Category: Travel

Plastic Free July 2020

On By lex270In Parenthood, Travel, UncategorizedLeave a comment

If you didn’t know its Plastic Free July… Will you be joining in and making more of an effort to cut down your plastic waste?  This is not new news, but even if you haven’t taken any steps so far, you can easily start NOW!

Here are a few quick and easy tips to help you out:

Reusable Water Bottle: These are EVERYWHERE, its so much better for the environment when you reuse a bottle rather than buying one every time you’re out, and might I add a hell of lot cheeper long term.

Reusable Travel Mug: Again, super easy to get hold of and you get money OFF your take away coffees when you buy in a store.  We invested in a coffee machine a few years ago.  Heres some quick math for our yearly coffee expenditure: x2 coffees five days a week at an average of £3.50 is £1820 per year!!  Break down the cost of our coffee machine and the coffee we buy for it, and it comes to £268 per year.  Thats a saving of £1552 per year… if that’s not an incentive to get a travel mug then I don’t know what is.  And knowing that you’re NOT contributing to the millions of takeaway cups being thrown away every day is a good feeling as well.

Flask: As a family we are outside as much as possible.  We take supplies with us for the day for a number of reasons.  A couple are that we can eat when we want, we don’t have to worry about finding somewhere to buy food from and we are not buying more food in plastic packaging.  One thing we always take out with us is a flask filled with hot chocolate for the kids, they absolutely LOVE sitting on a log in the ‘wild’ and sipping on a hot choccie.  I also fill it with coffee for long bike rides..

Cutlery: Invest in some portable cutlery so that you can eat your homemade lunch, or store bought lunch that needs a fork, so that you’re not using a plastic fork once and then binning it.

Reusable Bags: This should be second nature by now otherwise I presume you’ve mastered the balancing act of all your groceries.  I’ll admit, its a skill.

To help you on your Plastic Free July Journey, I’ve teamed up with MIZU and snagged you a 20% discount code for the entire month of July!  Just use the code MIZULEX on checkout to get your 20% off anything you wanted to help you along your Plastic Free Journey 🙂

Resolutions 2020: Better late than never

On By lex270In Fitness, Parenthood, Travel, UncategorizedLeave a comment

I’m not sure where December and January went… anyone know?  Ah I remember, December we were wiped out with a horrible virus that just.would.not.leave, and January was spent on the back foot, catching up with everything missed in December.  But we’re here now and back up to speed.

So Resolutions!  2019 I listed a whole bunch which were mainly focussed on a family effort to cut down on our waste, you can check out what those points were here Resolutions 2019  I feel that we stuck to a lot of the goals when it came to cutting down waste, but there is so much more room for improvement.

Things we nailed were: water bottles, travel coffee cups, metal straws, carrier bags, soap bars, washing powder, rechargeable batteries, ground coffee, making packed lunches (instead of buying in wrappers), natural shower scrubbers, reusable make-up cloths, shampoo bars, loose fruit & veg, buying less stuff, saying no to receipts on non important purchase or getting them emailed, splitting items that are part recyclable and part non recyclable, washing out packaging before it goes in the recycle bin / glass bin, making our own pizza dough which is healthier and no packaging!

Room for improvement: 

I’ve gotten slack on taking my own containers to supermarkets, as you really seem to have to fight your case as to why you don’t want to buy in packaging.  This is a shame as somedays I’m up for the conversation, and some days I’m more like, meh..  I will try my best to take my own containers going forward.

I have yet to visit a new re-fill store that has opened up near to me which I should have done a few weeks ago..

I don’t like my hair conditioning bar, its not very good?  Help, please let me know if you’ve found one that leaves your hair feeling silky smooth.

So thats the waste section done.. on to diet, health and fitness.  Last year I continued on my ‘journey’, everything is a journey, so en trend, anyway, I still practice yoga every single day first thing in the morning (thats 18 months guys!!) and I still love it.  (You can read about my 365 days of yoga here.)  I started to dabble in doing a Hiit workout before my yoga, which I did manage to do a few times, but I would like to make more effort this year, when I do get up, I enjoy going into my day knowing that I’ve already got a sweat on, and feeling smug AF.  I also focussed on getting stronger last year.

Diet.  I get asked about my diet, a lot.  Like its a big secret, but its really not. I’m an active person, I cook at home and I don’t eat many processed foods, and I drink a lot of water.  My diet does change as I’m always learning about what food can do to your body and the science behind it, like I’ve been researching a more plant based diet over the past few months.  The biggest change I’ve made is switching from cows milk to a non dairy option, at the moment I’m loving oat milk.  But this might be another blog entirely, (let me know if you want a ‘what I eat in a day’ blog).

