Lately, God knows why, I've become extremely resistant to the idea of plastic products.  I don't like the idea of man made chemical products surrounding my life.  True, plastic has its benefits - it makes things cheap, easy to produce, and plastic lasts a long time.  Which is why every time I throw plastic packaging (that isn't recyclable) away I feel so guilty that I'm just adding more to an already overflowing landslide.  Did you know that there's a Great Pacific Garbage Patch just floating in the Pacific Ocean? I can't even bring myself to put pictures up here - it's horrifying.  As part of my Simplifying 2012 project, I've decided to, as much as I can without putting a large financial strain on myself, eliminate plastic products from my life (and dispose of them responsibly, of course).  Individual actions do matter - maybe by cutting down on the demand for plastic ever so slightly, I might make a tiny dent in the Garbage Patch.

There are certain things that are unrealistic to trade in for my goal to be plastic free:
1.  My computer.  I have the old MacBook right now, and it's very unreasonable to go out and replace my perfectly functional computer with a new (expensive) aluminum MacBook.
2.  My car. I drive a Prius, and while they are amazing for keeping my gas expenses down, are FULL of plastic on the inside.  It would be ridicules to try and even find a plastic free car, let alone buy a new car.

Given the near impossibility of this project, I thought I would start with really small steps.

1.  Body wash.  I found an amazing bar of soap (packaged in paper) at Target to replace my plastic bottled body wash and my face wash.  It's fair trade, organic, and not tested on animals, and relatively inexpensive.  True, bar soap isn't as moisturizing, but I always put on lotion after I shower anyways, so problem solved.  Read more about Dr. Bronner's products here.


2.  Loofahs!  I currently use a plastic loofah, and easily switched to a natural loofah that I found at Whole Foods with no packaging.  I still haven't figured out how to ethically get rid of my plastic loofah and may just have to trash it... so maybe I'm already defeating my purpose of adding less to the landfill.

We'll see how this goes...

My friend has a lovely blog - the gracious gaze - where she's blogged a lot about the ideal simple closet.  If you had asked me a year ago to downsize my clothes, I would have laughed in your face.  However, two big factors have changed recently that have made me decide on my goal for this year - Live simply so others may simply live!

1.  My sister has moved back in with me.  Two girls sharing one closet?  Madness.  Out of lack of space I need to downsize.
2.  I'm taking a JustFaith class at my church.  It's a 30 week program that focuses on social justice from a Christian perspective.  As we're learning about truly devastating poverty, I have grown more and more aware of the excess I live with.

According to the gracious gaze, these are the rules...

The rules:
1.  Buy as little as possible
2.  Buy only good quality things that I love and that will last a long time
3.  Everything has to be able to be worn at least three ways
4.  Buy second hand - this is the big one for me

So far I've gotten rid of:
3 skirts
3 hats
3 scarves
13 shirts
2 pants
5 shoes
2 jackets

It's a start!