The up-cycle project inspired by Zach Braff.

When Big Poppa and I first met we spent many, many hours lying around watching Scrubs. We’d hang out for every new season, buy it on DVD and watch it until the discs wore out (I mean this quite literally). When we met we used to joke that all we had in common was a mutual love of Bill Murray, but the thing that probably kept us together was our common brand of humour. We loved the crap out of Scrubs and both of us were pretty fond of Zach Braff. We didn’t write this song, but we probably would have if we’d thought of it first.

So, years ago, when I discovered this t-shirt available for sale of course I bought it for BP. Of course I did. BP was leaner then (okay, if I’m going to be fair we were both so much leaner then), but he’s always been particular about the shape of his shirts and he prefers black, so he never wore it much. With all the decluttering and shifting of stuff, I just haven’t been able to pass this one on. It doesn’t fit BP and it doesn’t fit me, but maybe one day…?

Today a post that promised 25 minute sewing projects came up in my feed. I’m always looking for 25 minute sewing projects, because then I am absolutely certain they won’t take me more than 8 hours. Waking today and realising that no one had any plans (an oasis in a storm of activity) we decided to have a pyjama day. Big Poppa has been working on a mixtape for someone special, so I figured I had time for a mini project. This DIY kids nightie caught my eye. Even better – it boasts that it’s a 15 minute project. That’s only about 4 hours in Mama time. Super!

I rummaged through the sewing box and found the vending machine t-shirt. At men’s size XL I knew I was stretching being able to do this in just 15 minutes, but I figured I could probably get something to work. Even if it just kind of worked. Little Fearse is never particularly critical of my sewing adventures, so I reckoned it was a safe bet.

It took me about 2 hours in the end. Due to the size of the t-shirt I also had to cut out and reset the sleeves. I only knew this was a possibility from reading other t-shirt up-cycle tutorials previously and I’m sure that if anyone who actually knew anything about sewing checked this out they’d be horrified. It works, anyway, and Little Fearse (although very grumpy for these photos) seems wiling to wear it. And I reckon she looks just as spiffy as Zach Braff.

Mama xo

A rookie mistake.

BP and I made a rookie mistake last week. I call this a rookie mistake because it’s the kind of decision we would have made thoughtlessly in our pre-BNN life. And here we are, 19 months later, making the same sorts of mistakes. Unlearning life-long habits is hard.

My laptop isn’t functioning all that well and really needs to be kept in one steady place. In addition to this my back doesn’t thank me for using my laptop as it’s intended (on my lap). We decided to get a small desk for our living area so that I could remain a part of the gang while using my computer.

BP recalled, with sentimentality, how much he’d loved his childhood desk – an 80s style map top desk (chunky and brown). He asked around and found that it was located at his sister’s house. She kindly offered to have it fixed and delivered it herself.

We have had it less than a week and it has served its function as a table for my laptop quite well, but it has also quickly become a new surface to add clutter to. We knew this was going to happen. Everything we have learned about removing clutter from our home tells us that we need less surfaces and less storage, not more. Everyone who has lived in a house knows that it is going to take less than a month for those drawers to be loaded up with stuff.

Although we had already discussed the need for a dining table in the front room, sentimentality clouded our vision and we brought in this desk that is all wrong. During the winter months we only heat the front half of our house. The back half has few blinds and curtains and most of the heat would be lost. The only time we use that end of the house is for eating dinner. We could easily have solved this issue and the desk issue with a small, compact dining table in place of the big, chunky desk.  If we had a dining table here it would still be a surface, but at least it would be one that we had to clear every night to eat.

I’m disappointed in our thought processes which basically showed no growth from our impulsive decision making prior to our first buy nothing year.

Of course now we have a fierce Fearsian stand-off. BP is sentimental and wants to hold on to the desk and I am a cold-hearted clutter clearer and want to move it on (or at least out of the house) to make room for something more practical to our purposes.

