a-quieter-life

[a-quieter-life]

In July 2019, we moved to a flat where we took up head tenancy. This meant we needed to get a lot of things--like a washing machine, a fridge, and chairs. We got everything secondhand.

When I saw this chair in an op-shop window, I took a liking to it. These retro low chairs are great for using with my spinning wheel--they are just far enough off the ground to be comfortable, and not so tall that you have to reach to treadle.

When (after weeks of consideration), I finally decided to go check it out, I saw that it was broken! The burlap that had covered the chair bottom was torn apart by the spring, and it had actually impaled the seat cushion--hopefully no one was sitting on it at the time!

The metal sheath holding the spring to the chair frame had snapped, so we replaced it with a new one my husband forged and drilled out specially for this purpose. It was a two-person job to wrestle the spring back into place, pre-drill the holes and get the screws in, but I am so glad I did. It’s been a great little chair for the past year I’ve owned it, and the mend has held just fine. And it only cost $5 in total, just the price of the chair. We had broken scrap wood, scrap metal and old screws from other projects.

[a-quieter-life]

The catch-up continues!

All the rubbish from April through July 2019. Having moved (again!!!) and being the head tenants this time (and therefore having to buy more things for a household) there was a bit more of it. Clockwise from the top:

Plastic part that someone left inside the secondhand washing machine I bought

Hangers and tags for potatoes and dishcloth purchases

Misc food packaging from stress chocolate purchases

Mouse trap package from previous flat (which had both mice and fleas)

Bike supply packaging (shifter cable and rechargeable batteries for head/tail lights)

Water bottle cap because my husband got sent to work at a place ~1hr bike ride from our place & forgot to bring water

dead hair ties

Shiny fabric? Maybe I replaced the lining on something? Maybe it was inside furniture I bought? It’s been a year since I took this photo and I honestly have no recollection of what this is

Several dead earbuds from my husband. I’ve made him a carry bag so they stop breaking while riding around in his pocket

Misc

Empty travel containers of shampoo and conditioner I brought to NZ with me in 2014.

Thermopaper receipts and envelope windows

[a-quieter-life]

Obligatory disclaimer about regional differences so your mileage may vary but...

I feel that I am managing to do the first two very well, and better than most on the third.  For staples like oatmeal, you have more options than the regular supermarket and upscale grocers! Places that sell to restaurants/foodservice outlets, as well as grower co-ops sell large sacks (20kg/50lb) of dry goods. If you’re in a more rural area, you may have a farm store locally, which can be a good place to get things like wheat, peas, and dry corn for cheap (note: depending upon your country/local laws, this may be frowned upon).

I regularly get 20kg sacks of flour in paper bags, and 10kg sacks of potatoes in the same. We did buy a 40kg bag of peas 25kg bag of wheat recently when we ran out (we started grinding our own flour while my country was in lockdown), and those came in woven nylon feed sacks, but these are less total waste than buying many ‘consumer sized’ 500g-1kg packages at the shop, nylon is less biotoxic and quicker to degrade than most plastics (~40 yrs vs 200+), and the sacks are sought after for reuse in my local community (I’ve made a camping tarp and a liner for a bicycle pannier out of them before, and use them store weeds from the garden when my compost bins are full). If nothing else, you could offer them up online through whatever medium your community uses.

As I’m renting, storage has been a challenge in some places, but I’ve always managed to find a way, via closets/shelving/other creative mechanisms to get them sorted, even in very small flats with flatmates.

Basically, choose the largest package available in your region (split with friends/coworkers if it’s too big), and reduce the total volume of plastic even if you can’t avoid plastics all together. I have more detail here about other things I do to eat cheap, well, and with a lower impact.

Best of luck to you! It’s a tough row to hoe, but it’s worthwhile!

Man, the more I try, the more I feel that it’s impossible to eat 1)healthy 2)affordably 3) with a small impact on the planet. Like, I cannot have all three! Let’s make an example with oatmeal: it’s a part of a healthy breakfast (I usually make a oatmeal crumble with fruit and milk), but if I want it in a good packaging (paper on the outside, and inner compostable pack) I have to pay A LOT. Not to mention that those packs only have a small amount of oatmeal. I can buy it cheaper in a plastic bag too, but then again, plastic! Which I’m trying to avoid but so many essentials are somehow packaged in plastic… it hurts.

