Reviewed by Rama Gaind.
By Julia Watkins, Hardie Grant, $34.99.
Simply Living Well is a versatile guide – a gem – when it comes to creating a natural, low-waste home.
The back cover blurb aptly describes its contents. For every area of your home – kitchen, cleaning, wellness, bath and body and garden – these simple ideas will help you eliminate wasteful packaging, harmful ingredients and disposable items. Chock-full of practical checklists, tips and time-honoured traditions, this inspirational guide has everything you need to make your home healthier and more sustainable.
Watkins says getting rid of some things made it easier to get rid of other things, so much so that living with less stuff and consuming more mindfully became a way of life.
She hopes this book will serve as a bridge between the can-do ethos of generations past and the earth-conscious mindfulness many of us seek to capture and bring into our lives today. It celebrates simplifying, slowing down, working with your hands, making more, buying less, valuing quality over quantity, and living frugally, self-sufficiently and harmoniously with the natural world.
By the end, you’ll know how to use simple ingredients, plants from your backyard, and herbs from your garden to clean a grass stain, sooth a headache and stave off a cold. You’ll know how to make your own cleaning supplies, natural remedies and bath and body products.
As well, find out about the boundless potential for reuse of one food scrap – eggshells. Learn the unbelievable ways for repurposing!
Practical checklists outline easy swaps (instead of disposable sponges, opt for biodegradable sponges or Swedish dishcloths; choose a bamboo toothbrush over a plastic one) and sustainable upgrades for common household tools and products. Projects include scrap apple cider vinegar, wool dryer balls, kitchen bowl covers and cloth produce bags, non-toxic dryer sheets, all-purpose citrus cleaner, herbal tinctures and balms, and much, much more.
The 271-page hardcover is jam-packed with beautifully coloured illustrations … as you discover the art of living well sustainably and reducing our footprint for generations to come.
