cutting down on Plastic

Before I get started, I wanted to wish you all a Happy New Year.  Personally, I am hoping that 2018 will be full of simple pleasures, less political weirdness (there really is no other word for it), good health and sunshine.

I wanted to talk today about New Year's resolutions.  I know they've got a  bit of a bad rep these days, i.e." they are just a way to set yourself up for failure", but actually I've never really thought of them that way.  In my book, even if you make a tiny change or do something for a little while, it is better than not at all, and making a resolution might just spur you in to action.  The key is to be realistic about what is achievable.

For the past few years I haven't done too badly sticking to mine, previous examples include meditating daily and eating well, and nine times out of ten I do both of those.  But if I don't manage either, then I certainly don't beat myself up about it.  A more recent resolution,. not actually made on New Year, but sometime last summer, is my version of a gratitude diary, which is basically involves saying five things I am thankful for when I get in to bed each night.  This has made me a lot more appreciative of the little things.  The key is to change it up each day, it is amazing quite how many things you can find to be grateful for if you think about it. I have noticed that it is also creeping in to daily life now, things pop in to my head and I find myself thinking how lucky I am to have that in my life.

The constant battle to live in the moment, will also continue, I am a born worrier, and this doesn't come easy to me.  But I am starting this year, by trying to stop saving things for best, why do we do that?  Why don't we just enjoy things, life is short, I know that well enough.  It might seem a little thing, but every evening I have started  to light a candle on the dinner table, something so small suddenly makes our evening meal seem so cosy, it feels special almost.  Simple pleasures.

Aside from that, I don't really have anything I want to change on a personal level, except to exercise more, a tricky one for me with all my body strangeness so I know better than to have it as a New Year's resolution.  It might just not be possible, and that would be setting myself up for the aforementioned failure.

But there is something I want us to change as a family, and that is to be aware of and try to reduce the amount of plastic we use;  Here's why, a few week's ago, an article popped up on my Facebook feed written by Alice Guy, whose kitchen I featured on the blog a while ago.  Alice is committed to a plastic free existence and boy was I inspired by what she wrote, as well as rather guilt ridden about our current plastic usage.

I implore that you read at least one of these articles, but ideally both to get a feel for the effect of plastic pollution on our planet ecowatch.com and oceancrusaders.org.

If you do read them, It will be pretty obvious why I now feel guilty every time a piece of plastic enters our home.  We do already recycle every bottle, plastic tub and container that enters our house, but I just don't think that's enough.  Alice's article, which you can read on the Good Life website here, Is brilliant, because it gives a number of achievable ways that we can reduce our plastic usage.  What I do want to add, is this isn't another thing to beat yourself up about, another resolution that can't be kept.  It is a chance to make a difference, because every little change helps.  I'm not sure like Alice, I will ever be able to stop our consumption totally, but I do intend to try my hardest to do what I can. And if you want to add reducing plastic consumption to your resolutions this year, that would be amazing, even if all you do is swap a plastic carrier bag for a canvas one, it will alter those statistics a little bit.

Here's to a wonderful 2018.

Emma x