Temptations

DAY 181

About to experience the joy of doing laundry once again...part of the special travel process of unload, unpack, laundry, pack, load, repeat. Things will settle a bit after this week – excellent!

End of September is coming soon (yikes!) so I’ll be preparing for next month’s challenge that starts on Friday. I am going to switch to natural health and beauty products, cosmetics, shampoo and all that...I have always been on the no-animal testing route and made-in-USA when possible (almost never it seems) but have never really insisted on recycled or recyclable packaging. I have a feeling it is going to get more difficult the more specific the products get. Easy enough to get handmade (local) soap for the shower but is there non-petroleum mascara in bamboo tubes out there??? This and other important questions to be answered in the month of October...stay-tuned.

This challenge month of Natural Cleaning Products has been quite do-able and I am grateful...It has been an ongoing effort nonetheless to keep the discipline of buying nothing new. I confess...I have slipped and will be making a fat contribution to my Nothing New Account. Have you seen “Ugly Dolls”? Wacky, colorful stuffed “animals” – bats, robots and things. Poe and Ninja Batty Shogun are now in their new home in Fort Lauderdale because I did a little early Christmas shopping for my nephews...hard to resist the fun of giving presents to my boylies. I probably could have made them myself – grrr. I was not prepared to say no and I got caught up in letting them pick out the ones they wanted and the bonding in the whole experience of buying something on line together. Even better when I got to talk with them on the phone the day the packages arrived...Jon took Poe to his swim meet and Xander sleeps with Ninja. Very hard to resist.

I think the rest of holiday giving season will be good – I have plans for making some goodies and orchestrating some shared experiences...back on track now. By the way, my Nothing New Account - amounts I contribute if I do buy anything new - is now $230 ($1380 if I include new tires and new shingles for the back porch roof repair). From now on, I will be doubling the cost of new items as more of an incentive. The main thing is to NOT buy a new item in the first place, of course.

I did make some good choices of bringing my own food with me on this past road trip...picked up some organic homemade jelly at a farm stand on the way home. The Massachusetts Department of Transportation has Farmers Markets on Sundays at certain Mass Pike rest stops – nice! I think NYDOT does the same thing on the Thruway.

That’s all for now – have a Nothing New Day!