When you make significant changes to the way you lead your life, you owe it to yourself not to relax on those ideals. We have worked too hard to claw our way forward to now allow ourselves to slip backwards into old habits that don’t suit our purposes.

This week, to help us remember how far we have come, BP and I used ingenuity to repair a squashed, shattered and near destroyed washing basket. When I bought this basket, several years ago, I bought the cheapest one I could find. Everything about it was nasty. It didn’t take long for it to start deteriorating. Recently someone sat on it, or stepped on it, or was pushing someone else around in it as though it was a car and it collapsed into itself. Since we’re working on reducing our waste, and there was no way this was recyclable plastic, we knew that we had no choice but to find a way to repair it, or reuse it. I made the decision to buy the shittiest, cheapest basket I could find and I’m now responsible
for where that ends up. So, how do you repair a shattered plastic washing basket? Start by connecting all the broken bits back together with a few handy pipe cleaners, then insert a hardy backdrop (in this case some cardboard that came as the packaging for one of Little Fearse’s birthday gifts) and go to town with gaffa tape. Ta da! I reckon it will last us another decade, don’t you?

The daily decisions we make about our consumption and about the things we bring into our home need constant examination. This way of life is not yet ingrained in us, which is not helped by the fact that it is far from the norm in society. I see that there is a shift and change happening around us and I hope that things will change in this lifetime. All I can control are the choices that I make and hope that I can mostly make good ones.

Mama xo

The hierarchy of the three Rs.

Today when I watched Waste Deep I was reminded again that many people are still unaware of the true function of the three R’s of sustainability: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. The three Rs don’t just suggest three ways of being more sustainable. It is a hierarchical model for leading a greener existence.

 

Often the first thing people who are trying to reduce their waste will notice is that their recycling bin is now much fuller than their rubbish bin. While this is a really great start, the reduction in waste starts with just that – reduction!

Part of the reason our family buys nothing new is because we believe that all of the things we need in this world have already been made, purchased, in most cases used and have plenty of life left in them for a new life with us. If we are unable to buy something second hand we will usually not buy it at all. This means that we are instantly reducing our impact on the earth. Every new item that is purchased is created by using a variety of resources from production of initial materials and assembly of the product to packing, shipping and promotion. I’m not just talking about clothing and stuff here. I’m also talking about food. If we buy processed food (and try as I might not to, there is a whole pile of it in my pantry right now) there is often a hefty drain on resources before those items even hit the shelves.

So, what’s a better choice?

Reduce the processed food you buy and reduce the amount of food you buy overall. Really think about the type of packaging on your food – can it be composted or returned to nature? Is it plastic that can be recycled? Or is it foil or styrofoam that is much harder to dispose of? Think about this for all the stuff you buy.

Try and find a reuse for items, even recyclable ones, first. Glass jars have a bajillion uses. I give mine to my Dad for jams, sauces and pickles (and often get them back filled with goodies). I have a friend who offers her jars up in bulk lots for free on classified sites. Some people use them for storing collections (I can’t speak from experience because I do not have a large collection of vintage buttons sorted into colour lots in glass jars on my sewing shelves). You can use a glass jar for transporting soup, or as a vase. Tins, like jars, can also be used as a variety of receptacles. One of my favourite reuses for tins was seen in a cafe recently. They had used a variety of pretty tomato tins for utensils on the tables. I actually took a photo of this to share with you, but can I find it now? No, sir.

Glass and tin are two things that actually recycle well. They tend to retain their quality through recycling processes over and again . What’s really challenging and helpful is when you find ways to reuse plastic products, which reduce in quality every time they are recycled. I always try and find second, third and fourth uses for the least recyclable plastics, such as margarine and yoghurt containers. These are of such low quality by the time they’re produced, due to being made from a variety of recycled plastics melted together, that they can only really be recycled into plastic lumber which is in limited demand.

The final step in the three RRRs of sustainable practices, is recycle. This is certainly a better option than sending your goods to landfill. People often forget that recycling is a process which involves the use of transport and energy, as well as large amounts of other resources such as water. Recycling is what prevents much of our resources from going to landfill, but the recycling plant is the last step before landfill.

