Week 4: Ethical & Sustainable Decor and Ambiance

Hello and welcome to week 4 of the Cultivating a Minimalist Holiday online course. This week is all about creating your most hyggligt holiday home via ethical and sustainable decor and ambiance.

We are going to explore how we can craft a cozy and enviro inviting atmosphere in our homes and in our workplaces while still considering the ethical and environmental implications of our choices of just you know clicking by now at our favorite global online retailer and what a difference it can make if we step back from doing that thing that just feels easier and we think about some alternatives that we can do.

This is something that i consider always well not always but this is something that i have considered for my holiday for years and years about do i really need to be buying this thing can i buy an alternative that is made of different materials do i really want to be storing this item was this made in an ethical way. Does it you know does it make sense for me to be a part of this system and i think about this you know i've thought about this for multiple holidays ever since i started started to adopt

minimalist practices into my life in 2015

There are multiple reason you might decide that crafting more intentional surroundings this holiday season is the way to go. Maybe you’re being frugal or want less to manage. I want you to consider that you might have to pivot you might have to change how you're going to shop what you're going to shop for how you're going to decorate and what you're going to determine to be necessary for creating that ambiance

that feeling that you are seeking for the holiday.

As we continue to have shifts in how supply chains operate we have to consider how there are people who are involved in this and they are overworked and underpaid in logistics and manufacturing and there are so many who are you know a part of this system and what if we can do something to help to unburden them a little bit to help

make it so that they are not faced with even more of you know an issue because the message that you might be seeing is that well if you as the consumer don't want to you know have to be concerned with this supply chain issue you just need to order your things early just order everything earlier just order it early early make sure that you’re you know placing those orders early that doesn't really relieve the issue we are adding to the burden by placing those orders when there is already this backup and so maybe instead we can consider how good it would feel to not be adding to this issue um to not be thinking in an individualist manner but in a collective manner of what we can do to relieve this issue.

Do we really want to put the same value on you know like plastic garland or christmas tree or a sweater or socks that we would place on equipment that someone needs for um medical issues or um you know baby formula and diapers and gasoline well vehicles so that they can get you know from place to place to get to their jobs so that they can earn a living do we want to value you know those things that we're buying more than these necessary goods. So all this to say you know ask yourself this question because this i think is going to make it a lot easier for you to realize like i can opt out of this craziness this year i don't need to find a method to get around getting my items quicker i can opt out and so ask yourself this question is there one item can you think of one thing that if it did not appear on your thanksgiving dinner table or it wasn’t underneath the christmas tree this year that your holiday would be ruined is there any one item that if you didn't have that thing you're not gonna get to have a

good christmas can you think of anything that you would let stand in the way.

It’s just stuff it's clothing it's decorations it's not necessary you know essential food items do we want to let those things stand in the way of us having a wonderful holiday experience of course we don't and

i think this goes back you know to i posted this a little bit earlier in the month we have the perfect example in the book by dr seuss how the grinch stole christmas of you know the grinch is realizing he steals all of these things he's like i am i'm taking christmas christmas isn't going to come this year and overnight he goes he hates everything and then the sun comes up and everybody comes out and then they're all still singing and he's like wait a minute how i took all their stuff how did christmas happen and there's the line of it came without ribbons it came without tags it came

without packages boxes or bags what if christmas he thought doesn't come from a store what if christmas perhaps means a little bit more and i know that that is hokey

to repeat that line but y'all there is so much truth to that

and i think if we can remember that in the moment because right now it's really

easy to sit here and for me to say to you like if it's not there just don't buy it do

something else just don't do it but then you're faced with that it will happen

there will be a thing that you will want to buy and you will just last minute be like you know it's really it's not a big deal let me just place this order let me let me just buy this thing um and that is where you know we’re forgetting our values for a minute because it's easy because it feels like that's what we should be doing

so i want kind of your word to think to be thinking about in the back of your

head is flexible you should just allow that feeling to permeate through you of that you’re going to be flexible of christmas and thanksgiving and hanukkah and anything

that you are celebrating in this season new year's it doesn't have to have any specific type of thing and it doesn't have to look a specific way for you to enjoy it maybe you don't get a turkey this year maybe you're looking for turkeys couldn't find any turkeys are sold out you're having duck it's not a big deal we're being flexible um or you normally buy like a douglas fir that gets shipped from a uh from a christmas tree farm in

the carolinas and you live in the pacific northwest and trees didn't show up this year or there weren't enough trees looks like you're gonna buy something else you can go to your local nursery and see if they have any other types of evergreen trees maybe you get a potted tree and you have a potted tree in your house this year and you string up your lights um on that potted tree and then at the end of the season you go plant that tree in your backyard you’re being flexible it looks different it's still the holidays and you are still finding ways to cultivate that maybe you don't even get a tree at all we don’t have stockings we didn't stop doing stockings last year it's still christmas and it still feels good even without those things it is not there is not any one thing that is necessary for us to feel like it's christmas we could not have a tree in the past we didn't have a tree the first time we had a christmas tree was when we moved into our house in 2016. but before that when my husband and i lived together for five years before we moved into this house we never had a christmas tree christmas still showed up we still had a wonderful holiday even though we didn't have that quintessential item we still cultivated that coziness in our gainesville florida apartment when it was 80 degrees outside on christmas we were still feeling the spirit.

