Literally Walking the Walk

This commitment is long overdue, but I am also not giving myself a hard time about it because….life. I recently (2 weeks ago) made a pact with myself to walk rather than drive basically anywhere I go that is within a 2-mile radius, with some reasonable exceptions of course. Those exceptions being: time (sometimes the schedule just doesn’t permit, although I am finding that often I can move the puzzle pieces around to make it fit), size & weight (if something I am intending to bring/get is too big, bulky, or heavy to fit in my cart or stroller), wellness (if someone is sick or injured and walking could cause more harm than good…in all reality quite rare), and weather (too much rain, storms, unbearable sun). So I have been at it for a couple of weeks now and I just love it.

I spent all of my adult life, until the last few years, living in a city where I never needed a car and I walked or took public transportation everywhere. In terms of my daily transportation carbon footprint, I always felt so good. Plus, I love walking. I love the vantage point of walking, I love the closer interaction with people and the environment, I love to feel the elements and not just see them through glass, and I love the physicality of it. So I miss that. A LOT. I struggled with the transition to car culture even though some things were certainly made easier and more convenient. When I did move to a car culture, living in a location where I could walk to many things was part of my house-hunting criteria. So over the past few years, I have walked a fair amount and I think I definitely walk more than the average person in my geographical area but I also knew I could do better. And when I say “better,” I mean for the environment and also for my physical health. So…I recently made this pact with myself and let’s see how it goes. So far, I have been doing grocery shopping on foot, taking the kids to the park and the beach on foot, and running errands and going to some appointments on foot. It’s wonderful. The kids like it too—to them it feels like they are taking more adventures and if time is not a factor, they like to get out of the stroller and walk a bit as well and sometimes make little stops along the way, which makes them more active, which makes them more tired, which makes it easier for them to go to bed, which makes it particularly worthwhile for me. And an added bonus is that I kill two birds with one stone—I had been doing more walking just to exercise but now I don’t schedule that as much—my form of transportation is my exercise, or at least a big chunk of it. I do realize though, that this is not something that everyone can do in the same way and is very location-dependent. But if you can find a way to add some walking into your life, particularly as a replacement for driving from time to time, I highly recommend it. One more instance where better for the environment = better for the wallet = better for your health = WIN + WIN + WIN.

On My Soapbox About A...Soap Bag

I love this product. Small, simple, and goes a long way. Since I have converted to bar soap, I have had (and anticipate having) a lot more soap scraps and ends. The conservationist and thrifty side of myself always felt weird about throwing away the end of a bar of soap when it was seemingly too small to use “normally.” So I went through some phases in my life when I would save them, but to what end? They never stuck together well and I fantasized about turning them into liquid soap when I had enough but that never happened and I always ended up throwing them away anyway. But…enter the soap bag! I love it! I put my soap ends in it and then I use that bag of soap + my soap box when I travel. This combo makes me so happy—I am not wasting the soap scraps and I also know that I don’t have to use any small, single-use travel body wash, etc.

Another thing I love is that the bag is the scrubber. It exfoliates really nicely. You do have to allow the soap ample time in water to slightly soften up a bit before it lathers though. And FYI, it is not intended only for soap scraps. You can use it for a whole bar of soap as well. I just happen to prefer to use it for the ends. I did read in a product review about someone’s concern about mold. They then stated that they could likely keep an eye out for mold and then just bleach the product if they noticed any. I do take precautions such as letting it hang to dry out between uses, which is something to be even more mindful of when traveling, but I suppose it IS a good idea to monitor the situation for mold. I look forward to being able to use this more whenever we can travel again, but in the meantime, it is collecting my soap ends, which I will use whenever the bag gets full-ish.

On My Soapbox About A...Soap Box

Some of the things I wanted to post about, when I thought about doing this blog, was efforts and ideas to be a more zero-waste traveler. Up until COVID-19, we were a family that traveled quite often. Now, I don’t know when we will travel next. However, I imagine and hope that we will still take some “local” trips in the near future so there are still some travel-relevant changes and things to try out and post about. In preparing to travel during our last trip, I was reviewing what toiletries I needed to bring. I actually never really bought travel-sized, single-use toiletries on a regular basis but I do still have a small stash of random shampoos and lotions in the depths of my bathroom cabinet from who knows where. I think that my inventory of small bottles of toiletries has come mainly from hotels and samples from random places. In my thrifty mindset, I admit, I definitely used to take shampoo etc. when I would stay in hotels. As I transform into a more waste-reducing mindset, I plan to not only NOT take single-use hotel products but also to not even use single-use hotel products anymore. Those small bottles really are so very wasteful and good news, some major hotel chains are on board with doing something about it (click here)!

Although I never really bought travel-sized items, I did often use travel-sized reusable containers to fill up with my regular shampoo, conditioner, lotion, etc. It started more as an effort to save money rather than reduce waste, but I have found that these things often conflate. However, as I was packing, I realized that I did not have any more random samples of liquid body wash and since I had discontinued liquid body wash for the adults in my household, I needed a container to bring bar soap—a soap box. I chose this one for travel for a few reasons: 1) it has its own soap lift type of thing so that the soap doesn’t just sit in water and become gooey, 2) it has a tight band that wraps around and ensures tight and leak-free transport if the soap is not 100% dry, and 3) it’s cute and fits with my aesthetic. I really like this product, it has worked very well, and it will definitely be a part of my regular travel gear.