Wood for the Trees

I found this post drafted on my phone whilst clearing out my notes. Healthwise i am doing a lot better but i thought this deserved to be posted as a reminder about not trying to live up to what we see on social media. There was a meme that circled a few weeks back; I am a person who likes to do lots of things trapped in the body of a person who likes to sleep a lot. Never were truer words spoken when you suffer with fatigue. Cutting out gluten has helped. I have gone from a state where getting through the day was a struggle. Where merely standing up felt like gravity was crushing me. Where I was waking up tired, surviving till I was able to have a nap in my lunch break then surviving till I could go to bed normally about the same time as the kids. Where if you asked me a question it would take some time to register that it had been asked then to try and formulate an answer was like my brain was being dragged through thick soup. To a state where most days are good days. But I stil...

Buy this product it saves the planet! My Facebook ad stream currently screams at me. The words may have changed to fit in with current popular feeling but the narrative hasn't. Buy! Buy! Buy! Sure if you happen to *need* a new t-shirt, your current clothes are worn beyond repair and you have already searched all the nearby charity shops with no luck then buying one made from organic cotton, not made in a sweatshop (though the ones on my Facebook ad make no such claim) and bearing a planet saving logo is likely your best bet. But i suspect this is not the advertiser's intent. The hungry resource intensive conveyabelt of capitalism still hurtles along but now it promises us 'organic' cotton and nice slogans that make us feel better. It eases the conscience without us having to make many actual concessions to our lifestyle. You see this in Fast Fashion outlets bringing us 'eco' ranges. Clothes made from recycled plastics (which will still shed microfibres in ...

I haven't blogged for a while. Apart from a few token Christmas posts I haven't blogged for about a year. Illness and family/work pressures have stolen any free time that I had. I also lost enthusiasm for blogging. Caught up in a stream of others' stream-lined, well researched, professional posts I tried to copy what they were doing. It didn't go so well. I lost focus on why I started my blog in the first place. It was supposed to be a record of my journey, as a parent, trying to live ethically and sharing the wins but also the fails. A realistic view of what that means and sharing what I'd learnt. But I got caught up in trying to be a perfectionist. In trying to be an expert on a pedalstool, when I'm not. So I lost enthusiasm. Since then, I've seen friends ask questions on social media about aspects of ethical living. I've also changed my job to one which is less demanding of my time, energy and health. So I think it is time to re-visit the bl...

On Christmas eve this post popped up on my Facebook feed Black bin bags at the ready indeed. Christmas creates so much waste. We buy things with the sole purpose of throwing them away. Christmas cards which get put up for a couple of weeks then thrown away or at best recycled. Wrapping paper which gets torn open and scattered across your living room. Crackers. There is a Michael Macintyre skit where he asks what happened to the things we won in crackers. You don't get people saying anyone fancy a game of cards with this set of miniature cards that I won at Christmas? Because they end up in the bin that's why. To be honest, my least favourite Christmas tasks are writing cards and wrapping presents and to have an environmental excuse not to do them is somewhat of a relief. Last year we used blankets and reused paper bags to put the presents in. Were my children, then aged 2 and 5 disappointed not to come down to beautifully wrapped presents? No. They were more concerned ab...

I decided this year that now my youngest is getting to the age where she can cope with simple games that a nice family tradition to start would be to buy a Christmas board game that we could all enjoy. This year following reviews from Let Toys Be Toys we bought the cooperative game Dinosaur Escape. The synopsis is that you are helping 3 dinosaurs to escape the mainland to dinosaur island before the volcano erupts. You need to turn over a token with a matching dinosaur to the one in the same quadrant to move to the island. You each take it in turns to roll the dice, move a dinosaur and turn over a token (or add a piece of volcano if you roll a volcano picture). As a cooperative game it helps children to learn sharing and teamwork by suggesting which dinosaur to move and helping each other to remember what the flipped over tokens are. It says 4+ on the box but comes with instructions for younger players (you leave the tokens over so don't need to remember them) and with a b...

For the last few years alongside our normal advent calendar we have also been doing a Reverse Advent Calendar. If you haven't come across this before, this is where you put an item of food in a box for each day of advent for Food bank. Some Food banks issue a list of suggestions of what to put in each day like this one from Islington Food bank: Others suggest starting earlier in November to ensure the food gets to the food bank in time for Christmas. We find out from the food bank which items are in short supply and try to include a high amount of these items. Then drop some each week at church as church has a food bank drop off point. There are also often drop off points at different local facilities such as supermarkets, community centres or to the food bank themselves. Then for each day of advent the kids pick out an item each to put in the box. And they really have gotten on board with this! My 6yo was reasoning her choices. "Yesterday I picked vegetables a...

This last week we have been on a family holiday to Wales. We have had a good time bearing in mind that often when holidaying with young children is just dealing with them having a breakdown in a more picturesque location. But one thing I noticed was the huge increase in plastic waste we got through. When you're at home it's a lot easier to reduce plastic, you can gather, money permitting, your plastic free alternatives, local knowledge of the best places to shop, networks etc. It is a lot easier to prepare. When you're in a different country and you don't know the facilities, you're running on survivalist mode a lot more. Take this scenario. You are at a soft play. Child 1 is having a nice time. Child 2 is having a meltdown yelling that's she's scared and not letting you put her down but does want to go in to the soft play but not down. So you have to make your way out through the softplay whilst holding a screaming 2 year old. Kettlebell workouts h...