Simple, green skin care

 
Although I've always loved skin lotions and creams,  I've honestly been fairly lazy when it comes to skin care. Soap (most of the time), moisturizer (sometimes) and sunscreen (always because I'm a ghost). Despite being so transluscent that you could map my circulatory system from a good five feet away, aside from a bit of blotchiness, I don't think my skin looks too terrible. So I've never really bought into the idea that I need 12 kinds of product to look decent. As a teen, I loved to spend my babysitting money on St. Ives masks and different kinds of creams for fun but never really kept up a serious skin-care regimen.

About 7 years ago I started to break out in hives after using my moisturizer. I switched to something more "natural" which I now realize was more expensive, but more or less the same. Very quickly, I became unable to use anything with fragrance and most drugstore skin care brands were off-limits. My dermatologist then told me that most eye creams, wrinkle creams and the like are pure bullshit - its about making money and doesn't make any appreciable difference to one's appearance.

Since then, I've become really interested in (actual) natural skin care. Coconut oil was the gateway drug - luscious and moisturizing, plus the BEST eye makeup remover I've ever tried. A few years ago I added shea butter, for areas that need a bit more moisture. Recently I've started using rosehip seed oil on my skin at night, jojoba oil on my legs after a shower and argan oil on my freshly washed hair.  It doesn't have to be complicated. I've even heard of people using pork fat and ghee as facial moisturizers, believe it or not (my dogs would lick me to death).

I'll do some posts on natural skin care in the near future with some recipes and ideas. Suffice it to say,  you can use bulk goats milk or olive oil soap and pure oils and have lovely skin. As well as a fatter wallet and less crap on your face.

Living Our Values in the Day-to-Day

It is so very easy to lose sight of the big picture, particularly when it comes to making mundane, daily decisions in an ethical way. Budget, convenience, location, aesthetics, all of these factors have interfered at one time or another with trying to live our lives in a more sustainable way. There's also the fitting-in factor; its not uncommon to see people towing their groceries by bike in the city but it sure is weird out here in the suburbs.

As I reflect on the past few years of our life as a family and focus my energy on the forthcoming year, I find myself feeling sheepish at how much we've slipped away from our intentions. Its an ebb and flow, really, and we're not totally lost. Our ideals are still there, the intentions, the discussions - the foundation is solid. Its in the day-to-day that we really screw up.

I took the trash out two weeks ago and was gobsmacked by how much we had accumulated in one week. We're some of the most "sustainable" people we know and yet we throw out so.much.crap. I stumbled upon zero-waste blogs through an article about a Paris capsule wardrobe and I've gone down the rabbit-hole. I cannot stop thinking about ways to reduce our waste and remove poorly-made, disposable or shortly-lived items out of our lives.

I read somewhere that the practice of sustainability is like a table, held up by concepts like frugality, simplicity and some other good stuff that I cannot remember for the life of me now but I'm sure I agree with. Reading the article, I thought "yesssssss". Gardening, permaculture, and the big picture concepts are what turns Jay's crank when it comes to "greening" our lives. For me, its the smaller details that get me going: buying less and buying with quality in mind, choosing fair trade and ethical products, thinking of how our daily choices impact the earth and other people. That $5 t shirt is a bargain for me, but it sure costs a lot to the earth and the person who made it. Minimalism and simplicity appeal because life with young children is chaotic and my brain naturally hums along at a good clip; I crave space and peace and time not spent consuming or cleaning what has been consumed. Jay and I will each play our part in holding up our sustainability table, by focusing on what we are naturally drawn to. That's a comforting thought.

I've been furiously "Pinning" and scribbling notes in my notebook as I come across ideas, blogs and articles. I've decided to organize my thoughts a little bit. Going forward, here are some of my areas of focus (noting that its all connected, buying less is minimalist but its also frugal and sustainable)

1. Making our upcoming renos more sustainable. Some materials have already been purchased from big-box stores, but other purchases can be made more mindfully while staying in budget.

2. Slowly moving away from plastic and disposable items. We've done without paper towels for a few years now (which people think is SO WEIRD when they come over), but there's so much more we can do. Kiss your Spider-man toothbrush goodbye kids, its going to be bamboo from here on out.

3. Buying less, buying in bulk, buying second-hand and buying items with non-toxic ingredients. Buying only what's needed, repairing what we can, making what cannot be purchased frugally, mindfully or fair-trade.

Daunting? Perhaps. Inspiring? Hells to the yes.

Fair trade fashion

The Minimalist Mom just did a great post on the real cost of cheap clothes. This has been a huge issue in our house - way too many cheap clothes, purchased on a whim only to languish in our closets unworn for years and then sheepishly stuffed in a bag and sent to live at Value Village or Goodwill.  Jay and I both have far too many clothes and are making a concerted effort to give things away and donate them. But that's only part of the problem - we need to buy less. More importantly, we need to buy less often, but higher quality. Higher quality and higher ethical standards.

Its no secret that most of what we in industrialized nations wear is made in developing countries in deplorable conditions, by people getting paid a pittance. Its shameful, and many of us pay lip service to the fact that such practices need to change, but we often feel that we have no choice. We want to stop supporting companies that don't engage in fair trade practices, but then what do we buy? Can we even afford ethically made clothing? And how do we know something really is fair trade?

After years of saying we wanted to change the way we buy clothes, Jay and I recently discussed the need to examine this issue. We really can't claim to be living a greener life if we don't at least try to change this rather large aspect of our spending. I'll admit, we feel a bit lost at this point but its something we are going to be looking into over the next little while.

Our first discovery has been clothes at MEC, a Canadian retailer with a commitment to sustainability, and we've purchased some lovely Canadian-made items for ourselves and the boys. We've been impressed with the quality and plan to make future purchases from them. Now, to find more ethical, sustainable, work-appropriate attire.

Are you mindful of where your clothes come from? Why or why not?Have you found any good-quality, work-appropriate clothing, preferably Canadian-made? Any recommendations?