Greening Georgie: December 2018

Sunday, 30 December 2018

Project Use Up Update #12

And here we are, the final update on my project use up for 2018. I didn't get rid of as many products as I had hoped, but I still moved out 14 from this year and I'm happy with that.

Let's start with the last product I managed to use up this year, the Gosh Velvet lipstick in Matte Plum. I was worried that this won't actually be gone by the time of this post as I didn't have too long to go and this is one of those products that doesn't actually need to be re-applied very often (very good in general, but not when you're trying to use it up). Like the Rose colour I really liked this lipstick. It's cruelty free, has very good staying power, it a nice colour, and doesn't dry out my lips despite being matte. It also smells really nice, which is always good when you're putting it so close to your nose. I still have other lipsticks to use up and, once they are gone, I would like to try some more natural products so it's unlikely that I'll buy this again. However, if you are looking for a well priced, matt, cruelty free, long lasting lipstick then I would recommend the Gosh Velvelt lipsticks in Matte.

Next lets go for the Barbara Day Even Smoother eye primer in Vanilla. I actually pulled the stopper out of this one as I noticed the product was beginning to get a bit dry and I wanted to see just how much product I had left. It turns out I've done pretty well and, though it's difficult to see from the side, when I look down the tube it looks like I've used up around 3/4 of the product. For the fact that you use so little of it with each application that isn't too bad. However, I've had this product for over two years and, whilst it still smells fine, I don't want to take any risks with something I'm putting around my eyes, so it's time to get rid of it. I'm not sure if any of the Barbara Day products are cruelty free (or if you can even get them any more) and it did struggle with the oiliness of my eye lids meaning that the eye shadows did not stay on for a particularly long time. Due to this, I wouldn't recommend this item to anyone and I won't be getting this again. I think that eye primers are probably an additional step to putting on my make-up that I don't really need so, now that this is gone, I'm not going to be buying another primer again.

I still have a fair way to go with the Living Nature eye liner in Midnight, though I did make some pretty good progress with it over 2018. It's a pretty good eye liner and is very soft in texture, but that does mean that it smudges quite easily even if you set it with some eye shadow. I'll be rolling this one over to next years project use up where I might test out some very dark smokey eyes in the name of using up a product.

The same it true for the NYX Dark Circle Concealer Corrector in Light / Pale. I have done a pretty good job at using up a lot of this product, but there is still about a 1/5 to go. It's done a good job at reducing the look of my dark under eyes, but not disguising them completely and doesn't have the best staying power. However, it has been very easy to use and I'll be rolling this over to next year as well.

Lastly, the Argan Oil hair treatment. As I'm using a new shampoo bar which is adding a lot of moisture and waxiness to my hair I haven't had to use this hair treatment at all over the last month. Instead, I've been using it as a not very strong body moisturiser. I tend to need quite thick moisturisers around this time of year so it's not really cutting it, but that does mean I need to reapply it more then I would any other product and it means it's going down a lot quicker than before. I will carry on using this until it's gone and I think that I will roll this item over to next year as well.

I also want to have a quick chat about the Urban Decay Naked Original / 1 palette. I've been using this palette exclusively this last quarter and, whilst I do love the colours, it's getting old and the smell is definitely changing so it's time to say goodbye. Also, the size of the glitter is a little bit much for me, especially as I'm in my late 30s (highlighted 'fine lines' anyone). I'm not sure if the new versions are quite so chunky in their glitter and if not I would recommend this palette is you're looking for one with this colour range. Urban Decay is also cruelty free. I actually don't feel too bad about getting rid of this palette as I have managed to hit pan on 4 of the colours, so it's had its use.

And that's it, another year completed. I had hoped to get rid of 17 products, but it's actually been 14 (with some additional items added along this way) and I'm happy with that. I've already started thinking about what items I want to go through next year and hopefully that will be the final year that I have to actively concentrate on getting rid of surplus products. I hope you had a great year using up your products, let me know how you did in the comments below. 😀

My progress throughout the year:

Sunday, 23 December 2018

Goals 2018 Update #4

The year is now coming to an end and I wanted to give myself a chance to look at what I've achieved this year before I have a real think about what goals I want to set for next.

Minimising

This has definitely been my most successful goal this year and as time has gone on I have found it easier and easier to get rid of things I'm not longer using or need. I've even managed to get rid of a little chest of draws because I no longer needed it and I didn't like it just sitting there empty.

I don't think this will need to be a goal I set for myself again next year as I think I will just keep going now that I've started, reducing as things no longer have a use. Ticks all round for this and I'm very happy with it.

