Happiness is

Happiness is....

dancing around the living room to Jimmy Giggle singing "Five steps to bed", my husband carrying four year old Rafael, myself carrying the baby Florence and Rafael reaching his arms out to enclose us all in a "four way hug" as we dance together.

Happiness is.......

Rafael moving his toothbrush so that it hangs right between mine and my husband's and saying "now we can be all together here too".

Citrus infused vinegar

There is nothing revolutionary here - we all know that vinegar is the bees knees when it comes to natural house hold cleaning.

Vinegar cleans everything. Spotlessly. Naturally.

Normally I just use plain old vinegar but then I came across a wonderful idea; citrus infused vinegar.

I like to start every day with some freshly squeezed lemon juice in a glass of warm water. So I often have a lot of citrus peels that end up on their way to landfill (until we get our composting under way).

Citrus infused vinegar is a great way to get one more use of out citrus peels before they are disposed of (in whatever manner you might dispose of yours).


METHOD

• Prepare the peelings by taking as much of the inner fruit off as you can
• Place prepared peels in a glass jar
• Bring vinegar to a simmer on the stove top
• Poor the heated vinegar over the citrus peels in the jar and leave for about a day

OUTCOME

Lovely citrusy smelling vinegar!

I use lemon peel in mine because it is the most commonly used citrus fruit in our house. I have seen other people use orange peels and place fresh rosemary into the vinegar to steep as well. You can be as creative as you like.

USES

Whatever you use vinegar for you can use citrus infused vinegar.

I use it in my all-purpose cleaner, which is a spray I make to clean the kitchen, bathroom and mop the floors with.

Replacing tissues with handkerchiefs

Pyjama handkerchiefs sounds weird doesn't it? 

My husband and family-in-law had a good (kind hearted) laugh at me when I sat down one evening with a pair of my son's outgrown pyjama bottoms and my pinking sheers. 

Pyjama handkerchiefs

The thing is - we go through a lot of tissues here at Aidanvale and as we don't yet have a compost bin - they all head to landfill. A good friend of mine and her husband are very big proponents for hanky use and I thought that in the name of creating less waste this is a bandwagon I should jump on. 

Ideally though, with the 5 R's of Waste Reduction in mind, I didn't want to rush out buy new ones.

I read a whole lot of tutorial online about how to make your own using material at hand at home. The problem for me was that they all involved nicely sewing the edges of the handkerchiefs to stop them from fraying. 

I don't have a sewing machine and I also need to be realistic about myself if I am going to seriously try to cut down on my waste - and in this case the reality is I am not going to put the kids to bed and then sit down and hand sew a whole heap of handkerchiefs. 

So, I tried out the next best thing - I pulled out my trusty pinking sheers. Pinking sheers are a special type of scissor that you can use to cut material. The way these scissors cut the material is supposed to reduce fraying edges. 

METHOD

• Choose an appropriate material
• Use the pinking sheers to cut squarish shapes or rectanglish shapes or whatever shape takes your fancy out of the material

I decided to cut up my son's outgrown flannelette pyjamas because they were going to be donated to the Salvation Army. 

Flannelette feels good on the nose and they were made from 100% cotton so no microplastic pollution when they're washed. 

OUTCOME

They aren't all cut evenly. They are all very different shapes and sizes. Despite the pinking sheers, the edges have frayed in the washing machine. 

But do they work - yes! 

Have I been using them - yes!

Have the children been using them - mostly!

Has it cut down our use of tissues - yes!

HYGIENE

A note on hygiene. I think that it is fairly well established that the use of tissues is the most hygienic option. My husband won't use a handkerchief for that reason. 

When any of us are really sick - I'm talking serious colds, flus and other virus' - then we will use tissues and dispose of them rather than having the virus hanging about on our handkerchiefs. 

Most of the time though, we aren't sick and just need a hanky nearby for those occasions when you just need to blow your nose or wipe a bit of rogue snot off a child's face.

WILL I KEEP MAKING HANDKERCHIEFS?

Will I keep doing this - definitely. 

I already have my eye on some other pyjamas my son is about to grow out of and a t-shirt my husband continues to wear despite it being almost totally ready to be taken out of circulation. 

Yeah, they're not as pretty as store bought handkerchiefs and I am not opposed to purchasing some nicer ones made from re-purposed fabric at some stage as I increase my handkerchief collection.

But overall, I have really had some amazing use out of these handkerchiefs and my family can expect me to be pulling out my pinking sheers and chopping up more clothes in the future.

Getting to know the 5 R’s of reducing waste

So, I was watching a TEDx Talk on YouTube by Bea Johnson. Bea Johnson is woman in the USA who lives a zero-waste lifestyle. Living zero waste isn’t something that I personally aspire to but I admire that she has made it work for her family. Her videos and blog Zero Waste Home are full of useful tips for reducing waste.

In this TEDx Talk Bea Johnson put up a slide about the 5 R’s of reducing waste. Being new to reducing waste, this was something totally new to me.

Here it is:

What I love about this is that Recyling and Rotting are right down the bottom of the 5 R System.

