'Tis the Season for Waste and Single Use Consumption, fa la la la la, la la la la

Oh, the Holidays. Family, friends, good food and cold weather. That there sounds good to me. I love that part of celebrating the "holidays". Bring in Christmas music, holiday cheer and cheese-ball decorations and I just start puking everywhere. My good friends all know how I feel about this time of year. For those of you who haven't caught on yet I'll break it to you lightly, I am kind of a Grinch. But the good kind of Grinch, the kind of Grinch who sees what the holidays feed you to turn your soul black. The kind of Grinch who sees what this festive time of year does to our planet and our severe consumption problem. The kind of Grinch who celebrates what really matters, time with family and friends and appreciating those we love with out the sugar coated bull sh#*t.

I recently went into a CVS and saw the worst Christmas Decorations I have ever seen. To most, they might seem cute and festive, to me they scream tacky and cheap. To me, they were single use items that would be used once a year, put in a box and thrown away the next year when even cuter crap is sold in massive quantities. I don't blame you if you stop reading here, I don't want to bring your holiday cheer down. But hear me out if you have the patience, I wont totally bag on the Holidays. I will admit, I do participate in gift exchanges, big parties and cookie making and all that fun stuff. I just want to share some thoughts to make you think about how you participate. How you can still get the same warm and fuzzys with out total waste and destruction.

Let start with Black Friday, shall we? My only comment here is, really? People get trampled to death (literally) on this day, wtf? The Holidays are mainly about family right? So, why is it ok to leave your family after a nice Thanksgiving dinner to wait in line at the mall? Gross. I have some friends who work in retail, and it is the worst day of their lives. People turn into animals, just so they can buy a bunch of crap for cheaper than normal. So my friends have to work at 12 midnight on Thanksgiving and stay the entire night to field a massive consumer feeding frenzy. Give it a rest people, do you think your family or friends would rather have you stick around after dinner or go buy them crap? Crap that they most likely already have? If you're shopping on black Friday, you are ruining a holiday for the people who have to ring you up. Think about this, and just don't go. Global warming and climate change will also thank you for not driving all over hell to get to the mall and find a parking lot. How many people carpool to Black Friday? HAHAHAHAHAHA! What a joke right? Carpool to Black Friday, sheesh!

Ok, so say you went to Black Friday and spent hundreds if not thousands of dollars on stuff. Now you have to wrap it right? You're probably going to go buy some wrapping paper (made of and wrapped in plastic), some bows (again made of plastic) and some to and from cards, right? Some of you might say, "well I save all my old wrapping paper and ribbons to use again". Fair enough, we did that too. We crammed all our wrapping paper and bows in paper bags to use later. That paper bag gets shoved in a closet some where, all that paper gets wrinkled and taped together. When you pull it back out to use, its such a tangled mess you don't even want to use it anymore and it gets thrown away.  Does this sound familiar? If you have a better system that's great. When that paper is passed to the next person where does it end up?

You know all those paper bags you have stashed under your sink from when you forget your bags at the grocery store? No shame in that, I know I have a cabinet in my kitchen that barely closes because there are so many bags in there. Try using those as wrapping paper instead. The plain brown side can be the side you see, and they actually look really nice. I got a gift wrapped in a brown paper bag, some twine as ribbon and a lavender spring as the bow. It looked so awesome, and guess what? Plastic free! Well minus the tape, but that's another story. That worked, and sure that bag turns into waste, but at least it isn't coated in plastic and glitter that become microplastics in the ocean. It can be recycled or decompose if it gets in the environment. It also gives life to those bags that sit there day after day as well. See I don't totally bag on gift giving here.

What about the gifts you give and receive. Are they thoughtful gifts? Or are they from a list of things someone made up. Maybe they made it up and put somethings on there that they don't really want or maybe already have but just want the latest version of. Don't buy them that, buy them something that comes from the heart (corny I know). Something that means you listen to them, you hear them talk about things they enjoy doing and you help feed that passion in them. Don't feed their need to consume. Show them you really care about them as a person, not a consuming vortex.

Had enough? Haha, I could go on all day! But since this post getting pretty long I want to wrap it up in an upcycled brown bag (get it? Wrap it up?!). How do you get out of the conventional Holiday spirit? Open your eyes, look at the things you are buying. Are you buying decorations for a holiday party? Are they kind of cheap feeling, made of plastic and covered in glitter? Guess what, its garbage anyways! Don't feed into it and leave it on the shelf. Make your own decorations, it's fall right? Go outside and get some pretty fallen leaves to decorate your table with. Look for some festive looking squash to decorate with, and later you can eat them! Don't pull the argument of "well it's already here, if I don't but it someone will". That's a cop out, plain and simple. If this is how you justify some actions I recommend taking an Economics class, the law of supply and demand will fascinate you. Throwing a party? Don't buy a shit load of single use plastic cups, please! Tell your guests to bring their own. It is so easy to do, and it saves so much waste. Really, just try it. Making cookies? Try making your own frosting, don't buy a bunch of small plastic tubs of different colors. Giving a gift? Give right. Instead of buying everyone you know a gift, maybe you can make them something or just write them a letter telling them how much they mean to you. My family pulls names over the holidays, the name you pull is the only gift you buy. That way we each get one gift, and we can focus our energy on each other in the morning. Not riffling through boxes and boxes of stuff we don't really need. Maybe instead of gift giving, you each give to a charity in honor of someone you would normally buy a gift for.

