It's starting to have an effect.

As if breaking* my back again and suffering many many flare ups of the "chronic illness" wasn't a bad enough thing to have to contend with, the supply of luxuries around my house are starting to rapidly diminish.

Or in short

- I have no bubble bath and very little shower gel
- I miss a good steak (though not at the same time as taking a bubble bath)

My body is being washed with some soap I found in the back of a cupboard and while you don't get the interesting read when you're in the bath (what? You don't read the bottles when you're in the bath and wonder what all of those chemicals actually do?) my skin still seems as soft as ever. I do find my skin feeling "tighter" though straight after a wash - and not in a good way.

I am now on the look out for D I Y alternatives - the internet is amazing!

One thing I have struggled with though is shopping - not just because it is physically very difficult to go shopping right now but because while I am managing to reduce my plastic intake by just refusing to buy certain items (oh how I do miss berries - why must they pack fruit in so much plastic?) or by shopping around and only getting things if the packaging is 100% recyclable some things it seems are impossible to get right now without being liberally coated in plastic... meat for one thing.

I can cope with having to buy fresh vegetables and freezing it myself if I want to keep my freezer stocked up on frozen goods but I don't think I am yet able to home a young lamb in the garden (not until I have my vegetable plot built anyway. Even the local butchers (who are very expensive) look at me as if I am insane when I ask if they'll wrap the meat in paper rather than plastic. I guess I'll have to keep looking for this one.

But I can say having to look at everything that goes in your shopping trolley is an amazing way of keeping the cost of shopping low!! It horrifies me to think about how much we used to spend on stuff that
a) we didn't really need
b) and probably wouldn't have noticed if we had forgotten to pick up
c) was mostly priced on how shiny the packaging was.

More when I'm upwardly mobile!!
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*okay perhaps not that melodramatic - my sacroiliac jointkeeps "popping" out of place and requires my wonderful physio to force it back into place [which is more painful than when I really did break it!!]. Keep your fingers crossed for February when I see a specialist to hopefully sort it!!

Kitchen - Stock Check

If you thought the bathroom was full of plastic you'll be amazed at how much plastic you can force into one (rather disorganised) cupboard under the kitchen sink.

The List...

Things I rather like

• Ecover ecological washing up liquid x 3 litres
• Sainsburys Biological Gel Capsules x 900 ml (I know these aren't very good for my task but when my pain levels are high I find these a life saver - no fiddling around with arms that wont work trying to fill the washing machine drawer up with powder)
• Flash Power Mop Cleaning Liquid x 2 litre (another huge life saver on the cripple front, it's so light and easy to use)
• Flash Power Mop cleaning pads (see the cripple excuse above)

Things I could live without

• Bleach x 2 litres
• CIF oven cleaner x 500 ml
• W5 bathroom cleaner x 1 litre
• Grout Cleaner x 500 ml (and adding it here isn't just an excuse to avoid cleaning the bathroom tiles)
• Pledge Soap Cleaner For Wood x 1 litre
• Mr Muscle Cleaner x 750 ml
• Ecover Floor Soap x 1 litre
  

Things I don't use but haven't recycled yet

• Ant stop x 600 ml (if the ants are brave enough to walk through my kitchen they deserve the cake!)
• Sink Unblocker x 1 litre (it smells so nasty!)

This isn't my whole kitchen - this is just one cupboard! If you look around the rest of the room you will see lots more plastic - the fridge must be full of it. Most of this seems to be cleaning material - so it's a case of getting out the lemon and vinegar and cleaning like your great - grandma did! At least now my house wont smell of chemicals.

My two keeps for this room are the Ecover ecological washing up liquid and Sainsburys Biological Gel Capsules. When I've got everything else on track I will start coming up with alternatives for these. But until then I will keep them and hope that the energy I save in using them will mean I will have that extra bit of strength to work harder on the rest.