Tag: new years

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Buying crap

In the lead up to the most relaxed Christmas Rob and I have had in years, a simple question began to reoccur everywhere we meant. Do we need this? And often the answer was, you guessed it, no.

Where does the instinct come from to consume as much as possible over Christmas? The chocolates, the desserts, and a new one for me, candles with built in LED lights that come on when you light them. Seriously, don’t candles already light up enough? When the urge to buy takes over, I become a MONSTER.

Wilbur, caught attacking the christmas decorations at every opportunity.

I started thinking about my upcoming new year’s resolution quite early this year. I wanted to spend less, and put more into our savings. After a culmination of what I’m going to call multiple blackout ‘spending events’ – I realised how out of control I’d become. My impulse control for buying crap had always been low. But in 2024, it was non-existent.

My latest obsession – maybe even hyper fixation – was on cordless vacuums. Allow my own behaviour to a cautionary tale. My last vacuum was a fabulous little rechargeable thing. It was tiny, didn’t take long to replenish the battery, and did a pretty good job of keeping the tiny flat we used to rent relatively clean. However, when it came the end of its life, far too quickly in my opinion (after about 3 years of use), I decided to opt for a slightly more expensive corded alternative. My Shark vacuum has not only saved me money in the long-run as it doesn’t require the little bags my rechargeable one did, but it also does a much better job of cleaning. My rugs and carpet look gorgeous after a 15-minute whip round. And better yet, I’m not creating more e-waste as the lithium-ion battery begins a quick descent into uselessness.

But there I was, convinced that now we have two cats, and the need to clean more regularly than before, what I desperately wanted was something that I could whip out to do the little daily touch ups my home needed to stay fresh. And keep the cat hair at a manageable level. Despite the fact, I already have a much better vacuum cleaner – that albeit a bit heavier – works wonderfully well.

Penelope (left) and Wilbur (right)

In years gone by, I have also been a sucker for sustainable gimmicks. The Eco Egg laundry, uh, thing? Yep, I was an early adopter. And you know where it got me? Eventually my clothes began to take on a faint smell of damp. Even though everything was properly washed and aired. Bar cleansers were another obsession of mine, along with solid shampoos and conditioners. Though I must admit these were far more successful. As they are sensible alternatives to hygiene products that come in bulky or complex plastic containers.

I have to tell you though, one of my all-time favourite shampoo and conditioner bars are by the brand Ethique. And when they’re on sale in Holland & Barrett, I’m like a dog in heat. They are lovely, work well, and I adore their subtle scents. Side note – do Holland & Barrett still do the penny sale? (Oh dear, here I go again…)

But as I go into 2025, my goal is to simply use things up before buying more. Stop the accumulating, the hoarding of things ‘just in case’. And swap products out, where I can, for more environmentally conscious alternatives. Ones that work and aren’t just useless crap or convincing greenwashing.

One way of doing this is to create a ‘want’ list in my journal of the things I’d like to try. If I still think it’s a good idea in a month’s time, after plenty of research, then I’ll buy it. If not, well, it wasn’t meant to be.

For my birthday, Rob bought me an Aarke carbonator. A fancy looking alternative to the Sodastream he found on QVC of all places. I am in love – and no longer buying sparkly water or fizzy pop.

Me sipping my guilty pleasure – Diet Coke.

But what about the stuff that isn’t as easy to swap out – like household cleaning sprays, laundry detergent, toilet roll, fragrances, candles, moisturisers. Sure, there are loads of alternatives, but I’m not sure there’s a clear consensus on whether they’re actually any good, or better for the planet. Well, allow me to be your lab rat. That’s also what I’m going to be trying this year. I’m on the hunt for environmentally friendly, sustainable alternatives to the plastic crap I’ve been buying at the speed of light. And hopefully, I’ll be saving a bit of money along the way. I’ve recently been to my local refill store ‘Siop Sero’ in Roath, Cardiff. And will be sharing how I got along shortly.

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New Year’s Ease

The last time round, I was thinking a lot about the small pleasures of life. The sense of accomplishment we’re all capable of feeling when we feel able to find gratitude in the domestic. I wrote about what felt like the closure of a tumultuous time and the comfort I found in learning to bake. You may not know this but baking as a vegan is like engaging in a dangerous scientific experiment with a blindfold on. On Christmas Eve 2022, in my frenzied search for a dessert down the aisles of Tesco, I discovered my saviour: a bottle of egg substitute.

I’ve tried every variation of this type of product, some sort of okay for baking (though often producing a strange texture, far too dense for most sponge recipes) and some that scramble brilliantly, made from chickpea flour and, I assume, ground up pieces of pure solid gold. One box cost me upwards of £6. I don’t know any omnivore eating eggs for £1 a pop.

But this strange yellow bottle did the unthinkable. Already a liquid, it somehow managed to measure as the perfect baking substitute while holding it’s own in a hot frying pan. It’s not supposed to be this easy is it? The wildest part of this whole experience is that it isn’t even made from obscure ingredients like fermented mung beans, but instead: the humble pea.

I followed a simple lemon sponge recipe, swapping out the eggs for this gloopy genius (think egg with fresh cream whipped in) and whisked up some vegan cream cheese with the dregs of icing sugar left in my parents cupboard. The result: a fluffy, moist, lemon sponge cake with a delicious rich cream cheese filling. With it, an entire year of dedicated trial and error, chemical reactions, and endless baking, evaporated like it never even happened. Did it all feel like a waste of time?

Truthfully? I felt an unspeakable relief. No more carefully thickening soya milk with vinegar. Instead, decrease the oven temperature by 10 degrees Celsius and increase the baking time by 15 minutes.

So much of our resistance to change comes from our inclination to preserve our struggle as something worth while. Something necessary that we had to go through in order to arrive at an end point where we have something up on everyone else still slogging through it. We see it in resistance to our welfare system – why should it be easy for them when it was so difficult for me? We see it in generational attitudes to changing technology – why would I need a mobile phone when my landline works perfectly well? And we see it in our relationships too – why would I throw this thing away when I’ve already worked so damn hard to keep it alive?

But as I move into this new year, I’m not so focused on resolutions as I am on giving my head a wobble. Why work so hard when things can be easy? Maybe this year we can allow ourselves the gift of taking the easy road, instead of endless manoeuvring.

That’s not to say everything should be easy, or that the difficult to reach goals aren’t worth fighting for. Or that we can avoid hardship fullstop. But maybe, this year, we can give ourself the gift of not overly moralising when an easy option presents itself. Instead, why not allow ourselves to do simply whatever needs to be done, to give ourselves the space we deserve to finally put our feet up.