I know that when I started this little blog at Bashfully Designed that I swore up and down I was going to be writing about my own creativity and crafting. Of course, I’ve also said that almost nothing in my life is really coherent so I’ll also be talking about my work with Planned Parenthood South Dakota (PPSD) and my own private war on plastic.

Although I can’t say that I’ve given up all (or even most) plastic up– not as much as the woman blogging at LifeLessPlastic– Jon and I are making some real efforts at it. Today, as we left the CoOp with our milk in a glass jar, rice in a cotton bag (from the Etsy seller GoodKarma), and produce that wasn’t covered in shrink-wrap I had one of those kind of yuppie/bourgeoisie-bohemian moments where I thought that these little changes might actually make a difference.

Nevertheless, I do struggle with trying to determine what is actually going to help and what is just going to make me feel better while just ignoring the burden of real environmental responsibility. I own a car, so all the good I do will probably be canceled out by my (admittedly hugely efficient ULEV) car.

We’re getting pretty good at reducing and reusing. I think making our own yogurt from milk in glass bottles alone is saving us quite a bit of plastic these days (we eat yogurt like it’s going out of style). We’ve also switched to bringing produce bags and our own bulk bin bags to a local Co-Op and now use hankies and cloth napkins at home. Oh, and I’ve gone “no poo” and love it, though Jon remains a little skeptical about the whole thing.

Next up, taking on the dental care and deodorant, two areas that I’ve kind of avoided confronting but I’m almost out of toothpaste and deoderant.