There are no bulk stores where I live and even if there were, those places are expensive as fuck. There’s a place that sells detergents in bulk and I usually get my laundry detergent bottle refilled there, bc it’s a detergent with a small impact on the environment and no extra plastic comes in the house but it’s expensive!

[a-quieter-life]

Upcycled apron I made in 2019. I drafted my own pattern for it of a 1950′s advert I found. It has six (6!!) pockets for holding clothes pegs. Having this apron makes it loads easier to hang the washing, as I’m no longer trying to juggle a basket in addition to my damp laundry!

This apron is made from damaged op-shop jeans from an op-shop that was closing down. The white one had some serious thigh damage, the blue denim had a crotch stain, and the floral pattern had been (badly) sewn into a miniskirt by an etsy seller from Colorado 7+ years before and still had its tags on. That one is a bit of a mystery to me as I’m in New Zealand! All the scrap fabric went into draught excluders for windows and doors to keep the place a bit warmer in the winter, and cooler in the summer.

There’s more than enough space in the big pockets for all the clothes pegs I’ve been making. I turn them from wood I’ve harvested and cured myself--meaning they’re very low-impact, but also precious! I keep them inside the apron indoors rather than out in a bucket in the weather like my flatmates do. Both the apron and the clothes pegs have done well for me over the last couple years, and it looks beautiful hanging from the wall as a bonus!

[a-quieter-life]

All the rubbish from April and May 2019. I was doing a bit better than I had been the previous month, but still not great.

Clockwise from the top:

chip and chocolate wrappers

foam I saved from some packaging at work for insect pinning--decided against this in the end

wrapper for a squeegee to clear condensation in the bathroom to prevent mold--also to do the windows in the bedroom, as the place we were flatting in at the time was quite damp!

leather scraps from making some biking gloves for my partner

envelope windows and misc. plastic packaging

a ZeroWater filter

a broken food container that a previous flatmate acquired from takeaways; I saved it for freezing stock, but these containers are not very durable. They are also not recycleable in my city, as the local council does not accept #5 plastics

more thermopaper receipts

This was not a great time, and I was doing some stress eating--buying chocolate and chips rather than baking or cooking treats. Most of the rest is more-or-less unavoidable waste from living in modern society.

[a-quieter-life]

Here’s the rubbish through to March 2019. Not the best!

Clockwise from the top left:

Non-recycleable junk mail. New Zealand is a lot better about respecting the ‘no circulars’ / ‘no junk mail’ signs people have, but it’s not perfect!

Thermopaper receipts. Always an issue. It’s a shame they don’t print receipts on plain paper with toner. Did you know that doctors recommend that pregnant woman don’t even touch these due to the fact that some compounds may harm fetuses? Crazy stuff.

Duct tape. My husband repaired some of his martial arts armour finally and took off the duct tape temporary repairs

Empty dental hygiene products

Britta water filter

They stopped collecting film plastics in my town due to the global waste crisis. China stopped taking peoples’ rubbish (which didn’t affect my town directly as everything collected here is recycled in NZ or Aus), and then Aus stopped taking NZ’s soft plastics.

Chocolate etc packaging. I had quit chocolate (again, again), but fell off the wagon when I visited my family in the USA. Yikes! Junk is so cheap there that I bought an inadvisable amount of chocolate and got hooked again.

Leather and string scraps from armour repair

Packaging/envelope windows

Quite a bit of stuff this time! I’m afraid the stress of this point in my life got to me big time and I fell off the wagon regarding chocolate--there’s one kind that has recyclable packaging, but most don’t! Most of the rest is from armour repair, which is a big one-time dump.

[a-quieter-life]

Still catching up. Getting used to how tumblr works again & posting things to the wrong blog. Here is all the rubbish from January and February 2019.

