in our retirement.

Main changes: I have reduced our food budget, and my mobile plan. There is not a lot of wriggle room in this budget – by the time we also get our allowances (which have also reduced) we have about $1000 spare per month. I intend to build this as a bit of a cash flow to help us on the heavier months when we have more expenses.

So our one income budget looks like this:

Expenses   yearly monthly fortnightly
26 2
Car rego $ 2,200.00 $       84.62
Car insurance $ 1,100.00 $       42.31
House ins $ 1,100.00 $       42.31
car services $ 1,000.00 $       38.46
petrol $     120.00
Sundry $     300.00
fernwood $       24.00
internode $   75.00 $       37.50
mobile $   35.00 $       17.50
pocket money $       25.00
cleaning $       65.00
food $     400.00
electricity $ 1,200.00 $       46.15
gas $ 1,782.00 $       68.54
water $ 1,000.00 $       38.46
rates $ 1,300.00 $       50.00
primary school fees $ 100.00 $       50.00
piano $     600.00 $       23.08
netball $     350.00 $       26.00
health insurance $ 1,600.00 $       61.54
girls clothing $ 1,500.00 $       57.69
movies $     100.00
red cross $   25.00 $       12.50
guitar $     600.00 $       23.08
dancing $     400.00 $       15.38
oxfam $   25.00 $       12.50
Boys school fees $ 4,624.00 $     177.85
Girls school fees $ 550.00 $     275.00
Girls mobile $   30.00 $       15.00
foxtel $   50.00 $       25.00
gifts $ 3,000.00 $     115.38
boys expenses $ 200.00 $     100.00
total       $ 2,489.85

The main thing that I will focus on to reduce our food bill is to really cook from scratch. I like the health benefits of this as well, as I am really keen on reducing the amount of processed food that we buy. Things that I already cook from scratch include:

  • Bread – sour dough is may favourite
  • Yoghurt – greek and vanilla
  • Mozzarella
  • Pancetta
  • Biscuits and cakes for the children
  • Hommus (Yotam Ottolenghi’s  recipe is so yummy)
  • Preserves  – I preserve food when it is particularly season and tasty – like mangoes, apricots, peaches, tomatoes

The second way I will reduce the food budget is by buying in bulk from our local Food Co-operative. The food is organic and not packaged, which I really subscribe to. I take in my own jars and produce bags so there is no plastic packaging.

Finally, I will grow up to 50% of our fresh produce. My husband and I have just spent the weekend building three new vegetable beds. This weekend’s outlay has been around $1000 – I have spent all up around $2500 on the veggies beds – but they will pay themselves off in no time.

My job is to keep an eye on the family budget and to make sure that we are on track. Bottom line is if I don’t keep track of it, I am back to work so of course, keeping expenditure within budget is my number 1 priority! I am loving not working and providing really healthy produce for my family.

Cosmetics shame and empties challenge

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So we went to the States in 2013, the AUD was holding up strong and everything was cheap including make-up and I wasn’t considering minimalism back then.

Oh and I am a GWP junkie. At least I was. A Gift With Purchase offer would have me hovering over a David Jones counter, pronto.

Consequently, in a small cupboard in my bathroom, I confronted a shameful fact today:

  1. I have 23 lipsticks
  2. I have over 50 containers (small/medium/large) of various moisturisers, creams, body lotions, shampoos and conditioners, facemasks, exfoliates, toner, makeup remover AND THEY ARE MY SPARE ONES.

It’s funny – simple living and paring back to the essentials is a process and not a project. Six months ago, I would have been proud of myself that I had organised them into neat little zip lock bags into their little categories.

Now, six months on, I am looking at them in horror. So much consumption. No end in sight in terms of getting to the bottom of the storage bin and just having one of everything, like a real minimalist.

Possibly, if I was hard core, I would think about donating them just to clear my clutter immediately. But I’m not hard core. I know I will use these products at some point in the very near future. So I have set myself an empties challenge. The challenge is:

No more makeup or moisturisers until all of the little bottles are used. I am going to set up a little bucket in my wardrobe to put the empties in, to remind myself of the challenge, and I will post on progress.

Here is some shameful before evidence:

all lipsticks

hair products

What is your shameful hoarding secret? (PS I’m sure I will continue to horrify myself as my expectations are reset with this simple living process).