Day 17

Last night I was absolutely kaput. I’d been to the gym and spent probably longer in the sauna than I should have. I came home, had my glass of ACV water and needed a half hour to decompress. Mrgh.

After dinner though I finally decided I really needed to tackle the kitchen cupboards. Since I knew I didn’t have much energy I decided to tackle the worst offender first, where I would see the biggest difference. This is a cupboard next to the oven where we store all our condiments and oil as well as all our plastic Tupperware. It’s also an annoying cupboard since it sits in a corner and so half of it is not directly accessible since it is behind the other cupboard in the 90 degree bend. I had to stick my whole head in there to see what was going on and it was grim. Stuff gets pushed back into this area that you can never reach. It means we are always looking for the lids to our plastic containers that have drifted into the no-go zone.

It is also very deep and when we go out and buy new sauces etc we put them in front and the rest gets pushed back which made for an interesting timeline of sorts as I started to clear them out. There were maybe 30 bottles of stuff in there. The back layer was already fluffy and gross. I’d been complaining to my guy for weeks that it smelled in there and now I know why. I also tossed all the containers that I couldn’t find matching lids to as well as an assortment of take-away containers we insist on keeping. We were left with about 6 plastic containers and 4 condiments (my new jar of coconut oil, grapeseed oil (more on that just now), chutney bottle and balsamic vinegar). I also have two vases I was trying to find a home for since they’d been living on my counter space. I used these to try and create a wall between the accessible part of the cupboard and the rest. I then explained to my boy that from now on we were not going to put anything in that space anymore.

This morning I loaded up all that plastic and cardboard (we still had the packaging for sets of glasses we’ve owned for almost 3 years!). I’ll be stopping at the recycling depot over lunch to drop them off. I’m keen to get it all done as my mother is visiting this weekend and I don’t want stacks of rubbish by our front door.

Lastly, I had an aha moment at Pick n pay last night. I’d gone in to find vinegar, soda and carrier oil (I’d been thinking of plain old vegetable). The carrier oil is for the essential oils, I had been tempted to also buy them from Faithful to Nature. Wow, Pick N Pay had so many different types of oil! I was properly impressed! Besides the usual; vegetable, canola, olive etc they had more interesting ones as well; Grapeseed (bought this one), Avocado, Apricot Kernel and Macadamia nut. It was also a lot cheaper than those listed on the faithful to nature website and careful checking of the labels showed them to contain no additives or preservatives so also pure oil. Made me realise again though that impulse buying is not good. It was good to wait a bit since Ive seen a cheaper alternative now.

Oh and since I enjoy illustrator, Ive been playing around with the design of the pretty labels to give my new products.