I’d love to see many more people putting many more steps between purchase and disposal. 

Mama xo

Sentimental paper gifts: DIY Memorabilia Mini book

For Big Poppa’s 30th birthday this week I wanted to make him something special, which also reflected his new status as an “old man”. BP is affectionately thought of by many who know him as a grumpy old man. At the age of 24 he did start saying things like “I don’t understand young people any more”. Now that he’s officially tipped over into his 30s we have joked that he can now really start his decent into grumpy old man territory.

This project included finding a use for some of the paper memorabilia I’ve saved from our honeymoon in New York, as well as creating a mini book explaining the dice game Farkle. I found a gorgeous set of dice at the market in a little leather case. I couldn’t resist buying them for my-young-old man, but we’ve never played dice games, so I thought I’d better find a game we could enjoy. Farkle seems to be a popular and fun game we can play with just the two of us.

[I have also made a mini book comic about how we met for BP for our first wedding anniversary (paper) and last year I made a friend a mini book from a gorgeous old raggedy 70s picture book that was falling apart. The possibilities are endless really.]

1. You can use any paper of any size to make these books. If you want to use some paper from a special holiday or event, you can choose bits and pieces, like I did, and glue them on to a larger piece of paper. I glued these papers onto an A4 page. As well as the paper you will need scissors.
2. So here is my paper to start with (each side is different).

3. Fold the page in half.

4. Fold the page in half again.

5. Fold the page in half a third time. By this stage you will need to apply quite a bit of pressure to get a good crease.

6. Unfold your page to step 4.

7. With the fold towards you, cut up the middle crease to the centre of the page.

8. When you unfold your page it should look like this, with a slit up the centre of the middle four rectangles.

9. Fold the page in half lengthways and open the slit out like a diamond.

10. Push the top and bottom points of the diamond together and press the pages into a booklet. This is where you might have to readjust your creases to ensure the pages are even.

11. Voila! Mini book.

I used the pages from a tiny note pad inside my booklet and hand wrote the information. You can do whatever you like inside yours – use photos, stickers, lined pages, sketch paper…be creative!

If you do make a mini book using these instructions I’d love to see it! Please leave a link in comments or pop a photo up on our Facebook page.

Happy birthday to my beautiful beardy man. xo

Mama xo

10 Easy Ways to Reduce Your Trash

When we buy a product it is so easy to neglect to envision the whole life cycle of that thing. Where something has come from is relevant to us – we should be aware of what the product is made from and how that effects us and our environment. We should try and buy products that have been ethically produced, whether we’re thinking about the impact on the planet or the impact on communities. People are starting to show more awareness of ethical issues when purchasing new products. The mass boycott of products containing palm oil is one great example of this. How often do we neglect to consider where our product will end up when it’s life is over?

Thanks for the image, wehatewaste.com.

This summer I’ve been reading Amy Korst’s The Zero-Waste Lifestyle: Live well by throwing away less. I have found it incredibly inspiring. (And, by the way, I am also recommending it as an easy, engaging and particularly instructional read.) As a household we have a long way to go before we can consider ourselves rubbish-free, but every day we are learning to make better choices for ourselves and our environment. The idea of living with no waste at all can be really daunting.

There are degrees of living this type of lifestyle – you might be an individual or household who wants to halve their waste or find a better way to dispose of what they already use. Perhaps you’d like to downgrade from your current size curbside garbage bin to a smaller (and cheaper) version. We pay for the size bin we use in our rates in Australia. Could you be saving your household money by throwing away less? You may be someone who believes you can get to the stage where you only create a shoebox full of waste a year, like Amy and her husband. We don’t think we can get down that far, but we would like to reduce our waste by at least 50% this year. When we get there I’d like to see if we can go further, but for the time being we’re sitting at that goal. By now you’ll have learned that I I’m particularly motivated by goals.

