zero waste home adventures: 3 months strong

before we left on our bike tour this past may, we had a mad load of things to do that we waited to do until the last hours of the day. one of those things included a visit to the disposal site (aka: dump). 

you guys, with our zero waste efforts, we were able to go for THREE MONTHS without taking out our trash! originally, i was aiming to double our first feat of one month without taking out the trash, so going for three months was a pleasant surprise. our next challenge is to go six months without having to take out our waste! *gulp*

the dark mystery man pictured here is samuel. i told him to smile holding our bag of waste, late at night in the freezing cold (i think there were snow flurries earlier), before we had to drive one hour to bozeman where we'd sleep for a couple hours before heading to the airport. please remind me not to procrastinate next time. but huzzah for minimizing waste!

zero waste home adventures: around the house

my husband has been an true support in my (sometimes ocd) zero waste (zw) adventure. he pokes fun at me when i'm being neurotic and genuinely asks about what to do in a possible wasteful situations. obviously adopting a zw lifestyle can't be done alone in a household or everyone involved in said household would go crazy. but here are a few things we've been doing together:

• we live out "if it's yellow let it mellow. if it's brown, flush it down."
• we make whatever food we can, instead of buying it prepared/packaged. if it doesn't make sense for us to make it, we buy it in bulk.
• we started an indoor composting system!! we went with bokashi because it takes meat/fats. it's awesome, and the juice is fantastic for our septic tank. win-win!
• we make an effort to eat whatever we have at home before buying more of something we might already have. this isn't always easy because my cravings can be impulsive, and i'll put up a good fight. (poor samuel...)
• we are learning about (and trying to implement) vinegar as the solution to most questions. for example, you can use a 1/2 cup of vinegar in the rinse cycle instead of using dryer sheets. awesome.
• we've eliminated paper towels. we're a towel/linen household now.
• we purchased a few handkerchieves from the vintage store and use that in lieu of tissues.
• we reuse padded envelopes and boxes that have been sent to us (b/c we love receiving love mail from friends!). 
• we tracked down someone who will sell us "pet food" (aka: raw cow milk!) in a jar. now i can make plenty of yogurt and have milk leftover for the baked goods samuel brings home on thursday nights without all the plastic containers! (note: selling privately sourced milk is apparently illegal here. hence the "pet food" label. shhh, don't tell.)

below is all of our non-recyclable trash for the past month, collected in an 8 gallon bag. we just dumped it at the disposal site. i hope our next bag lasts us at least two months! 

small steps towards progress! onward! 

zero waste home adventures: let's talk about apparel

i'm embarrassed to tell you how much clothes/shoes/accessories i had before i moved here. good thing i didn't count it all. but to give you a sense of all the crap i excavated from every nook and cranny of my barn loft, here's what i donated on just one occasion of a clothes drop: 50 shirts, 3 jackets, 10 dresses, 12 shoes, 3 bags, 2 luggage bags.

i've said this before, but i prided myself in believing that i lived simply. but when push came to shove, the amount of stuff and waste i accumulated was - simply put - too much. so i got rid of possessions, over and over and over again until i finally came to a stall. too much of this iterative minimizing can cause a kind of mental constipation. it's an exhausting process. when i felt like the amount of apparel had been reduced enough, i packed it all up.

then i moved and counted everything before unpacking it. here's my current list of apparel:

• tops
• 10 casual shirts 
• 5 nice blouses/shirts/sweaters
• 4 tank tops
• 4 dresses
• 3 cardigans
• 3 sleepwear tops
• 2 half zip long sleeve pull overs
• 2 athletic tank tops
• 1 really ragged hoodie sweater (my favorite!)
• total: 34 tops

• bottoms
• 3 jeans
• 3 shorts
• 3 sleepwear bottoms
• 3 other pants
• 2 hiking pants
• 2 workout pants
• 2 running shorts 
• 2 long johns
• 1 snow pants
• 1 skirt
• total: 22 bottoms 

• jackets
• 1 waist length down jacket
• 1 half zip puffy
• 1 rain jacket (also doubles as my snow jacket for snow activities)
• 1 knee length down jacket
• 1 running shell
• 1 cycling shell
• 1 jean jacket
• total: 7 jackets

