Litterless Living

Greetings Friends, Grocery shopping can be a difficult area for those of us wanting to live without plastic. When I first became aware of the less favorable traits of plastic my first trip to a grocery store was mortifying. I suddenly saw plastic in so many places that I never noticed it before. It wasn't that I didn't know that nearly everything in a conventional grocery store was covered in plastic, but I felt like a film had been lifted from my vision and these things I never thought of before were vibrating neon lights blaring at me. Even my debit card that I used to pay for my groceries is made of plastic! How is one to escape and still feed themselves? I've put together some tips on how to successfully (most of the time) navigate your food buying ventures. Please share in the comments if you have other tips for us zero-wasters/plastic-avoiders. Knowledge is power! Tip 1: Find Alternative Stores Of course I have to start off with encouraging you to support

Hello Friends! I hope you are all well. Recently I ran out of my homemade laundry soap. Since I needed to make a new batch, I thought I'd bring you along and show you my recipe. It's super simple. I got the recipe from Making It: Radical Home Ec for a Post-Consumer World  by Kelly Coyne & Erik Knutzen. Homemade Laundry Detergent 1 part grated soap bar 2 parts borax 2 parts baking soda/washing soda Mix together in a bowl, then pour into an air-tight container for storage. Use about 2 Tbsp of powder for each load of laundry, or what suits your needs. How simple can you get? And all of those ingredients can be found without plastic packaging--at least here in the US. I've been using this recipe for over 2 years. It works just as well as the liquid soap you can buy in plastic jugs. I use a castile soap so it should dissolve in cold water, however the authors of Making It  suggest starting off your load with warm or hot water to help the soap dissolve. If

Greetings Friends! I hope you have been well. I myself got a little busy during the holiday season while also battling a stubborn cold, so I'm a little behind on my postings. Because it is winter where I live & because oranges are in season & because I had a cold, I got myself a large bag of oranges. They were absolutely delicious! I love those little guys. But as I'm sure you know, they can be hard to eat up before going bad. Forthe first time ever I had some with very dried out skins that were a pain to peel, but whose fruit was still soft & delicious. I didn't want to waste them, but it didn't make sense to peel them either, so I decided to juice them instead :) It worked great! I especially enjoy mixing the fresh juice with unflavored sparkling water to give it a little pzazz.  You may have noticed the bag the oranges were packed in looks like plastic. I believe it is. Yet I bought it anyway. This was my lo

Greetings Friends, I know it's been a couple months since I last posted. I have lots in the works, I promise. But a friend of mine keeps a really great blog called "Living More with Less Today" where he & guests write about different ways to live an ethical/environmental life. He was kind enough to ask me to be one of his guest writers. Linked is my post about  the 5 R's of Zero Waste ; the framework I follow to help me with plastic-free living. Please check it out, and while there look at the other great posts written by David and his other guests. Thanks! And until next time, take care.

Greetings Friends! Thanks for joining me today. A huge reason I decided to keep a blog about my transition to a plastic-free life is because I quickly learned that in many ways it's not as difficult as I feared. I wanted to share with others & encourage you to consider doing what you can, little by little, to reduce plastic use & waste in our world. However, as I was reminded in an excellent episode by the NPR podcast A1 called " Plastics are Forever ," the problem of ever-present and ever-accumulating plastics can be overwhelming to think about, let alone fight. So today I want to talk about ways you and I as individuals can make a difference in our world. Art Credit: the Somerset Co. Library System of NJ #1 Awareness Awareness is always the first step to solving any problem or changing behavior. We cannot fix what we do not see. So many people in my immediate sphere have indicated to me that simply interacting with me & witnessing my efforts to elimi

Hello Friends! As I've already said, I will often (try to) make my own products if I can't find them without plastic packaging. One of the first things I tried to make on my own was toothpaste. I found an incredibly simple & cheap plastic-free tooth powder recipe in Making It: Radical Home Ec for a Post-Consumer World by Kelly Coyne & Erik Knutzen, which you can probably find in your local library, or you can follow their blog here . I love this book and often turn to it for homemade-recipes and ideas for alternative living solutions. For toothpaste I tried out their variation of equal parts baking soda to powdered sage leaves. While I can't deny it gets the job done, I didn't like it much due to how salty it tastes and that it can be messy as it makes my mouth water so much while using it. Unfortunately even the best and most reliable of resources sometimes let us down. I still highly recommend this book if you can get your hands on a copy. What I've s