Healthy Eating

This has actually gone a lot better this quarter then last. I've reduced my sugar intake considerably and have noticed that I'm not even really enjoying the sugar I do consume. I'm going to allow myself a 'treat' now and then (mainly dark, mint chocolate as I've found that that is my new thing), but I think I'm finally getting off the sugar bandwagon. My diet has definitely become more vegan as well, especially when I cook for myself. The main stumbling blocks here are when others cook for me or when I eat out. When it comes to people cooking for me, they are already making me (and eating themselves) a gluten free meal and I feel bad also asking them to be vegan as well - though, to be fair, many of the meals they cook also end up being vegan as they know I'm vegetarian and am not supposed to have dairy either for health reasons. For the most part I'm happy to except these little non-vegan meals now and then as long as the meals I make myself and the food that I choice to eat most of the time is vegan. Eating out is always going to be a struggle as I need to go gluten free as well and finding a meal that is gluten free and completely vegan is hard, but I always try and find some way around it so I can do both.

This goal definitely wasn't the best goal this year and is definitely something that I struggle with on a daily basis. I will probably carry this on next year as healthy eating is especially important for me and my PCOS. Definitely a most do better, but I have made some progress so I will concentrate on that and move on from there.

Fiances

This goal as gone much better then I was expecting this year and keeping a budget has definitely helped me keep an eye on where my finances are going. Minimising my things has also helped as I don't want to buy anything I will probably need to get rid of in the not so distant future. The only thing I have struggled with is finding additional income to compliment what I'm receiving now (this is especially important as the work I do at the moment is not guaranteed or even regular sometimes). The main issue is that I just don't know what I'm going to be doing next year and how my weeks are going to pan out, so finding very, very flexible work to coincide with my more permanent job has been difficult. However, I have been researching activities like house sitting (with the advantage of not necessarily needing to keep my own home) and dog walking / sitting, and these seem like a possible good fit. I'm going to research them a little bit more over the next couple of weeks, but they seem likely to be the best thing I can go for next year. If you can think of any other type of flexible work it might be possible to do let me know, I'd be interested in hearing your opinions.

Finances isn't necessarily a goal I'm going to set for myself next year, but I am going to carry on using a budget to help me keep an eye on what I'm spending on and to help build up my savings to help act as a buffer should things even get a little tricky or work suddenly dry up.

It's definitely been a mixed year this year with goal setting, but at least it's given me an opportunity to look at where my strength and weaknesses are. How are your goals doing this year? Have you had many successes? What are the hardest ones you've found to achieve? Let me know in the comments below.

Sunday, 16 December 2018

Donating to Charity in 2019

Because I believe that it's always important to give to charity no matter my budget I have always done my best to give money to charity on a monthly basis. It's not always been a lot (sometimes just a couple of pounds) because my budget has not ever been particularly large, but I have decided that next year I want to give more. My budget hasn't particularly changed and is not likely to increase at all next year, but I do think that there are places that I can make changes to help give me the extra cash I need to be able to donate more. No matter how careful I am there are definitely times where I have spend money on things I really don't need or necessarily want in the long run, and having this extra commitment should help me curb these unwanted purchases.

At the moment I already give to the Bat Conservation Trust (BCT) and the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB), and I'm intending on carrying on giving money to these two charities (possibly increasing the amounts I donate to both) as they are still very important to me. However, I wanted to add some more charities and decided to do some research on what would best ones to go for. These are the criteria I was looking for:

I want them to be charities that work in the environmental sector, especially ones that are working to combat climate change. As I believe that climate change is the greatest threat we will be facing and a factor that will affect a whole host of other things, including increases in poverty, warfare, and famine.
I would like to be able to get a clear view of where all their money is going and to give money to groups to that give most of their money to what they are actually supposed to be fighting rather than predominantly administration and advertising. I know that these departments are important to the running of an organisation, but it seems strange to be that these would be where the main focus is.
I want them to be charities that are not as well known as Oxfam, Greenpeace, or Friends of the Earth. Whilst these charities do do great work they already get a lot of support, and there are other charities out there that do great work but don't necessarily get the money or support they need and deserve. I would like to put my money towards them.

The first charity I decided to add to the list is Water Aid. Having lived somewhere where fresh, clean water wasn't available to all I know just how important it is and what affect this can have on all aspects of someone's life. The affect dirty water they have to walk miles to get to has on someone's body isn't just a health issue, it affects their ability to go to school and learn, to grow the food they need, and to look after their family. To me everyone should have safe water, it is the most basic of human rights and is usually pretty easy to achieve with the right equipment and knowledge. I really like the look of Water Aid, they seem quite open about where their money goes and what the work is that they do. They've also put out a Modern Slavery statement outlining the work they do to prevent slavery from occurring in any of the work they are doing.