The reality of throwing an item away is that it ends up in landfill. There is no magical land where our rubbish goes, breaks down and ceases to be. It sits in huge mounds, creating a dangerous atmosphere in which it is nearly impossible for anything to biodegrade, even your “biodegradable” rubbish bags.

If you think you are ready to make the change to a less trashy life, here are ten quick things you can change now.

1. Think about every single thing you put in the rubbish. Think outside the box. How could you re-use this instead of throwing it away?
2. Don’t buy packaged goods. You can buy packaged everything, but in the same vein, you can get most things unpackaged. Avoid anything with double layers, too much plastic and styrofoam trays. Shop at stores or markets where you can return the packaging. Shop in bulk when you can. Recently I *accidentally* purchased a four pack of mangos at Aldi. They were housed in a little plastic box with four mango shaped molds. They even had nutritional values listed on the front. For mangos?! They were inexpensive and they looked great. I completely forgot about the rubbish they were creating – buying four mangos should always be a zero waste purchase. Think hard about everything you put in your basket.
3. Search Google for alternative uses. The world is full of innovative and resourceful people. The web is full of their ideas. For example, when I searched alternative uses for styrofoam trays I found that they could be used for planting seeds, making toys, creating collages, framing photos and crafting in a gazillion ways. One savvy trasher even created a Pinterest board dedicated to reusing the sly old styrofoam tray.
4. Which brings me to our best trashing resource – Pinterest. If you have a child, or are associated with a school, kindergarten or childcare centre (or if you know someone with a child…have I covered most options here??) then you have somewhere to pass on your crafting resources. Pinterest is a whole world of new ideas for ordinary things. This summer when I caved and accidentally bought the cheaper (and more fun) frozen yoghurt pop sticks, instead of the less trashy tub, I washed and kept all the pop sticks. I know these little wooden blighters will come in handy one day. Similarly, I collect bread bag ties. At the moment they are helpig my worn out thongs (if you are not Australian read: flip flops) last out the summer. Maybe one day I’ll make a gown out of them.
5. Sell it. I have a friend who sold a broken answering machine, which was declared as such,  at her garage sale. Just because you think it is trash, it isn’t to everyone. Did you know that in the US you can sell toilet tubes in bulk lots on eBay? There are about a billion crafts that you can do using them. In Australia we are not allowed to use them in schools anymore due to dubious hygiene concerns. What a shame! Check out where your trash can make you some money and be re-used or repurposed.
6. Have fewer bins. This suggestion is straight from Amy’s book. If you take the bins out of the bedroom and bathroom you’ll have to think harder about where that rubbish goes. While you are transporting that rubbish to the kitchen bin you’ll have time to think about what it is, how it could be reused or, failing that, recycled. What is is made up of? How did it end up in your house? How can you avoid it in the future?
7. Don’t buy one use items. They are everywhere! My Mum bought a packet of 6 sippy cups when my nephew was born (almost 6 years ago). She only realised much later that the brand name was “take and toss”. They were designed to be thrown out. These sturdy, colourful sippy cups are still in use. It’s unfathomable that people buy things like this to throw away. Many one use items, including tissues, nappies, wipes, breast pads,  sanitary items, razors, paper plates, plastic bags,  plastic cups, take away coffee cups and plastic cutlery can easily be replaced with reusable items without too much stretching of the imagination.
8. Stop lining your bin with bags. Check your council regulations. Some will allow you to put your rubbish directly into the garbage bin without a bin liner or bag. Others require you to contain it so it doesn’t fly away when the bins are emptied into the truck. Our council requires this, but there is no reason for us to have a fresh bag every time we empty the bin. Buy larger garbage bags to cover your bin, if this is necessary, and fill that throughout the week. One. Bag. Otherwise, use paper bags. If you’re composting (this is easy, too!) then you won’t have much mushy waste and paper bags should suffice.
9. Recycle plastic that can’t go into your curbside bin at Coles. Did you know that Coles collects biscuit packets, plastic wrap, pasta packets and the like to recycle into playground equipment. I know! How awesome! You can read more about that here.
10. Find a better way. Crunch this: If you replace your toothbrush as recommended (every 3 months) and you live, say, 70 years, how many toothbrushes will you throw into landfill in your lifetime? 280. Two hundred and eighty toothbrushes! That’s 280 for you, 280 for your spouse, 280 for your children, 280 for your parents, 280 for your neighbour. That’s a huge amount of dental hygiene waste lying around in landfill. A little bit of research brought us to Environmental Toothbrush – an Australian (yay!) company who create compostable toothbrushes. They’re made from sustainable bamboo and are entirely compostable. Also awesome – they cost about the same as a normal toothbrush and come in cardboard packaging. We’re in love. When at all possible, if you cannot avoid the product, find a better way.

