stewardship

travel

Traveling is one of the most damaging things to do to the environment, but telling people (including me) to give it up...ehhhh, doesn’t really fly. There ARE things, though, that we can do which require increased attention and inconvenience, but help to offset the carbon footprint we are leaving by using fossil fuels to get places.


I try to be conscientious about everything I purchase and do anyway, but traveling during “No Plastic July” provided me with a few challenges I had not really thought of recently and made me realize I need to work on new plans to avoid spastic more when traveling. Below are the things I already do to be conscientious on the road, but i plan to add the new things I thought of on my recent trip.

To cut down on eating out (or if you’re in the backwoods, like I often am when traveling), I always keep a lunch crate in the car. It usually has stuff to make peanut butter-jam sandwiches and fruits, nuts, etc to avoid sudden hangriness. Leave it in the car if you’re traveling via car and then it’s always there when you need it. Don’t forget a silicone mat to make the sandwiches on, utensils, baggie alternatives (like stashers or beeswrap) and water, wash clothes, and hand towels, especially if you’re someone who freaks out when your hands are sticky.


Don’t forget your togo bag when you go on vaca! Even if you are not eating out at restaurants, it could be helpful to have the extra containers for leftovers!


Wow, y’all know how bad all those little tubes are right? Not buying travel sized products or using the ones provided in hotel rooms, is a great way to reduce your impact. If you already have travel sized bottles, just refill them. If you don’t have them, get creative! It’s fun. Plastic products I still have are soap containers, because I just haven’t had to replace them yet. When I do, I’m assuming I will go with a metal tin to hold my soap, but know I will need to make sure it is thoroughly dried before storing so it does not rust. Since I make a lot of my own products anyway, I just grab them and they are most definitely not plastic! They even have bamboo toothbrush cases, which made me cry actual tears!

coming:

  • walking to make up for miles of carbon


sometimes it’s not the amount of impact you make but rather the act of doing something, intentionally, to nurture (or at least not destroy) the land. it’s mindful gratitude. i used to question whether i was being too obsessive about some of the things i do, but as it turns out...it’s just more work to do better. the payoff is seeing the cadence of systems coming together. any way we live, we have to work within systems, so why not move within systems that are natural patterns our foremothers used millennia ago?


a good example of this is flour. i could sweep into the rubbish, the leftover flour after kneading. i see others do that all the time. but in my head, i can’t stand the privilege of it. that my convenience is worth a disregard for the tired hands that milled it or the vision of joy in the mothers of starving children watching the relief truck bring flour into their village, like it’s straight up jesus, come back again.


so how do you show respect for what equals to be maybe 1/8 of flour? i personally sift out the chunks. i put the soft flour into a jar that i use to coat my bread board when kneading. i give the chunks to my chickens and they love it. if i didn't have chickens i would put it in the compost or save it to make dog treats. nothing is wasted. no plastic needed. nothing for the landfill. no participation in the modern food system. my favorite sorta things!


but the point, is that the size of gesture doesn’t matter. it may be a tiny impact we make with tiny decisions, but it’s a shift in mindset. it’s humbling and it’s beautiful and it makes everything an act of gratitude.


I'm not gonna lie...I really suck at this, but I'm trying to get better. I don't really think it's laziness, as it really does not even OCCUR to me to do this a lot of the time. I did reject the clothesline once intentionally, like a selfish person, who didn't want the stiff starchiness of wind blown clothes - I assure you if softens once connected to your warm fleshiness. If you have never line dried clothes before...DO IT! If you do this regularly, you know what I'm talking about. That connection. Like we are pioneer women and WE ARE!!! We are blazing the path that says PROGRESS isn't always PROGRESSIVE!!!

While we do not claim that it is a woman's place or that we are intended to be servants, we (like, some of us, but not all of us) have a connection to these things. Whether it be in our family or our vocations or our socio-cultures, there are just some things that some people seem to be attracted to - baking, perhaps, or sewing or hand washing our clothes - tasks that connect us to our foremothers and each other. Just because they are considered "domestic" doesn't mean they're bad --- even if we ARE feminists!!!

Taking towels off the wash line and folding them and putting them into the basket is one of my favorite things! I am making the same movements and processing the same thoughts and feelings and being grateful for the same things as women back so far in time, I can't even say, since I suck at history. I am connected to them! I have always been a little nervous about admitting to liking some of the old ways, but I am not really anymore. I long for this. It doesn't mean others should or that women aren't capable of other things. If anyone thinks they are domestic technicians in a land of chivalrous expectations, you are wrong. At least, mostly.

Anyhoo...hang your laundry, yo! Save the earth and feel some feels!


This cedar chest belonged to my Aunt Helen. I took ownership of it when I was 18 and she died. It was in almost perfect condition, despite being old (late 30’s, I think). Still has the tags on the lid, even.

