Getting Debt-Free by Going Waste-Free

As I learn more about money management, I can’t help wanting to learn more about life management as well. And part of living a balanced life involves being mindful of what I consume and how I consume it.

One girl I follow on social media, Lauren Singer, has been my main inspiration for transitioning to a waste-free lifestyle. What does that mean? To me, that means learning ways to produce less waste and live more naturally – not because I’m turning into a hippie, but because being mindful of my consumption is leading me to a healthier way of living.

How do I do that? I’m starting by taking baby steps. After I’m finished with my current plastic toothbrush I plan to buy bamboo toothbrushes, which break down much faster than plastic. I am also using bar soap for my face and body. Bar soap requires less packaging than body wash or other liquid soap, and can also be more beneficial for the skin if it contains natural ingredients. A third step is changing out my plastic razors for a stainless steel safety razor. That is my most recent purchase, and I have to say I’ve actually enjoyed the progress of learning how to use it.

Not all of the change is fun, however. In addition to using bar soap for my skin, I have also started using a shampoo bar for my hair. For the last six weeks, my hair has been one greasy mess as the residual silicone and chemicals from drugstore shampoo have slowly disappeared. In their place, my body is having to re-train itself on how much oil it produces to regulate my hair. One thing that has helped with this is rinsing my hair with lemon juice on occasion; it functions as a conditioner as well as a way to cut through the grease. Showering in the morning has also been very helpful, instead of going to bed with wet hair (although I’m usually a night-shower-er, so that’s really weird for me!).

The most challenging and probably most tedious next step for me will be reducing my food waste. I find it much more convenient, and often cheaper, to buy frozen vegetables in plastic packaging than buying fresh ones and cutting them up and potentially having to throw them out because I didn’t eat them quickly enough. I also don’t like cooking and meal-planning in general, so my journey with eating habits has always been a difficult one. I hope to remedy this by developing more consistent routines with meal-planning, and perhaps even utilizing the local farmers’ market more.

I still live pretty wastefully, so when I say I’m taking baby steps I mean really baby steps. I imagine it will take many months for me to transition to where I want to be, but it starts with becoming a conscious consumer and growing from there.

My New Year’s Resolutions

Clean out closet – completely
Clean out car
Keep at least one of these snacks on hand as consistently as possible:
- baby carrots
- cherry tomatoes
- cucumbers
- sugar snap peas
- edamame
Achieve the ability to do 10 regular pushups in a row
Achieve the ability to do a pull up
Increase my jogging speed to a consistent 10 minute mile or less
Read 15 books

These are a few thoughts I wanted to jot down. I’m not big on resolutions, but I am big on setting achievable goals. What are your goals?

Emptying the Inbox

In the past couple years I have developed my own style of minimalism for my life. I possess a distaste for clutter, and have improved my ability to detach sentimentality from objects that no longer add value to my life.

Since graduating college, I created a goal to empty my email inboxes, because digital minimalism is just as important to me as physical minimalism. Deleting and archiving most of my college emails was easy. The other challenge was cleaning up my personal inbox.

While I deleted many emails, there were many that I kept, but not in my inbox. I created enough folders to keep everything organized, but not enough to constitute another level of clutter. Creating categories such as bills versus family emails, or specific locations I’ve lived in, have been incredibly helpful in this process. I can now proudly say that my personal inbox has under ten emails in it, as I have learned to sort my mail as it comes in.

I understand that not everyone can do this because some receive hundreds of emails per day. I cannot say I know what that experience is like. However, I have discussed with some friends how useful “digital housekeeping” can be these days, and how it would be an interesting adventure to pursue that service as a line of work to clients.

I do not know exactly everything that that service would entail, but it is an area that interests me, and I would love to hear readers’ thoughts on it. Whenever I learn something that is useful in my life, I become excited to share it with others in hopes their lives can improve as well.

Minimalism and the Internet

I am now settled into my new apartment with the adventures of adulthood knocking at my door. For the first month of my living here, I thought I would experiment with not purchasing a wifi plan and seeing how long I could last.

Not the best idea.

I will say this: I’m not a fan of people who are addicted to their screens. Sometimes I can be that person, although I try not to be. I figured it was worth trying to go without internet and therefore purging what wasn’t adding value to my life. Hopefully it would force me to get out more.

The problem I had was that instead of going out more, I stayed in more. I cocooned. Being introverted, I already don’t like to go out much, and not having internet only made me feel more lonely and less connected. Sometimes, if I have several days off from work, I may not even leave my house because I see no reason to. I entertain myself with cleaning, crafting, and reading. Sometimes I would try to hang out with friends, but I’m also in that stage where I’m trying to find a community outside of college, which brings with it its own unique challenges. There are only so many things to do inside a house before boredom joins the party.

