No Buy August

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I mentioned in the past post that my sudden return to craft blogging was triggered by having pledged to myself not to buy anything that it is not edible or an absolute necessity, and it’s been going well so far. In truth, it’s been very easy as, once you think twice most things are really not necessary. Although my resolve was put under trial yesterday when I visited the Sostrene Grene shop, which has opened recently in Dublin City centre. It was the first time I got the chance to go, and it is basically like the grown up version of Tiger, but not grown enough to be an Ikea.

They have an amazing craft section.

So many things… I have plenty of already.

One thing in particular was very tempting: little squares of fabric for patchwork, which would have been fabulous for making my cloth pads. I had just started working on my third batch (I’ll talk about that soon), so I felt I needed more fabric to make more.

No, I didn’t need more fabric. Really I don’t. This is why:

All my fabric!

The boxes contain PART of my fabric stash I grown since I got the sewing machine about 6-7 years ago. Bulky fabric is stored in my wardrobe, and the top box is were I have all the cute fabrics for pad making. Full disclosure: I realised there was one more box in the shelf only after I took the picture. So, I let it there (until next time) and my No Buy August was safe!

I don’t want to go into a rant about consumerism and how needs are created by capitalism, but when, on a friend’s suggestion, I approached Marie Kondo’s method, known as “the method” among the cultists, I realised how much of what I’d buy wasn’t needed. That along with a push towards a more zero waste life have brought more awareness to my spending habits, hence less money spent on stuff more on food. Yay!

I don’t embrace Marie Kondo’s principles fully. There’s a lot that would go into the bin that could be easily upcycled or repurposed, but overall the fact of taking all your belongings out and sorting through them by category makes your realise what you own. And she also has a lot of good tips on how to store things back, i.e. folding clothes in little packages and storing them vertically is as brilliant as it is simple. My t-shirt drawer has been tidy since and it’s so satisfying to look at!

Charity shops are now my go to when I absolutely need to buy clothes. My thinking is that there are no new clothes being brought into the cycle, and once I’m fed up with it I can bring it back. It is also where all clothes that didn’t pass the sparkle test (now, if you don’t know what I’m talking about it’s time to google Marie Kondo) go. The ones that are still good enough to be re-loved, the others end in a bag of scraps for upcycling projects.

My spending habits still have a bit to work on. Books are definitely my downfall. I buy second hand, I buy new, I buy buy buy. And to be fair, I also read. I reorganised my books last NYE (I know how to party hard) and I calculated that I read about 60% of them. Not too bad for an hopeless book hoarder!

But there are other aspects I try to improve to live in a less cluttered environment, but also to take care of the environment. Some things in my daily routines have already been replaced with zero waste solutions (coconut oil is the shit…):

  • Toothpaste
  • Period pads
  • Moisturiser
  • Various cleaning products
  • Shopping bags
  • Steel bottle
  • KeepCup (I have the cutest…)

I’m still struggling a bit with hair care stuff. I’m using a Lush solid shampoo, I used them already in the past for a while, but I have very long hair and it’s not working quite well. And the other thing is groceries. There are more and more opportunities to be zero waste, but I know sometimes my sweet tooth (mostly hummus really) combined with my laziness often win over my zero waste conscience.

Maybe it’s time for a No Plastic September challenge?

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