It really resonated with me because I am coming to realise that the idea of reducing waste is bigger than reducing waste that goes to landfill (although that is a start). 

It is also about reducing waste on a bigger level so that items can avoid the need to be donated, recycled, composted or sent to landfill.

Clothes for example. There is more involved in the donation of clothes to op-shops. A lot of those clothes end up in landfill anyway. This March 2017 Sydney Morning article quotes to CEO of the Salvos talking about this issue: 

“According to Salvos Stores CEO Neville Barrett, "Generally speaking donations are slightly up on previous years, by perhaps one or two per cent. The quality of donations, however, has reduced a lot."

He explains that damaged cotton garments can be sold for industrial rags, "suitable garments can be on-sold internationally" by third parties (although the revenue generated is minimal) but "if it's not good enough for either of those outcomes, unfortunately we must send it to the tip.

"Nationally, our annual waste collection and disposal bill is somewhere between $5millon and $6 million."

A charity has to spend up to $6million a year on disposing clothes not appropriate for donations. Think of what that money could otherwise be spent on.

There are 7 kinds of plastics that go into our recycling bins but at the moment, according to Clean UpAustralia, only 1, 2 and 3 are recycled in Australia (although they do say that increasingly councils are recycling 4 – 7).  

Even kerbside recycling of every day products still requires resources (even if it saves more). Wouldn’t it be great if we could even reduce the need to spend so much to be recycled?  

This 5 R System of reducing waste might be old news for some but for me it is a useful new tool I can use as a compass as I try to reduce the waste produced in our home. 

Does homemade deodorant work?

Yep. I went there. DIY Deodorant.

Why?

Firstly, I spend a lot of money on clinical strength deodorant. Since having my second child I have a serious issue with body odour. It must be hormonal. The clinical deodorant is expensive and the bottles don't last very long. 

Home made deodorant seemed like an easy thing to try. I had all the ingredients at home required to make a deodorant paste and if it worked what a great win - less plastic and I save money and I don't have all those nasty chemicals being rubbed into me every morning. 

I have seen natural deodorants available on the market, but again, if I could make it myself even better. 

So, it seemed like an easy way to save money and reduce waste all at the same time.

The thing is – and I am sure that you have already spotted this – how likely is it that someone who has a problem with body odour and has been using expensive clinical strength deodorant will get any effective odour control from DIY Deodorant?

Good question.

And I am going to find out.

No Pong natural deodorant - what I use now

In an effort to speed up the process, I started by making two different deodorant pastes – each using a different recipe. I uses Recipe 1 under my left arm and Recipe 2 under my right arm and I took note each day of how they each performed. My plan was to trial them until they were empty and then maybe also trial a DIY spray deodorant against the winner of the battle.

The recipes were:

RECIPE 1:

1 tablespoon tea tree oil

4 table spoons bicarb soda (baking soda)

6 tablespoons melted coconut oil

Mixed together in a glass jar and refrigerated till hardened. I keep it in the bathroom and depending on the temperature it can become a bit more melted than ideal but so far so good. I just take a small amount on my fingers and rub it under my arm until I feel that it is sufficiently coated.

RECIPE 2:

¼ cup melted coconut oil

1/4 cup bicarb soda (baking soda)

¼ cup cornflour (the recipe I took this from actually suggested tapioca pwder but I didn’t have any immediately to hand)

1 tablespoon tea tree oil

Again, just mixed it together in the glass jar and refrigerated until hard and now I keep it in my bathroom. I take a small amount and rub under my right arm until it is all covered to my liking.

My understanding of the ingredients is that the tea tree oil acts as an antibacterial (given it is the bacteria that causes the smell), the bicarb soda assists with dryness and the coconut oil is the binding agent that binds them all together and then binds them to your skin. I ain’t no scientist though.

OUTCOME

Initially - they performed pretty evenly. Recipe 2 was slightly better with odour control but left a lot more white streaks on my clothes because it has a lot more powder. Both did not work as well as my clinical strength deodorant (of course) but they did perform a lot better than I expected.

Unfortunately by about day 5 I was having a bad reaction to the bicarb soda in the recipes, particularly under my right arm. I came out in a really itchy red rash.

So, I gave up the home made deodorant.  

NO PONG

Instead, I purchased a bicarb free natural deodorant called No Pong. So far so good. Again, it doesn't work like my clinical strength deodorant. I still smell a bit by the end of the day but it is nothing that other people would notice. I can also feel wetness in my armpits but again, nothing that worries me. It is bicarb free so I am not having the reaction to it that I did to my home made version. Yeah, it's not super pleasant having to smear the cream under my arms and I am not saving as much money buying it from No Pong but with everything balanced I will be sticking with No Pong for now. 

Reducing waste - the beginning of our journey

I have always thought that we probably make a little much rubbish in our house but I never really thought much about it, certainly not enough to take any steps to combat it. 

When I saw that the ABC was screening a show called War on Waste I was quite excited. It seemed like the perfect opportunity for me to start thinking about the waste that we produce and see if there were any changes that we could make as a family to reduce the waste that we produce.

