When I’m feeling overwhelmed probably isn’t the time to try this. But when I’m in control and feeling fairly organised, I can make good decisions about what I can do to simplify my life. These decisions can then form actions that line up with my personal values.
Clear as mud? Let me give an example. Years ago, I made a decision to simplify the way I cleaned my hair. Most shampoos and conditioners are loaded with all sorts of weird chemicals and I wasn’t keen to keep putting them on my scalp, considering that the skin is the largest organ in the body and does soak up at least some of what’s put on it.
It did take some time to find exactly what worked for me. Many years before I’d washed my hair with a ‘green’ laundry gel I used to make. It had soap, washing soda and borax in it. Borax? Hmmmmm. Not this time. I was looking for something simpler this time. I tried washing with bicarbonate of soda then rinsing with watered-down lemon juice. It worked okay but didn’t really resonate with me. Eggs are a great conditioner, but a bit too messy to be an everyday go-to soution. Then I tried normal soap to clean the hair followed by a dessertspoon of white vinegar in a couple of cups of water as a rinse then letting the shower water run to wash out the vinegar.
After a week of washing my hair with normal soap and cheap-as-chips food-grade white vinegar (which is actually clear), I thought I had the perfect method for keeping my hair clean. Seven years later, I still think so. I’m grateful I spent that bit of time researching my options and working out something simple that would work for me. Every time I go to the supermarket I save myself all the angst (and expense) of looking at the evergrowing shelves of shampoos, conditioners, hair colours, mousses, clarifiers, waxes, gels and whatever else is around these days. Maybe once a year I venture to that aisle to hunt down some hairspray, which I do use occasionally on a windy day. Otherwise, with a sixpack of soap and a bottle of vinegar, I’m set for eons.
The vinegar lives in the pantry and I decant into a squeezy bottle that once held mayonnaise. The biggest addition to the bathroom is a cup for mixing water with the vinegar.
Soap and vinegar simplified how I wash my hair. But making the decision not to put the colouring chemical cocktail into my hair simplified my life even more. Every six weeks when my roots grow out, they’re the same gorgeous brown-silver combo as the rest of my hair so they never need hiding. I do exactly nothing. Nowadays you can get colours that don’t have quite the same awful chemicals in them, but there’s still the time you have to take to buy the products and do the dyeing.
What I did with my hair many years ago I am now doing with food. I’ve simplified flavourings down to some basics that I can mix and match. It’s an interesting exercise and it means that in some of those aisles where there are 6,000 different packet sauces I can walk by, confident that two or three single-ingredient products and general pantry staples can do a similar job. It may take a little research and a little extra time for my first effort. But this way, I know what goes into my food.