That is because there are you know it's a mindset but that also you can have a lot of fun creating the holidays from multiple different avenues and so one of the things that you consider is that that ambiance and that feeling that you want to have doesn't necessarily just come from like the things that we have in front of us it's not just necessarily the decorations that we set up so you want to consider you know not just your site not just what you see but we've got four other senses that can really add to

our holiday season of that feeling that we want to feel they're sound obviously there are just oodles of holiday playlists that are out there if you have old records if you you know rent cds from the library or you just do a free playlist that you find on youtube or spotify or apple music or is pandora still a thing i'm really not sure there are a lot of options for holiday music if you have someone in your family who can play an instrument oh that oh that sounds beautiful to me like how just wonderful just one little christmas song or you can sing you can create those sounds yourself and then also i am not you know gonna sit here and tell you that you can't just have christmas movies on in the background that sounds wonderful if that is part of your holiday feeling and

you know you turn on the hallmark channel and you've got all their christmas movies going um or like you know abc abc free formibc family but free form they have lots of christmas stuff if you have any streaming service um christmas movies galore so there's that sound and

then of course their smell there are different items that you can put in your home that are going to be scentedif you ever have you ever heard of a simmer pot you put it on your stove you fill it with water and you fill it with a bunch of fragrant items that you know once you are done using them they could have multiple different uses i've used simmer pots before as a means of doing like a cider or a mulled wine and then when i'm done with it i save it in the refrigerator and you can reuse it a few times before that scent goes and then you can just put in your compost make sure you keep it away from any animals but you can just find all different types of scented things a very simple scented candle from a local store wonderful

obviously taste taste we can create the holidays with food with drinks and one of the things that i want you to consider that goes back to how we're cultivating a little bit more of an ethical and sustainable holiday is considering purchasing things that were grown locally and that were grown seasonally that is something that i think gets overlooked a little bit in terms of how we create any sort of a seasonal ambiance if you are eating in a more seasonal manner if you are sticking to mostly buying things that are within this growing season within whichever hemisphere that you were in that is a very easy way for you to create that ambiance because then you know that that item is only available for that specific point you know in the season or you know at that point in the year and then you can start to associate it with that season so like for example we don't really buy oranges outside of winter because that's when oranges are in season maybe you know like it's a fruit you're thinking summer but oranges are in season in winter in northern in the northern hemisphere and so we really don't buy oranges outside of winter and so i really associate having lots of oranges around with winter we even will buy a few oranges we slice them up really thin we put them in the oven and we dry them out and we use them as decoration and they are fragrant and beautiful and there have been a few times when they've broken or i didn't really dry them out that well and so they got a little bit sticky then they had to go in the compost and that was okay and i you know didn't have to worry about storing them it wasn't an item that was made of plastic it was just one or two oranges and it was made of materials that to me made it feel more like a traditional christmas and that's something that i consider of could i have found this item like 70 years ago to decorate for christmas if not maybe i don't need it um

and then let me go over this last one which is like a feeling your feel is a touch i know that you all have cozy blankets you have cozy sweaters i have a set of cozy christmas pajamas that I bought like three years ago because i bought my family the whole same matching set kids wore that same stuff for three years before they grew out of it shout out to uh hannah anderson who makes 100 organic cotton pajamas that last forever we had these for three years these pajamas the kids wore them nonstop in the winter and they still look wonderful and this is the first year we had to replace them but going back to that i don't have multiple types of christmas pajamas i have one set and that is enough and i know that i can wear that set and it's going to feel cozy and warm and i have one christmas sweater technically it is a sweatshirt it is a sweatshirt that my grandmother made and decorated for my mom in the 90s it was made in the united states this haines sweatshirt y'all and it is soft and cozy and it is my one christmas sweatshirt and i put it on and it feels good and i don't think to myself well this is great so maybe i should get more of it no i have the one item i wear it until it needs to be washed i wash it i put it back on again no one is coming for me because they see me wearing the same christmas sweatshirt over and over again and if they are those are not my people and those are not your people either

um so one thing that i want to mention because i was thinking about this is the i can give you millions of examples but you could also look up some of those examples and a more sustainable way for you to look up those items is to add the ecosia extension to your web browser it is a search engine so it operates like google it's ecosia e-c-o-s-i-a and the way that they operate is their ad revenue because that's you know where google gets its money from is they sell your data and they sell ads ecosia any ad revenue that they get they take it to buy trees to be planted so you can see

based on how often that you've been searching um how many trees have been planted by people who are using this search engine which i think is just the coolest thing

the results are a little bit different from what i would see on google they're not as targeted which i think can be a good or a bad thing i mean it's sometimes great when they're targeted because then you're going to find those things that are like local to you but then at the same time it gets based on you know if it's targeted it can be based on a bias so similar to like what news outlets were searching through to look for things we're just seeing that side of it and it works the same way with google as it gets to know you so it only gives you results that it thinks are good for you and i don't have the experience with the cozia it feels just very like straightforward unbiased so i just want

to throw that idea out there for you and have it be a way that when you're trying to think of some alternatives that that is where you go because

like i said I could sit on this call with you for hours and give you lots of examples but i think that if you instead just say okay i'm gonna focus on my senses i’m going to focus on things that are frugal things that i can find locally this year in stores brick and mortar is making a comeback because we are seeing that we cannot always depend on this very incredible intricate system we need a balance your local businesses are going to be so grateful that you are making sure to stop and see what they have on shelves instead of placing an order online because it's easy instead let's see if we can go without if we can create that ambiance in an entirely different way that isn't dependent on things that we’re purchasing in a store that are made on the other side of the world and take a lot of resources to get to us