Self-sustainability - A family journey

Last week I was interviewed by Janene Forlong from TV Central (Waikato regional television) about our certified organic geoskincare products. We also started talking about our 'family project' that we are undertaking. Janene thought it would be great to share this project with you all!

In the last 2 months my family (me, my husband and our three children) have undertaken a journey to become as self sustainable as we can by the end of the year!

What is sustainability? Basically it is the ability or capability to endure, maintain or survive. In the environment, biological systems remain diverse and productive to survive in their environments and we too as humans, need to be diverse to be able to create a sense or state of well being for both ourselves and our environment.

For us as a family, being self sustainable means becoming as self-sufficient as possible and trying to support ourselves without such a heavy reliance on our current consumer lifestyle - the aim being that this will have an impact not only on our budget but on our health and well-being also.

My enthusiasm at the beginning was enormous, however, the daily reality of to becoming a self-sustainable home soon set in. After alot of thinking I realised that this was indeed just a journey and that we didn't have to change everything overnight, lots of little steps do eventually add up to big steps!! We have however begun to change our way of thinking and we were beginning to identify loads of ways we could improve our health and environment.

First things first!

The first thing we did as a family was sit down and talk about what was important to each of us (very democratic!). Some examples were gardening, eating good homemade food, reducing our shopping bill (that was mine!) reducing our power bill, recycling stuff (rubbish, water, old clothes, toys) having fun as a family, making things etc... you get the idea.

We decided to start small and implement one or two changes at a time to what we did on a daily or weekly basis. 

Step 1: BISCUITS

The first thing we decided to do was stop buying bought biscuits..... forever!! Now, that doesn't sound too life changing, however if you get to Thursday and there are no biscuits for the lunches - no cheating and nipping to the store!

So, for the past two months I have been baking a couple of batches of biscuits every week and freezing half of them (my Thursday backup!) - not only has this saved us money, I know what we are eating is good for us (no funny numbers, artificial colours or preservatives) and I must say, the biscuits taste delicious and the kids love to bake, which is great family fun. Baking is especially nice in these cold winter months, you can pop some biscuits in the oven after cooking dinner and there is something comforting to the soul when you smell home baking!

My daughter Jess during one of our baking sessions!

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I am going to start sharing some of the 'steps' we are taking in our home with the hope that you too will enjoy and perhaps join us on this journey!! I will update you with my progress and any tips or trips I discover on the way.

Take care 

Penny