These ideas are designed to be easy to implement, but they are just the beginning.

What do you do to reduce your trash? What’s your number one tip for those getting started?

Mama xo

Links we’ve loved #10

We have really loved finding the perfect recipient for things we are decluttering. Sometimes it’s an item of clothing that would better suit a friend, sometimes a DVD we know someone will love or something we no longer need that someone else does (often a charity that is looking for something very specific). Liesl Clark’s post 365 Days of Giving is a lovely post that looks at giving from a new perspective.

This post about the first day of marriage equality in Minnesota made us envious. We wish Australia would get with the program.

Great short film. Watch.

We love Dads here at Fearse Industries – especially special Dads. Also, regular Dads. And wise, funny Dads. And cool Dads.

How do you feel about bear decapitation? We are fans.

We think this petition is worth signing.

Big Poppa… humour.

We always like to follow when Vladimir Putin is in the news. Don’t you? He pretty much awes us and terrifies us in equal amounts.

The first time Little Fearse saw this she was completely awe struck (so were BP and Mama).

We’d love your recommendations for great links from the week. Hope your weekend was splendid.

Happy Sunday,

Mama, Big Poppa & Little Fearse xoxox

Links we’ve loved #5, Part 1.

My parents tried to sell their piano for years. When that failed they tried to give it away. No one wanted it. I was really shocked. Like many people I had thought that pianos were expensive to buy and something people valued. I was wrong. When BP and I bought our house he asked if he could have the piano. I wasn’t so sure, but as it turns out it has been a great addition to our home and a beautiful instrument for Little Fearse to explore. This article talks about putting free stuff on the curb, but also includes a really upsetting youtube clip of pianos being tossed in the tip. Adopt a piano, you won’t regret it!

If you want to squee a little go here.

This isn’t my favourite article on this topic, but it is the most recent I’ve read.

This is pretty cool – imagine being plastic bag free entirely.

This article made me really glad to know that we have so many strong females in our lives.

Our FB page includes links and photos throughout the week. We’d love to see you there.

Have a great weekend,

Mama xox

Give it up!

As well as selling some of our random goods, we’ve also found plenty of places lately to give our things away. Once we were a one stop donation family – the local St Vinnies. No longer! Since really analysing what we have to give away we’ve realised a few things. I’m going to break out the dot points here.

• Op shops only want things they can sell. They don’t particularly like books. They definitely don’t want things in poor condition. They do not want your electrical goods.
• Savers will take your electrical goods. They’ll take your clothes, too, but Savers is not an op shop. They donate a dollar for each item they receive. This isn’t a bad outcome, but it’s not the same as the whole profits going towards a charity. (And lets not even start on how much money raised actually goes to a charity anyway!)
• There are many, many, many specialised charities looking for particular goods at a particular time.
• Freecyclers tend to be really picky about what they want and what they don’t want. It’s hard to know if people are being picky because they want to get something for free to on-sell, or if they really can’t afford that one thing they really need, and they really need a particular type of that thing. It sometimes feels like it’s less about giving away and more about getting.

So here’s a mini run down on things we’ve given away.

Rags to the Country Fire Authority: the local CFA has a small wheelie bin out the back for rags. They ask for cotton-only clothing with no zips or buttons. I was able to donate some of the badly stained children’s clothes I mentioned here.

