There’s one thing I know for certain: we can’t consume our way to a life that doesn’t destroy the planet, so you won’t find a quick list of things to buy in any of my blog posts. That means my top five is a list of simple ways to change your mindset and habits that will help you tread lightly on the planet. So… after a couple weeks of thoughtful reflection, here’s my list of five great sustainability {mindset} swaps (in order of importance, according to me, which means they’re based on science and anecdotal lessons learned from friends and clients):

1. Drive less, walk or bike more. Take a good hard look at your car before you drive somewhere. Can you walk your kids to school instead of driving them? Can you walk or bike to the grocery store? If your gut reflex is no, I encourage you to think a little more creatively… a backpack is great for carrying groceries home on foot and a bike trailer is your friend when you’re biking. These activities will reduce your impact on the earth (mostly carbon emissions, which are causing global warming) AND make you healthier! Sure, it might take you a little longer than driving, but can you eliminate time at the gym because you’re so much more active during the day? This is an important swap in your daily life and especially important when you’re making big life decisions, like taking a new job or buying a new house. In those big moments, consider driving vs walking/biking as an important factor in your decision. 

2. Keep looking at your car and calculate your miles per gallon (mpg) efficiency, if you don’t already know it. This tells you how efficient your engine is at driving you where you need to go per gallon of gas it burns. You want this number to be as high as possible. For example, the average truck, minivan or SUV gets about 17.5 miles per gallon of gas. An average car gets closer to 25 mpg and a motorcycle gets around 45 mpg (the source for all of these numbers is here). When you’re ready to replace your car, buy the most efficient car you can afford (that’s one with the highest mpg rating). I’m a huge fan of electric vehicles (EVs) and purchased a Tesla Model S in February 2020. You can read about my experience in blogs here and here. If you want to talk more about EVs, please leave your questions and comments below! 

3. While we’re talking about electricity, do you know where yours comes from? Electricity in the US is generated, on average, from the following resources (all of the following info is from US Energy Information Administration (EIA) which has a lot of great resources if you want to learn more): 

• 40% natural gas
• 19% coal
• 20% nuclear
• 20% renewables (like wind, solar, and hydro)
• 1% petroleum

If you want to get more specific to your state or electrical grid, you can learn more here (it’s another great page on the EIA website). Learning more about electricity is great, but my recommended action here is to call your electric utility company and request 100% renewable electricity. Most utilities have a program that lets you pay a little extra (for reference, my monthly bill increased $10 when I made the switch) for 100% renewable electricity. I know… you have lots of questions… like “how can I just buy renewables? Am I actually getting renewable electricity delivered to my house???”

The short answer is this: when you subscribe to green electricity programs like this you’re incentivizing your local utility to invest in more renewable electricity projects. This means they’ll build more solar arrays or install more wind turbines. You’re really buying a renewable electricity credits, which means that an equal amount of “extra” green electricity is being produced on your behalf. No, the utility can’t send this electricity directly to your house, but you are part of the overall move to a greener and more renewable electricity grid and you are voting with your dollars every single month. Still have questions? Drop them in the comments below and I’ll help you find the answer!

4. Embrace minimalism. Do you really need all the stuff in your life? Does it really make you happier? For me, minimalism is a great mindset to truly embrace the Reduce in the decades old mantra “Reduce. Reuse. Recycle.” Yes, recycling is important and you should do that too, but moving beyond recycling and buying less stuff is where the magic happens when trying not to destroy the planet.

Think about it this way: every single thing you own was created from the Earth’s precious resources. These resources were mined, grown or harvested from somewhere, transported to a processing site where they were turned from the raw material into a more usable form, transported to another manufacturing site where they were combined into the thing in your hands, transported to a store or warehouse, and then transported again to you. And that’s probably an oversimplified version of the truth. This happens over and over again for every single object in our lives. With this in mind, I ask again… Do you really need all the stuff in your life? What could you choose to live without? What would actually make you happier NOT to own? 

If you’re ready to embrace minimalism, there are TONS of resources out there for you to explore, but some of my favorites include: The Minimalists blog, the book Soulful Simplicity by Courtney Carver, and the Our Minimalist Lifestyle Facebook Group. Please share your favorite resources in the comments!

5. Stop wasting food.  Each year, the average American throws away more than 200 pounds of food at a cost of more than $1,600 per family! And if food waste were a country, it would be the third largest emitter of greenhouse gases (GHGs, the major cause of climate change), behind the Unites States and China. Farming of meat animals and food transportation are additional contributors of GHG emissions, so I’ll give bonus points for eating less meat and more local food. 

