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Who is BlueIndy for?

January 28, 2016 by Julia Leave a Comment

BlueIndy car For a couple of months I’ve been wanting to try the BlueIndy electric car sharing service in Indianapolis. There’s a station about half a mile from my apartment, and I was curious about the cars and what the overall user experience is like. I also wanted to address a lingering question I’ve had since the system appeared: Who is BlueIndy for?

As a car owner whose daily commute is outside the BlueIndy range, I figured I was not the primary target market. However, the BlueIndy website touts free, guaranteed parking as one of its benefits, so I wondered if would BlueIndy be convenient for occasional trips downtown. Every Indianapolis urbanite knows the frustration of arriving downtown to unexpectedly find the cheapest parking garages plastered with “$20 Event Parking” signs. Could BlueIndy be a way to avoid this unpleasant surprise?

With the warmer weather this past weekend, I thought Sunday would be a good day to try it out for a trip downtown for lunch, so I logged on to the BlueIndy website to start planning my excursion. My plan was to pick up a BlueIndy car from the SoBro station, drive downtown and deposit the car at one of the many downtown stations, eat lunch, then pick up another BlueIndy car and return to the SoBro station. I quickly learned that this plan would be inconvenient to the point of impossibility due to two major flaws in the BlueIndy system.

Two major flaws

According to the membership description pages on the BlueIndy website, all BlueIndy memberships (including one-day memberships) must begin at an Enrollment Kiosk.* This in itself seems reasonable, since you need to verify that you’re a licensed driver before using the cars. However, as of the date of this post, there are only three operational Enrollment Kiosks in the city out of dozens of stations, with only two more under construction. Standard BlueIndy stations run along the north-south corridor as far south as the University of Indianapolis and as far north as 63rd Street, with some popping out to the east and west near downtown. Despite this broad coverage area, two of the Enrollment Kiosks are located downtown within two blocks of each other, and the third is located at College & Broad Ripple Ave.

*In the more deeply-buried FAQ, the website says that monthly and yearly memberships can be purchased through the website or mobile app, but there was no clarification on whether the user would still need to visit an Enrollment Kiosk to obtain their membership card.

BlueIndy vehicle stations

BlueIndy Enrollment Kiosks

It would take me about an hour to walk to the Broad Ripple kiosk—technically doable, but hardly convenient. It would only take about 15 minutes to ride my bike there, though, which seems like a reasonable alternative except for the fact that there is no bike parking provided as part of any BlueIndy stations. There may be nearby bike parking or there may not; it is in no way guaranteed. This seems like a huge missed opportunity, as including bike parking as a fundamental part of each station would make the system accessible to a much broader geographic area.

Who is BlueIndy for?

Because of the Enrollment Kiosk requirement, it seems apparent that BlueIndy is not really intended for one-day use. The inconvenience of getting to an Enrollment Kiosk would far outweigh the guaranteed parking benefit in most cases.

BlueIndy banner promoting guaranteed parking

Guaranteed parking doesn’t outweigh the other inconveniences of a one-day membership.

The Enrollment Kiosk requirement also begs the question, is the system intended for people who don’t own cars? If it is, how are these users supposed to get to an Enrollment Kiosk to sign up? Yearly membership cards are sent out via snail mail according to the BlueIndy website, so once you have your card you could use any station for your first trip, but a yearly membership is a big commitment if you haven’t even had a chance to try out the system.

Despite these flaws (which I hope the city addresses soon), here are some groups that I think can actually benefit from BlueIndy as it exists today:

Partners or families who own only one car, particularly if one working adult can use BlueIndy for their commute
Non-car owners who have access to an Enrollment Kiosk
Tourists staying downtown could use one-day memberships to visit other “notable” neighborhoods like Irvington, Broad Ripple or Fountain Square
College students
Electric car owners can use BlueIndy stations to charge their own vehicles

Do I still think BlueIndy is a valid mode of green transportation? Yes. My favorite thing about BlueIndy, now that I realize I can’t practically use it myself, is the charging service it offers to electric car owners, as this could increase the adoption rate of all-electric vehicles in the city. Is it a perfect system? Far from it. Hopefully as the program matures it will find its niche and clarify its marketing to reach the people who can truly benefit.

What If All Packaging Was Reusable?