Books to a retirement village: Melaleuca Lodge Retirement Village on Phillip Island has an attached second hand bookshop. The bookshop raises money for the village. We donated a huge box load of books here. We have also recently discovered that our local YMCA where Little Fearse goes swimming has a book corner you can give your books to, or purchase books from for a small amount. I’m not sure who the money goes to.

Bill’s Bookshop – that’s our box of books right there.

Toiletries to a woman going to an orphanage in Fiji: Through a FB group I have ‘liked’ I discovered a woman was looking out for toiletries to take with her on a trip to a Fijian orphanage. She was after soaps and shampoos for the children and wanted to take some special items for the women working at the orphanage as gifts. I receive a lot of toiletries as gifts from students at the end of the year and often don’t use them. I donated a variety of hand creams, perfumes and soaps to be taken to Fiji.

Children’s clothes on Freecycle: When I last received the clothes on Freecycle there were many I didn’t need. I took out the ones destined for ragdom (above) and redonated the rest to a Freecycler, with some added unwanted items of ours. It’s good to see them being passed on and on. The woman I received them from originally got them on Freecycle, too!

Household goods to St Vinnie’s: I know that kitchen items sell well at St Vinnie’s, so I didn’t hesitate to donate these to them. I also donated toys and other random children’s goods.

Our clothes to Red Cross: Our local Red Cross op shop is very small and only receives clothes, so we donated ours here.

I’m going to make just one final point on donations. During the severe 2009 bush fires in Victoria BP and I volunteered to help sort the clothing and goods donated to families who had lost their homes. There were two huge HUGE warehouses full of clothing and household goods donated. Some of this stuff was really useful and would have really helped families resettle. A lot of the stuff was really awful. Stained. Full of spiders. Torn. Worn. Broken. Covered in animal hair. Stiff with food or bodily fluids. Seriously. If it is in such bad condition you wouldn’t wear it – don’t donate it. Find a different way to recycle it. (For instance, if it’s pure cotton put it in the compost – the worms will love it!) It’s an insult to those people who have lost their EVERYTHING to think that they will enjoy wearing your stained, see-through, torn, hairy old clothes.

We’d love to hear about other places you have found that liked to receive particular items.

If you’re looking to pass on any of your baby goods and you live in Melbourne, I’d highly recommend you check out whether it is something St Kilda Mums needs. They do a great job re-homing baby goods for Mums in need.

Mamaxo

Guest Entry: Bubble Kids

We are really excited to have Amy-Lee and Alexandra from one of our favourite FB pages, Bubble Kids, share some of their best ideas for entertaining 1 -2 year olds. Their page has given us heaps of BNN ideas for toys and activities we can share with Little Fearse. Bubble Kids is a favourite of educators, cash-strapped parents and those who value creativity over stuff when spending time with youngsters.  

(Advance apologies for the issues we’ve had with formatting this entry. Let’s call the random blank spots pause for thought.)

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Hello! My name is Amy-lee and I’m one of the two admins of the Facebook page Bubble Kids. I created my page with the help of Alexandra to give all types of parents all sorts of easy and cost efficient activities and ideas to do with their children. When we were asked to write this blog we had so many ideas and thoughts float through our heads that it made it incredibly hard to narrow it down to just a few! So we have decided to stick to the theme of ideas, games and experiences for children between the age of 1-2 years and here is what we have come up with!

Cardboard roll shakers:

1 cardboard roll, bells and fishing line/wire to stick the bells on to the cardboard roll.

Children will have hours of fun shaking these and making lots of different music with these.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Drums:

All you need to make these are 1 tin (old formula, milo or coffee tin), two different colour balloons for each tin and scissors to cut the patterns into the balloons.

Use different size tins and layers of more balloons to create different sounds.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Pasta necklaces :

Raw pasta and string (or left over ribbon!) and food dye if you want to get extra creative!

So easy but yet so fun to make.

