The sustainability project…finally
Well, this post is more than a bit overdue, but I have had a good time playing around with sustainability over the last couple of months.
The phrasing may sound a little irreverent, but it’s important to remember that sustainability is defined as “the ability to be maintained at a certain rate or level.” The same is true with how you take on sustainability in your life. There’s so much work to be done, but if you take it on all at once, you’ll find yourself overwhelmed and unable to keep it up.
So I’ve been slowly integrating more elements of sustainability as I go. I’m trying to focus on the three main pillars of sustainability: economic, environmental, and social. In other words, all of my acts have to save money, be eco-friendly, or contribute to my community.
Not everything falls into all three categories. For example, our new flooring choice is fairly inexpensive and eco-friendly but was purchased at a larger box store as opposed to our local flooring store since they didn’t offer a bamboo option. Some of the local foods and products I buy definitely cost a few dollars more, but I know I’m giving back to my community. Overall I’m doing my best to maintain a good balance while I continue to strive to add more sustainability into my life.
The best thing about this project was getting to take a nice long look at what we were already doing and seeing how we could build from there. We’ve been using natural cleaning and beauty products for a long time, but now I’m working on making more of my own. We’ve increased our push to reduce our use of plastic, we’re reusing as much as possible, and we’re recycling what little we can these days.
The toughest thing about this project is figuring out how to write about it, but here’s what I’ve come up with.
I will:
-try to post a couple of times a week. Those of you who have subscribed will hopefully see me popping up in your email boxes a lot more often.
– provide a few different tools, techniques, recipes or products that can help you become more sustainable. Not everyone wants the DIY approach and luckily there are a lot of great products out there. I’ll link to things whenever I can.
-probably be kicking myself for not setting up affiliated links on this blog. Maybe I’ll even do that at some point during this journey. As of right now, I get no kickbacks for any of this. I just want to share what I’ve found that works.
I will not:
-get all preachy. I don’t have all the answers and if I can’t inspire you by example, I’m sure not going to convince you by shouting from my soapbox. You wouldn’t be reading this if you didn’t already care about living sustainably…or you’re related to me. Maybe both. In any case, you don’t deserve a lecture.
– make you scroll past pages of text to get to the tips and recipes. That is my biggest pet peeve about blogs. You’ll get any recipes I use at the top and then my thoughts, ramblings, and stories after. Feel free to get what you need and go or hang around and see what I have to say. I will be sharing links if I got a recipe from someone else and am using it as-is. I can’t guarantee they won’t wax poetic forever before delivering the goods. Hang in there; if I’m sharing it, it’s because it worked.
So stay tuned all, the first post in this series will be up later this week. In the meantime, here’s a picture of the crazy gorgeous skies we get around here in the fall.
