On the difficulty of being a discerning and conscientious consumer when you have health needs

I was going great with the solid moisturiser bars until winter struck and with it, ezcema flare-ups.
I did push on through but my skin was just not getting enough hydration, so I have had to go back to my plastic bottle of sensitive skin moisturer made from petrochemical ingredients, plus my plastic tubes of body moisturiser with the urea from petrochemical ingredients.

I will keep trying though!

Thrift - maybe it's genetic

We all laughed when my friend's brother, at their dad's funeral, talked about how thrifty the dad was - how he refused to chuck out his favourite armchair, and bought toilet paper in bulk. I laughed because my mum is a lot like that.

My mum used to by loo paper in cartons of 72. They rested in her spare room alongside the  equally bulk cartons of laundry powder and dishwashing liquid. (In a civil defence situation she might run out of drinking water but she'd have a spotless bum.) And she uses a pastry brush old enough to remember my first teen-angst tantrum.

So, if the new undies I bought for TLM turn out to be too small ( apparently Asian 7-8 year olds are the same size as Kiwi 4-5 year olds) - is it over the top to sew little scrap fabric inserts into the sides to make them big enough?

Our battery collection

For months now, I've been avoiding putting our used up batteries into the household rubbish - because somewhere, I read or heard that those things are full of heavy metals and ought to be disposed of in a special way. So I hung up a plastic shopping bag to collect them, fully intending to find out where they should go and then taking them there.

The bag has gotten pretty heavy by now, and the boy voiced fears that it can't be healthy having a big bag full of toxic thingamies hanging around in the kitchen. So I finally got around to going on the 'Net to find out what I'm supposed to do with it.

And it turns out that there is nowhere nearby that recycles them.

So into the kitchen bin they go.