Clockwise from the top:

Hard plastic and tape from packages

Leather scraps from making my own gloves for biking

Bag handle for 10kg sack of potatoes

Broken hardboard from bicycle pannier

Receipts

Elastic from retired underwear

Chocolate wrappers (gifted some through the holidays)

Broken bike light (another casualty of war!)

Empty toothpaste tube--I had gotten this prior to going zero waste

Packaging for an auger bit

Packaging for bike light

Envelope windows

A Britta filter & misc in the centre

We can’t send the filters back to the manufacturer (out of the country), but use them to extend the life of our ZeroWater filter. We are always flatting in houses with old copper and brass pipes, which means there’s a real danger for lead. My family has a history of higher than average metal absorption, and I need to be careful! Unfortunately, in this city, our Britta filters are lasting 1/4 as long as they did in our past city (only 1-2 months), so this is generating quite a lot of waste.

[a-quieter-life]

Whenever looking for a new place to flat, I always scope out the possibilities for new gardens. Over the years, I’ve made a lot of sacrifices in other areas to make sure I have a place to put a compost bin and a place to put seeds in the ground.

The first garden was at the neighbour’s (I fixed it up from its previous overgrown state), and the second I built out of pallets. Moving within-town, I take as much compost as possible with me, as I’ve been moving too often to build up good soil!

My coworkers thought that moving bags of soil when shifting flats was absurd, but the soil scientist said she completely understood and has done the same in the past herself!

Gardens are great, and have meant that I have only bought greens a handful of times in the past 6 years!

[a-quieter-life]

Life is still a bit chaotic, but I will hopefully catch up at some stage! I am still doing zero waste stuff, though!

Here’s all the rubbish from August through December 2018. It’s a bit of a jumble in the image as I was moving (again!) at the time.

In the first image above there are:

sandpaper

windows from envelopes

a couple chocolate wrappers

thermopaper receipts

a dead pen

packaging from bike repair stuff

a truly destroyed hair brush

a brita filter

misc wrappers

In the second image, there is:

packaging for a new bike headlight (my husband’s was irreparably destroyed)

bottle of expired, congealed sunscereen (the container is #5, which is not recycleable in this city)

toothpaste tube

broken Agee bottling jar--the tempered glass is not recycleable

bottles from flatmate which couldn’t be recycled

dead safety razor from before going zero waste (some time ago now!)

[a-quieter-life]

sewing is one of those skills everyone with the ability should know IMO. i’ve known too many people who just throw out perfectly servicable clothing and bedding because of tears or buttons that have fallen off and these can be fixed at home. sewing’s not hard either. 

[a-quieter-life]

Still catching up.

All the rubbish from May through July 2018. Clockwise from the top:

Burner sim card for my business trip to the US

More backlogged thermopaper receipts

Tool packaging

Mail

Worn out underwear

Non-recycleable #5 plastic food container. I don’t remember what as in it

Tags from secondhand woolen blankets

USB stick packaging. USB sticks are massive these days. I backed up my computer before opening it up and repairing it with parts cannibalized from a secondhand laptop of the same model

[a-quieter-life]

@skeletonymous said:                                                                                           What do you typically buy that your grocery bill is so low?

The real key is not buying any processed foods. Those are almost always terrible value for money. Except chocolate, which I buy on occasion despite trying repeatedly to quit.

Staples:

Flour. We have 20kg sacks of wholemeal and white

Potatoes, 5-10kg sacks

Dried beans

Dried peas

Lentils

Rice

Butter. We go through 500g of butter (at an eye-watering $6 presently) per week

Eggs, about a dozen eggs per week (free range $5/doz at the local market--way cheaper than the grocer)

We don’t eat a lot of meat--maybe 50kg/year for both of us, about 5% of the average American, aussie or kiwi. What I do eat is what I can find cheaply and ethically. The only chicken I’ve cooked in the past five years is chicken that I have butchered. I butcher 1-2 birds per year, depending on my circumstances. I don’t currently live somewhere that permits keeping chickens, so I am lucky to have a coworker with geese that he occasionally needs butchered, so that has been my primary source of poultry this past year. I also got a free-range pig (small, 55kg) and split it between my coworkers. I have also eaten a whole assortment of types of meat (including insects) as and when it became available. Again, not much, but enough to get my protein & B12.