There are lots of great strategies you can use to reduce food waste in your home. Some of my favorites include

• create a weekly meal plan
• buy less during each trip to the grocery store
• organize your food storage areas (fridge, pantry, freezer) so you can find your food easier
• learn about best by, use by, and other perishable food labels to avoid spoilage
• freeze leftovers and other perishable items before their expiration date

Here they are, all together once more:

1. Drive less, walk and bike more
2. Buy the most efficient car you can afford
3. Buy renewable electricity
4. Embrace minimalism
5. Stop wasting food

Do some or all of these recommended {mindset} swaps resonate with you? Share your thoughts and experiences in the comments!

Looking for more? If you’ve already made these swaps and are ready to make deeper change, I highly recommend calculating your ecological footprint and using the results to identify your biggest opportunities. 

According to the calculator, my goods footprint is pretty much nonexistent, but I firmly believe there’s always room for improvement. The goods category includes all the “stuff” in our lives… clothes, kitchen gadgets, books, magazines, home decor, basically anything you buy thats’s not food.

I’ve spent the last few years really focused on not buying stuff I don’t need. Call it minimalism. Call it sustainability. Call it slow living (because in retrospect, I’m shocked at how much time and energy I used to spend shopping). Whatever you want to call it, it makes me happy.

• Buy used clothes. So one of my goals is to simply keep up the good habits I’ve worked so hard to create. Not to let culture sway me back into habits that don’t serve me well. In 2020, I didn’t buy any new clothes (only used, and in full disclosure I did buy myself a new bra after my old one broke and my amazing mother bought me new undies and socks as gifts). I promise to post more about my capsule wardrobe strategies and the wide-ranging benefits of buying used in an upcoming blog post, so if you have specific questions, please drop them in the comments below!

• No online shopping. This year, I’m adding a second shopping related goal: to only buy {clothes + everything else} from local stores. I’m excited to put my dollars into my community and the individual people who own/run small businesses here. Sure, I might have to get creative and/or wait a day or two longer to get something, but I think creativity and patience are two GREAT skills to cultivate! This means I’m going to be asking for your advice (local friends, I’m looking at you here) for local places to buy the random things I need throughout the year.

How do you influence your friends, family, community, and elected officials? It’s fine if the answer is “I’ve never really thought about that”; my space is always a judgement free zone. The last category of my eco-footprint is “services”. Services include all of the infrastructure (mostly government) that supports your life, but isn’t within your direct control (think, roads, train tracks, bridges, police, fire, etc). This category invites us to think about the ways we influence the world around us.

While the environmental impact of these are not directly controlled by my actions (at least not compared to the car I choose to drive or the food I choose to eat), I firmly believe that we can and should influence them. This right here is why I publicly talk about my sustainability journey. This is why @carbonfreefamily exists! When I started Carbon Free Family in 2018, my goals was to talk about the joy, laughter, fun, and calm I find in a more sustainable life and hope that my story helps you find more a more sustainable version of yourself and your life.

To continue my sharing journey in 2021 and support your personal sustainability growth, I’m excited to keep working to build this amazing community of people and resources, collectively committed to living a more sustainable life. I will be building more of these resources and community space:

• Digitally on Instagram, Facebook, and www.CarbonFreeFamily.com. Follow me on whichever is your preferred platform to stay in touch and involved!
• Through community presentations and workshops (online and someday soon in person again)
• In person gatherings, like the clothing swaps and mending parties I started hosting in early 2020. I can’t wait to gather with you again soon!

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Self care isn’t a category in the environmental footprint calculator, but self care is critically important for us all! We have to take care of ourselves before we can take care of the community and the planet. So, while this is the last set of goals I’m sharing with you, it might be the most important.

My early morning routine includes stretching, meditation, and coffee. I will continue to make quiet time with myself a priority. Every day.

2021 will be my third year participating in the 52 Hike Challenge (this is a great program with really great resources, especially for beginner hikers, so if you’re interested in learning more I highly recommend following to link to their website). My weekly time in nature continues to bring me such joy, connectedness (with nature and the humans that come along), and health. This year, as a bit of an added challenge, I’m going to try to visit as many different trails/parks as possible. I’m not fully committing to 52 different trails (because I’m so very fortunate to live near the White Pine Trail and some days I just don’t want to drive anywhere), but I am excited in intentionally explore new pockets of nature.