• intimates
• 12 underwear (i accidentally forgot underwear on a 3 day trip, so bought 2 extra. argh)
• 4 bras
• 3 lingerie
• 3 sports bras
• 1.5 bikini (two bottoms, one top)
• 1 slip
• total: 24.5 intimates

• shoes
• 2 brown leather boots
• 1 running/trail shoes
• 1 crocs
• 1 swing dance shoes
• 1 flip flops
• 1 snow boots
• 1 slippers
• total: 8 pairs of shoes

• accessories
• 10 pairs of socks
• 6 pairs of earrings
• 4 rings (including my wedding band)
• 2 belts
• 2 cold weather beanie/hats
• 2 gloves
• 3 scarves
• 1 bracelet
• 1 neck gaiter
• 1 sun hat
• 1 cap
• 1 messenger bag
• 1 "nice" bag
• 1 pair of sunglasses + case
• total: 36 accessories

• GRAND TOTAL: 132.5 apparel items

this is my first time adding it all up, and geez!! it seems like a lot. 

i'm surprised by: the number of jackets, pairs of socks, underwear, and shirts i own.

when you see this list, what surprises you? 

what's been really interesting to notice in this lifestyle experiment, is to see what i've actually been wearing these past three weeks. it's significantly more casual here in montana, it's actually winter, and my days sway more towards being ready for an adventure than going into an office. also, i haven't touched any of the spring/summer things like my skirt, shorts, and flip flops for obvious reasons. my hope is to get down to ≤100 items by my next culling. until then, hopefully subconsciously, i'll be able to let go of more of my "what if's."

slowly and surely...

zero waste home adventures: waste disposal in rural montana

a few years ago, when i first heard of bea johnson's zero waste home in a sunset article, i was thoroughly impressed and inspired. i started making some changes in my life to reduce waste. i started composting everything i could, thanks to fosth's composting system in the backyard and the county of san mateo's industrial composting program. then, recycled everything else, and finally, threw away what i couldn't compost or recycle. it was pretty amazing. i would throw out my 8 gallon bag of trash every 4-6 weeks, instead of every week or so. in addition to getting my waste down, i made some other decisions to minimize waste: no more paper towels, paper napkins, plastic wrap, ziplock bags, etc. i wasn't extremely strict about this new lifestyle but i did try to live out this intention.

but after a while, i noticed how quickly i turned back to the way of convenience. it was easier for me live in tune with the north american majority culture way of consumption and waste. i didn't like inconveniencing others and the upfront cost of trying to make a full conversion to zero waste.

anyway, fast forward to now: i got married, reduced our lives down to a carload, and moved out to very rural montana with my husband. the operative words being: very rural. 

to prove it, we have become trash collectors. we have to take our trash to a disposal site about 10 miles away, where there is no fancy industrial composting program. in fact, they only take cans, paper/cardboard, recyclable plastics 1 and 2 (of 7) and NO glass! and burying our compost in the (frozen, snow covered) ground isn't really an option, since it'll also entice unwanted critters.

so how do we implement bea's 5 R's (Refuse, Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, Rot) in a place lacking the mindset and resources of the bay area? i'm not sure. but this is what we've resolved for now:

• be okay with using up what we have. the house had a lot of supplies in here already, and we brought a number of things i didn't want to just throw out for the sake of starting fresh. it seemed like a ... well, waste. i wanted to finish using our stuff before moving onto making the transition to "all things bulk" and making our own cleaning solutions. again, not ideal, but i'm coming to terms with it. 
• buy only what we absolutely need. and when we buy it, try returning the packaging before leaving the store. and if we need to order something from amazon, we try to have it all shipped in one box. 
• refuse plastic bags and receipts. we bring our own bags for everything or just carry it in our hands. montana isn't like california where BYOBag is ubiquitous. 
• reuse glass jars. we've collected some jars, brought some with us, and have bought some glass snapware we take to any store we can. our meat guy is currently closed to not using a piece of plastic to weigh and wrap the meat. (i'm gonna try to work some charm on this situation...)
• recycle the rest in gallatin county. since ennis doesn't take recyclables 3-7, we're collecting the rest of our recyclables to do a run in bozeman in a few months. in fact, the state of montana doesn't recycle glass, so we need to take it to a private recycling company.
• buy in bulk. so the ennis grocery store is kinda pricey, not super fresh, and sells almost everything in a package. if we are in a bind, we'll go there. but if we can help it, we will make a trip out to bozeman (60 miles away) and go to town & country foods and the community food co-op to pick up what we'll need for the week. tip 1: community food co-op on 908 w main gives $0.10 off for every jar and bag you use! tip 2: use a sharpie to write on your glass jar if you don't have a crayon like me. it comes off and it saves you from using a sticker or twisty tie.
• reuse the plastic bag that the local tortillas come in. btw: i need a solution for tortilla packaging! 
• return the egg carton to deemo's where we buy meat occasionally and local eggs often.
• be aware. because i'm sorting recycling, collecting compost, and throwing away what we must, i can see how much waste piles up. it helps to just notice...
• rot's not hot. actually, to prevent rotting (and therefore, wildlife scavenging our trash), we freeze all of our compostables until the freezer drawer is full. then we treat it like regular trash. this is not ideal, but it's saved us from having to make a dumpster run for almost two weeks.