So, I watched it. And I was horrified. The amount of waste produced by Australia alone is mind blowing. The Australian Bureau of Statistics states that in 2010, each household in Australia is estimated to produce almost 1.5 tonnes of waste and that nearly half of all of that was organic waste and almost a quarter of that was paper and cardboard waste. 

Clean Up Australia says this on their website: Australians are the second highest producers of waste, per person, in the world with each of us sending over 690 kilograms of waste to landfill each year (the United States is the highest waste producer). The amount of waste placed in landfill each year in Australia is enough to cover the state of Victoria. 

And to think that there are other countries all around the world producing enormous volumes of waste. I can’t even imagine how much space it all must be taking up throughout the entire world.

I learnt a lot from watching ABC's War on Waste and I am so grateful that it has inspired in me the motivation to make changes to what my family send to landfill.

Keep Cups

I genuinely didn’t know that disposable coffee cups were not recyclable – I have spent the last 15 years unknowingly recycling all of my coffee cups. Mind blowing. I had a keep cup and I hadn’t been using it, thinking to myself “well at least the cups are being recycled”. Now I know better. 

I started using my keep cup and purchased a new one so that I would always have one available to me no matter where I am. I keep one in the car and one in my work hand bag. 

Since starting to use the Keep Cup I have also made a promise to myself that if I find myself without a Keep Cup then I will forgo a coffee. So far that has only happened once and I did stick by my resolution. I have also convinced my husband to try using the Keep Cup and he has also been trying very hard to use it as much as possible.

Soft plastic recycling

Soft plastic recycling! What a revelation. 

I had no idea that soft plastic recycling existed. It turns out that one of my local Woolworths and one of my local Coles supermarkets have Redcycle bins. Redcycle is a soft plastic recycling company. So you can put all of the soft plastics (plastic bags and plastic food packaging) can be placed in large wheelie bins and the plastic is delivered to the Redcycle recycling centre in Victoria where they are turned into other items. This is what they say about it on the Redcyle website: “We bring the collected plastic back to our facility for initial processing then delivered to Australian manufacturer Replas where it undergoes an incredible transformation. Replas uses the material as the resource to produce a huge range of recycled-plastic products, from fitness circuits to sturdy outdoor furniture, to bollards, signage and more. All products are extremely robust, as well as water and termite resistant. They won’t crack, splinter or rot and will never need painting. Replas products are perfect for use in schools, park, public spaces and commercial premises.”

Disposable hygiene items

I have cut right down on my tissue usage by cutting up a pair of my son’s old pyjamas (which were going to be donated) using pinking sheers and have used them as handkerchiefs and little wipes which I use to wipe makeup off the back off my hand in the morning. 

I have stopped buying makeup remover wipes and started using a microfiber cloth to remove my makeup. The cloth can be washed and will last for a very long time. I am a little uncertain about microfibre because I have been reading about microplastic pollution, but at the moment this works and seems a better alternative to remover wipes.

I have purchased a menstrual cup which will hopefully eliminate the need for tampons and pads.

Being more aware of what can and can't be recycled 

I have really come to realise the importance of making myself aware of what can and cannot be recycled and therefore avoid landfill (at least for a little longer).

I didn’t, for example, realise that aluminium foil could be recycled after use (although in hindsight this was pretty obvious). 

My coffee cups is another good example of something I didn’t know could be recycled. 

I didn’t know that the tags on bread bags could be recycled and I didn’t know that if you just put those tags and beer bottle lids and other bottle lids loose into the recycling that they are unlikely to be collected by the recycling machines. 

I order frozen meals that come in paperboard packaging. It is a different material to paper and cardboard. I am told by the producer of those meals that the paperboard is recyclable in some council areas and not others. I am checking with my local council whether they will accept them. Before this, though, I have been sending them straight to landfill.  

UPDATE: They can be recycled in my recycling bin.

THE OUTCOME SO FAR

I won’t go here with everything I have tried doing. I might try to do a post about every swap or change I make and the effect it has.

In short, within 3 weeks of attempting to reduce my waste – I have greatly reduced the amount of waste we produce that ends up in landfill. We line our garbage bins with the grey plastic shopping bags you receive at supermarkets. Before I started making small changes at home, we were producing at least 7 - 8 plastic bags of rubbish + maybe 2 - 3 plastic bags of nappies a week.

Last week, we put out 2 plastic bags of rubbish and 2 plastic bags of nappies.

Massive difference.

What I have learned so far from this process is that the bulk of the waste we were producing and sending to landfill was soft plastic – which is now being recycled in the soft plastic recycling system.

Now, I am not saying that sending it all off to be recycled is the answer. Resources still need to be used to recycle the material and people/businesses still need to be willing to purchase items made from recyclable materials. It may be recycled but it is still waste. I do aim in the long term to reduce my waste from a bigger picture point of view. 

But for me and for now, it is a start.

I can see other areas we need to make improvements in – investigating whether there is way that would work for our family to buy less packaged foods and arranging a composting system.

But this journey towards producing less waste has started and I am pleased by the changes I have already seen in our house.