2021 will be my second full year participating in the 52 Days Unplugged challenge (again, to learn more, please visit the link or look for the #52daysunplugged posts on my Instagram and Facebook). I still struggle to have a healthy relationship with my phone, but weekly phone free days have opened my eyes to the addiction (and I don’t use that word lightly). This year, I’m going to continue to have at least one screen free day per week. Additionally, I’m going to focus on bringing screen free moments into my daily life, working to use my phone with intention (vs mindless scrolling or addictive pickups) each day.

WHEW! Now that I’ve written it all down, that feels like a lot to work on in just one year. And I feel compelled to talk about giving ourselves grace when setting our goals and working on them throughout the year. My goals are mine; your goals are yours. Our goals won’t look the same, just like our lives don’t look exactly the same. We’re all at a different place in our personal sustainability journey. Some habits take longer to break than others (for example, it took me 3 whole years to fully build my bike to work habit. Seriously, three years of walking out into my garage each morning and talking myself into hopping on that bike instead of the car). Additionally, my goals are made up, they only exist to serve me, to make my life better. If mid-way through the year, I realize a goal isn’t serving me in the way I intended, I LET IT GO! I encourage you to give yourself the same grace and flexibility.

My annual goal setting, much like my life, is a slow and reflective process. I like to calculate my environmental footprint (see my blog post last week for more information), reflect on last years’ progress and this year’s biggest opportunities.

I’m excited to take you on a journey of my 2021 intentions. I’ve organized them to coincide with the areas highlighted by the environmental footprint calculator and in order of my biggest to smallest opportunity to reduce my impacts: transportation, food, shelter, goods, and services.

Transportation remains my biggest opportunity. So, this year, I have the following goals:

• No flights – In 2020, we committed to no flights and found adventure nearby (see last week’s blog for more details). We explored our home state of Michigan and had wonderful family adventure (yes, even in the midst of the pandemic). I love travel, but I know how impactful my flights are. In 2021, we’re going to remain focused on nearby adventures, expanding our radius to include longer car rides this year… we’ve got a date with the smoky mountains for spring break! My long term solution will include offsetting the emissions from our family vacations, so please send me your recommendations if you’ve purchased offsets.

• Become a one car family again – In 2020, we bought a 100% electric vehicle (again, see last week’s blog for more details). We’ve been a one car family for several years, but it’s taken us months to fully embrace our new Tesla and be ready to give up our trusty old ‘08 Honda Fit. This is mostly because Robbie has dirty hobbies like hunting and woodworking and we had to figure out a way to haul messy things in our “fancy new car”. A few weeks ago, we installed a trailer hitch on the Tessy, so we’re finally ready to let Honda go and return to being a one car family. I can’t tell you how excited I am to never buy gasoline again!

My food is wildly important to me as I work to fully align my life with my values. And it’s my second biggest opportunity to impact my footprint. I also find the food category to be a stubborn one… meaning, its hard to see the impact (via a lower environmental footprint in the calculator) from the changes I’ve made (one more time, see last week’s blog for more on this). But that’s not going to stop me from leaning in to the joyous parts of my food journey! This year, I have only one food-related goal:

Eat local food, even in winter.

I’m proud of my summertime foodprint (that is, the environmental footprint of my food), but during the winter in Michigan I struggle to find locally grown, unpackaged food. So, I’m going to focus on this goal especially hard in the next couple of months (February through May) until my own backyard vegetable starts to produce and my local farmers market starts up again.

Here’s where YOU can help!

Michigan friends – please comment below with your favorite winter farm shares, farmers markets, and other resources you have for local food (that are available right now!) so I can build a robust list of farmers to support during these cold winter months. I promise to explore your recommendations and share my adventure, with details and recommendations, in an upcoming blog post.

Non-Michigan friends – please share your strategies and recommendations too! I have followers all over the world and we can always learn from your strategies!

This year I’ve realized how very important it is for my home to be a place of peace, relaxation, and comfort. A place that calms my nerves, supports connected time with my family, and gives my soul space to Just Be Here. It’s not surprising that my 2021 goals include a few to make my home more cozy (and energy efficient) and less cluttered. I love it when the connections between minimalism and sustainability are clear like this.

• Declutter one room per month. Less stuff means less cleaning, less things to break, less things to repair, and more time with my family.

• Install insulated blinds everywhere. Cozy spaces in my home encourage all of us to slow down, sit down, play together and take the time for meaningful connection. Last year, we installed these blinds in most of the windows on the first floor of our home. Even I was shocked at how much warmer I felt in these better insulated spaces. And even better, we could see on our nest thermostat that the furnace was running less often, saving energy, carbon emissions and our hard earned money!

