Sustainable everything- Remodel your life

by Derek Clark

The idea of sustainability can be applied to anything. It can be applied to your shopping list, your home and your car in any situation where you need to obtain resources reliably. It can even be applied to your home insurance in the sense of “How to make your home insurance consistently affordable”. Usually, the best way to make something sustainable is to cost it and lock in a reliable source.

Lifestyle and sustainability

It’s probably fair to say that the reason sustainability becomes an issue in anyone’s lifestyle is mainly cost, but that also applies to where goods and services are obtained. A favorite thing may be difficult to get, expensive, hard to find, or even more annoyingly easy to run out of, meaning you have to put a lot of time and effort into getting it.

The sustainable approach is based on making things accessible, usually on a reliable cost basis. In terms of lifestyle, it’s definitely a better option than mindless compulsive, no-choices consumption. You can even make holidays sustainable and luxury items affordable, if you know how to do it. Christmas is the same time every year. Plan ahead and save money throughout the year and you can sustain the hit to your budget in November and December.

Sustainability is also a lifestyle and ethical motif. Many people use sustainable products on the basis of their personal beliefs, environmental consciousness and common sense. Sustainable lifestyle products are generally higher quality, safe, non-toxic and sourced from natural products. This means by definition a much cleaner environment both in the home and in the wider personal context.

What’s not generally known about sustainability and lifestyle is that it can also be a lot of fun. Mainstream consumer products have a bad habit of being major ordeals to handle both economically and when in use. A simple organic throwaway product can be thrown away safely, and doesn’t require a chemistry degree to use properly.

For example, if you’re a gardener, a lot of pesticides and herbicides are extremely dangerous. Most expert gardeners gravitate to the cheaper, safer and far more sustainable organic products. The lifestyle effect is that you can enjoy your garden without risking your life or anyone else’s. Many insecticides used in the home include chemicals which are particularly dangerous to human beings, including neurotoxins. There are many alternatives which are far cheaper and infinitely safer. To save money in this area just google things like “DIY fill in the blank” and you will get plenty of results for things like cleaners or gardening chemicals.

Getting yourself sustainable

It’s actually pretty easy to create a whole suite of sustainable products and practices for yourself which will probably save a lot of money as well as improving the cost and safety factors of simply living. The fact is that most sustainable products and concepts basically involve doing things more simply and more efficiently. The things contained in the name brand products are simple and easy to combine. There’s no need to spend lots of extra money for the name on the label.

One of the easiest ways to get yourself sustainable is to simply remove costs and issues from the weekly budget. What definitely costs too much? What can be replaced with something better and cheaper? What are the things you don’t like doing for which you would prefer to have either an alternative or not to do it all?

Sustainability is in many ways a decluttering exercise, focusing on personal preferences and better ways of doing things. Ironically, it’s the ultimate form of consumerism, meeting your own demands. Think of it as “contents insurance” for your lifestyle. Finding cheaper ways to do things will widen the gap between your income and expenses and help get you to the ultimate in sustainability, financial independence.

{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }

Corina December 6, 2010 at 2:36 pm

Thank you for this great post and sharing your views on sustainability and how it can be applied to all aspects of your life.


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