January 5, 2016 by Julia 12 Comments

Empty glass bottles and jars

I had an idea at the grocery store recently as I was shopping for pasta sauce, salsa, and some other packaged foods. Lately I’ve been conflicted about glass jars. On the one hand, glass is infinitely recyclable with no loss of quality, while plastic can lose quality during the recycling process due to contamination from incompatible plastic polymers. On the other hand, it’s more energy efficient to recycle glass than plastic—both types of recycling save energy over producing new materials, but plastic saves significantly more. As I pondered which material was the more responsible choice for food packaging, it occurred to me that I was asking the wrong question.

Reusing an item generally has a lower environmental impact than recycling it. What if, somehow, all the containers used to sell packaged food were reusable? Not simply by the consumer, but by the food companies themselves?

The milkmen of yore reused the same glass bottles over and over again. Some modern companies like Oberweis Dairy continue to do the same—they use a deposit system to incentivize customers to return glass jugs to the store to be reused. What if all food packaging was standardized in such a way that companies could collect containers, clean them, and use them to package more food?

For this system, I’m envisioning various sizes of glass jars and bottles to be used for products that are already sold in these types of vessels. Rather than brands custom-molding their own glass or plastic containers with their logos or special shapes, they would use one of the standard containers agreed upon by the industry. There could be a wide range, maybe 15 to 20 sizes and shapes to accommodate various types of products, but all standardized in style and material.

Standardization would be necessary to facilitate the easy return and redistribution of the containers. With standard containers, collectors (primarily grocery stores) would be able to accept containers from various brands. Stores would encourage consumers to return containers by operating a deposit system. The cost to “rent” food packaging, maybe 25 to 50 cents an item, would be built into the price of packaged items, and upon returning the packaging, the consumer would receive their deposit back. (This system has the additional benefit of encouraging consumers to cook fresh food rather than pay more for packaged food, if they don’t plan to return the packaging.) A middleman company would separate the containers, remove their labels, clean and sanitize them, and redistribute them back to food manufacturers for reuse.

Close-up of jar of salsa and lid

Imagine buying a jar of salsa. (Mmm, salsa.) When you’ve enjoyed your nachos and the jar is empty and rinsed, instead of tossing it in the recycling, you would toss it in a bag to return to the grocery store on your next shopping trip. Upon returning your empties, you would receive a refund of your packaging deposit. Retailers could even offer the refund in the form of store credit to build customer loyalty. For consumers already accustomed to recycling, this system is only a minor adjustment to a familiar habit. For consumers who don’t recycle, this system offers convenience and a financial incentive.

Such a system wouldn’t be without its costs. Food companies would have to purchase the containers back from the middlemen, or take on the costs of running their own collection program. There would be environmental impacts from transporting and cleaning the collected containers. However, in this closed loop, there would be nearly zero end-of-life packaging waste, notwithstanding containers that break or don’t make it back to collection. Glass containers are costly to transport due to their weight, but since new containers would need to be transported anyway—in addition to consuming raw materials and requiring disposal efforts, my hypothesis is that the costs and impacts of the reuse program would be significantly lower than the costs and impacts of creating and disposing of new packaging.

The biggest perceived cost to food companies of such a system may be the limitations on branding and design. Packaging designers would lose the ability to convey a brand’s identity through the materials, shape and other characteristics of a product’s container, and due to the consistent containers, grocery store shelves would become much more homogeneous. However, a designer would still be able to differentiate a brand through the color, material, shape, size, and style of its products’ labels. In fact, the new limitations could lead to a boom in creative label design—as long as the label can be removed from the container by the consumer or during the cleaning process, any treatment is fair game! Shelf homogeneity could be addressed with dividers, different styles of shelving, or point-of-sale displays.

This system could be applied to other packaged goods as well, such as household cleaners or personal care products—basically anything that’s sold in liquid form or in small pieces. I’m not sure if there would be contamination risks if reusing, say, a shampoo container for hot sauce, so there may need to be different styles of containers for non-food products.

I personally get really excited envisioning such a radically different (but honestly, not that different) future for consumer packaging. I’m already thinking of the opportunities it would create. (Jobs running collection and processing programs! A market for reusable non-slip bottle coozies!) Obviously this hypothetical system would require a major coordinated effort between manufacturers and retailers, and likely changes to food packaging regulations as well. However, I was telling my dad about the idea and he said companies like Coca-Cola used to collect bottles back when he was a kid, so it’s certainly not unprecedented. If the environmental impacts, especially carbon emissions, are significantly lower compared to new packaging production and disposal, I could see this system as a potential way forward for American food distribution.

