Monday - 01/11/2021 — We live in an age of irresponsible excess. My son is something of a role model for me since he lives in a completely self-contained van. I read years ago about a visitor from India who was asked by reporters what she would remember most about her trip to the USA. “The size of your garbage cans,” she said without any hesitation whatsoever.
A place for everything and everything in its place. I heard that so many times when I was growing up, but I am unfortunately far from that ideal here in my own house.
Still, I am doing small things, many of which you already know about if you’ve followed my FB posts for the past four or five years. One I haven’t mentioned before is toothpaste. Toothpaste tubes are not recyclable in any way, shape, or form. So why, I ask you, must we go through toothpaste as if it were in limitless supply?
I have two pictures of toothpaste here. One shows how most people load up their toothbrushes each morning and night. (At least I hope they’re brushing their teeth twice a day). All that goo, all that foam, all the extra water needed to flush it away and rinse afterwards.
The other picture is my toothbrush with the amount of toothpaste I use each morning. Still enough foam to clean thoroughly, not much water needed to rinse, good enough. And SO many fewer empty toothpaste tubes to go to the dump.
My evening routine is to brush with a paste made of baking soda and hydrogen peroxide (recommended by my dental hygienist). Same sort of benefits—good cleansing, little rinsing. And NO tubes. Once I’ve used up all the toothpaste in my house, I’m switching 100% to this method.