The next organisation I want to add is ClientEarth. I had never heard of them before but this organisation uses law to help protect people and the planet we live on. In a statement about themselves they said that they believed that society needed to change it's relationship with the natural world (something I definitely agree with) and that they believed that law was an effective tool to use to do this. Their aim is to empower people and NGOs with their legal rights allowing them to put forward environmental battles of their own, hopefully taking Governments to court, forcing polluting industries to stop, protecting irreplaceable ecosystems. They are also using climate law and legislation to help with the fight against climate change. What I like most about them is that they seem very honest about their finances (making it very easy to find on their website) and that they start with science. To me the use of science is important as it is much harder to argue against someone who's using facts. Whilst doing further research into ClientEarth I also found an article showing that they had been voted the organisation which accomplished the most based on the resources that were available to them. This vote came from chief executives from other environmental organisations and helped me decided that they would definitely be an organisation I wanted to support. [Incidentally, the RSPB came second so I'm glad I'm sticking with them.]

The last charity was a bit more tricky. I've been umming and ahing over different charities that fitted the bill. Climate change is a big issue and I want to do as much work on it as possible, but it's also something that many people find overwhelming to begin with. I wanted to look for a charity that carried out work that didn't look like it was directly dealing with climate change, but whose outcome actual did help with the fight against global warming. In the end I've gone for Plastic Oceans.

Despite that fact that they produced the movie that I've written about before I hadn't actually heard that much about Plastic Oceans and decided to do a little bit more research. Their aim is to get people to reduce their plastic footprint and prevent anymore plastic from getting into our oceans. This is something that people can easily get on board with and feel good about, and as oceans play a large part in helping us fight climate change, protecting this ecosystem is hugely important. Plastic also release greenhouse gases as they degrade, so reduce the amount that we produce will also play it's part in the fight against global warming. The thing that I likes most about Plastic Oceans is that all their work is backed by scientific research and they produce educational packs that can be used by anyone to help promote reducing the amount of plastic we produce and throw away. In the future they are hoping to support more research into this issue and build on links with industries which have close ties to the ocean to help encourage best practises that will not only reduce the waste we are leaving in our waters, but also help reduce the cost to the industry. The only issue I had was that is wasn't that easy to find out about where the money was actually going other than to look at the annual review they have to release on the UK Governments Charity Commission website, but I would still like to support this organisation non-the-less.

And so that's it. Those are the charities I will be donating to next year and why. Which charities do you support and why? Let me know in the comments below as I would be interested in knowing why people like to support the groups that they do.

Sunday, 9 December 2018

Choosing A More Sustainable Christmas

Last year I decided I wanted to improve on the sustainability and ethics of my Christmas. It was something I had been thinking about for a while, but then Christmas hits and things start to get really busy it always just falls to the wayside. During the previous Christmas I had mainly concentrated on making the gifts I got more ethical, but this time I want to expand on that.

Cards and gifts.

As with last year I want to make sure that I the gifts I get are more ethical then the usual presents. This can be difficult to achieve and it's easy to get lost in the rabbit hole trying to find something that ticks all the boxes, so I'm going to look for something that contains at least one of the following: fair trade, organic, locally produced, cruelty free, low toxicity during production, and as climate neutral as possible. Finding something that was all of those would be very difficult and probably well out of my budget, but even just finding a product which has just one of these would mean giving support to a better way of producing goods.

I've decided to make some of my Christmas cards this year, something I am sort of regretting as I haven't really given myself enough time to do as many as I would like. This means I still needed to buy some of my cards. Every year I make sure that the cards I get do actually support a charity of some kind and this year I've decided on the British Red Cross because of the help they provide to people after natural disasters and in war torn areas. With the scale of fighting this year and the number of natural disasters (possibly connected to climate change) it seemed like a good place to send some money over Christmas.

As for wrapping the gifts. Last year I tried wrapping presents using the furoshiki method and I might give this a go this year as well. However, I've also noticed a number of companies that are now making wrapping paper out of 100% recycled paper and printed with environmentally friendly vegetable based ink and thought it would be interesting to give this a try as well. Then I can decide what I'm going to use moving on to next year.

Decorations.