Enter me. I have moved this cedar chest to many, many homes and through many, many seasons of life. Even in the 17 years I’ve lived in this house, it’s been moved around quite a bit from room to room. It’s chipped, dinged, broken, chewed (puppies love to eat cedar chests, as it turns out), and basically just battered.

I want to be angry with myself for how poorly I have cared for it, but I can’t do that anymore than blaming my 18 year old for not appreciating the sentimentality of things. That’s something that has only come to me with age. And for reals - all this battering has been done with love. I have never once thought to myself that it is too big or too cumbersome. I have always known it would stay with me forever. Every time I open it, the smell still makes me think of Aunt Helen, who I spent almost every day with as a child and named my daughter after. You can’t replace that or replicate that.

On this journey I've been on, I have really been paying more attention to craftsmanship and lastibility (yep, that’s a word now). We live in such a disposable plastic world and it is KILLING our planet (and us). One of the things I want to commit to, is buying for life and spending the energy to repair and preserve what I have been blessed with. It’s a beautiful thing to take something broken or battered and restore it...kind of like what is done for us, with our loved ones or a smile from a stranger. You can’t not see love in that, if you can see it anywhere.

So...yep, that’s where I’m starting.

This almost seems stupid to write about because it is so simple, but honestly, if someone would have suggested this to me when I was younger, I could have probably saved thousands of gallons of water. .. it's the jug that I keep on my sink. I fill it when I am waiting for the cold water to become hot or the hot water to become cold.

At some point, I just became aware of the waste. Most of my life, I have been aware and empathic toward those who suffer - in this case people who do not have clean water readily available to them. Well, yes...I have it available to me and they don't, but me saving water wouldn't help them get water, right?

Then my thinking shifted. Maybe it's not all about that. While, there is obviously a major crisis is some places and we need t o help with this, that is not the lesson at all. The lesson is gratitude and stewardship. Just because I CAN run as many gallons as I choose down the drain without it hurting a single person, doesn't mean I should. If clean water is an invaluable resource in many parts of the world, it should be revered - regardless of its easy availability to me.

So...I fill this several times a day. ..usually between 3 and 4, JUST WAITING FOR THE RIGHT TEMPERATURE, like some bratty, entitled American. Where do I get off? At 3 gallons a day, that's over a thousand gallons a year. I don't know how many gallons humans can carry, but let's say 5 a day and you walk an hour to get it and an hour back. That's 438 hours of time to get that much water. I don't know about y'all, but me getting my water to the perfect temperature is NOT worth that.

So, the jug mostly waters the animals, but sometimes waters the plants too. This is even better because sitting for awhile can make the water more healthy for my plants! Booyah! Anyway...this was the simple and somewhat rambly story of the pitcher.

This item was not necessary before I started changing my thinking to the old way. When the dryer broke (and we could not replace it because of this experiment) and I started hanging clothes on the line, it brought me in touch with so much more than dry clothes.

Hanging clothes is not an easy task for a lazy person (which I am). Carrying a basket of wet clothing up the basement stairs and out into the yard to individually pull them out, shake them out (we have a million furry pets), and individually hang them on the line is much more time-consuming and labor-intensive than tossing them into the machine right next to where you already are and turning a dial. What I found is that, in those moments at the clothesline, I was so at peace. I was connecting to the women who had come before me, my grandmothers, my sisters (just like dishes, y’all). Who was I, that I had to have a fancy machine to do that for me so I wouldn’t have to work at it? (fun fact...we ended up fixing the dryer so that thought didn’t carry me too far. Sorry, doing that in winter is a whole other story! We’ll see.)

Anyway, as the laundering process became more laborious, I started thinking more about what I was putting in the wash every week and whether I needed to be. Things were getting washed when they really probably didn’t need to be because 1. that’s what we do and 2. they were getting mixed in with the truly unclean stuff throughout the week to the point I couldn’t tell.

So...I got these hooks from my friend because she wasn’t using them! Now the things I wear that are still clean enough to wear again, I hang on the hooks. I know they are pre-worn, but they still have some use before washing. It has been pretty cool. I mean, seriously...you think our foremothers washed those big fancy dresses more than once a month? And they were probably doing REAL sweaty, dirty work in them, day in and day out. Why are we so afraid of pheromones? (another post, another day.) So that’s the story of my hooks, I love them, I produce at least half as many clothes for laundering a week.

This photo is on wash day..it’s a whole different crazy story mid-week when things have complied.

if i were to show all the products in plastic bottles that this tray equals, they wouldn’t all fit on the whole shelf this tray sits on. these all natural ingredients mix together in different ways to make shampoos, conditioners, facial scrubs, facial masks, body oils, deodorant, and probably a hundred other things. and honestly, it would take a lot less than this...i just like variety.


pretty much the same ingredients are also used to make all our household cleaners, laundry detergent, and really just about everything we use. it’s so simple.


also...i can pronounce all their names. that feels pretty good to me.