There is a local green grocer who sells a box of damaged produce for $2, which I get on occasion. I look for the lowest price on produce and buy a whole bunch and then structure meals around that--$3.50 for a cabbage, <$2/kg for carrots, <$2.50/ea for pumpkins, etc. When tomatoes get down to less than $2/kg, I preserve diced tomatoes--this is about the same price as buying from the store, but avoids BPA and tastes better (all numbers New Zealand prices, ymmv).

The above paints a rather bleak picture, but we eat very, very well because my partner and I have taken the time to really expand our cooking knowledge over the past decade. Simple ingredients, with a bit of time and know-how, can be made into delicious dishes. We make sourdough bread, bagels, soft pretzels, crackers, tamales, tacos (with from-scratch tortillas), lasagna (with from-scratch noodles and a peanut-based mock-riccota), bisque, pesto from all sorts of greens, gnocchi, bowtie pasta, pizza, ravioli, steamed pork buns, pan-fried dumplings, stir-fry, crepes, curries, stews, roasts, basically anything except just plain meat & veg type dishes. We know how to make phyllo dough from scratch, and celebrate special occasions by using it to make apple strudel or baklava. We also make a delightful, rich chocolate cake which is very delicious because it uses 250g of butter.

We don’t drink and only go out to eat on special occasions (once every other month(ish)), which helps the pocketbook quite a bit. I actually don’t like going out to eat much, as I can usually prepare the dishes being served without burning through 1-2 weeks of grocery money.

Hopefully that helps! Feel free to ask any clarifying questions!

[a-quieter-life]

All of the rubbish from February through May 2018. Clockwise from the top:

Food packaging. Handles from a sack of wheat, a chocolate wrapper, a produce net from a set of locally-grown macadamia nuts, and some other bits and pieces including fruit stickers.

Mail packages & tape

Foam I found on the side of the road which I picked up for a project

Tool packaging. Broke several drill bits and needed to replace them. So much packaging for single drill bits, but I didn’t need another full set.

Thread reel I finished using. All new thread comes on plastic reels these days. I do use vintage thread sometimes, but there doesn’t really seem to be a work-around for new stuff. I guess it’s better to be re-using fabric and making items that will last than buying cheaply made modern stuff

Broken pen. It’s centre was made of cardboard, but it gave out and stopped working

Tape & rubber bands

Receipts. Was a bit behind on the old accounting. We shop at ~10 different places to get groceries, so we end up accumulating a lot of these thermopaper receipts. This is really a trade-off between money spent on food and number of receipts generated. On the plus side, our grocery bill is only ~$50/wk and has a lot of whole, fresh foods.

Sandpaper from making furniture. Re-using pallets means that this venture is probably less waste than buying furniture, as new stuff is imported and comes with a lot of packaging.

Ribbons from gifts. I thought I was going to re-use these, but I’m not--the op shops didn’t want them and I don’t want to hold onto stuff because I might use it eventually--don’t have the space for that mindset!

Light bulb. These unfortunately can’t be recycled.

[a-quieter-life]

The last year in my new city has been a bit rough. Hopefully things will be better now in my new living situation. Going to do some catch-up posts and make up for lost time!

Here is all the rubbish from September 2017 through January 2018. Clockwise from the top:

Thick seams from an old, worn-out pair of shorts. The salvageable material will be patches, the thinner stuff went into the compost.

Parts of a stretched-out bra, which I cut out and sewed back together--good as new!

Cuffs and tags from a pair of jeans that became scrap.

Broken dust mask

Seed packets finally used up from Kings Seeds.

Old sandpaper

Non-recycleable plastic-paper from packet of screws we used to build furniture

Tape from something

Thermopaper receipts

Packaging from unknown item

Packaging from mail

And a bunch of chocolate wrappers in the middle from the company Christmas party

All in all, not bad for five months! Receipts are a consistent problem, but we use them for our accounting/budgeting, and most places print them out whether you want them or not.

I feel like I’ve finally figured out enough patching/mending so that we’re wasting much less fabric when our clothes eventually die. I’ve also made a bunch of items out of the resulting scrap, particularly gift and produce bags, which is great.

