This is a long post for anyone who was me, about 2 years ago, starting out at the Eco Friendly end of life and looking in confusion at the Zero Waste end which, with its “Why Not Make Your Own Toothpaste?” vibes, can initially seem pretty over the top and a bit scary. I’ve included links to the various helpful subreddits along the way!
Green
Where I was: living a ‘normal’ lifestyle, but trying not to buy things I considered blatantly wasteful like single-use plastic items, cheap throwaway clothes, and choosing local/organic/eco products where financially viable and convenient. People would have picked me from my group of friends as the most eco-friendly person out of us.
I was unhappy with the direction of my life. I knew that chasing the middle-class-defined Successful Life wasn’t for me. I wanted contentment and peace, space to breathe and enjoy life and I didn’t want to get higher up the ladder, I didn’t want more responsibility, I didn’t want to chase a larger and larger pay check.
Simple Living
I decided to change my focus and deliberately try to seek out a quieter life. This is where I encountered /r/hygge (enjoying life’s simple pleasures), /r/simpleliving, Slow Food (Sustainable, Local, Organic, Whole) and /r/slowliving. I tried to do things I liked rather than what I thought I should like. I tried to use my phone and social media less, because it turned out that they made me sad. I tried to buy less products but instead buy only a few that brought me joy; that were local, or handmade. I gave myself permission to be, and embraced being, a homebody (/r/cozyplaces).
Decluttering
Buying fewer but nicer versions of things started to show up the sheer volume of crap I had accumulated in the name of nesting. Moving house was the trigger for change; I felt like our home was overflowing from drawers and bursting at the seams and I didn’t care about taking most of it with us. I realised that none of it was making me happy; buying and owning most of these things wasn’t bringing me the joy society had said it would. In the spirit of hygge, and having a calm home filled with things that I liked, I decided to get rid of the things that I didn’t like or need. This is when /r/konmari, /r/anticonsumption and /r/declutter entered. Kon Mari is the specific goal of only having things that bring you joy in your house, while decluttering focuses on having less un-needed stuff in your life.
I think most people who start out decluttering will tell you, getting rid of things feels awesome. We did a great job on our house. I think perhaps we halved our belongings? From shelves and shelves of DVDs to two small drawers of only our favourites. All our kitchen gadgets fit on a 1ftx2ft shelf and they’re things we actually use. We only owned things we actually liked or used! It felt fricking magnificent.
Minimalism
A side benefit of our new found freedom from possessions was realising that I hadn’t previously been caring for any of our things properly. They weren’t precious, I wasn’t taking steps to keep them clean/in good repair etc. But doing that takes a LOT of investment of time and energy and I’m not naturally gifted at it, so I needed to have even less things to give my remaining belongings the attention they deserved.
/r/minimalism was the next step in helping me evaluate why I owned something. There are a lot of people out there who own a lot less than I do - so did I really need all the things I owned? Turns out, no. I’m never going to be an aesthetic minimalist, but by golly I can learn a lot from people who own a pencil and a mattress and still live just fine. I found inspiration from the White Room minimalists (/r/minimalist), the Living In A Tiny House minimalists (/r/tinyhouses) and the Buddhist minimalists. We cut down on even more things, and I don’t miss any of them. I don’t even remember what we used to have.
Zero Waste
So now I have a house that we actively strive to keep things out of, and only bring in what is worth owning and being responsible for. This makes you real picky about what you buy. /r/buyitforlife was helpful for opening my eyes to the throwaway item culture, and changing my perspective from ‘Buying The Thing That I Want’ to ‘Wanting To Buy The Thing That Will Last’. I became newly interested in products that were more natural - long lasting wool clothing instead of whatever material’s in the high street shops, wooden toys for my niece rather than their breakable plastic versions. In actively seeking out natural products I accidentally sidestepped into the aesthetically-pleasing world of /r/noplastic. When shopping for a replacement item I would search for natural products, and it turned out that the pretty, natural products were designed for the Plastic Free market, otherwise known as /r/ZeroWaste. I had seen that sub before, but it had, in all honesty, scared me. It seemed so far from what I thought was an achievable lifestyle. But now I was buying way less stuff and could consider each purchase more carefully - so why not see if, when I buy something, it could be sustainably made and packaged? In return I would have prettier items that made me happy (hygge), less of them (minimalism), fewer choices (simple living) and it would be better for the planet (green). In this endeavour plastic is the real kicker as it’s often not even recyclable where I live. Researching no-plastic products such as mouthwash and toothpaste in order to find what a viable alternative looks like led me to finding out what is actually in those products, and discovering that it’s usually just a very small subset of ingredients that are active. So now, buying homemade or making my own shampoo/soap/toothpaste/mouthwash seems totally achievable, and a path that I’m currently investigating.
So there you have it! How you, too, could end up going from buying all your stuff at the supermarket to making your own homemade toothpaste and still feel completely normal.
This is in no way a judgement, indictment or comprehensive piece, and I hope no one feels worse about where they are for having read it (or judges me for where I am!) because we all make slow changes and decisions and end up in different places for lots of different reasons. But I hope that someone who might otherwise feel a little overwhelmed might see how the steps towards a more sustainable life can be, and were for me :)
Submitted May 31, 2018 at 07:46AM by CherenkovLady https://ift.tt/2kExnJy
