Veganuary – Changes in your home

We’re well into the month of January now and for some Veganuary is coming to an end. For others, Veganuary might be stretching out for a bit longer, for a lifetime perhaps? (Let me know in the comments if you’ve decided to stick with it).

Either way, there are super easy ways for you to change up some of your home habits to become a little bit more ‘vegan’ in your day-to-day, or, what I’ll actually call sustainable.

There are many small things I have implemented in my life since becoming vegan, that I never thought about before so let me give you a quick run down of the changes per room in my house!

The Kitchen

• Coffee making at home instead of take out coffee – honestly so much more fun to make coffee at home. You can fork out some money for a machine or else get a cheaper alternative such as a pour-over, an Aero Press or an Espresso Pot. I love coffee a lot. I’ll be writing a blog post about it very soon! 
• Using a Keepcup or other variation instead of take out cup – If you do enjoy a take out coffee and you get them on the reg try using a reusable cup instead! You often get a discount from the coffee shop as well, which is a plus!
• cleaning recycling items – Ah, something not a lot of people seem to realise (if you live in my apartment building that is), is that you can’t just throw EVERYTHING in the recycling. A lot of items you might think can be recycled can’t (see this list for some great tips) and anything containing food has to be cleaned out before it’s popped in the bin. 
• Try to reduce your waste – Another topic I’ll be covering later this year as I embark on reducing my waste but if you’re a newbie to the concept try avoiding things in plastic that don’t need to be in plastic! Fruit and veg doesn’t need to be shrink wrapped and it adds up if you buy a lot of it – use reusable bags if you want to bag loose veg in the shop or, if you realise that that’s pointless, like me, you can just bung veg into your basket or trolley sans wrapping. It’s FINE. 
• non-chemical cleaners – This is something I’m just getting into. I use essential oils for as much as I can but supermarkets have started selling cleaning products that aren’t jam packed with chemicals. How does this help, you ask? Well the chemicals in cleaning products are carcinogenic and can lead to really bad healthy, I know that when I use them my asthma gets REALLY bad. Now I use a natural spray and it’s so much better and, guess what, even cleans stuff! Plus most of the household names test on animals which is horrendous. 
• composting – 2020 is my year for composting. I live in a very small flat and we don’t have space for a compost bin but our local council are actually giving us some bins specifically for food waste – which is mostly what I throw away (not food I haven’t eaten because I’m not a left-overs person); vegetable cuttings! So many it hurts my soul! I am also getting an allotment (a patch of land in a community garden) so I might start a little bit of composting there as well. If you don’t have space why not contact your local allotment or a farm and see if they want your veg cuttings! You might even have a neighbour who could use it!
• lunch box – I think we all know the years of plastic are over but how many people still buy lunch or use plastic lunchboxes on a regular basis? Yikes! One of my favourite purchases of last year was a metal lunchbox with a bamboo lid which doubles as a chopping board! Things like bento boxes and the like are becoming a lot more popular but watch out for the plastic ones. Yes, they’re going to last longer but they’ll still end up in a landfill more than likely so try picking sustainable materials and go forth! 

The Living Room

• Picking a sustainable energy provider – I’m popping this in living room because this is where we blast our heating the most but MOST energy providers are still burning those fossil fuels and it’s time we moved to renewable energy so do your research and pick a provider who is backing sustainable energy. I personally use Ecotricity who are the worlds first green energy supplier and they use their profits to build windmills and the like – investing in the future is A OK in my book and they might not be the cheapest provider but I’ll take the financial hit if it means I’m putting money into something good. 

The Bathroom

• Banning plastic shampoo – I made a decision a while ago to stop buying shampoo in bottles and I’m glad I did. Buying shampoo was starting to be one of those boring purchases, like buying toilet paper. When you start buying shampoo bars it starts to be a bit like buying makeup and other fun things! There are so many new products out there these days so you can shop around and find something you love without having the throw plastic into a landfill every month or so. I have two shampoo bars at the moment; one Lush bar which is nice and foamy and one LJ Natural bar which is less soapy and more clarifying. You might worry that a shampoo bar won’t last but they really do, trust me! 
• Soap bars – Much like shampoo how many of us buy shower gel? Or even soap pump bottles for besides the sink? The easiest switch is buying soap bars – they last and at the end you’re left with… nothing. Except maybe a bit of paper to pop into recycling! 
• Bamboo toothbrush – How many toothbrushes do you think you go through a year? Now times that by your age, then think about how long you’ve still got left to live (a while, hopefully!). Now think about how many people there are in your town… your city… the world! From what I’ve gleaned from my research just chucking your toothbrush into your recycling bin doesn’t do anything. You need to POST your toothbrushes to a specific company to do the job. Um.. What? That’s insanity! The easiest thing to do is switch to a bamboo toothbrush if you like the manual method. I’m not sure about electric toothbrushes so you might wanna look into that if you’re interested in switching up. 

The Bedroom

• Not having ‘down’ pillows an quilts – Are you a fan of feather pillows? Erm… maybe try not to be! Feathers are plucked from LIVE animals a lot of the time so it might not be a good idea to support that industry. If you do some research and you’re happy using companies who ‘gather’ (pick up feathers naturally shed) then do some research and find out which companies do that but definitely do the research! 

These small changes are easy ways to implement vegan sustainability in your daily life!

Let me know if you happen to do any of these already or if this has given you any ideas of other changes you can make!

Sam