PLASTIC FREE JULY - AND BEYOND

If you're interested in reducing the amount of trash - and particularly plastic - that you and/or your household produces and you're not quite sure where to start, it can seem like a daunting task.  Once you stop, look around, and tune into the problem, it suddenly seems like plastic is simply everywhere - from tea bags to tracksuit pants, to those tiny but annoying stickers on the fruit you buy or the straw that you asked them to leave out that still turns up in your drink anyway.

9 STITCHES

There's that old saying about a stitch in time saving nine - which of course means if you tackle a problem early you'll save yourself a much larger problem later on. This is also a saying from an era when mending and darning were not only commonplace but essential. These days a split stitch, broken heel or missing button is less often attended to early, if at all. Cheap, convenient and fast-changing fashions often mean we end up with more clothes than we really need and that we also generally neglect them (not helped much by the inferior quality products on the market that give up after a couple of runs in a washing machine).

HIGHLIGHTS OF THE MONTH - APRIL 2016

April has been a beguiling mix of warm, clear (and frustratingly rain-free) days with the occasional sudden dip in temperatures to remind us that winter is just around the corner, and the occasional spike to remind us that summer still wants to play.

IN THE GARDEN:

Last 3 strawberries of the season...

WORKING LESS FOR THE PLANET

As part of my most recent life overhaul, one thing I wanted to try out was a reduced work week, so that I could investigate that mythical beast called a work-life balance. Luckily, as well as getting a job offer very quickly, it was also a 4 day a week position.  I guess I imagined the eternal 3 day weekend giving me more time to relax and read, garden, get to the end of my to-do list (who was I kidding? It's huge) and go camping and exploring more often. But, as it turns out, there's been more to it...

To me, the life of a 40+ hour week seems to lead to a slow but steady feeling of being consistently flat. Not always exhausted exactly, but a constant feeling of wishing there were just a few more hours in each day. The kind of feeling that has been pretty much normalised by modern society as just 'getting older' - but is it actually normal?

HIGHLIGHTS OF THE MONTH - MARCH 16

Time to get back on track with the earth-loving, slow living posts, it seems like I've been talking about nothing but travel and vague plans to move on for ages! I'll try out regular monthly summaries to keep on track with where I'm at, and as an encouragement to keep progressing.

ONE STEP BEYOND

It's likely you're all familiar with the eco-conscious jingle 'reduce, reuse, recycle' - aka 'the three R's', but how about my personal favourite - upcycling?

More creative planter ideas here 

GREEN TRAVEL

I've got another trip over the Tasman coming up in a couple of weeks. Every time I click 'confirm and pay' during online checkout, my eco-conscience has a little wobble. No matter how hard I try to manage my carbon footprint, I often make certain lifestyle choices that make me wonder if a handful of large footprint actions aren't blowing my credentials out of the water. For me, this mostly boils down to driving a car to work, air travel and mostly unavoidable food miles.

CLEAN GREEN - IN THE HOUSE

I live in a little studio space that opens out directly into a well-established garden. Living in the tropics, this basically means one thing; being prepared to share my space with critters - the good, the bad and the ugly. Despite my open air, open door and barefoot approach to living, the bug situation isn't as bad as you might suspect, especially with my crack team of house geckos on patrol 24/7. There are also at least 5 resident frogs hanging around my bathroom and laundry (with countless more in the garden).

DECLUTTER BLITZ, THE CRAFTERMATH

Up until recently I've enjoyed the luxury of either living in a fairly decent sized house or, if not, I've had access to the free service known as 'parental house storage'. Either singly or in combination, this has meant not having to really face the problem of what to do with my worldly goods...ALL my worldly goods. After I moved back to Australia in 2012 - well, there it was. All my other stuff. Waiting for me. In a poignant Toy Story 3 kind of way...

ECO FREAK

Don't stop now, this is hipster country

One of the things I love about Melbourne is the splendid abundance of earth friendly shops. From supermarkets that stock nothing but organic, fair trade, cruelty free, free range and low packaging to stores that specialise in products for sustainable living, in some of the trendier Melbourne burbs it seems you can't go more than 10 paces without stumbling across a shop bursting with a downright Scandinavian level of eco-friendly merchandise. Not to mention every possible configuration of kale and quinoa you could imagine.

PFJ UNPACKAGED

Not so earth loving, lovingearth

Well, that's the end of another Plastic Free July and a month of realising that if I want to actually do these things without ending up going periodically hungry then I really need to be a bit more diligent with my shopping routine (the road to plastic is paved with bad meal planning).

POT SET PERFECTION

So, I got down to the make-or-break remains of my store bought yoghurt yesterday. Granted, it was one of those biodynamic, ABC culture brand of creations, but in the interests of sticking with my Plastic Free July commitment then I was really going to have to give this DIY yoghurt thing a go without further ado.