I'm not really a decoration person and I'm not even sure if I have any Christmas decorations (possibly one or two in a box at my parents house). I thought it might be interesting to maybe get a couple of things for the house (obviously not as elaborate as the street decorations) but I am very specific about what I want to get. To me Christmas will always be connected to Norway as that is where we lived when I was a child and most excited about Christmas. Due to that I want to decorations I get so have that Scandinavian feel about it, being made of wood, and containing the distinctive reds and greens that always make me think of this time of year. I also only want a couple of items that I put out every year, but don't take up too much space to store then rest of the year. I haven't found anything just yet, but will keep my eyes open to see what pops up, especially as we're going to Norway at the end of January.

Food.

Last year I was at my parents for Christmas, but this year it looks like I'll be at home instead. This means that I'll be making all the decisions about what I eat when the big day comes around. As with getting gifts, finding food can be difficult when you're trying to find something that ticks all the ethical / sustainable boxes. On the plus side, the fact that I won't be eating any animal products definitely takes out a couple decisions when trying to find ethical food. I will try and make as much of it from scratch myself, reducing the amount of process food as much as possible, and I'm going to try a buy local or organic or both if I can find it.

Asking for gift.

When people ask me what I would like for Christmas I usually don't really know what to say. Most of the time I don't really want something specific and if I do I'm more then capable of buying it myself and almost prefer to do so. What usually then happens, as people still like to buy you gifts, I end up with presents that are thoughtful but not what I want or need. So this year I've decided to be a little more helpful and ask for gift cards that allow me to buy some of the digital items I want (like some movies I still want to see) and experiences (of the outdoor active variety, not the spa variety - that's not really my thing). This way they will still be giving me something, but it'll be something I can actually use and not something I'll have to feel guilty about getting rid of.

Donating and decluttering.

Christmas is always now known as a time of plenty and excess, and, whether you want it to or not, that feeling does have a tendency to seep into everyone's attitude - I know it does with me. I want to try and reset that this year by reminding myself that I'm perfectly happy living with less and the way I've decided to do that is to do another declutter of my items and keep adding to my donate pile. As I've already done a whole lot of decluttering this year I can't see there being a lot of things that will actually need to go, but just reminding myself of that feeling and that attitude will hopefully stop me from being caught up in the madness and buying a whole lot of stuff I don't need. It'll also be good to remind myself that Christmas is meant to be about a time of giving and not a time of buying, buying, buying.

So that's been my Christmas plan, what's yours? Are there any aims or goals that you're going for this year? And do you have any advice on how to make Christmas a more sustainable holiday? Let me know in the comments below.

Sunday, 2 December 2018

Project Use Up Update #11

The final month is now on it's way and it's very clear now which products I have a chance of finishing by the end of the year and which I really don't. Whilst I obviously hoped to finish all of this items this time around I'm still pretty pleased with the amount of progress I have got done so far.

Let's start with the got bit. I have finally used up the MUA lipstick in Raven. I really like MUA as a brand as the products are pretty good quality for the price and they are cruelty free. I was also surprised by the fact that I actually quite liked wearing a black lipstick. Dark colours tend to suit me, but I wasn't expecting black to. The only thing I didn't like was how glossy this product was, which meant it didn't last very long and tended to get everywhere. If, for some reason, I decided to get another black lipstick it will need to be matt. However, if you like black, glossy lipsticks I would recommend this one. That now only leaves the Gosh Velvet lipstick in Matte Plum to go and I think I can get this finished by the end of December.

Next is the Living Nature eye liner in Midnight. Progress is slightly slower this month as I don't like doing a full on smoky eye when I'm wearing a dark lipstick. It's still going down however and I will definitely be a carrying it on to next year's project. It hasn't got the best staying power and I do find smudges under my eyes, but nothing too bad.

NYX Dark Circle Concealer Corrector in Light / Pale is another slow and steady, and I've managed to take off another section. I'm pretty sure this will also be another carry over to next year. The creaminess of this product (an issue in summer) has actually turned out to be a blessing over the colder months and it's definitely holding up better now that the temperature has dropped.

Let's not even discuss the Barbara Day Even Smoother eye primer in Vanilla. We all know where this one is going.

And lastly the Argan Oil hair treatment. I've used up all my liquid shampoos and am now testing out a shampoo bar, which has turned out to possibly be a little bit too oily for my hair type. This means I haven't needed to / wanted to use a hair oil and so progress has slowed right now. I'm going to leave it for a couple of weeks and see if my hair settles down once it gets used to the shampoo bar as I may need to go back to using a hair treatment. If it doesn't then I will need to find another use for this product, possibly a body moisturiser, to get it used up. Either way it's going to be a carry over to next year.

My progress so far:

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