How to Give a Charitable Donation as a Meaningful Holiday Gift

December 3, 2015 by Julia Leave a Comment

The article below was originally published by Alden Wicker on EcoCult, a guide to sustainable and eco-friendly living in NYC and beyond. I’m in the process of cobbling together my year-end giving plan, so I was stoked to come across Alden’s excellent tips for charity selection. Whether you’re looking for a charity that speaks to your own values or a donation to give as a gift, Alden’s tips from #GivingTuesday will help you cultivate a generous spirit throughout the season and the year. Enjoy! —Julia

I started putting together a Christmas wish list gift guide for myself, and then I realized: nobody is going to buy me any of it.

My step-dad donates to charity on my behalf, which I enjoy. My mom gets her Christmas shopping done long before Black Friday – it’s a point of pride for her – so I’m too late for that. My sister always handcrafts something really special for me. My aunt does her shopping at cool museum gift shops in Arizona. The other part of my family who usually relies on my gift guide I don’t think we will see this year. And I will have a long discussion with my fiancé about how we want to thoughtfully gift each other this year. Maybe a nice dinner? So, the gift guide will be completely ignored. Which is just fine.

I decided to take this opportunity on #GivingTuesday to talk about donating to charity instead.

Donating to charity on someone’s behalf is awesome on so many levels. First, you are not giving your money to a large corporation, which in turn gives money to overprivileged CEOs and hedge funds managers. Your money is going to people and organizations who will put it to work not buying third homes, but fixing the food system, restoring wetlands, feeding hungry people, teaching work skills to the underprivileged, etc.

Second, giving to charity is inherently sustainable, even if it’s not a environmentally-focused charity, because it doesn’t involve resources to produce, package, and ship a gift. It just requires an infinitesimal bit of energy to digitally wire some money over. And then, it won’t end up in the landfill when the recipient tires of it.

Third, donating to charity can be one of the most thoughtful gifts out there … if you do it right. (Do not be like that one distant aunt who donated on my behalf to her fundamentalist church. That is weird and so self-serving.) By donating to the right charity on someone’s behalf, you’re saying, “I think your values are amazing and important, and I want to support you in that.” It demonstrates that you have taken the time to find out what they love, do, or believe in.

My biggest tip, and one that I’ve used successfully in the past, is to search on Charity Navigator. Not only does this website allow you to find organizations by keyword, title, or location (the advanced search is awesome) it tells you how efficiently and transparently each organization is using donations, helping you avoid exploitative or even fake charities.

Here’s some questions to ask to find just the right charity:

What organizations support their favorite pastime? For example, if they enjoy classical music, you could donate to the local symphony. If they like to garden, you could donate to Seed Savers Exchange. If they enjoy art, donate to a local museum. If they listen to the radio, donate to NPR. Or donate to the local library if they enjoy reading.
What organization has supported them in the past or supports them now? My grandmother is part of a wonderful church that is about so much more than Sunday service. The ministers are non-judgmental and welcoming of all races and sexual-orientation. When a member is going through a challenging time, they assign him or her a buddy, who will talk to and check up on him or her. She’s met many of her best friends through the church, one of whom moved in with her for a time when they were both widowed within a year of each other. Everyone knows my grandmother’s name. It’s her community. So donating to her church is a way for me to almost gift her directly, by ensuring they can continue their programs and support for members like her. This isn’t just religious – you could also donate to a research or clinical organization if your recipient is struggling with a health problem, for example.
Where do they volunteer? If they volunteer at an organization, not only does it make it an obvious choice where you should donate, they’ll see your money at work firsthand, making it all the more special.
What is their career? Some careers will afford obvious choices. If they are a teacher, Donors Choose, a charity that lets teachers ask for money to purchase certain items, is a great choice. If they work in fashion, Dress for Success might be meaningful. If they work in medicine, Doctors Without Borders does the trick. For me, I use the Environmental Working Group‘s research and Skin Deep database constantly for EcoCult, so I would appreciate someone donating to them for sure!

Continue reading on EcoCult >>

Waste Not, Want Not: Vegetable Stock from Kitchen Scraps

November 10, 2015 by Julia 2 Comments

After reading Faye’s excellent post about making vegetable stock on her blog Sustaining Life, I was inspired to attempt it myself. And just in time too: I’ve made soup a couple of times this fall already and using plain water definitely leaves something to be desired.

