Market Victory

Several big things have happened recently:

1.  I went to the market and bought meat and tofu. I took my own containers and the shop keepers were very happy to use my containers. The meat lady "tare"d my container and then put the meat it. The tofu lady just plopped the still warm magical goodness into my container and scooped a bit of extra tofu water into it. It was so much easier than I had made it in my mind.

2. I cannot get any wheat flours without plastic. Rice flours and nut flours are all available at the market, but not wheat flour. The lady at the mill shop said if I brought her wheat berries, she'd grind them for me. After much searching, I cannot get those without international shipping rates and plastic packaging. When flour becomes a "need" I will buy a larger sized bag to reduce the frequency of purchase. I will still look for bakeries that might sell me a kilo or two of flour.

3. I am planning time for my meals. Taking the time to actively decide what to cook and schedule it as well as planning blocks of time in my daily schedule for eating - 30 minutes to an hour each meal - has made me more aware and less stressed.

4. In conjunction with number 3, I have started to schedule my days and life better. Using a weekly calendar, monthly scheduler, and a massive everything all together in one place to-do list has been helping me keep on track. It's allowing for realistic procrastination.

5. I haven't been going into shops. At first, I wanted to go into my old favorite stores: Olive Young, Daiso, etc. just to look and be there and see what was plastic free that I could buy. Two months in and I really don't care. Partly because I don't want to go in and be disappointed, but mostly because I don't want to buy something I don't need.

Several hurdles that need to be addressed:

1. What do I do with the two months worth of plastic recycling. This is still a significantly smaller pile than before. It all still fits into my recycling basket. I want to reuse some of these things, if I can since recycling isn't a perfect system either. I just have no ideas as to how to reuse them.

2. Flour situation mentioned above.

3. I made my own laundry powder a few months ago. It's down to near the end. I had been planning on just making another batch of the same stuff until my friend mentioned, yesterday, that "well, I mean it all goes into the water doesn't it" concerning my use of borax in the laundry soap. This made me think. I will consider this and look into other options as well as doing some additional research on borax itself (I know not to use it on food related things).

4. Got a show coming up and looking at how to do a set/costumes/props with minimal plastic is a fun challenge. It's nice to be able to think really creatively about this.

Fragile Blossoms and Renewable Beans

This week has been cherry blossom week. Here are some photos of blossoms from a park near my home.

Instead of so many comments about the struggles on plastic free I will leave you with one failure and one huge success.
- I bought a gift card and loaded money onto it. Then realized that the cards are plastic.
- Ran out of coffee and went to my local roaster with my empty jar in hand. He gladly poured me 200g of deliciously roasted beans into my sustainable container. And he gave me a little sample of another type of coffee as well. (It's in plastic, but I didn't buy it and could not refuse the gift)