SUGAR FREE, GLUTEN FREE BANANA BREAD (AND PLASTIC FREE TOO)

This recipe is slightly modified from one I found online when I was looking for a gluten free banana bread (I'm lucky enough to live a life free from any dietary intolerances but some of my friends can't eat any foods with gluten). Either way, I don't think it hurts to find grain-free alternatives sometimes.

Considering this recipe packs a pretty wholesome punch, I figured it wasn't too gluttonous to eat a couple of slices for breakfast. Slathered in butter because seriously, what do you take me for? A joyless ascetic?

So, without any further ado, here's the recipe

DYNAMO BREAKFAST

I'm a week into my sugar free month and, apart from probably eating a bit too much fruit as a coping mechanism, plus one mistakenly ordered mocktail over the weekend, I have been doing pretty well all up....considering that in one week, there's been an influx of gourmet chocolates from a returning work colleague, and an afternoon tea to welcome new colleagues that stretched over two days due to excess cake (I'd like to say this was an anomalous week at work, but it's a pretty common scenario).

TOTES UPCYCLED

Diary of a self-confessed scrap fabric hoarder.

Aside from knackered knickers, almost every bit of clothing that stays the course until it's threadbare will end up in my fabric scraps suitcase...It used to be a bag, now it's a suitcase. When it reached the verge of spilling over into a second suitcase I started to think seriously about what the hell I was going to do with some of this hoard (there are only so many rag dusters you can use in one lifetime, after all).

GONE TO THE DOGS - ZERO FOOD WASTE

Well, that's another Christmas down, and fridges around the country are groaning under the weight of all those family dinner leftovers (in fact there is a food advisory ad campaign doing the rounds here right now to warn people of the dangers of food poisoning from tidbits that may have sat around in the summer heat for a little too long).  I didn't make it though the month completely guiltless despite my zero food waste efforts - I can own up to 1 cucumber, half an eggplant, quarter of a pot of yoghurt and a bunch of mint. So I'll wrap up the year with another quick couple of suggestions before coming up with a different personal challenge for January (but including a resolution to come up with a better food plan system from now on).

Anyway, now might be the time to indulge your pets a little if you do have more food than you can handle on your plates. That glib remark that I made in my first post about never having leftovers if you have a dog was based more in fact than humour. My dog, the first dog I've owned, is a little over 7 years old now and he has been instrumental in keeping my food waste to a minimum since he arrived -  puppy size -  into my life.

BOTTOM OF THE VEG DRAWER

I'm a serial offender when it comes to having a couple of limp carrots, a shriveled chilli and a few black spotted tomatoes hiding away at the bottom of the veggie drawer. But team it up with a dried up cob of fresh corn and some kidney beans and you've got the makings of some delicious vegetarian nachos.

LOST BREAD

Just a sprinkle of sugar, promise

The pre-sliced plastic wrapped grainy bread so favoured by folks in this part of the world is something of an anomaly in France, where they have a much greater fondness for the staple white baguette. Personally I prefer to buy my loaves from a baker (and consequently have an elaborate wrapping system of cloth and paper to keep them fresh for as long as possible in the fridge - though it's worth noting that bread freezes very well).

FINAL 2013 MINI-CHALLENGE

One of my many delicious farm shop hauls from a local village in Kent, UK

December is a pretty excessive month overall; a merry-go-round of gifts, meals, drinks and parties means a pretty full fridge and a lot of leftovers. So my final month-long mini challenge will be a zero food waste December. To be honest I'm pretty good at not throwing out food but it does feel like over the last couple of months that regular small shops have been replaced by less frequent larger ones, and that I've also been buying more produce before finishing off what I have in the fridge. To put it bluntly, my shiny non food waster badge is getting a little tarnished. To top it all off, food goes off in a blink at this time of year (in the tropics) so it's even more important to keep those eyes smaller than your stomach!

SHADES OF LUNCHTIME

One of the upsides of working in the city is I can go for a stroll by the waterfront, the park, or wander round the mall. One of the downsides of working in the city - at this time of year - is that it's stinking hot, and a casual wander generally turns into a casual browse in an air-conditioned shop, which often leads to the casual purchase of a casual item.

Not shopping is super easy when you don't go to the shops, I've discovered (call it a eureka moment) - but when the beckoning CBD is a useful and healthy excuse to get out of the office, then what?
So as an alternative to casual consumption, I've decided to do mini photo-walks instead. Whatever I can find and shoot in half an hour, give or take. At the absolute worst time of the day for photography. The added bonus is that it will hopefully kick-start my photography mojo, which has been flagging these last few months. And, as I'm waiting on a new (secondhand) battery charger for my DSLR, I'll be using my neglected point and shoot. I've never really clicked with it (no pun) so it'll be a good time to figure out if we're going to get along in the long run.