sustainable sustainability

A few weeks ago I was tired, and I mean tired. I had had it up to {here} with the endless stream of dishes and laundry and sweeping and folding and... well, you get the idea. I snapped while folding a fitted sheet (which I do perfectly, by the way) and just shoved the linens in the closet, wrinkles be damned. I was fed up with the never-ending cycle of work and chores. I had a strong urge to quit my job, quit doing the housework, and just relax in the hammock all day with a fizzy drink and escapist book. Since that wasn't going to happen, I sent out a plea to some of my friends: help me come up with ways to streamline my routine so I have *some* down-time. The most repeated advice I got was to switch to disposable products - use paper plates, use plastic utensils, and, for Pete's sake stop, using cloth diapers! While these suggestions were well-intended, they really rubbed me the wrong way and exacerbated my frustration. Does it really have to be a choice between an overflowing landfill or a little relaxation? And if I take this advice, what kind of lessons am I teaching my daughter? That it's ok to waste for the sake of convenience? The more I pondered, the more determined I was that it didn't have to be that way. There had to be a way to live sustainably without going crazy and angrily throwing crumpled sheets into the closet. But how?

Since receiving the aforementioned advice, I've been thinking a lot about my routine. I'll admit, I was briefly tempted by the siren call of single-use items, but that lure was short-lived once I realized the cost alone of living so disposably, and don't even get me started on the waste... We could use conventional chemical-laden products that would take decades to biodegrade in a landfill, if they ever did, or spend twice as much money (or more!) on "eco-friendly" products that would, theoretically, turn into butterflies and sparkly dew the second they leave your fingers. I was not ok with either option for predominantly selfish earth-friendly reasons. So began my quest for sustainable sustainability. I *want* to use cloth napkins and eat off real plates and diaper my daughter in soft fluff. I want to stop using so much frikin' plastic and stop adding to the comically large pile of garbage in my office break room during the week. I want to not have to lug our trash can out to the curb every week because it's empty enough to go another week. While this is a noble ideal, I'm struggling to figure out how to make it work with my full-time work schedule without sacrificing every last shred of free time and sanity (ha) I have left...

Baby steps: I realized I need to take baby steps to achieve my "sustainable" goal. My earlier plea - how can I streamline my routine - still applies, but the answer isn't adding in more single-use products, but to reduce them and more efficiently use the products that are already there. Reducing single-use products does mean one unfortunate thing - more dishes and laundry - and that's one of the areas I need to streamline. Laundry-schmaundry. I don't mind that, even when I line dry, since - even with cloth napkins and diapers - I have it down to just a couple loads a week. It's the dishes that kill me (and my free time) since we don't have an automatic dishwasher. My current "baby step" in streamlining those is actually to do them more often. Rather than waiting until the end of the day when the sink is full, I'm striving to constantly tidy up as I'm cooking then to wash everything from a meal immediately after a meal. It takes discipline, but so far it's working and I'm spending fewer long chunks of time at the sink with a howling toddler wrapped around my legs.

Another area that desperately needs to be streamlined is meal planning. Once I started contemplating the balance between time spent doing things I had to do versus doing things I wanted to do, I realized that I lose a lot of time every week to grocery shopping and meal planning/preparation. I *thought* I was doing pretty well in that department, but I still had to make multiple runs to the store during the week and often had to come up with a plan on the fly if the slow cooker wasn't clean or I hadn't thought ahead enough. Streamlining this process is going to take several of those baby steps, some of which I've already started. The first, and probably most important, will be to actually plan meals and the corresponding shopping list. I looked into various "meal planning" sites and applications, but none of them seemed like an ideal fit for us since we eat predominantly paleo (and never eat gluten for Squirt's sake). I finally gave up searching and decided to build my own recipe index using only paleo-friendly, family-approved ingredients. This project took the better part of a week to get functionally populated, but I finally have a workable (living) document listing various meal ideas and ingredients. This effort was well worth it! Last weekend I took it for it's first test run. I was able to pull together dinner plans (and a complete shopping list) for the entire upcoming week in minutes. Because I grouped recipes by main ingredients, I was able to minimize the shopping list (and thereby the food budget) by using the same ingredient in different meals throughout the week. Shopping was also a snap! I'll admit, though, that my meal preparation could use further refinement, but I'm still working on that baby step.

I'm sure there are myriad additional baby steps I can start taking to move toward a more sustainable sustainability for my household (and the associated bragging rights that I am single-handedly saving the entire planet by not using paper towels at every meal while still having enough time to lose myself in the latest Louise Penny... or something like that), so the quest is ongoing. With my new approach to meal planning off to such a good start, I'm pretty excited to continue finding new ways to help my family live more simply with less waste while still maintaining a shred of sanity - or at least going the fun kind of crazy...

Ready to take some baby steps.