Alright! We’re halfway through my 2021 intentions and this feels like a good spot to take a break. I’ll be back next week with my goad related to goods, services, and self care (self care isn’t part of the footprint calculator, but I’ve added it. I firmly believe that we have to take care of ourselves before we can take care of the community and the planet).

Intentional living takes time. Sometimes the process is (intentionally) slow. If you’re still thinking about 2021 and what you might want to work on, I’m right here with you and for you. Drop your thoughts and questions in the comments. I’d love to hear about your goals, even if they’re still a “work in progress”.

I also firmly believe that you are not obligated to keep gifts that do not bring you joy or support the life you are trying to live. This does not make you ungrateful. Yes, someone spent time and money choosing the gift for you, but they wouldn’t want you to compromise your values to keep something that doesn’t fit… your body, your lifestyle, or your values.

You can be grateful and still not keep every gift you receive.

We’re all trying to build the life we want to live. I’m focused on a simple life, built on minimalist and sustainable values. It is a core value that I do not keep things in my life that do not bring me joy. And in general, stuff does not bring me joy.

So what do I do when someone gives me a gift that doesn’t support my life? I pass it on to someone who will appreciate it and use it!

Interested in building more sustainable habits in 2021? Please join my upcoming virtual workshop: Kickstart Your Sustainability Journey!

Here are my simple strategies for passing on gifts:

1. Exchange or return it.

I think this can be done in a way that honors both the gift giver and my values. It might be important to be honest with the gift giver if you go this route, but I trust that if you approach the conversation with love and kindness, you’ll leave even more connected to each other. This is an especially good strategy if the color or style doesn’t fit your life, but the gift comes from a store that has other things that would fit you better.

      2. Regift it

I LOVE regifting things! It doesn’t have to be Christmas or their birthday, giving someone a gift on a non-holiday can be even more special! It’s worth noting that this is only a kindness if you truly believe the gift will be a blessing to someone else. Regifting at random just passes the clutter (or act of donating) on to someone else.

       3. Donate it

There are plenty of people in need these days. The gifts that don’t quite fit you could be very helpful for someone who is stretching to make ends meet. Donate unwanted things (maybe as part of a January clean out? see below for more on this) to your local charity of choice or directly to an individual in your community using online groups like Buy Nothing group on Facebook

I can’t help but highlight the opportunity that’s just below the surface this time of year… the annual purge, clean out, or whatever you choose to call the opportunity to review your accumulated stuff to make sure it is still truly bringing value to your life. If not, pass it on!

After Christmas is an especially good time to do this with kids. If you’re new to this sort of activity, give yourself grace and time (it might take longer and more energy than you think, but I swear it’s worth it to surround yourself with only things that fit your life) and consider approaching only one area of your house at a time. And if you need help, ask for it! I’m happy to support you on this journey and can design a one-on-one coaching program to meet your specific needs. Send me an email (at carbonfreefamily@gmail.com) or complete this form to start discussing the possibilities.

Also worth highlighting in a little more detail is the growing number (and value) of groups like my local Buy Nothing group on Facebook. If you’ve never heard of a group like this, the basic premise is such: the group is a platform for giving away and asking for things you need with NO exchange of money (or any sort of value, trades usually aren’t allowed either). You can give away just about anything you want, including stuff, services (like offering to cook a meal for someone or teaching someone to mend their own clothes), or time (like offering to meet people for a coffee date or picnic). Alternatively, you can ask for the same types of things. I love this model because you’re giving things directly to a person who has 1) asked for them or 2) expressed a need, rather than potentially overwhelming a charity with unwanted stuff. 

Getting to know your local Buy Nothing group is a great strategy to manage your stuff throughout the year. I’m constantly giving things away using this group and asking for things you need. I always feel like I should give more than I take from groups like this, but they’re an amazing resource to ask for things you need too! Last summer, I picked up kefir starter and used roller skates for both my kids from my Buy Nothing group… for free!  

Comment with your questions and additional recommendations below!

Please join my upcoming workshop… Kickstart Your Sustainability Journey! This 6-week online workshop will change the way you think about sustainability, flipping your mindset so that sustainability becomes a natural part of every decision you make and creating easy sustainable habits. Find more information and register here!

I fully believe in progress not perfection. I believe that absolute zero waste is not attainable and so its important to find joy in the journey, so I’m here to tell you the whole story with hopes that something in my progression is useful for your shampoo habit.

A few years ago, I started experimenting with bar shampoo and conditioner as a way to avoid the plastic bottles the traditional version comes in. I started with LUSH products because they were popular and readily available… I like to shop physically at the store because I can bring my own jars and avoid any waste, plus I can avoid the carbon emissions from shipping to my home.