You could even change this up a bit by using fruit loops, grapes, slices of fruit or anything really, just attach a toothpick to the end of the piece of string so that it has a point to push through the fruit with.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sock puppets:

Sock puppets can be made from odd socks they are just laying around the house, left over felt/wool from other projects and buttons for eyes!

You could create a whole family of sock puppets and put on a puppet show using an old cereal box (cutting out the sides) as the stage!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Pet rocks:

I mean who doesn’t want a pet rock?! Pet rocks are so easy to make with what ever

resources you can get your hands on and they have so many uses.

They could be a part of a “puppet” play, act as a “no talking” rock, a member of a rock family or even a doorstop! So many possibilities!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I spy jars:

Recycled plastic bottles filled with rice, beads, glitter or anything really and then a few little items tossed in so the children can find the hidden objects!

These don’t have to be in a jar, any container will do! For older children you could also attach a list of the “hidden” objects for them to find.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We have enjoyed working with the Fearse Family to put this post together and hope you all enjoy it. You can find many more ideas just like these on our Facebook page Bubble Kids.

Amy-lee and Alexandra xx

A few tiny steps.

We had two gift vouchers remaining from Christmas that were due to run out in May – one for a popular stationary store and one for Myer. We ummed and ahhed over what we should spend them on, as we couldn’t allow them to go to waste. Of all the ideas the only ones we had that seemed to make sense, or were justifiable, were to spend them on Little Fearse.

At the stationary store we purchased her a new lunchbox. She didn’t need a new lunchbox. The one we purchased at the op shop is still going strong. We were just at a loss – we didn’t need anything at the shop. It was an empty kind of purchase and it felt like we were cheating on BNN and ourselves.

At Myer we bought Little Fearse a winter jacket (much more expensive than we’d usually get) and a winter top that will probably fit her this winter and next. Of course both items of clothing are ridiculously cute. I did get some pleasure out of this purchase because they were things Little Fearse will get a lot of wear out of. Although we can easily purchase clothes for her second hand it’s nice to have the opportunity to buy her something special. It sort of tickled the consumer in me in the way the previous purchase hadn’t.

Being at the shopping centre (for only the second time this year) was unlovely. The visuals there are like an assault if you haven’t been for a while. When you’re at a shopping centre already it becomes kind of second nature to pick up something here and something there. Since we’re not buying anything new we ended up purchasing coffee and snacks we didn’t need.

My tuna hand roll came in a plastic box with a little plastic tray for the wasabi and a tiny plastic bottle of soy sauce, held together with a rubber band. I felt really guilty about how much packaging was involved in my purchase of one tiny hand roll. I wished I’d had the forethought to at least get them to leave off the plastic container. They had paper bags, which would have been marginally better.  Feeling ill at ease about the amount of stuff left over when I’d finished eating I tucked the container into the bottom of Little Fearse’s pram figuring I’d try and find a way to reuse some of it later.

The wind was ferocious. While we were unloading the pram the wind stole the sushi box and rubbish and whipped it off across the car park. “Oh no!!”  I cried. Big Poppa got ready to chase after, thinking it was his steak that had flown away, or one of Little Fearse’s new purchases. As I saw the box sadly crushed under a car wheel then lift over the edge of the upstairs car park wall I said “Never mind, it was just my sushi box.” I felt kind of relieved in a disgusting way. I no longer had to come up with some fancy way to reuse it. And I felt guilty, too. If it had been one of our purchases or even a $5 note we would have worked hard to retrieve it. Instead I just watched the little box float away.

I wish it was easier – that we didn’t have to work so hard to be good and ecological. Isn’t that terrible? I know that it is true, though, that if it were easier we’d all be much more willing to recycle more or purchase organic food more often or try harder to reduce our waste. It makes me sad to know that even though our little family feels like we’ve come such a long way we still have so much (SO MUCH) further to go. We’re really just a few steps along the pathway to becoming more aware people.  A few tiny steps.

Sigh.

Mama xo