I’ve never been a fan of purchasing stock from the store because it seems like a lot of packaging, either an unrecyclable carton or multiple cans. A couple of people have recommended bouillon cubes, and I agree those would probably be a good option. However, I like the idea of using the scraps of all the produce I’ve already bought. It’s like making something out of nothing!

As Faye advised, I stored my scraps in a plastic bag in the freezer. It took me about a month to collect enough to fill the bag. Here’s the collection I ended up with:

I reuse tortilla bags for everything.

I followed Faye’s recipe, first seasoning and roasting the scraps in the oven, them simmering them in water for a little over an hour.

Frozen vegetable scraps in a Pyrex baking pan

Some scraps I included were a pumpkin rind, a few apple cores, red and green pepper stems and membranes, onion ends, and rutabaga peelings.

Vegetable scraps in pot with water

Vegetables in pot after having been simmered

I could tell it was working because my apartment started to smell like delicious soup. After letting the stock cool, I removed the big vegetable chunks with tongs and then poured the remainder through a strainer.

The finished stock is a lovely golden brown and has an oh-so-slightly sweet flavor, probably due to the apple cores. My only puzzlement with the process is that I put in 8 or 9 cups of water and ended up with only 5 cups of stock. One culprit may be the fact that the lid to my stock pot has steam-release holes in it. The stock also came out a little more oily than I expected, which I’ll take as a lesson to lighten up on the olive oil during the roasting step. (I eyeballed it instead of measuring—a classic blunder. Come to think of it, I eyeballed the water amount too…)

Homemade vegetable stock in plastic container

The whole process was very easy and didn’t make a mess. Now I have tasty stock to use for making soup, rice, or anything else that could use a flavor boost instead of plain water, and I didn’t use anything other than scraps I would have thrown away. I definitely plan to continue collecting scraps for my next batch!

If you want to try it yourself, be sure to check out Faye’s post for the specific recipe and a helpful list of what veggies not to include in stock.

Have you ever made your own vegetable stock? How cool is it to make food out of [clean, edible] garbage??

How Facebook Could Revolutionize the Sharing Economy

October 19, 2015 by Julia 2 Comments

Remember the scene in The Social Network where one of Mark Zuckerburg’s friends asks him if a girl in his art history class is single? You see the lightbulb go on over Zuckerburg’s head, and he runs back to his dorm room to add Relationship Status as a field in Facebook profiles.

Creating a way to broadcast that simple piece of information revolutionized dating in the digital age. With the rise of the sharing economy, Facebook has an opportunity to allow us to broadcast another piece of key information that is typically hidden under social norms: the items we want to obtain or get rid of.

Imagine a feature called Facebook Exchange. It’s as simple as a shopping list. Users enter items into two categories: Things I Want and Things I’m Offering.

While it would seem nosy to ask everyone you know what they have in their house that they want to get rid of, and it would seem greedy to constantly ask people to give you stuff, the reality is that we all have wants and needs that people we already know could happily fulfill. The missing link is an easy connection between the wanters and the providers.

With a growing cultural mindfulness about waste and excess, people are more willing to share what they have and more uncomfortable with simply throwing decent stuff away. While there are plenty of standalone platforms for reselling, secondhand shopping and free-cycling, there isn’t one that connects you to the people you already know, and those are the people with whom many of us would be most interested in conducting an exchange.

Exchange isn’t a full classified ad service. Facebook tried that once with Marketplace, which has now been transferred to an external provider called Oodle and is no longer available on the Facebook platform. Facebook’s error with Marketplace was in reinventing the wheel. Relationship Status didn’t need to be a dating service; once the information was out there, users acted on it in a variety of different ways without needing additional intervention from Facebook. Similarly, Exchange isn’t about executing transactions; it’s about creating the sense of serendipity that comes from connecting with existing friends in new ways.

Let’s say I’m looking for vacuum cleaner bags. (My needs are glamorous, I know.) This is a low-value item that would be pretty pointless for anyone to sell, but it’s also an item that would be silly to throw away if it’s in perfectly good condition. In this case, let’s say one of my friends’ moms has vacuum cleaner bags to give away. She puts them on her Things I’m Offering list, and because we’re friends and I have vacuum cleaner bags on my Things I Want list, Facebook sends me a notification: “Janet Smith just added ‘vacuum cleaner bags’ to her Things I’m Offering list. Send her a message to ask more about it.” Janet would also get a notification that “Julia Spangler has ‘vacuum cleaner bags’ on her Things I Want list. Send her a message to see if she wants what you’re offering.”

