I planned one trip to Whole Foods for the month of February as part of my zero waste experiment. My goal was to get some organic/free range meat, and some bulk goods that I couldn’t get from my usual supermarket. This trip took longer than I expected. I spilled flour on myself, had to ask someone Read More…
Category: Homemaking
Zero Waste Shopping: At the Supermarket
I’ve now made three shopping trips to my usual supermarket trying to follow zero waste habits as much as possible. First I get my gear: Edith’s car seat, my shopping kit, and my canvas bags. I think that as soon as you start bringing your own shopping bags – per the norm many places now – it’s relatively Read More…
Adventures in Zero Waste Shopping
For a while now, I’ve wanted to experiment with reducing food packaging waste. I first encountered this idea in Zero Waste Home by Bea Johnson (who blogs at www.zerowastehome.com). The book describes how to make every aspect of home life ‘zero waste’, that is, producing no landfill waste. (It’s full of good advice even if you don’t aspire Read More…
Pantry Organisation
I feel about our pantry much the same as I feel about our bathroom cabinets. Hooray, we have a pantry! But it’s kind of an awkward space. It has a narrow single door opening onto a very deep closet of shelves. Even at a generous estimate, only half the space is accessible enough to use easily. Read More…
Laundry
Here is a common sight in our home: my British clothes airers, lifting our laundry up to the Texas sun. I brought these clothes racks with us when we moved, on the advice of some American expat friends who warned me that if I had grown to love my clothes airers (I had), I should bring Read More…
Me, My Stuff, and I
Lately I have been slowly undertaking a project of sorting out my belongings. This is because, at age 30, I still have never moved all of my possessions out of the house where I grew up. Like many people, when I ‘moved out’ from home during college, I didn’t permanently move all of my belongings. Nor did Read More…
Getting Cleaning Done with a Baby
I can tell you, figuring out how to do housework with a Little Someone in tow has been a huge adjustment for me. I started out writing this post in a ‘how to’ voice, with three tips I’ve learned, but scrapped it as inauthentic. It gave a false impression of my efficiency and success, and, Read More…
Baby
Here, on a wild hair-day, is Edith. Her name was actually chosen before I was pregnant. It was a name both Mike and I liked, and whenever we talked about what we’d do if we had children, the imaginary child was always ‘Little Edith’ – ‘When we have Little Edith we’ll bring her here,’ etc. So Read More…
Digital Declutter of My Writing Folder – Plus Some Thoughts about Marie Kondo’s Method
For the last three months, Mike has had to listen to my grumping about how much I am DYING to unpack and sort our things. You see, we are still waiting for them to arrive (which we now think should actually be soon). In the meantime I have had to exert my willpower not to Read More…
Some Final Maternity Sewing: Custom-drafted, Nursing-friendly and Everything
Sewing for myself has become a tricky proposition. I’ve more or less figured out how to sew for my pregnant figure, but now that I am fully 8 months along, any maternity clothes won’t get too much wearing before everything changes yet again. Not that I mind the change – for a long time now, I’ve Read More…