even though i'm not confident we can become a zero waste household at this time (season and location), i'm proud of what we've been able to figure out thus far with our limited resources. i just need to remember to not feel defeated when i notice the trash bin getting more and more full and that becoming a zero waste household is slow process of transforming a deeply engrained lifestyle. for now, i'm just trying to remember to take my bags and clunky jars to the store. 

big news: we're moving & i smell like dried sweat.

i've been avoiding this post for a while.

partly because i've been busy, but mostly because it makes the news so final.

right now, i'm sitting with an empty stomach after my final (and possibly most intense) 6am workout at crossfit palo alto. the damage is called "whitten" and i'll be paying for days. admittedly, it was a great way to end my 2.5 year stint with cfpa......wait, i'm digressing.

this is the post announcing that my husband and i are moving to ennis, montana.

but that's not all. we're not just moving to ennis in the dead of winter! that's just our first step. actually, we're spending 2014 creating a LOT of space to recover from one very intense year. and by "intense," i mean full of major life transition. there was the dying and death of my husband's mother, leaving my beloved workplace of six years, planning a wedding, marriage, and now preparing to move to another state. i'm tired. 

actually, i'm exhausted.

deep in my core, i know this is the right must thing to do. i just know it in my bones. but boy, it's been go go go non-stop to get to a place where we can finish well. 

for us, part of adjusting to being newly married includes a massive purge of our belongings. everything is up for question. our goal is to minimize our stuff down to one carload. (oh, we also sold both our cars and bought a used suv and affectionately named him "buddy." pics to eventually come.) besides a couple boxes of keepsakes per person, we're using inspiration from the 100 things challenge and zero waste home to guide our process of simplifying our lives. the hope with this experiment is that we can live a more thoughtful lifestyle by wasting less. we want to create more space for the really juicy stuff of life (people, experiences, imagination, creation, relishing nature, paying attention, relationships, values, Presence, being, whimsy...) by minimizing the distractions (artifacts that symbolize the "what if's," excessive amounts of clothes...basically, CRAP).

this process ebbs & flows between being emotionally draining and invigorating (mostly the former). it's not common practice for the typical north american household to minimize their belongings. however, it is common to live a life of accumulation. an extra water bottle here, another pair of cute boots there, craft supplies i never used but believed i must have in a moment of inspiration, booksbooksbooks, knicks & knacks. and i prided myself in living simply.... (major ego blow enters here.)

and then there are all those things i collected along the way that symbolize a story. a journey. an adventure. those tiny purple rocks i collected lakeside in glacier national park, that other little rock i carried out from the bob marshall wilderness, the feather i once found on the trail, the shiny yellow rock that stood out among its peers on my first solo backpacking trip.... those things remind me of my fear, and the courage to overcome them. how do i get rid of those things? or do i? (i still haven't decided on those yet.)

for now, all i know is that we're having a massive load of stuff picked up tonight. and the next day, there will still be more to sift through. but with each day, we get closer to a life of material freedom.

we're taking it one day at a time, until we reach the morning of january 1st, 2014 when we hug our dear friends farewell and look at our home one last time before we begin our journey onward.

ps. it's almost 2pm as i wrap this up. and yes, i really do smell like dried sweat.