That’s as far as the feature would go. Any photos of the item and the details of the transaction would be handled through person-to-person communication. Users would be free to arrange their own preferred forms of payment, barter, or give stuff away for free. In a lot of cases it could also eliminate shipping, which is one of the biggest inconveniences of online shopping. In this example, my need isn’t urgent, so I’d just pick up the goods the next time I was in Janet’s neighborhood.

The goal of Exchange is to identify potential matches between list items, then let users hash out the details in a subsequent conversation. Facebook’s understanding of language is good enough that it would be able to match up list items that are close but may not be phrased the exact same way. The feature would also be a boon to Facebook’s advertising strategy, since users would literally be telling the platform what they’re interesting in acquiring.

Exchange is obviously a hypothetical feature at this point, but it illustrates a potential solution to the gap between wanters and providers of any given item. My previous blog post on this topic illustrates how challenging it can be to find the right recipient for your unwanted stuff. How much better would life be if we could easily find those people within our own networks?

5 Things I Love About Not Using Shampoo

October 13, 2015 by Julia 4 Comments

Showerhead with post title

It’s been 10 months since I’ve used shampoo. To some of you that may sound shocking, and others of you may already be familiar with the movement winkingly known as “no poo.” The underlying belief of the no-poo movement is that conventional shampoo is actually more damaging than it is helpful, and by stripping the natural oils from hair, it creates the need for more frequent washings than would otherwise be needed.

While I spent a couple of years experimenting with natural shampoos, the no-poo method lingered in the back of my mind as a mysterious, too-good-to-be-true myth conjured by the internets. However, once I found out that my two bandmates with dramatically excellent hair were also no-poo, I decided to give it a try.

I chose one of the methods I saw discussed most frequently online, using baking soda and apple cider vinegar in place of store-bought shampoo. I started out washing my hair on the same schedule I used to shampoo (every other day), and over time that became less frequent. Now I only wash my hair twice a week.

If you Google “no poo,” you’ll find a myriad of different methods and opinions and experiences. Some people have had negative experiences, and others, like me, only wish they’d done it sooner. Here are my five favorite things about no longer using shampoo:

1. It changed the way I think about my hair

Until I went no-poo, I was very concerned about my hair being clean. I felt like it would be a scandal to go out with unwashed hair. I washed my hair every day for most of my life and assumed that everyone else did the same. Now that I know about the wider world of hair care methods, I feel like I’ve been freed from a prison of my old assumptions about socially acceptable hair.

2. Less time spent styling

Changing the way I wash my hair has also changed how I think about styling it. I used to think I had to straighten my hair for it to be acceptable. Over the last 10 months I’ve begun to embrace my natural hair, which is sometimes mostly wavy and sometimes mostly straight—I’ve come to appreciate both without feeling like I need to intervene with a styling tool.

I felt like it was especially imperative to blow dry and straighten my hair for work, and now I realize that there are way better things to do with that 20 minutes every morning, and life will not end if I show up at the office with my hair how it naturally dries. Plus, since I wash my hair less, if I do decide to style my hair it lasts for several days.

I’ve also come to love wearing my hair in a bun—it’s quick, it looks good whether my hair is wet or dry, and it curls my hair for later. A trifecta in only 30 seconds.

Notable natural hair moments from this year. Waves! Movement! All brought to you by no-poo.

Some natural hair moments from this year. Waves! Movement! Note that my grandma is chic as all get-out at 92. Also note that no-poo gave me so much confidence in trying new looks that I actually pulled off wearing a hat.

3. No more traveling with a hair dryer and straightener

Breaking my reliance on heat styling means no more lugging around small appliances on every trip. Extra room in my suitcase for the win!

4. Uses no plastic bottles

Now that I don’t buy shampoo, that’s one less plastic bottle in my waste stream every couple of months. My baking soda comes in a cardboard box and my apple cider vinegar comes in a glass bottle. I go through the baking soda every 4-6 weeks, but I’m still working on my original bottle of vinegar since I use so little at a time.

