Category: Uncategorized

At the start of 2022, I had taken no buy challenge for a few categories and had decided that I would buy nothing or very less of those items. Starting 2023 is a good time to review how I did with my challenge. Just penning it down here:

Max 5 clothes, no traditional wear – I had set limit of 5 clothes purchase maximum and I bought three – two jeans and one pant. Mainly I bought it because I have gained weight and I am not fitting in old pants anymore… I stayed true to ‘No saree or traditional wear’ oath.

No Art & craft material – I did buy one acrylic colour box for gifting purpose and that’s all. Gave away most of my art & craft material to interested people and I feel light now.

No notebooks and diaries – Bought one notebook for office purpose and that’s it. So I think I slipped a little but I am using the notebook everyday. I forgive myself.

No makeup items – I failed badly in following this. I got carried away by a sustainable brand sale and ended up buying two lipsticks and a foundation, which did not work out so well on me. I realised that I wasted the money and did not buy anything after that for almost 6 months.

Then again, I bought a makeup stick and a lipstick. Now I am also bought a set of three lip gloss second-hand (did not suit me 😔), so real purging in this stuff. I bought some self care products which I am happy for actually, using those everyday.

No furniture – This is another thing I missed. We bought a new house this year which was not in plan in January. So lot of making furniture and buying furniture happened. We tried to reduce buying furniture to the minimum and stocked to it. Frankly, I deterred from my goal here but no regrets.

No warm clothing/quilts – I did not buy any sweaters, woollens etc kind of stuff but I did buy quilts. With travel opening up and we buying a new house, many relatives visited us and we had around 7 people for a week staying with us. Frankly we were a little under-prepared for that. So we bought one quilt and that’s it.

No jewellery – I would not say this was 100% followed. I did buy one earring which I am using every day. Also, in our tradition, husbands has to give a gift to wife each Diwali. So for this Diwali I got my mangalsutra extended. So, these two long pending costly purchases.

No guitar accessories – This was my husband’s commitment. I think he did quite well here considering he did not buy anything extra as such.He did buy stands for monitor speakers and I am gifting him one practice amp, I guess that’s all.

So, that’s it! Some things I followed religiously while failed miserably at others, knowing or unknowingly.

I think I need a better system this year to constantly remind me not to buy things from my challenge category. Do you have any tips?

Now we have shifted to our new home and in process of setting it up. Since my husband is permanently working from home, he wants to have a good home office setup. One of the important aspect of working from home is online meetings. If you are going to meet everyone virtually all the time, it’s better to switch on your video during the call, it feels more connected.

With that thought in mind, one of the thing he is looking for is a good video camera so that he can easily switch on video for any meeting. With the whole setup i.e. monitor, keyboard, mouse etc, it’s not easy to use laptop camera. Monitor mounted camera works better. So he started looking for a camera, asked a few recommendations and got into his usual research mode.

With thanksgiving round the corner, Amazon was offering a lot of offers, most of the stuff he wanted was at 60-70% off. That’s a good deal right?

Looking at Amazon prices, first thought that comes to anyone’s mind is to buy it right away. ‘Anyway I need it and I can save money as well. The offer ends today! I will have to pay so much more if I miss this sale. I don’t even know if I will get such offer again! ‘

I saw my husband check the camera specs multiple times in that day. I even told him to buy it. At the end of the day, when I asked him if he ordered the camera, he said ‘No. I am not yet 100% convinced about buying it.’

That was interesting. Knowing the purchase, seeing an easy way to save money, thinking and rethinking about it whole day, he finally decided not to buy it and let go of the great price because –

He wasn’t 100% convinced!

How often do we do that? How often do we think how convinced we are. Most often than not, sale, offer, price influences our decisions. We think we may not get it again.

Once or twice we don’t buy the item instantly and we never get that deal again in future. we take that one experience and think that it may happen every time. This makes us buy things right away with that great offer.

It is one thing to buy with great offer when you are 100% sure and another thing to buy it because you may miss a great deal.

I learnt something that day. That is to always check if I am 100% convinced before I do something and if I am the decision maker, not to do it if I am not 100% convinced!

What do you think?

