Category: thirty days

No social media for 30 days

12/31/23 123123

30 days no social media.

No Tiktok, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube or Reddit.

Social media definition

Interactive forms of media that allow users to interact with and publish to each other, generally by means of the Internet.

I tell myself I go on there to see what my friends are up to but in reality I get sucked into a black hole of scrolling. Scrolling through videos I don’t need to watch. Information I don’t need to know. Fake news I can do without. Sure, I might learn how to make butter, see cute cat rescues, organize my house room by room or get Christmas party ideas but 99% of the videos I watched I don’t remember. So they are just time wasters, distractions from things that need to be done.

I understand that this blog is a form of social media but I will strictly be using it to post and receive feedback. Nothing more.

With that, wish me luck. 🤞🏽🤞🏽

Thirtydays 2021 recap

Well, and just like that. 2021 is one and done. I guess that should have been my new year’s resolution. Blog for a whole year. I’m actually kind of proud of myself for sticking to it. I think I’m going to print it out so I can read it beginning to end.

So, recap. I’m a little late with this. I quit the gym for a couple of months and I found that was when I blogged the most. So, back at the gym and back to the blog. How do I blog and workout at the same time? Well, my favorite machine is the ARC trainer. It’s just like an elliptical but no arms so that leaves my hands free to type on my phone. Lol helps with my balance too!

Twelve 30 day goals.

1. No online shopping

2. No candy/chocolate

3. Shop small

4. The Purge

5. Green drinks

6. No snooze

7. 64oz water

8. Trash less

9. Trash less 2.0

10. No social media

11. Anti-inflammatory diet

12. Bullet journal

Favorite thirtydays?

It would have to be trash less. I learned a lot about my garbage habits and how I look at packaging of the stuff I purchase. I am still using the un-paper towels and handkerchiefs. I rarely use paper plates and disposable silverware. I bring my reusable shopping and produce bags when shopping. I still use the composter for food garbage.

I cringe with every piece of garbage I put in the trashcan. I wrack my brain on how I can reuse it. I know, by keeping it kind of goes against my second favorite thirtydays.

The Purge. It was very freeing donating bags of stuff that I knew I would never use. I didn’t do the Marie Kondo method, holding it while asking myself if it brought me joy🙄. Nope, I held it up and asked myself how much would it cost me to replace it. Pretty much all of it was minimal dollars except the stuff that had sentimental value. I’m still going through the house now. Someday it will be cleaned out.

Hardest thirtydays?

Has to be the no social media. I don’t really consider myself a social person but social media makes it easy to be social while not in person. You can connect with people near or far with a post, message or a like on their page. Covid kind of cut off the in person meet ups so I think for some it was a needed interaction. I gravitated more towards Instagram because of no politics, just fun stuff. Reddit is my second favorite. Just a forum you can talk to others with similar interests. There is some political stuff but not as much as Facebook and Twitter. They have really gotten more about politics and advertisements which I find annoying but some of my friends only use those venues so I can’t dump them. Tiktok is probably the worst. Laying in bed, swiping through video after video while not realizing an hour or three has passed. I did learn some stuff about plants and iPhone tips but was it really worth it?

Easiest thirtydays?

Had to be the 64 Oz of water per day. I found I drink twice that a day. I love water. Room temperature, not cold or with ice. Just gulpable, sitting out on the counter, water lol.

Which thirtydays have I kicked to the curb?

No snooze. That one was impossible. I am not going to lie. I’m not a morning person. My alarm is set for 6am and most days I make it out of bed by 7am if I’m lucky. Maybe I need to go back east for a month so when I get back I’m used to getting up at 3am 😂

The bullet journal was tough. I live a pretty boring life so the daily bullets were hard to find something interesting to write about. I still keep a bullet journal but it’s just a recap of the month or if something exciting happens.

I am sad that this blog is over but I think a foxpartyofone trip may be in my future. Stay tuned😊

Thirtydays

Trash less

I went through my drawers and cupboards looking for ways to trash less. I came to the conclusion that in order to figure out what needed to be recycled, reused or reduced I needed to pay more attention to what I was putting into the trash can. So I looked in my garbage and I found :

food packaging

tissues

junk mail

paper towels

paper plates

plastic slider/zipper bags

food waste

We have already covered paper towels and paper plates so I guess we can talk about the plastic slider/zipper bags. Okay, I’ll admit it. I love them. They aren’t just for food. I use them for traveling, craft storage, organizing random things, rocks and sweat towel storage for the gym. I don’t really throw them away. Probably just the ones I use for lunches. So from now on I will use a reusable container instead.

Junk mail. It’s mostly advertisements for services I am not looking for. It either gets ripped into tiny pieces, shredded or sent back from whence it came. If they send me a postage paid envelope I will send it all back to them with a note to take me off their mailing list. Does this work? I don’t know but it makes me feel better knowing that it’s not going into MY garbage can lol.