The list goes on, explore what you can do to make you Holiday footprint really small. It is possible, and guess what? It isn't weird to take a step back from the conventional Holidays, it feels quite nice actually.  You don't have to buy gifts with lay away because you can't afford them. You don't have to fill up an entire piece of paper with gifts you "want". You can still have parties, hang with friends and celebrate the times. Just look at it as a whole, what are we really celebrating at this time of year?

Well, here goes nothing!

Blogging. Something I have never really been into, and have little experience in doing. Tonight I was oddly consumed by the idea of creating one. I would not go to sleep until I did, even when I knew I had a 12-13 hour day ahead of me. It had to be done. Why? Because I am kind of crazy, and thought sharing my thoughts on this invisibility cloak of the internet would make me feel better.

Before you run away screaming, let me tell you why I am so crazy. Plastics and our addiction to creating waste have consumed my ability to survive normally in this world. I cannot go anywhere with out getting completely overloaded and stressed out. Grocery stores, restaurants, bars, coffee shops, clothing stores, freeways and pretty much everything else we use as humans is now a source of crazy to my mind. As I have launched myself into my dream job, educating the community about the severity of plastics and working towards reducing this waste, I have found I am becoming scared of this infinite material. I always considered myself environmentally conscious, though in the recent year it has been ramped up to high gear.

So what is this blog? A way to relive pressure from my precious brain space ultimately, and hopefully spare the sanity of my loved ones. In my journey of extreme waste reduction, I am stumbling across thoughts that are so crazy I have to share them.

Let me tell you about the thought that started this new (and totally not like me) endeavor. As I was getting out of the shower after a long day of work and house cleaning, I found myself thinking, "I am so happy I wash my hair again". Yes, that was a real thought that passed through my mind. Bet you can't guess why I thought that! Yep, I stopped washing my hair. I decided to go no 'poo (an alternate way of washing your hair with out any form of soap) for 2 and a half months. The reasoning? Plastic. I was tired of going to the bulk section and getting shampoo out of the larger plastic shampoo bottles that were on the same road as the smaller bottles (recycling is a joke). I do not want to come across as anti-poo, I have heard unbelievable success stories. I wanted to love it so badly, but you can't always get what you want.

2 and a half months went by where I washed my hair every 2-3 days with baking soda and apple cider vinegar only. I liked it for a while, but I could not seem to get the formula down. I tried everything; changing up ratios of baking soda to water, apple cider vinegar to water, switching apple cider vinegar for lemon juice, not using a vinegar rinse, using 2 vinegar rinses, brushing the vinegar through my hair and washing with water only. Alas, I decided it was ok to abandon ship. I had survived that whole time with waxy, sticky hair that I could not do anything to.

I gave it a good hard try and it just didn't stick. So I thought "Ok, I can still do this with out using plastic, I can make my own shampoo"! Easy enough, right? Well not really, most shampoo recipes call for liquid castile soap, which comes in bulk or in its own plastic bottle. Ugh, ok another problem to work out. At this point it was more than just using less plastic, it became a personal goal to figure it all out and make it work! So I did some research and found to my surprise, that you can turn a bar of soap into liquid soap, and buy bar soap with out packaging! What was the catch you ask? Vegetable glycerin keeps the soap in liquid form, and guess what that comes in? Yep, plastic. So I did some reasoning with myself and thought, 4 ounces from a bulk bottle is a pretty good compromise to make 30+ ounces of concentrated liquid soap. So I made my liquid soap and homemade shampoo.

Did it work?! Eh, nope. On so many levels did it fail. I put way to much tea tree oil in it, so much it made my eyes burn and my boyfriend sick to his stomach. Now, I have 2 huge bottles of half hardened liquid castile soap in my kitchen because I didn't use enough glycerin. So, I used my shampoo twice and after the second time my hair was so heavy and coated in weird crap I lost it. I snapped to my boyfriend "I just want to wash my f*#$ing hair"! What was his reply? Do it... So I did, and it was the most glorious moment of my life! So glorious in fact, I washed my hair twice and put about half a bottle of conditioner in my hair. I was feeling like a million bucks.

So what did all this time tell me? Well initially I felt like a total failure. I felt like all that hard work for 2 and a half months I just flushed down the toilet. I had to convince my self that I'm not, I just wasn't fighting the right battle. Instead of boycotting the bulk isle, I should focus my efforts on other areas of my life that are still dependent on oil. Driving my car everywhere, buying meat and cheese in plastic packaging, getting stupid crap I don't need that is most likely made from plastic, and so much more!

So thats where this all stemmed from. Does the worldwide web really care? Probably not, but I know some people in my life will enjoy it. I hope that sharing my off the wall crazy thoughts and projects will show you whatever you are doing is great. Hopefully, this will also open your eyes as mine have been, and you too will start a ranting blog just to keep your sanity. I also hope that if my loved ones do read this regularly, they can intervene when necessary so I don't totally loose my shit.

Humans are pretty smart, amazing creatures. We created some amazing things, as well as some really awful terrible things. If we can all get together to bond about organized sports, beer, chocolate and whatever else floats our boat, we can definitely get together to get our act together and quit our compulsive creation of ridiculous waste.

So here's to you, and your quest to de-plasticize your life. Looking forward to a long and ridiculous road with who ever reads this.