[a-quieter-life]

Carrots from my garden, constricted by a piece of plastic. Reminds me of ocean life being constricted by those six-pack-rings. Not sure what the blue bit was even a part of.

[a-quieter-life]

Sorry for disappearing, guys! Life has been a bit crazy. Here is the rubbish for June, July and August 2017.

Clockwise from the top left:

Inners from packages that folks brought to craft nights

Used-up sandpaper (I do a lot of knife-sharpening and building/making stuff). I haven’t found a suitable alternative, ideas?

Duct tape from my husband’s hobby (holding together some falling-apart gear together--we’ve since fixed it)

Gauze pad. Got this from work as it had “expired”, but it met its end when the packaging broke open and it got wet in my husband’s backpack

Broken clothes peg

Cough drops I bought from before I started doing zero waste stuff (very old!)

Broken old bike light and packaging for a new one. I got a more rain-resistant model, so hopefully it lasts.

Broken hair ties. Down to our last handful!

Cover for new mattress protector. Ours ended its life in shreds.

I did a long-distance move in early November, so there is some stuff not pictured like the old mattress protector, half a dozen chicken feed sacks, and the drawers we sawed out of the terrible-quality MDF unit we were using as shelving for the past year. All told, probably between half and a whole wheelie bin.

We had to get rid of a lot in the move--everything that couldn’t fit in the van had to go. The only furniture we kept was the table we built, two bookshelves, my treadle sewing machine, and the spinning wheel. We haven’t replaced the bed, and are instead sleeping on a thin (2cm) stack of blankets on the floor. We hang this up during the day to air out. This shift has been surprisingly beneficial as 1) we don’t need to lug a mattress around any more 2) we can occupy smaller rooms (bedrooms are tiny in our new city!) and 3) after a couple weeks to adjust, most of my chronic back/shoulder problems have greatly diminished! Plus, being on the floor is cooler in this climate, which is way hotter/muggier than I’m used to.

[a-quieter-life]

I just saw your post about homemade toothpaste being unhealthy so I'm just wondering ow bad are the abrasive properties of baking soda and do you know a zero-waste alternative??

Sorry for the delay, Anon, I just got this message today!

Minerals are given a hardness rating using something called the Mohs hardness scale, which goes from 1 (talc) and 10 (diamond). The harder a substance is, the more difficult it is to scratch. Tooth enamel is around 5, and baking soda is 2.5; a lot of zero waste and natural health sites have used this fact to say that baking soda is not capable of scratching teeth.

However, softer substances can scratch harder ones. For a non-dental example: iron and steel have a hardness of approximately 4 while glass is 5–despite being harder, glass is easily scratched by iron, it’s just that the iron is damaged more than the glass is in the exchange.

Baking soda crystals are less abrasive than steel, obviously, but have been shown to cause small abrasions over long-term use, which is why a number of medical professionals caution against brushing with baking soda. These tiny grooves provide the perfect habitat for bacteria to grow, and can make you more susceptible to cavities further down the line.

On the other side of the coin, a number of commercial toothpastes contain silica (hardness 7), and have been known for at least a decade to abrade enamel, the results of which are worsened by regularly drinking acidic beverages (this study has a lot of good information for those interested in reading more about the above).

The take home message of the dental literature I’ve read (disclaimer: I’m not a dentist nor a doctor, not giving anyone medical/dental advice) is that baking soda is less abrasive than some commercial toothpastes, but still too abrasive to be using on a daily basis. It has been shown to be good at removing plaque, but this is a once a month rather than daily type of requirement.

What I do personally is brush with water daily, and dissolve baking soda in a glass of water to make a mouthwash. This gives you the pH-balancing action of the baking soda while getting rid of the abrasion. I do brush with baking soda, but only once a month to once per two months, depending on whether or not I see plaque buildup. This is actually how old-fashioned tooth powders were used a century ago, on an as-needed basis. They have become popular again, but people have forgotten how to use them (and there are plenty of 1950′s and before patents and papers demonstrating their effectiveness when used in this fashion).

Hope this helps!