Monthly Update

I haven’t gotten around to writing and posting an update in some time, so rather than post three very similar posts, I’ve decided to write a quarterly update this once and keep up next time. So, here it goes:

Overview

Sadly, just after I’d planted most of our veggies outside, we had torrential rain and that was the end of the poor veggies. The few ones, who hung in there, are suffering in the current heatwave. If we’re lucky, we might have some pumpkins, potatoes and red cabbages (touch wood) come autumn.

Also, the amount of trash we produce continues to be an issue. But I’m trying to come up with a few ideas to improve on the current situation. In the positive column, both myself and my husband found natural deodorants a) we like and b) that work! I also found some clean haircare products for hubby, but my hair continues to look, well, not its best. Our nutrition is getting there though, and we have established a meat-twice-a-week-rule, we eat vegetarian the rest of the week. When shopping I try to find ingredients which are organic- regional -seasonal, in that order. If I can get it fairtrade as well, even better.  Since the baby is eating the same food as us now, I’m being even more careful about the ingredients I buy. To be perfectly honest, a few staples that don’t meet the criteria always make it into the shopping trolley, but we’re only human after all.

Second hand shopping

You might have seen the challenge I set myself back in March to only shop for clothes (for myself) second hand. I should have specified, that I am only adding necessary items to my wardrobe to also reduce my shopping overall. It actually started really well and I was very excited to find a second hand shop in town. So, when I had some time on my hands, and realized that I am woefully short of T-shirts, tops and dresses for summer, I headed to the little boutique. I found a nice blouse I immediately fell in love with (striped long-sleeve in the picture).  There weren’t a lot of other things I liked, so I decided to check online and found two lovely dresses and two basic T-Shirts at ubup.com- they also own medimops.de, where I buy my second-hand books. Even though the shopping was somewhat successful (even shopping in normal shops I never used to come home laden with shopping bags), I noticed a few big differences.

Firstly, shopping with a list of specific items can become quite frustrating and time-consuming. To be fair, that’s the case at the best of times, but going through pages and pages/ racks and racks of clothes, which aren’t at all what I‘m looking for, is pretty disappointing.

Secondly, looking for good quality, basic items second hand is quite difficult. Since my wardrobe is mostly lacking basic T-Shirts and tops, it’s a bit of a challenge. I’ve found tons of great statement pieces and stand-out items, but very few basics.

And lastly, it really pays to know your measurements when shopping second hand. Thanks to Alison Freer’s book „How to get dressed“, I had taken my measurements before setting out on my hunt for new clothes.