Day 215- Let it Begin

In honor of the recent events, I changed up the look of the blog. What do you think?

We have big news. BIG news. Approximately 3400 square feet of news. Can you guess? It rhymes with mouse.... Yes, the Hubbs and I bought a house! There will be updates on this house as time progresses, as it's a fine specimen of 1970s styling, but I will try to focus for the remainder of the year on the ability to be plastic free in both the move and the renovations.

Let's talk about packing first. As my mom likes to say, collecting china is a long a winding road to nowhere; so naturally I picked up that trait. If I had my druthers, I would wrap everything in bubble wrap, box it up, and call it a day. Well, we can't really do that now, so it's paper to the rescue. The Hubbs has been riding the DC metro to and from work recently, and on the metro, individuals are inclined to leave their newspapers. Score! Packing material. Really, we've been using the newspaper to fill the gaps in the boxes and purchasing paper from Home Depot to actually wrap the dishes. This way they are clean and not covered in metro cooties. We've also been buying individual boxes instead of a wrapped pack of boxes. But Carrie, you say, why don't you free cycle boxes from a grocery store? Well,  our last move as done by professional movers and they used standard size boxes, it was so much easier to pack the truck. So we now spend the $100 on boxes instead of $100 on gas tooling around to find the boxes. Thus far this is what the guest bedroom looks like:

Ok, I lied. There is another stack in there too. But you get the idea. Soon we'll be moving into the house, but for right now we've been working on it constantly. Let me just say that this:

Beautiful carpet, yes? 

The Hubbs and his glory work:

And this is what is underneath:

There is a special place in hell for those that carpet over hardwood. I say this as someone who's spent 6 hours this week pulling out carpet staples and tack strips by hand. 

Oh, and I've already bled my own blood and gotten a tetanus booster. Thanks carpeters. Thanks. 

Day 209- Review of LUSH products

So waaaaaay back in February I hit Lush to find some plastic free bath supplies. In all my wisdom, I chose to go to the mall (for those of you who aren't giggling inside) the Friday before Valentine's Day. This was not my brightest shining moment of intelligence, but I digress. I finally just went through the last little bit of the lush shampoo bar. So 6 months later, here is my timely Lush product review:

First the shampoo:   

Yes, I know; it looks like a white hockey puck, it's pretty creepy up close too. It looks like little worms. This is what took me forever to use up. I got the ylang ylang shampoo and it made my hair nice and soft and shiny. My hair was also dyed brunette for about 4 months of that time, and it helped the dye stay really really well. On the downside, I hate it when the bars break in half then you wind up with little slivers of soap. Overall I would give this a 6, it was nice to have, but I wouldn't buy it again. 

Lotion: 

This is the Mange Too Massage bar. I really liked this, especially in the wintertime when it was so dry. It's far too heavy for the summer, and might give you a oiled look which isn't particularly my thing. Also, this bar has a very..... strong scent. When you are all covered because it's 8 degrees outside that fine, when it's 110 outside, I found that I smelled a bit like a dirty hippy. Well, a clean hippy, but patchouli isn't my favorite. All that being said, I would buy the lotion again especially in the winter. I give this one a 8.5

Soap:

This the porridge soap bar, you get to choose how much soap you would like to buy off this huge wheel 'o soap. I used soap a lot in that last sentence. Soap soap soap. Anyway, this soap is fine, it smells pretty good, I didn't break out when using it and it meant I could word play on two breakfasts. The Hubbs got pretty tired of my Lord of the Rings impression "What about second breakfast?". I like the $2.00 soap from Trader Joe's way better and as you may have guessed, it's much less expensive. If I could only get it in a non-plastic wrapper. This one gets a 4. 

So there you are, the long overdue LUSH product review. Has anyone else tried LUSH products? What is your favorite? Why do I keep capitalizing LUSH? 

 

Day 174- Trip Trips and more Trips!

Like most bloggers (magpies), I was all about the blog and then I kinda bailed. Sorry guys.

 

First, a little update about life in general; The  Hubs and I have been gone practically every weekend for the past 2 months. We've been to Texas, California, Washington and Alaska, I must say that I am rather tired of flying across country. I mean, even if you don't pay for it, it still gets old. The good part about most of those trips is that they have been pretty plastic free. I had a little burp in Texas, but I will get to that later. In addition to flying all over the US, we are in the process of buying  a house. So there will be several posts about the move and I'm hoping to keep this from turning into a blog about home renovations. There are enough of those already, right? I'm just saying I might have strong opinions about refinishing floors. So as you can see, we've been pretty busy as a whole recently.

 

In our travels, Texas posed the biggest problem to the whole plastic free lifestyle. Now, those of you who actually know me, know that Will's family lives out on 18 acres and are pretty plastic free themselves, so how did I wind up getting all plasticized while there? As it turns out, Edwards Aquifer water and my gut.....  do not like each other. Sadly, I get to bear the brunt of this battle; so I don't drink tap water, or even filtered water while in Texas. In the interest of full disclosure, I will drink water that is frozen and blended with lime and tequila, but that's ok, it's delicious and makes my face feel funny. While in Texas I drank many many bottles of water, I tried to get large ones, but sometimes they were smaller. So I got the ones that are made out of corn too. I remain dubious that something made of corn is better for the world then something made of oil. Unless it's cornbread, because, well, that's just delicious. So are these 30% corn bottles any better than 100% plastic bottles?

