sustainable living Archives

Eight inexpensive water saving tips for your home!

Post category:Sustainable living

South Africa is experiencing its lowest rainfall since 1904. Five out of nine provinces have been labelled disaster zones due to drought, our dam levels are getting lower and at this rate, will reach below 20% by April when the rains hopefully start. This means that we will need an exceptionally wet winter to replenish our dams and ensure water security for our farmers and for those that need it most. These are worrying times, but also a wonderful opportunity for us as individuals and communities to understand and value this precious resource, and at the same time, rally together…

Upcycle me!

Post category:Sustainable living

I have always been quite a hoarder. As a child I used to have huge bag of sweets and chocolates at the bottom of my cupboard behind my sock box. When my mom or friends gave me sweets, I would always eat one and keep the other. (and then have great bribing material for my sisters!) Even on long car journeys to our annual camping holiday to the Eastern Cape, everybody would guzzle down a packet of chips that was shared equally, but I would secretly stash every second chip into a neat toilet paper pouch carefully laid down the…

Cutting food costs; shop-bought to homemade

Post category:Food

When my family sat down and looked at how we can decrease our weekly grocery expenses, there were a few things that we either had to stop buying, or make ourselves. The expensive luxury culprits for us were: Bread, chocolate, yogurt and rusks. These sound like random items but considerably increased our weekly bill. Call me a food snob, but I was not willing to swop my R30 stone ground local bakery sourdough loaf of bread for a R7 refined white flour wall paper paste supermarket special. Neither was I prepared to change my 70% Lindt chocolate bar for an…

Ingredients to avoid in your deodorant.

Post category:Personal Care Sustainable living

mountain fresh deodorant

For most people, deodorant is something we put on every day, like our underwear. It is one of those habitual products that keep you smelling fresh and feeling good. It gives you peace of mind at a midday meeting at a sunny café, and keeps you smiling in the packed elevator to the eleventh floor. Your deodorant is your friend, or is it? What is really inside your deodorant? And how does it stop you from sweating?Let's look at some common ingredients in conventional deodorants and see if they are really something that you want to be using every day.…

Simple natural DIY household cleaning

Post category:Sustainable living

Time and time again people ask me which laundry powder I use and the answer is pretty simple - I make my own. I stumbled across a very cool website about a year ago and have been making my own household cleaner, dishwasher machine liquid, and laundry powder ever since.Go have a look at the ingredients on your commercial laundry powder....not much information is there? Laundry powder manufacturers are not required to list all the ingredients on their packaging so it is difficult for us to make informed choices when we don't know what we choosing. While these products may…

Have your green wedding and eat it!

Post category:Sustainable living

My husband, Daniel and I got married in December 2010 at Goedgedacht farm near Malmesbury in the Western Cape. The venue was specially chosen because of its climate change awareness projects, but also because it allowed us lots of freedom to create the real deal green wedding we always wanted. We did have a look at other wedding venues around and Paarl and Stellenbosch, but they were very expensive and you had to conform with the humdrum types of ‘wedding packages’ that they offered. The green theme started off with my wedding dress. I wanted it green, the colour green,…