Women and the mental load of waste-free living (+ a soap recipe)

There's an elephant in the room, when it comes to waste-free living. In the majority of households attempting to reduce their waste, it is still largely the work of women. Women often have the desire to make change in practical ways, and carry the burden of researching and strategising ways to implement waste-free shifts in their households. Women and children worldwide are also most likely to suffer the impacts of environmental issues and poor waste-management. It's been well documented that women are at the forefront of the actual day-to-day work of environmental change. Anecdotally, Oberon and I have seen it in the Facebook group we run (Zero Waste Tasmania), where more than 80% of members are women. And across social media, the majority of accounts devoted to the practical business of zero waste living are women. Women are the ones buying our book, although hopefully the men in their lives are reading it and trying things, too, and we've addressed this in the book. Waste-free living doesn't have to be burdensome. In fact, it can be joyful and enriching as you find a closer connection and care for nature. It's even fun! But in our home, it's fun, and not burdensome, because it's shared.

Women carry the mental and physical load of waste-free living, and we need to see that shifted. It has to shift for more of us to be able to make space to take more waste-free living practices on. It was the manufacturing of plastic packaged products and 'convenience' foods that simultaneously gave women freedom from their homes and created the huge environmental problem we face today. Meanwhile, men have, for the most part, carried on as usual, embracing 'convenience' products and being left somewhat off the hook. This has to change, for all our sakes, but especially for our children who will discover the full effect of choosing 'convenience' over responsibility.

But for today, on International Women's Day, I'm going to leave the mental load of pushing for that shift to the men-folk (thanks, Huz), and recognise and celebrate the women who have done so much practical work to care for their families, their homes and our planet. I'm often drawn to think, on such days, of the people who lived on the patch of land where I live, before me. First the muwinina women who cared for it so very well that only a midden and stone fish traps by the foreshore remain as evidence that they'd impacted this land. And then the farmer's wife, who possibly seldom made it to our patch of the orchard while she tended her home and garden. Or the housewife who lived here before us, who saw fit to install lots of small cupboards for their preserves, which inspired me to think about filling them with preserves of our own.

While we were in the process of compiling recipes for our book, I visited my Mum's place and she pulled out a couple of notebooks she'd had stored away. Simple notebooks featuring beautiful handwriting, on plain, lined paper, yellowed now from age. The pages were filled with recipes and notes, taken by my two grandmothers, who began them as young, newly married housewives. They began writing them towards the end, and immediately after WW2, and both notebooks reflect how they were striving to stretch their resources further when they were required to keep their homes running, and families fed, on very little. It was a time when food was rationed, Victory gardens were encouraged, and wasting food was illegal or very much frowned upon. And women bore the brunt of that work.

As I turned the pages of hints & tips, so often shared by friends or in newspaper articles, government publications and magazines in a time before Google, I found many that looked like the handy hints we've come to know and love, in our waste-free living travels. But one of my favourites as I flicked through, was my maternal grandmother's method of using up all the old soap ends to make new soap. I snapped a photo so I could bring it home to try. I never met Doris, my mum's Mum. So having a little routine of hers in our own family rhythm seemed like a wonderful idea. So we saved up the soap ends, and gave it a try.

I had to do a little tweaking and estimating to quantify things like how many soap ends a family might make in 3 months, or how big a small cup or her pie dish might be. But we got there in the end. I was delighted to share the making of it with Little Owlet, and I'm happy to say it worked well. And so we have olive oil scrap soap in our home, stretching our resources further, and creating a beautiful product from old, as my grandmother did. Here we've shared the recipe, as you can find it in our book. It's one that's dear to our hearts. 

MAKE THIS :: Olive Oil Scrap Soap

What you'll need:

1 cup soap ends

1/2 cup olive oil, plus extra for oiling 

soap mould - a small glass baking dish works nicely
1 cup water

STEP 1

Grate the soap ends and place them in a

saucepan with water. Make sure the water just covers the soap. 

STEP 2

Place over a medium heat and stir well until

the soap fragments have dissolved.

STEP 3

Remove from the stove and add olive oil,

stirring well.

STEP 4

Beat well with a whisk and, while the

mixture is still warm, pour it into an oiled

dish or mould.

STEP 5

When the soap block is completely cold,

turn it out onto a board and cut it into

squares.

