Less impact.

In today’s world it is quite easy to feel overwhelmed. Climate change, Biodiversity loss and various worrying political scenarios can make us feel powerless and downbeat.

But it does not have to be this way. Every single one of us has the power to change our everyday habits to have less negative impact on our beautiful world. We are firm believers in the collective power of positive thoughts and actions. You are probably doing many of these things already, but we hope you might feel inspired to pick up one or two new habits.

 

Invest in a dehydrator to be able to store foods without the need for chilling and freezing. 

There are the bigger things, like flying less or eliminating it altogether, using public transport or carpool whenever possible and think hard before you buy anything new.We also like to do many small things to reduce our impact and have some fun in the process.

Today it is easy to find companies selling shampoo bars, soaps and other personal hygiene products with only a small paper bag for packaging. We have been shopping at https://uk.lush.com/ for years and lately we have found a new company in Ireland making lovely travel-friendly alternatives to your bottled hygienic products. You can find their range here. https://www.palmfreeirishsoap.ie/ The ingredients used are often much more natural and kinder to your skin as well.

Lush.

Palm oil free irish soap company.

You can also go one step further and create your own products. We like to make healing oils for the skin and bath salts.

 

If you are at all handy with a sewing machine, or have friends with this skill, get together and make a few Morsbags. You can find all the information about them here.  You can use vintage fabrics to make reusable shopping bags in this social guerrilla bagging movement.

We made a load of them one year and gave them as Christmas presents. It is also fun to stand outside your local supermarket handing them out to people.

While we are on the subject of sewing, making your own cloth period pads is easy and rewarding. They are so much more comfortable than your average commercial product. We found a pattern online years ago but if you wish to buy them instead there are numerous sellers and shops stocking cloth pads and menstrual cups, a great alternative to tampons.

Pantyliners.

If you feel like sprucing up your sitting area or wish to make a second hand piece of furniture more unique, create a few cushion covers from vintage fabrics you might have knocking about. We came up with a clever way of getting some colour into your space even if the individual pieces of fabric you have are quite small.

Melting your candle odds and ends to create new ones is another way of reducing your impact. We wrote about that here.

 

In the food department, growing your own is ideal as it cuts out the packaging and transport. For years we did not have this option so we “grew” sprouts and microgreens right in our kitchen. It is a fun, easy and incredibly tasty way of getting some greens into you. For inspiration and recipes please visit the wonderful Sproutpeople website. If you live in North America, they also sell great sprouting seeds and mixes.

 

We also wrote a post about our own sprouting endeavours a few years back.

Smoothies are popular but unfortunately most come in one time use plastic bottles. We like to make our own and you can find a couple of recipies here.

The clothing industry is a massive polluter and I set a personal challenge at the start of this year to not buy any clothes for the whole year and so far not so much as a pair of socks has been purchased. Even second hand clothes are out the window as I think someone else might pick them up instead and not go for a new item of clothing.

If you are planning a new building or wish to create some more light in an excisting space, a recycled glass bottle wall might be a solution.

 

We hope you feel inspired to try something new and have fun!

 

Odds and ends knitted blankets.