According to the website that shall-not-be-named-lest-I-get-sued-for-copyright-infringement, the bottles are made of 30% plant material and are supposed to help reduce dependence on fossil fuels.... Except now you have to grow, process and transport corn. So what about that? I've also done some reading that indicates that this doesn't make the bottles themselves any more recyclable, because, as we know, plastic doesn't really recycle very well. So for my next trip, I will have to figure out a different plan. Any tips or ideas?

Oh and remember how I lost 2 reusable bottles, I lost another one. So we are down to one left. However, I am replacing them with these really cool glass bottles that have a rubber polka dotted sleeve.

 

In case you are wondering, we are in the process of buying a house. So far, it's pretty plastic free. Hopefully it will stay that way. 

Day 159- Shopping

So, my friend Katie over at The Katie Chronicles has this thing called Wednesday link-up. This is where you shop one site for cool stuff, this week is Etsy, and since Etsy is pretty eclectic I figured, hey let's shop for plastic alternatives. Or something.... Yeah.... Something.






First: STRAWS

Yes, we all know I love straws. But these are especially awesome because they have anchors and go with my navy and white/khaki wardrobe. Score. 

Coasters- And these are so pretty! These are great to make sure that your furniture stays water ring free. Yes, I know most coasters are not plastic, but I am also on a coaster kick this year. 

Water bottles- perfect for those like me that lose water bottles like pens. At least I can bean someone with these if someone tries to steal from me.

Day 102- At least I think it's day 102

So, as I've mentioned before; once The Hubbs and I got through that first push, going plastic free is pretty easy. As a general rule, unless we are buying food, we don't have much of an issue. And I'm sure you all want to hear about my day to day comments.... Hey lookie! I cut my toe nails. Weeeee!

Things have been changing recently, though. Spring has definitely sprung here in the great white north. This means that I can FINALLY go to the farmers market. I love farmers markets, I would seriously go to one daily if I could. Unfortunately, I have illusions of grandeur with regard to markets. I want there to be thousands of vendors and I want there to be gorgeous fruit and veggies. In reality, it's a bunch of herbs (in plastic!) and jelly. Though, I do like jelly. It's delicious. Well, I don't need herbs, the Hubbs built me an awesome herb garden for our balcony. I will keep trying the market; it has to get good sometime, yes?

Speaking of herbs, we found that we wouldn't really be able to make bruschetta or caprese salad this summer without herbs like basil. And he can't make terrible things with cilantro (which tastes like soap) without, well, cilantro. We also couldn't buy a little container, because they were plastic. So, he made one! Now we have 8 little pots with herbs in them! The Hubbs got wood, and terra cotta pots, and we requisitioned some soil from the apartment complex. With a little tool action, we have a balcony herb garden, it's pretty exciting.

See our little basil?

So that's our exciting news for now.

Soon, I'll have a LUSH product review and the battle of clothes shopping. 

Day 74- I confess

So it's been a while, I think it's mostly shame. Shame of buying plastic water bottles. Since my last post, I've gone on a binge. I really want to blame it on traveling, considering that's when I wind up getting them; but I also brought one home from work. In that time I have also lost two, yes, TWO reusable bottles. I almost lost the second one twice. So needless to say, it's been a bad few weeks.

The upside is that beside the bottles, the Hubbs and I have been doing really well. The Hubbs takes food with him to work, and I have as well. So that means less plastic! Yay! And I've also ordered a glass straw. I'm a little on the fence about the straw, it's creepy! Whenever I think about glass straws all I can think about is Chinese torture.

Here is your useless info for the day: There is a form of Chinese torture where one inserts a glass straw up a urethra... and then breaks it in situ. Sounds wonderful, right? Anywho, that's what I think about when I think of glass straws. Maybe it'll be pretty and then I won't care!  So we shall see.

In the meantime, it's off to the camping store to get some new water bottles. I'm thinking stainless steel. Thoughts?

Day 53- Wedding stuff

Note: I may have been slightly hyperbolic about cadbury eggs. I like them, but normally I don't have more than 8 a year.

ANYwho (MOM), this past weekend the Hubbs and I went to a wedding in Dallas. It was really very beautiful, and the first wedding that we've been to as a married couple. During the dinner and cocktail hour I noticed that there was lots of plastic cups and plates. This got me thinking about our wedding and how much plastic there was that day. But really, there wasn't that much plastic (and!! I have pictures for you) at all. Let me explain.

Let's talk about decor first. Yes, I did order table clothes instead of renting them and they all came in individual plastic bags and I had a ridiculous amount of cranberries, but that was about it. All of the centerpieces were wheat wrapped in ribbon, sticks stuck in cranberries ( I think we practically had a bog  there) and candles with rocks. So mostly plastic free, yes?

I must confess as a general rule I'm cheap, so when we picked out serving ware,  I didn't want to pay for real china. We had Whole Foods cater the whole wedding so one of their options is something called verterra plates. Turns out that verterra plates are made of the fallen leaves of the gumdrop, and they also look really cool. In addition to the verterra plates, we had cups made of corn and normal silver wear. We also had normal plates for cake; because really, who wants to scrape frosting off fallen leaves of the gumdrop?

And the best part? Whole Foods was awesome and composted the leftovers and my bog of cranberries. So, it is possible to be pretty plastic free. But if I thought of this idea before the wedding, now THAT would be a blog!