I want to view the internet as a tool, and I admit I do waste time on it, but if I’m not going to leave my house anyway, at least the internet gives me the ability to find new articles, watch movies, and see what other people my age are up to.

Hopefully as time goes on, I may find more valuable ways to pass the time, but for now, this is where I am in my journey.

Minimalism: Step 1

According to the Minimalists, one of the first steps toward minimalism is the decision to change. This is something I’ve already been wanting to do for awhile, so in my journey, step 1 was packing everything up for my move. The nice thing about moving is that you have to pack up everything anyway, so it felt good to leave a clean room behind.

I wasn’t able to fit all my clothes into one suitcase, but I was able to organize almost everything into two. One suitcase contains my seasonal clothes and clothes I’m not currently wearing. The other contains clothes that I wear on a daily basis. I kept some items (such as jackets) on hangers and just carried them separately.

I did enjoy being able to pack everything up, because I was able to organize at the same time, separating stuff that I would need to use right away from stuff that I wouldn’t be using but still needed to hold on to for now. I was also able to throw away a lot of trash, which is a wonderful feeling. It makes me feel so much lighter to not have to carry around a bunch of trash with me.

Now that step 1 is completed, I’m able to move on to step 2, and it’s really exciting that I’m on my way to a simpler life.

My Journey to Minimalism

I follow a blog called The Minimalists, which has inspired me to want to live a simpler life. In general I try to be frugal, because having too much stuff overwhelms me, especially when that stuff accumulates into a disorganized mess.

I want to work even more toward living a minimalistic life – getting rid of unnecessary things, working toward living more purposefully and meaningfully. The Minimalists wrote a series of posts about their 21-day journey to minimalism, so I want to create my own series of posts documenting my journey to minimalism this summer. This will also force me to write more, which is something I’ve been wanting to do as well.

For a long time I’ve had a dream of one day being able to fit all my belongings – or at least all my clothes – in a single suitcase so that I could pack up and go anywhere at a moment’s notice if need be. I do not intend to reach that goal this summer, but I do intend to downsize. Downsize the stuff, downsize the stress. I hope that by coming with me on my journey, maybe you will be inspired to work toward a more meaningful life as well, whatever that may look like for you.

Should I Get a Pinterest?

Recently, I somewhat reluctantly created my own Pinterest account. I was reluctant because I didn’t want to be perceived as a stereotypical girl who spends her life on the addictive website planning her dream wedding (or dream closet, or whatever). But ultimately I created it primarily to help me with meal planning. Eating well is important to me, and even though I’m still in the early stages of changing my eating habits, Pinterest has been helpful in providing me with meal ideas as well as keeping those ideas organized. I have to admit that it seems much more orderly to have a board devoted to main dishes rather than trying to bookmark all the recipes I find on the internet.

For some people, maybe Pinterest is a waste of time. For others, it is a useful tool. Ultimately I had to ask myself, “Will this add value to my life?” That is probably one of the more important questions when considering making a change. For me, I think it does add value to my life, because I am trying to use it as a tool to help me be more mindful of my diet. Granted, I still have fun with it (I created a board devoted entirely to muffin recipes I’d like to try), and I still want to be careful about how much time I spend on the internet, but I think for me this account has been a good thing. And yay for good things!

My Thoughts on Facebook Fasting

Periodically I’ll see some of my Facebook friends announce that they are going on a Facebook fast: “Leaving Facebook for x days; text if you need to reach me.” While it sounds like a good idea, I have never officially done my own Facebook fast other than when I was traveling or at summer camp. I think a break from the internet can definitely be a good thing, both for the mind and the body, but I have some mixed thoughts about it as well.

Hearing about someone going on a Facebook fast sounds pretty similar to someone announcing they’re going on a diet. It’s short term and may have some benefits, but it takes discipline, it’s easy to give up on, and it probably won’t affect you much in the long term. I’m not a big fan of diets, but I am a fan of healthy living.

Personally I don’t do internet fasts because I want to be reachable if people need to contact me, especially if they want to schedule something last minute that I wouldn’t see if I were on a fast. A one-time internet fast isn’t likely to accomplish much (for me), but I do like the idea of trying to moderate how much time I spend on the internet on a regular basis. Maybe that means taking a day each week/month and not checking Facebook. More practically for me it means not checking my email constantly throughout the day.

Personal internet moderation is something I still need to work on – I still fall into the trap of sitting in front of my computer screen when I’m bored, or even when I should be doing other things. For some people, Facebook fasts are great. For me personally, I don’t want to go on a diet; I want to improve my lifestyle.