I have to admit that I’ve tried more natural shampoos several times before in my life and always abandoned the effort because my hair looked terrible! I’m a professional and committed to sustainability, so I need to look the part of a professional. My hair is fine and greasy. For most of my life, I’ve washed it every day. For the past several years, I’ve been slowly weaning myself to every other day, using dry shampoo on the non-shower days (I’ll share my recipe in another post soon). By the end of the second work day, my hair is starting to look greasy, so I know I can’t stretch it any further.

Robbie on the other hand has very thick hair that can handle nearly any kind of shampoo. In fact, he regularly goes for weeks or even months without using soap of any kind on his hair and it looks exactly the same (strike that, actually better) than if he washed it every day. Daily washing for him results in fluffy, dry hair.

I’m telling you all of this for several reasons:

1. To assure you that my hair is not the kind that can handle any ol’ shampoo and still look amazing every day… meaning that if your hair isn’t “perfect” you still have options to transition away from plastic bottles; you’ll just have to experiment with a variety of products to find the right one,
2.   to note that if you’re hair is similar to mine and/or Robbie’s then the actual products recommended below might work for you too
3. and lastly, to reassure you that even if you have two very different hair/shampoo needs in your household, you’ll likely be able to find a solution that works for both/all of you with a bit of experimentation

It took me a little while, but I found the right shampoo and conditioner for my hair… Honey I Washed My Hair solid shampoo and Jungle conditioner in case you’re looking for options.

When we finished our last plastic bottles of liquid shampoo, I gleefully bought shampoo and conditioner bars for all of our bathrooms. I dreamed that guests will come to my house, use my bar shampoo, and be hooked for life.

BUT… My husband kept buying liquid shampoo and conditioner in single use plastic bottles. And every time I walked into the bathroom, I felt like a FAILURE! FRAUD!

Since Robbie does ALL of the grocery shopping and housework, I try not to micro-manage him… too often. I finally asked him about it and learned that he HATED the soap residue left behind in the shower by my bars (and he cleans the bathroom so he has a vested interest in this).

Solution #1: I found a white-ish colored conditioner bar (also from LUSH, but I can’t find this on their website, so I’m not sure what its called) that I’m hoped would solve the residue problem for Robbie.

Solution #2: Robbie built soap holders from some scrap wood to keep the bars off the tile, drain the residue, and hopefully help our shampoo and conditioner bars last longer because they will dry out faster.

We lived with this solution for months and were really happy…. for something like 9 months. During those nine months, my hair became used to the bar shampoo and I slowly stopped using the conditioner.

And then our minimalist minds turned to the shower again, wondering “why do we need three bars of soap? Could we find just one that could wash all of the different parts of our body??” Also, the LUSH bars are expensive and I believe that sustainability doesn’t need to cost more. In fact, for sustainability to be truly sustainable it must be accessible to all.

So, we went on the hunt for one bar of soap that would meet all* of our body washing needs at a more affordable price. We tried several different bars before landing on the one that works best for us. Our purchase criteria was simple: we had to be able to buy it from either 1) our local grocery store (we generally shop at a localized chain called Fresh Thyme which is somewhere between a co-op and a more mainstream grocer) or 2) through our local buyers co-op (we buy through Frontier Co-op Wholesale in bulk and then the amazing woman who organized the group splits our giant order into individual ones for us to pick up in person at her house).

And so I present you… my new shower soap! It’s called Pine Tar Bar Soap from The Grampa Soap Company (which was founded in 1878, a great reminder that the oldest technology is still often the best) and I love it! The smell is amazing and my hair looks great! I still need to wash it every other day and use dry shampoo, but the body and texture of my hair feels really nice and I’ve been getting compliments on how great my hair looks (thanks, mom!)

And doesn’t this shelf in my shower look so neat and tidy with only one bar of soap?! That’s my double edged safety razor on top (from Edwin Jagger). I’m happy to talk more about that in another post if you’re interested in making the switch.

Have you experimented with bar shampoo or a “3-in-1” bar like this? How did it go? What’s your biggest shampoo challenge? What’s working really well for you? These brands/products work well for me, but I’m sure there are lots of great products out there. Please share your favorites in the comments!

If you haven’t tackled your plastic bottles of shampoo yet… what’s stopping you? What’s your biggest fear or challenge?

*when I say all of us, I really mean Robbie and me… the kids don’t care what kind of soap they use and to be totally transparent, they still have giant jugs of liquid shampoo and conditioner we bought forever ago. Bar soap seems to disappear very quickly because they still take baths and play with the soap underwater for hours on end.