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Reflections on Plastic and Plastic Free July
We started out Plastic Free July with a list of 50 Thoughts on Plastic. Here are a few more thoughts to round out the month’s experience. Overwhelming Reality of Plastic My approach to Plastic Free July this year (my first year participating) was to get a better understanding of the role plastic plays in my life. I wanted to try out some “plastic free swaps” like I talked about in my posts on A Plastic Free Period and a Plastic Free Bathroom, but I knew that eliminating all plastic for a month would be unlikely. I knew that there was a lot of plastic in my life, but it wasn’t…
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Plastic Free Kitchen DIY
Why Make Your Own? This month we’ve been focusing on ways to reduce plastics in our lives. We’ve come across some great ideas from our amazing community and wanted to try a couple out and share our experiences to wrap up the month! I decided to make some homemade dishwasher tabs when I ran out and I realized I had all of the ingredients to make my own. I had made dishwasher powder before but never tabs and as it turns out they work great! My other experiment came about as a result of reading “I Quit Plastics” by Kate Nelson, also known as the Plastic Free Mermaid. I was…
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#MoneyMasterClass Recap–Week 30
Gail covered some more heavy topics this week, including finding a guardian for your children if you have them, the necessity of making a will, and what it means to be an executor of an estate. Guardianship This is something no one wants to think about, but it’s also something not to leave to chance. Gail offers some really practical advice on making this choice. Confronting Death If choosing a guardian for kids wasn’t enough of a difficult topic, Gail reminds us we are all going to die. She, of course, has a purpose for saying it, but I love her bluntness! When we were originally talking about wills in…
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Plastic Free Gift Wrap
There are so many areas in our homes that create waste where we may not even notice it! Wrapping paper is one of those. Every time we wrap a present–whether it’s popping an item in a gift bag or using wrapping paper–we’re creating waste. Here are some ideas on how to minimize that waste with some practical and reusable wrapping ideas. Wrapping Paper Alternatives Cloth–this could be anything from a tea towel wrapped around the gift and secured with a ribbon or a scarf clipped in place with a brooch. Newspaper–use newspaper just like wrapping paper. Any page can be interesting, but I particularly like to use the comics or…
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Plastic Free Laundry Routine
How did you develop your laundry routine? Is it something that you’ve thought about or do you maybe do what your family did growing up? Maybe you are drawn to certain scents and make your detergent and dryer sheet decisions around that? That was certainly me! I gave very little thought to what my laundry routine might be doing to the materials I wore right next to my skin or to the environment that we all live within. That all changed after reading Slow Death By Rubber Duck* about 10 years ago which caused me to start re-evaluating many of the products used in my home using the ThinkDirty app.…
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#MoneyMasterClass Recap–Week 29
This week introduced the topics of disability insurance, critical illness insurance, and a little life advice about selfish behaviour and how to address it. Disability Insurance Gail continued the discussion on insurance policies this week and introduced disability insurance. Gail emphasized this week again that we should buy insurance, not be sold insurance. In other words, make sure that you are not just getting sold on a product, but that you are intentionally buying something that fills a need for you. Critical Illness Another option is critical illness coverage, though Gail does say not to have both critical illness and disability insurance at the same time. Selfishness Last week ended…
