Nature – Juniper and Daisies

Why I’m a Big Fan of Buying Eco-Friendly Products Before Using the Old

Switching to an eco-friendly lifestyle isn’t the easiest thing done. It takes time to find the products you like, in your budget, that actually work. It feels daunting, images of people posting their pretty zero waste mason jars filled with barely anything as the trash they accumulated the entire year (which, by the way, is total, absolute bullshit). You wonder how you can switch to the bar shampoo, usually sitting at $14, when you can barely afford that cheap $3 shampoo at the grocery store. You have no idea where to start and what to do, what makes the biggest impact and if you’re actually helping the planet.

It’s a lot. But, it really, really doesn’t have to be.

There are so many things that we’ve switched to doing, or not doing, in order to live a more eco-friendly lifestyle. Some things have been tweaked as they weren’t as sustainable as I thought, being that we couldn’t keep doing it and it didn’t fit well into our lives. While there is so much that we are doing, it still feels like we are not doing enough, which is a cyclical nightmare you can get stuck in unless you’re an asshole who owns 5 yachts and two private planes. Just one yacht is good enough, guys.

Instead of freaking out over whether or not you’re doing everything you can, know that you’re still doing the best that you can. Stop, Breathe. And, try again.

When I was phasing out plastic wrap in our home, I still had a huge box of plastic wrap that I used often. It was that behemoth from Costco and it felt like it would never be finished. I still had a good year or give left on that thing, but I jumped on buying beeswax wraps, thinking that they would be an absolute saviour and get us off of the plastic wrap train. I tried local and not so local and gave them a shot with some foods, saving the plastic wrap for meat and when I was out of beeswax wraps or got too lazy to clean them right away. I felt like such an eco-friendly star and told everyone to give them a try…even though they didn’t always stick well, washing them was a pain, and I couldn’t use them on all foods.

It’s 5 years later and I have zero beeswax wraps in my house. I also have zero plastic wrap. Instead, I have bowl covers and containers, some plastic, some not (because using what you have first is always the best option). I’m glad I bought the beeswax to try them out while I still owned plastic wrap. They didn’t work for us, which meant I would’ve just high-tailed it back to the plastic wrap life and never looked back. Instead, I pivoted and found new ways to store my food and now don’t miss the ‘ease’ of plastic wrap.

When I switched to bamboo toothbrushes, I still had plastic ones sitting in my drawer. Thinking the same as my plastic wrap, I tested out the bamboo seeing if I liked one product over another. Finally, I found what worked for us in regards to price point and feel. It may have felt weird to use a plastic toothbrush after months of brushing with a bamboo one, but it felt good at the same time because I had found something that I liked enough that using anything else was disappointing.

It’s easy to just jump to a store and start grabbing plastic-free products and cleaner beauty items, but not every single product works for every single household. And, heading to a store to buy every single thing eco-friendly really only works if you have lots of money to spend and don’t need to stay on a budget. Like everything you buy for yourself or your home, it’s all trial and error. After a couple of decades of dressing myself and picking out my clothes, I finally know what fits me and that I don’t need to stray from my brands, fabrics, or cuts. I know what coffee I like after trying many, and I know which shampoo bars work better than others and better than the plastic bottles.

Throwing away that less than friendly item may seem like a good idea, but using up what you already have while you find something to replace it is better for the environment, your wallet, and your habits.

Finding Happiness in Forest Bathing

A fall trip to the lake is my favourite time of the year. Sure, floating in the water while the sun warms you into a crisp, then napping the afternoon away while a fan blows is a wonderful weekend spent, but it’s hard to feel connected to nature during those months. You’re hot, sticky, worrying about spending as much time in the water as possible, worried about wasting away the summer days. Yes, bathing in the lake while baby loons played about me has been a highlight in my life, and I felt so close to the original world around me, but that’s not the everyday. I’m not a Disney Princess with a passel of animals ready to make me laugh and serve me. Wouldn’t that be amazing, though? What I’m trying to say here is that summer is great, but in the fall, nature brings out her most colourful, crisp, cozy, happiness.

In the fall, my priorities change. It’s not the water I’m seeking, but the closeness of the trees. I want to feel wrapped in their embrace, I want to hear the birds and squirrels making noise, playing, and singing, and jostling about.
I need to ground myself in the Earth. I need to feel that quietness deep into my soul. With less people milling about, it’s easier to sit in silence, listening to the birds chirp while a hot mug of coffee warms your hands. It’s easier to listen to the trees talk, the rustling of their leaves providing the perfect background noise. This is when I feel most relaxed, most at home here in the middle of the woods.

I don’t need to read any studies on why Forest bathing is so good for you. I can feel it inside myself when I take a walk through the woods. When I sit and just listen. Even while sitting in a man-made structure, snuggled under a blanket, just smelling the Earth, the leaves, listening to water lap at the shore while trees whisper, I feel it. I feel the benefits before I’m fully immersed in it. I feel my body relax, my mind let go of everything. I breathe deeper, I smile more, I feel absolutely and wonderfully content. While for me, complete happiness is open fields and prairie skies, for a lot of people it’s the hustle and bustle of city life. I’m sure if you plopped them down in a forest, made them comfortable (to whatever that comfort is to them), they’d feel the same. Dropping the phone, breathing in, and connecting with the world in which we try so hard to run away from.

There’s a spot in the cabin, the breezeway, that I call my home. There’s one wicker chair, an old log used as a foot stool, and my complete happiness there. Curling up with a good book or magazine and my coffee is my favourite part of the time spent here. I look forward to it before we leave, I think about it before I go to bed, snuggling under the blanket while the quiet radiates through the air.

But, my chair faces away from the water, the magnificent lake views that the whole cabin revolves around. Instead, it points towards the trees, the small path that leads to the road. It is there, in that view, that I find the most comfort, where I feel most at home.