Time: now our kids are four and seven, we’re out of the trenches, we can, and do, take them anywhere (not that that stopped us before! but its easier now) as they can start to interact with the family activities now, like we ALL went rock climbing last week and it was so so fun!  And also more date nights.  We’re big on family dinners in our house and we all sit down for a home cooked meal in the evenings, which is a luxury now, because just a couple of years ago, my husband used to leave for work before we woke up, and get home after the kids were in bed.  So these meals are great, but they revolve around the kids, so we don’t actually get to have a good catch up, so 2020 is the year of the date night. Investing in my man.. and any chance to not have to cook an evening meal. Seriously, is there a competition where I can win a chef for a year?  Sign me up.

So there are my Resolutions for 2020:

1. Continue to cut down on waste and learn more about different ways to cut down

2. Get a workout in before yoga a few times a week

3. More date nights

4. More activities with the kids

5. Continue to learn about food and how they are linked to health

6. And work goals… I’m excited for this year.

Resolutions

On By lex270In Parenthood, Travel, Uncategorized3 Comments

Over the past few years, I’ve seemed to think about my New Years Resolutions around October time.  I’m not sure why, however, I feel it has something to do with coming off the back of summers filled with wakeboarding, surfing and other outdoor activities and being inside more.  I get restless and need movement and change.

I tend to go through my entire house and see what I can get rid of (either sell, recycle or donate to give it a second life).  I try to change a few things in each room with some basic Feng Shui methods.  I look at what my family and I are eating and how it can be improved.  I look at my body/activity and see what can be tweaked there.  So I put my loose resolutions into place well before the New Year.  I didn’t start this on purpose but it seems to have stuck, and it means that the resolutions have stuck as they are in place well before Christmas each year.

Last year I was focussed on cutting down on our waste in general, which also included cutting down on plastic, especially single use plastic, and also buying less, mainly clothes/toys/and just stuff.

So things we have been doing for the past year (or longer) to cut down on waste:

  1. Swapped liquid soap out for bars of soap
  2. Bought washing powder in a box rather than liquid in a plastic bottle
  3. Switched our coffee machine that took plastic non-recylable pods to one that takes ground coffee
  4. Became religious in taking water bottles EVERYWHERE for the whole family
  5. Same with a travel coffee mug (I even take this abroad for my coffee shop stops)
  6. Obviously buying loose fruit and veg where I can
  7. Reusing carrier bags.. thats a given.
  8. Food waste goes in the garden bin.
  9. No more plastic straws, we have paper and metal straws now.
  10. Buying items in glass instead of plastic where possible.
  11. Buying less stuff, and thinking is it needed, before buying.  Also buying better quality items that will last longer than most of the fast fashion garments.
  12. Looking at the packaging properly to see if its recyclable or not.  I used to be pretty happy with our one black bin bag week and a few recycling sacks, but now I’m paying 100% attention as to what can actually go in them, the ratio has sadly swung the other way which has been a wake up call to how much we are throwing away.

So thats all been going on in 2018.  And I feel I wanted to add to it coming into 2019:

  1. I have started the daunting task of looking at the packaging of what I’m buying in supermarkets to see if I can recycle it.
  2. I am also testing out different supermarkets for prices and recyclable packaging.  This is a painful process and will probably take me all year to come up with an effective and efficient weekly food shopping system (I do not like the weekly food shop or cooking for a family of four e-v-e-r-y-day, if I could have one thing in life it would be a chef).
  3. As well as making more of an effort to source local foods
  4. I’m whittling down the bottled shampoo and conditioners with the aim to replace them with bars.  (This is a goal, I will have to report back on what I test out).
  5. Paper straws.  We have them (bought a big pack for a party) and we use them, but every time they still get thrown away… Once they are done, I’ll be sticking to the metal straw.
  6. Just generally being more conscious on what we throw away as a family and always thinking about how to reduce/avoid it.

Other tweaks:

  1. Diet: I feel my diet is pretty varied but I’m always looking for improvements.  So less processed and more food that had a life.  I have days where I eat meat, and also veggie days.  I like vegan meals and am looking more and more at them, especially to get more veggies into the kids, but I’m not sure I can see myself saying no to full fat cows milk and also my body weight in cheese.  I love cheese.  Fact.
  2. Blog more 🙂 I always say this!
  3. I bought an alarm clock back in November/December, its amazing, I love it.  I leave my phone downstairs at nighttime now so no playing on my phone in bed.

Any more tips?  I am always excited to hear what people do to cut down their waste!  I’d love to hear all about your hacks! xx