Sustainable living

[aminia]

My whole life I have felt older than I really am. Today it seems to be more evident. Instead of blogging about going out and drinking and other things people my age are doing, the majority of my time is spent thinking about knitting, gardening, getting married and sustainability

Comments

[bluevanilla]

Isn't the wrap-n-mat thing just... cloth tupperware?

Anyways, my mom gave up wrapping paper YEARS ago and now my family uses a bunch of her old scrap fabric to wrap gifts for holidays. It cuts down on a lot of waste, let me tell you.

I think gardening is pretty awesome, and I think if I lived in a place where I planned to actually live longer than a year I would try it too.

[aminia]

Yeah, essentially it is, but I was thinking it would be an alternative to those plastic bags that we use for sandwiches and stuff.

I also read about someone who uses old scarfs (I think the thin ones, not the thick winter ones) as wrapping paper. That is a really good idea, but I still have a ton of wrapping paper and bags that I should continue to use. Keith and I re-use gift bags that people give us and the paper our gifts are wrapped in, if we can. Last year, we gave people twice used wrapping paper.

You should try something in pots! All of my plants are in pots this year!

[sucrelefey]

The downside to self sufficiency is it is not always more resources efficient. For example it takes way more water for hand washing clothes to get the same level of clean that a new machine would do; been there, done that, have the back injury to show for it.
There are really good books out there for learning all the old handicrafts and skills for doing it yourself but a lot of them center on the return to rural homesteading rather than urban self sufficiency.

[aminia]

Yeah, I am more interested in urban self-sufficiency than doing everything by hand just because. The one lady, who's blog I was reading used the dirty water for flushing her toilet or watering her plants. So, maybe for her, she was using less water. I don't feel like making more work for myself on the inaccurate notion that I'm doing good for the earth!

[sucrelefey]

Urban self sufficiency is something of a contradiction. I think looking to the WWII era when rationing forced a lot of waste reduction and led to things like victory gardens would be a good starting place for ideas.

[kittenscurious]

I think this is awesome. I would love to live in a place where I could be (mostly) self sufficient and wouldn't have to rely on the government. Also, these skills will be quite handy when the zombie apocalypse comes.

[aminia]

Hell yeah!

[aminia]

Thanks! My momma made them. She's awesome! (The leftovers are going to have a makeover and become thank you cards!)

We will be registered at Target after tonight. We just have not had time together to go do it in the last few weeks.