Low Impact for Life

This week I've been trying to think of all the things I want to say about the sustainability efforts I've made, and what I've learned and the more I've typed the more I've wanted to type about. But there has also been a lot of anxiety involved in putting this on the internet and here's why:  If you look at the internet these days, at influencers, and some of the loudest voices advocating a sustainable lifestyle, they are usually wealthy and they are almost always curated as hell. The photos are edited and polished. The lighting is just so. There is a quaint story to go along with each decision and everyone seems to have the design savvy of someone with a 4 year interior decorating degree. (Is that a thing? I don't know if that's a thing.) And I'm not hatin'. I respect all the work these folks are putting into their online presence and I'm generally envious of anyone with a design sense. The first time I lived alone, my beau at the time cam...

This started out fairly easy and then got more challenging. I had no problem reducing my coffee waste but tea was a whole other thing.  Let's talk coffee: I've had a French press for years because it's convenient for camping. I can't speak to how to modify a home pore over, but let's assume you're currently using your standard Mr. Coffee. A French press is just as easy to me because you're still putting coffee in something and then adding water. I have an electric kettle that I use for hot water and I can make as much or as little coffee as I need to at any time. The benefit of this is that the electric kettle is also good for tea water, and I drink both coffee and tea regularly.  If you have never seen an electric kettle, it looks like... a kettle but it also has an auto-off switch. My French press is wet because I just washed it (told you I was clean). If you are dedicated to your percolator, friends of mine have used a metal filter for years and...

This one was also fairly easy. Again, having more cloth means more laundry, but since I already do laundry so often because of my work scrubs, this hasn’t been an issue for me.  I have had my cloth napkins for about 9 years and I really don’t remember where they came from. They have held up remarkably well. I have 8 because I live alone. I will also admit that I don’t use a fresh one every day. If all you’re doing is wiping your mouth with it, you don’t really need a new one every day. If it becomes visibly soiled, I toss it and get a new one and this happens about every 3-4 days. If by some miracle it doesn’t, I swap out anyway. Guests always get something clean because I’m not a savage.  My day to day place setting. I have no idea where these things are supposed to go but this is where I like them and it's house rules up in here.  As it has been so long since I bought mine, I can’t recommend the brand (the tags have fallen off long ago), but World Market has s...

I have embraced the Southern tradition of the kitchen rag. This is not to be confused with the kitchen towel with which we are all familiar. I have a stack of cloths from all kinds of sources, all of which are roughly the size of a dishcloth. They have come from the following places:  A cut up sweatshirt Swedish dishcloths - we'll talk about these later 2 different kinds of cloths from Mighty Nest Some dishcloths that I knitted when I was learning how to knit that have always been too heavy to be actual dishcloths Kitchen towels that have been sufficiently destroyed by use that they can no longer in good conscience be hung from my oven handle. The beauty of building your collection of kitchen rags is that they can come from anywhere! In fact, I have found that having a variety of materials comes in handy for various cleaning tasks. The clean bin of them sits in my kitchen and when I need one, I grab it, use it with my favorite surface cleaner, and toss it in the laun...

The first thing to go was tissues. I have been building a collection of handkerchiefs for years because I think they are beautiful and easy to use. You can buy handkerchiefs online, from general stores, and in my case, largely from antique and resale shops.  Some people are disgusted by the idea of handkerchiefs and you do have to be more aware of your behavior than when using paper tissues. I always have a bag in my purse for my soiled hankies, and you need a rather large collection to make using them feasible. You also need to wash your hands after you blow your nose, but you should be doing that anyway.  When laundering them, they are more delicate than lots of other household cloths, and of course, they are full of your dried snot (look, we’re all thinking it). I have found that mine last longer if they are presoaked, and then washed in a mesh bag along with the rest of my laundry.  To manage this at home, I have a small separate container that they go in...

Long before we had paper products for everything, we had cloth. Returning to our historical resources has saved me a lot of money over the last year, and I’ve learned a few things about managing these items. Prepare for a series of posts addressing the following:  Coffee filters & tea bags  Napkins Paper towels & disinfectant wipes Parchment paper / aluminum foil for baking Tissues Bathroom paper products will be covered elsewhere, since they are a whole other deal.  Some things I have figured out:  It will take some time to build a collection of cloth products big enough to replace your paper ones. Go ahead and buy a couple things here and there. Start using cloth for some things and keep a few paper items around for when they are truly necessary. By the time you completely run out, you may not feel like you need to replace them. And you don’t have to do all these things at once. Pick one or two and start replacing things. Once you see th...