Litterless Living

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...

Hello friends, Thanks for joining me today. Kind of a heavy topic today, so please enjoy this photo of my daily morning view from my office. Despite it's beauty, this river is one of the most polluted rivers in the US. This is what I'm trying to fight with my efforts discussed below. I came to the decision to cut plastic out of my life about six months ago. I had stumbled across a Zero Waste youtuber, Kate Arnell, at her channel  ECO BOOST , which opened my world to environmental concerns I never knew existed. Kate Arnell's channel is just one of many I now follow as she and others share about their Zero Waste journeys. (I hope to talk with you more about the Zero Waste movement soon.) As I learned more about how awful plastics are for our environment, I decided I needed to cut them from my life as much as possible. When I made this decision I had lots of fears. I was afraid that others wouldn't understand. I was afraid my friends and family would mock me. I wa...

Friends: cheese. So many of us love it, but it is one of the hardest things to get without plastic. So silly! Cheese has been made, bartered, sold, transported, stored, and eaten for centuries LOOONG before plastic was around. Yet in today's market it's almost impossible to find any cheese plastic-free. I believe it is possible to buy big wheels of aged cheese coated in wax, but who can use that all up before it spoils? Usually when I have an item that I just can't find without plastic I try to make my own. However, I've heard that cheese is a very difficult, precise process that requires specific equipment. I was daunted to try making it on my own. And honestly, I don't really want to learn how to make everything I could possibly ever need. Don't get me wrong. Self-sufficiency is a wonderful thing. But there is a reason that most societies developed specialization--not everyone will be able to make their own bread, or build their own house, or fix their car, ...

So let's talk deodorant alternatives. You can use a salt block. You can use baking soda. You can even use a potato! Well, that's according to Niahm, a BSc in Nursing Science, and host of the Fairyland Cottage youtube channel. You can check out that particular video  here . I can't honestly say I've tried the potato option. And I couldn't find a salt block that came without plastic packaging. But I did try using baking soda and found that it irritated my skin. So I scoured the internet and found a recipe on a blog called MamaInstincts.com  and lo-and-behold I already had all but one ingredient. I'm sure you recognize baking soda and coconut oil, but I'll explain the others. In the top right ramekin I have arrowroot powder--this is the one ingredient I still needed to buy. Luckily for me, my local co-op down the street sells it in bulk, so I just brought an old bouillon paste jar with me and got a few scoops of it. The little vials on the left are essen...