5. My hair has more volume and holds curl

I remember the first day I went out in public having washed my hair the new way. It was the Colts vs. Patriots AFC Championship game this past January, the game of Deflate-gate fame. I washed my hair in the morning and wore it in a bun most of the day, and when I let it down to go watch the game, it was holding beautiful, voluminous curls. Though the Colts’ playoff hopes and the game balls deflated, my curls did not, and I’ve never looked back.

Julia wearing curly hair and a blase expression

An example from earlier this year of curls I could not have achieved before no-poo. Ignore my sullen expression; inside I am giddy.

For those of you interested in the details of my hair washing routine, here’s what I do specifically:

Fill a small travel shampoo bottle halfway with baking soda, then fill it the rest of the way with water. Shake to mix. Depending on the size of the bottle this should last for 2-4 washes.
Combine 1-2 tablespoons of apple cider vinegar with 1 cup water in a small spray bottle. This quantity should last for 6-10 washes, depending on how heavily you apply it and and how much hair you have.
Wash wet hair and scalp with baking soda mixture. Do not wash ends of hair. Rinse well.
Spray vinegar mixture onto hair, including the ends. I let it sit for a minute or two to absorb. Rinse well.

Edit Feb. 2016: I’ve made some changes to the proportions of baking soda and ACV I use, resulting in my hair being softer and shinier. Check out my updated method.

You may be tempted to skip the vinegar rinse, but don’t. I’m not totally up on the science of it, but because baking soda is basic on the pH scale, it’s important to follow it with an acid to keep the pH of your hair balanced.

Lots of no-poo articles describe an adjustment period during which hair gets incredibly greasy. That was my biggest fear going in, but it ended up not being an issue for me at all. I think this is due to the fact that I started using the new supplies right away instead of letting my hair “lie fallow” for a few weeks, as many articles recommend. There was a brief period where my hair looked slightly greasy, but not to the extent that I felt like I needed to cover my hair. Following the slightly greasy period there was a dry period, which I also didn’t really mind because it gave my hair temporary super-volume and I had a lot of fun with that. I don’t remember exactly when my hair found equilibrium again, but I think it was around the three-month point.

I have often pondered how people in the past kept their hair from looking greasy, because I know if I lived on the prairie in a cabin with no heat, I would not be washing my hair at all between November and March. No-poo hasn’t totally answered this question for me, but it has shown me that human hair can take care of itself more than most people give it credit for.

Have you tried no-poo? What was your experience? Can anyone enlighten me about old-timey hair care methods?

Why I’m Not a Minimalist

June 23, 2015 by Julia 8 Comments

Photo credit: Feans

I once dated a guy who was a minimalist. His apartment had some basic furnishings, bare walls, a shelf of some books and DVDs, and not much else. (Actually, looking back I’m realizing that none of my boyfriends have owned a lot of stuff, which might say something psychologically interesting about me.) The first time he came to my apartment, the first words out of his mouth were, “You have a lot of stuff!”

This was after I had already begun consciously not accumulating new stuff, so needless to say I was rather affronted. After further thought, though, I decided that having a lot of stuff isn’t inherently something to be ashamed of.

Minimalism is a buzzword these days, and as a theory it has a lot of merit. In practice, though, most people aren’t starting from zero, so attaining lofty minimalist benchmarks (like having a super-small wardrobe) is unrealistic. If you’ve already accumulated a lot of possessions, to purge all those items just so you can be “minimal” epitomizes a wastefulness that to me seems at odds with the entire philosophy of minimalism.

The main reason I’m not a minimalist is the realization that just because it’s not my problem anymore doesn’t mean it’s not a problem. Minimalism espouses the mental and emotional benefits of living with less. I agree that removing clutter and excess can have very positive effects… on the person losing the clutter. However, you can’t ignore the fact that whatever you get rid of continues to exist, whether in a thrift store, a secondhand market in a developing country, or a landfill. (There’s a good chance your stuff will travel through all three.)

Mindless purging can be just as harmful as mindless accumulation, as it enables further consumption and injects more items into the waste stream. Finding someone who wants what you don’t is a more sustainable solution than throwing all of your unwanted items in a box for someone else to deal with.

Honestly, that approach takes more time and effort, which is another reason I still have some things I don’t really need or want anymore. But I’m fine with that, because I know they’re causing me less of a problem than they might cause somewhere else.

What’s your take on minimalism? Do you also accidentally date only minimalists?

Conducting a Wardrobe Audit: Plan of Attack

May 12, 2015 by Julia 3 Comments