Compost Success

Do you remember the story about my attempt to compost? In that post, I mentioned that I had built a ‘soil factory’ in a bin on my balcony, in the hope of producing usable compost for potted plants, all made from our own kitchen waste. The bin was plagued by flies, however, and over the winter Read More…

Zero Waste: The Composting Saga

The end of this saga is that we compost our food scraps. But how we got there is an eight months’ story of failure, flies, stink and slop. In fact some of the flies are still with us today, but I think their days are numbered. It began last year, a few months into my zero Read More…

Crafty Christmas, Zero Waste Style

This Christmas, I am thinking more carefully about my festivities and trying to make them less wasteful. I’m not eschewing gift-giving or anything like that, but as far as it’s within my power, I’m trying to enjoy treats and activities that come with less packaging and less unnecessary consumption. So, while I was walking outside Read More…

Has Zero Waste Simplified or Complicated Life?

Something I have been wanting to find out since starting my zero waste project back in February is this: has zero waste complicated my life, or simplified it overall? Advocates of the zero waste movement tend to claim that zero waste has simplified their lives. Bea Johnson’s book, Zero Waste Home, is subtitled The ultimate guide to Read More…

Konmari: Kitchen Equipment

The time has come…to declutter the kitchen dishes, pots, pans, utensils, storage containers… Once again, I broke this down into smaller groupings. This was useful not only to create manageable tasks for the time I had, but because it limited things to groups that would fit on my table, so I could work there. First Read More…

Konmari: Food

It’s time to sort through the food! I decided to break this into three parts: pantry goods, tea/coffee, and fridge/freezer. Here’s my pantry before I got started. It has fared well since I reorganised it at the start of the year, but since I shop more from the bulk foods now, its contents have changed Read More…

Konmari: Recipes

Monday morning, as usual, I was stressed about planning the menu and making a shopping list. Maybe the problem was my messy recipe collection, in binders so thickly crammed that I couldn’t wrench them out of the cupboard without pulling everything else out with them. I decided it was time to tidy my recipes! I’ve designated recipes Read More…

Zero Waste Food Storage

Since trying to move more towards zero waste in my kitchen, I both store more food and, paradoxically, store less food. I store more because, buying certain things unpackaged, I have to strategise a way to store them where before I would have shoved them in my pantry. But I also think zero waste tends Read More…

After a Month of Zero Waste Shopping

My initial zero waste shopping experiment ran for the month of February, and now I’m thinking over the month. How did it go? Would I do it again? Here’s what happened. What we ate I didn’t try very hard to plan our menu around zero waste foods; mostly I drew from my usual repertoire of Read More…