Tissues. Yes I use them to blow my nose in the morning. What is the alternative? Good old fashioned handkerchiefs. I am going to try these but no guarantees. Lol. I don’t know if I can do it.

Food waste. Most of my food waste consists of banana peels, coffee grounds, avocado shells, onion skins, lettuce and egg shells. These are things that can be composted so I got one. More on that later this month.

Food packaging. Wow. I didn’t realize how most of the things I purchase are contained in plastic. And it’s not small or recyclable. Orange juice, laundry soap, body wash, apples, condiments, the list goes on. I will be researching alternatives. Wish me luck🤞🏽

Thirtydays

Trash less

Trying to trash less is difficult.

Yesterday I went into a store to get some household items and dog toys. Dog toys to replace the ones that Krystal’s dog, Sunny killed a few weeks ago lol.

I got to the register and the cashier asked if I wanted to purchase a bag for 5 cents. Of course not. Did I bring my own bags? Of course not 😂. Luckily I shopped without a cart so everything I was purchasing I was carrying. 10 items😂 Ugh I need to train my brain to grab those recycle bags on my way into the store. In my defense, the bags are in the back of the car. I guess I should just put them in the front seat but I hate clutter lol.

Less garbage:

I bought some reusable paper towels. Not that I am getting rid of the real thing altogether. I will still keep them for dog barf and grease clean ups. The reusables are 12×12 inches and made out of cotton flannel. They roll up around a cardboard tube. You can take them off one by one. I got them from Amazon but they are actually made in Eugene Oregon, Marley’s Monsters reusable unpaper towels. A little spendy but over time I hope to use less of the real ones and this is more about the environment. I guess if I wasn’t so lazy I could make my own. They are just flannel squares serger stitched around the edges.

Cotton balls. I use at least a bag of cotton balls each month to remove my eye makeup. I know, they are tiny but everything adds up over time. I found some reusable makeup removers from Wild Minimalist that are basically just like the unpaper towels but double layered. These are also made in Oregon. They measure 2×2 and are cotton flannel. I just squirt some makeup remover on them, use and toss them in the dirty clothes. They wash up perfectly and again I could probably make these lol. Spoiler, maybe that’s what’s coming for Christmas….😊

I hate to admit this but I use a lot of paper plates. I was reaching for one last night and reminded myself I should be using the real plates. Most of the paper plate use is for cooking/reheating in the microwave of greasy stuff. So it’s a toss up between them and paper towels as clean up afterwards. To explain, I am not connected to city sewers and I have a septic system. I definitely don’t want to wash any grease down the drain or it could cause a grease plug and a back up of the system. And yes I am speaking from experience 😂🤣

Thirtydays

The Purge

Day? What happened? Where did April go?

The purge could take much longer than expected lol. It has really been an eye opener as to how much stuff I have. I’m still only on the second room of the house. The guest bedroom. It’s got a futon and closet full of stuff. Lots of empty boxes. Boxes for things that I’ve purchased and for whatever reason kept the box that it came in. Why? I guess if it breaks I can return it within the warranty period? Maybe keep the box to sell it later? Regardless of those reasons I have a bunch of boxes that will be going to the dump. They are way older than thirty days. Months or could be years probably lol.

The other thing I’m working on in that room? Photos. Old photo albums of trips taken with a bunch of landscape pictures along with some with people pics in them. I decided to take out all the people pictures and toss the rest. I will still need to go through all the people photos and sort them out but it consolidated them to one small box. It would be awesome to convert them to digital someday. I have to say, I really like the pictures that have the date stamped on them. It’s not like the digital photos that you can tell when it was taken. I also have a thing about people pictures. I can’t throw them out. That’s why they are in that box lol. Even if they are out of focus, ripped or of people I don’t know. That also goes for digital pics too but at least now the cloud will tell me I’m running out of space. It makes me go in and delete a few. End goal would be one or two albums with dates on the pictures and maybe where they were taken.

I took another load to Salvation Army. They will probably know me by name soon lol.

For my next thirtydays I will continue on with the purge and add in a green drink every morning. For those of you who are wondering, my green drinks are not fancy. I buy the bag of Power Greens at Costco and throw it into the freezer. It has organic baby chard, baby spinach and baby kale. It’s really the only way I’m going to get any green nutrition lol. Once they are frozen I smash them to bits. They are much easier to add to the blender that way. I add some flax seeds and chia seeds into orange juice or coconut water and blend them up. I could probably add something else but I’ve been doing it before I go to work and unless I start getting up when the alarm goes off there’s not much time for creativity 😂 that could be the next thirtydays thing. No snooze lol. That would be brutal.