STEP 6

Leave your new soap bars to harden for

a few days before using. 

........ 

Our book 'A Family Guide to Waste-Free Living' is available in all good bookshops (including ours!), and libraries now. Published by Plum Books and featuring photographs by Natalie Mendham, who also took the first picture in this blog post. 

~ Lauren. xx

unschool monday :: feminism, princesses, dolls and owlets

I'm a feminist. Huz calls himself a feminismist and we endeavour to instil feminist values in our owlets. A necessary measure when you live and raise daughters in a patriarchal society, as we do. The irony that my current job description is probably something like "home duties" isn't lost on me. If anything it highlights the patriarchy that devalues my role as equal partner and full-time educator. But how do we work to instil feminist vales in our owlets? How does that work with unschooling? Last week, Natalie asked: 


"So I have a question... Have Disney Princesses invaded your nest? I have a nearly 4 year old who is princess-crazy. This obsession leads to hours of imaginative play, colouring in, reading and story telling. But conversely there are so many negative associations with the princesses - antifeminism, consumerism, external beauty etc.

Does unschooling embrace any interest? Or would it limit/redirect some?"


Yes, Disney Princesses have invaded our nest from time to time. As has Barbie. The owlets have pocket money that they spend each week on what they like. They have bought themselves Barbie dolls at a garage sale and Princesses on a wander through a department store... I don't love them. They know this. But it isn't about me. We don't go out of our way to buy them or give them as gifts, but if an owlet takes it upon herself to buy Barbie or Princesses, we figure it must be important to her. We encourage her to make her own choices based on the information in front of her. We nurture her interest in a broad sense and use it as an opportunity to provide an ethical and feminist critique.


Little Owlet is particularly enamoured with dolls and princesses of all kinds. She loves Cinderella best of all, I suspect because she also has a thing for shoes. Rather than just watching Disney movies, we read old fairytale versions that are slightly different to the ones she knows. We talk about the characters and what their lives are like, why they've been written to assume certain roles. We look at alternative depictions of the princesses Disney has chosen. We read fairytales with strong female characters, or twisted fairytales. We talk about real life princesses and what it is they do... We play with Barbie and we look at her body and discuss it in context to our own. We talk about her clothes. We talk about who might have made her and how and we imagine what it might be like when Time Team do an archaeological dig in 500 years time and discover a layer of Barbie and Princess dolls.... The owlets spend hours colouring, playing, acting out stories, reading (as Natalie mentioned), and doing puzzles. They know they are not beautifully made, or lovely to hold, but they love to play with dolls of all shapes and sizes, because the game is what's important to them.


We compromise with Blythe. Her body shape is girlish and she has flat feet... and fashion sense in spades. And the owlets LOVE her. They relate to her. They love that each one is so different and can be customised. Saving for Blythe has led to lots of numeracy learning, further discussions about fashion and body image, history and geography discussions... Mastering of ebay... Building... I expect there will be much crafting for Blythe in years to come. A recent trip to the shops to see if Barbie might have something in her wardrobe that Blythe might like to wear turned up a big fat NO. Barbie is very fond of pink shiny lycra... Blythe is not. Blythe isn't into platform stilettos either. The owlets' feminist critique continues to bubble away, helping them question why and how things are marketed the way they are... And OH the questions!! A visit to the toy department is a really interesting and eye-opening visit almost every time. Add to this the fact that we've just bought a business promoting handmade, ethical and natural products and discuss why we care about these products with the owlets, and we have a fairly well rounded response to Disney and Barbie. If we banned them altogether, we might miss the opportunity for those discussions with the owlets. But we show them that there is SO MUCH more choice out there if you shop around and use your imagination... Their fascination with them doesn't last. It fades and gets lost in the message of what they've learnt along the way. But they had a lovely time learning it...


For more on Princesses and feminism, you can't go past Unschool Monday regular, Sazz.
And Shae captured it all beautifully with this post on what she wants her daughters to know. 
Oh, and this fabulous post by Wildecrafted, on Barbie and even some doll customisation. 


*****************
Thanks for reading along with Unschool Monday. If you have a question for me, or one of the other participants on the linkup, ask away! I'm happy to try and answer here next time. If you feel like linking up, it'd be lovely to have you on board and see how unschooling happens at your nest. xx