We see many photos… of garbage, plastic, dumps, cluttered roads. We look at the photo for two seconds, feel bad and forget the next moment. What creates a lasting impact is the seeing that garbage in reality with our own two eyes, albeit for two seconds. We also feel it when we feel the pinch of its effects – when foul smell of garbage irritates or when we don’t get to walk on a walkway due to cluttered roads. Those moments… yes exactly those moments when we curse others for not keeping it clean.. Unknowingly, do we introspect our habits?

I am back from a trip to Pondicherry. Taking advantage of a weeklong holiday, I was all set to enjoy the beaches, cool weather and nice food. Just when we reached that quiet town, ‘red alert’ for heavy rains kicked in and the unexpected started happening. I know, whatever can go wrong will go wrong -Murphy’s law. But still, what do you think my first thought would be? Untimely heavy rain – unpredictable weather – climate change.

Like I said, we realise it more when we feel the pinch. How many of us have found it absurd to have untimely rains in many parts of India? How many of us related it to climate-change? now think about how many of us would have thought about effects of climate change couple years back, when the weather was normal & predictable?

I see this as just a peak into the future.

So continuing the trip with rains, I was roaming on serenity beach when these fishing nets caught my eye. Me being me, first thing that I saw was plastic.. a lot of plastic. I know plastic is okay if it’s going to be used for a long time, it is durable and can stay in ocean water longer, it makes fisherman’s job easier etc etc… the thought that bothered me was if these nets break into ocean, will the fisherman bring it back? Will ocean allow them to get things out when they are not tied so strongly? Or will ocean clean it by itself?

So many pictures that we see – of the turtles being caught in fishing nets, of the fishes full of plastic in their stomach, of plastic nets floating around in deep sea – Why is that happening? How can we prevent it? Moreover, if someone wants to clean these nets from the sea, is it humanly possible?

I love sea, I love everything about it. We all know how huge it is, we all know that sea decides whether to drag something deep down inside or to throw something out on the shores, we have no control over it. I can clean the sea-shore but will I be able to get those pieces of fishing nets from that enormous belly of the sea?

Today while coming back home, I realised I was supposed to make eggs for dinner as per my weekly plan. Generally I buy eggs in advance and always carry my egg carton to get the eggs in it. My forgetful brain had decided to vanish this reminder from my memory and I did not have any eggs in the house.

Being a zero-waste enthusiast, I resented the idea of getting into nearby store on my way back and buy eggs. In my experience you need to get either a carton of 6 eggs or shopkeeper will pack some eggs in single use plastic carry-bag. I hated both options, but I did not have anything else to cook for dinner so reluctantly I entered into the store.

We all know such times, when we suddenly remember to buy some grocery and realise that we don’t have a bag to carry it. Zero-waster in me hates me for taking single use plastic & minimalist hates me for having to buy a carry-bag unnecessarily. It was one of those days.

Upon entering the store, I saw these small packets kept alongside eggs. Yay! Now the eggs can be bought in loose & can be carried in the REUSED packets. I obviously knew that he has not taken that step to reduce plastic waste, rather it was born out of two things: customer convenience & cost saving for him (based on my many past interactions). Nonetheless, I liked the idea, it did solve my problem & I can see that the shopkeeper has increased life of that packet.

I conveyed my appreciation to the store owner. He said, he just tried to use what was a waste anyway.

Sometimes, we start despising plastic way too much while applying zero waste lifestyle. So much so that seeing an empty plastic packet gets on our nerves.

Sometimes, we become too critical of ourselves and of others. We think of idealistic lifestyle & blame ourselves for not following it rigorously.

Sometimes, such small changes we can’t appreciate because those are not the ideal ones.

Sometimes, we fail to realise that ‘Jugaad’ can also take us an inch towards zero waste lifestyle.

And many times, we fail to convey our appreciation to anyone taking that small effort to reuse, recycle or revive used items.

This incident made me realise that there can be other options too. We need to keep an open mind and welcome non-ideal options as well.

This incident served as a reminder to make it a habit to appreciate little changes anyone does, which directly/indirectly help mumma earth.

Because, appreciation & gratitude always has ripple effect.