Sustainability lessons during the #stayathome period

The current global climate has seen many of us having to adapt to a different way of life. On a personal level, it's also made me think in more depth about sustainable living. Here are four lessons I've learned (or focused more on) during this period of staying at home.

From a need to be self-sustainable to not requiring so many clothes, staying at home is presenting some valuable life lessons.

I really don't need many clothes, shoes, etc.

I don’t know about the rest of you, but this time of staying at home more has highlighted a key point to me: I really don’t need so many clothes, shoes, accessories, and the like. I work from home anyway so I don’t need a corporate wardrobe, but I can’t remember the last time I actually put on jeans - it’s been activewear for weeks now. Sure, it’s nice to aspire to dress a certain way, but at heart I’m honestly just a hoodie and leggings gal.

Stressful situations lead me to shop - and I need to find better methods of dealing with that.

Perhaps negating the clarity I found in the last point, I’ve found that during this stay at home period, I’ve been fighting the urge to shop online more. It doesn’t help that I’m getting like 6 Uniqlo emails a day - I really need to unsubscribe - but I also need to understand why I’m wanting to consume more, and honestly I think it’s the low-key everyday stress of life right now. Aside from the point of buying things that are wants, not needs, there’s also the impact of the fossil fuels required to get those products to me. Whether it’s cargo planes in the skies, or trucks on the expressways, there’s a negative environmental impact.

Photos from just one of many Uniqlo emails - among other promotional ones - that try to tempt me to shop!

I want to find ways to be self-sustainable to a degree.

When we first moved to Niigata a couple of years back, I was so impressed by just how many people grow stuff out here, and just about every square inch of a person’s yard space here is utilized for something. Tomatoes, cucumbers, corn, watermelon, rice - it’s all grown out in these parts by our neighbors. Many of them also go foraging for mountain vegetables, which to many people would probably look like weeds, but there’s a resilience and resourcefulness to people out here. In these times of a global pandemic (or a zombie apocalypse, or any kind of emergency!) I’m glad to be here rather than in an urban area, and it makes me aspire to that kind of life. Without any yard space on our block right now, we don’t have the option of planting into the ground, but I do want to research container planting more. Eventually, in my dream home, I aspire to have space to grow all of my own fruit and veggies, and maybe even have some chickens for eggs.

Don't throw things out - give them away

Something I've been doing during the past weeks has been going through my children’s clothes, shoes, and toys that they’ve outgrown. My kids seem to grow like weeds, and often they’ll have things in their cupboards that they’ve worn once or twice, if at all. There are so many ways to donate them (i.e. our Kodomoen has sized donation boxes, so we just sort them into the appropriate size ranges and take them in), or you could even give them to a friend who has children slightly younger than yours. Textile waste accounts for a really significant part of landfill, and statistics note huge increases in this kind of waste over the years. For instance, US statistics from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) showed that textile waste grew from 1.71 million tonnes in 1960 to 10.5 million tonnes in 2015.  You can even make some money off good quality clothes if you want to sell them, whether it’s taking them to a Hard-Off store, using a Facebook swap group like Japan Garage Sale, or even dedicated websites like Mercari.