Challenges

As I embark on my quest for less, I envisage a few challenges along the way:

1. My partner. I have a wonderful partner who goes along with most of my quirks and challenges.  However, he really enjoys the occasional junk food "treat" and also does not embrace the idea of making personal beauty products at home. He buys deodorant, hair gel, moisturiser and shampoo in the supermarket, in plastic containers. I have managed to switch us over to using soap bars in the shower and to wash our hands, and will try a shampoo bar once our shampoo runs out and see what he thinks.  The junk food treats, well I'm not too sure how I will handle that. Luckily, he is more of a minimalist than me, so I'm hoping that in time the idea of having less things and spending less will win him over.

2. Outside sources: we have a baby and therefore are given a LOT of things. It has been amazing as we have received a lot of hand me downs from friends and family members which has meant that we have not needed to buy many baby items such as clothing, strollers, nursery furniture, toys etc.  I am so incredibly grateful for everyone's generosity.  However, now that our little girl is here we have started to receive a lot of plastic toys for her, especially from the grandparents, who (rightly so) want to give her gifts that she loves. Plastic aside, both my partner and I do like to have a minimalist household and are constantly trying to downsize, so having toys strewn everywhere around the house does tend to stress us out. I am not sure how we can tackle this area diplomatically without offending the generous hearts of the people who bring Maia gifts.

3. Social occasions: we often have my parents over for dinner as they very generously look after my daughter one day a week when I go to college. We take turns in cooking dinner and they often stay over, bringing with them containers of food, items wrapped in cling film or aluminium foil and disposable plastic storage bags. It feels quite rude of me to tell visitors not to bring any plastic or disposable containers into my home. The one suggestion I am contemplating is asking them to take their rubbish home with them but again I'm a little worried about seeming ungrateful.

4. Travel: normally when I travel I am pretty organised in bringing food and snacks with me to avoid junk food, but I have to admit a lot of the items are packaged in plastic or disposable packaging.  Not to mention disposable nappies and wet wipes, which we use when we are out of the house with no access to a washing machine. At home we use cloth nappies and Cheeky Wipes but when we are away for the weekend or longer we have to revert to disposables which is not ideal.  When we travelled to Malaysia in December I was faced with no access to a kitchen to cook my daughter food for a week, so I packed lots of organic food pouches and tinned sardines and salmon into my suitcase in order to prepare her meals in a hotel room. So much packaging waste! I am hoping that now she is a bit older and able to eat a wider variety of food I won't have the same challenge. I do use these BPA-free reusable pouches (Little Green Pouch Baby Food Pouch) when we are out during her lunchtimes. She really loves feeding herself with them and I feel better knowing that what she's eating is home cooked. 

5. Temptation: I have to admit, I am an impulse buyer. And now with the wonders of the internet, as soon as I get a flutter of desire, it only takes a couple of clicks to have that desire fulfilled. I am so guilty of purchasing things on the fly and then regretting it. Now that I have to be very budget conscious I will really have to put an end to these impulses because we simply cannot afford them!

6. Supplements: As a naturopathic nutritionist, I have been on a lengthy health journey which lead me to experimenting a lot with diet and supplements. I am embarrassed to even think about how much money I've spent on these in the past years, and I still have a large box filled with half filled supplement containers. I made a conscious decision last year to stop taking any supplements except for cod liver oil and probiotics, and am set on sticking to this resolution. I will make sure that should I need any supplements in the future, I do not purchase supplements in plastic containers. Luckily there are  fantastic brands like Wild Nutrition, Pukka Herbs and Viridian who sell their supplements in beautiful glass containers which can then be reused.

Quite a few challenges there, it will be interesting to see how we get on.