Live Consciously during the Holidays

How to live consciously even during the festive season?

How to, at the same time, minimize the environmental impact, and not least on to your wallet?

How to make others happy and live consciously at the same time?

These are also the questions that we ask ourselves every day.

Many alternatives exist to start with, or to carry on, in supporting the idea of living consciously even during the festive season.

You can focus on purchasing e.g. eco friendly presents or you can give your close ones gifts of your own production.

Give your friends and acquaintances not just gifts that will stay in the corner, but gifts that will support sustainability, joy or evoke happy memories from receiving them.

To bring you closer to some ideas for gifts supporting the thought of LiveConsciously, we have decided to write some inspiring tips and alternatives down for you. All of them can be used during the upcoming festive season.

Tip 1. Alternative for Present

Many people would rather get gifts such as experiences or long lasting practical products.

While this is surely true, you should not forget that also experiences can be harmful to the environment and to your wallet, and you should try to choose some of those that support sustainability and are environmentally friendly. Even experience can represent some kind of consumption, when instead of a product you will obtain a service, behind which can be hiding something that could cause more damage to the environment than a product from the market.

How can you find the right alternative?

When is your gift the best alternative?

As we live in a world full of offers, it is important to know how to orient responsibly among them. It is often necessary to estimate the kind of a long term impact the chosen service or the product might have on the environment. And that is why we are now trying to find some examples of the right alternatives for presents for you.

For your better visualization, we have added pictures of the below examples for you.

Thanks to your time, effort and creativity, you can make gifts that will not only make you happy by giving them but also will evoke surprise and joy in others. 

Gifts recycled by you:

You can make, knit or tailor from old clothes some new practical and beautiful toys for your kids or four-legged darlings.

Handmade gifts:

• Collect nuts, rose hips,..

• Make honey, jam, vine, spirit or other tasty goodies.

• Also fruits, spices or herbs dried by you can be the right alternative.

• Mixed herbs, for example for tea.

• Jointly baked sweet or salty cakes, deserts, etc.

• Create pictures, drawings, paintings, candles, accessories, boxes.

• Sew pillows, covers,...

• Wax napkins, soaps, creams.

• Hand painted silk scarf.

• Zero waste and eco products.

The world is full of creative ideas, options for everyday use, it only takes a look around and the idea is right before the eyes. Look at what you utilize, use, consume every day, and try to replace that by a product made by yourself. 

Someone, who loves nuts, will surely appreciate a small bag of them, picked from your tree or in your garden.  

If you haven’t got a garden, try to purchase some from your neighbor or so. Surely there is someone from your friends, or someone that they might  know, who offers something similar. In the case that you picked nuts in your own garden, the beneficiary will certainly appreciate that. These presents speak for themselves, they tell about your consciousness and awareness, they show how important it is for you to live healthy and consciously, and that you not only care for the joy of giving but you also care about the environment!

Everyone, who thinks consciously, knows that you give products or services that are healthy and that they are also from your region, perhaps even from the place you were born. They are from a place that you are proud of, and by this way you are also giving them a little piece of yourself. 

There are truly many options, because the gifts of nature are all around us. Every season is hiding in itself beautiful, healthy and natural fruits of the earth. For example the rose hips, you can pick them in your region, then dry them and give them in a bag that you made yourself. In the winter season, they are an ideal gift for your close ones, which you can enjoy even together as a tasty hot tea.

But you can also give for holidays plants that you grow and reproduce. It is truly a lovely gesture.

Gifts from you express your attitude, your thinking or your responsibility towards yourself and others. And also because of that, your right choice becomes an example, a model for future generations, for your kids. You lead them to how they should perceive life, relationships, values and the world around us.

For example, an ideal present from kids to their grandparents can be a flowerpot, which they painted by themselves, with a plant, which they growed.

Tip 2. Alternative for Wrapping Paper

You can replace the wrapping paper by an old paper, e.g. old newspapers, that is collected at home over the time. Eventually you can obtain some from others. You can ask your grandparents for it, who will surely appreciate that you help them eliminate the waste. You do not have to tell them what is the reason behind it. You can bind down the wrapping, made of an old paper, by string or ribbon. 

The founder of HHI says: “Me and my family, for years now, use the same Christmas’s paper bags. Repeatedly we put our presents into them. The kids, but also the adults, know by now which bag belongs to who.”

For those who do not want to use old paper or newspapers, a suitable alternative could be an old fabric, a paper shopping bag used from its inner side, or old scarfs found at home.

Not just in our country, but also around the globe the #Furoshiki method is known, which has got its roots in Japan.

Furoshiki, a wrapping technique, has been a part of Japanese culture for a very long time. The original use of this technique was to create a carry bag. During the Edo period, the Japanese developed a strong culture of bathing. This was a base to a new habit of folding and carrying clothes in a bath towel, which in Japanese is called furoshiki.

The origins of using fabric for packing and/or for transporting materials reaches into the Nara period, which started approximately thousand years before the Edo period. Today, furoshiki has many different uses, such as place setting, for pick-nicks, but also as an accessory or, if the fabric is a nice scarf, it can be a wrapping and a gift in one.

For inspiration, we are adding a picture guide on how to tie the furoshiki cloth; this guide was obtained on the web site of The Ministry of the Environment in Japan.

 video from furoshiki technik Furoshiki.

 

Tip 3. Alternative for Christmas Tree

We have mentioned several times alternative solutions on how to use the Christmas tree. People, who after using the tree for two weeks do not put it into compost or donate it as animal feed, can choose from other options. For example a tree with roots, which can be planted after holidays, or you can also rent a tree. 

At home, we prefer a tree with roots, which we keep for a few years and after that time we donate it to a school or a preschool for planting, so others can enjoy it too.

Tip. 4. Shopping for Gifts

If you haven’t got the opportunity or the time to create and to make your own gifts, that you would give to your friends and close ones, you could go shopping. 

Some do like the pre-Xmas shopping and rush, they are a part of their life. They like to get inspired by the selection, they like the cold weather, they like to look for new ideas. They enjoy spending money they have earned and to purchase products, services or experiences for their loved ones. 

We do not say “no” even to this, but do not forget to live consciously while shopping, think consciously and do not get carried away by extreme consumption. Think about what you are supporting by this and why you are buying certain things. There are still many lovely shops where you can find a lot of regional, handmade and locally produced goods. 

We recommend to those, who like to shop, to be inspired by e.g. packaging free shops or shops where you need to bring your own shopping bags. 

We recommend visiting shops such as “Second hand”, colloquially called sekáč, where you will surely find even clothes with original tags, because someone just bought them but never wore them.  Perhaps someone got something as a gift, which did not fit or was in the wrong colour, and that was the reason why these clothes were never used.

Certainly this happens in this world. Consequently people then bring these clothes to collecting containers, second hands in order to give them another chance to be worn, to extend their life.

Second hand does not mean used by another person, but it means bought by another person, eventually never used or unneeded. It is a place where you can surely find even pieces that are no longer in production - they are rare, collectable or treasures. 

For example craft markets are amazing markets. Here, you can personally meet not just the craftsmen, but you can find out where products are coming from and how they were made. If you have friends, colleagues or acquaintances who like to bake, cook or sew, you can also buy products from them. It is one of the forms of how to contribute in environmental protection, to support relationships and last, but not at least, to live consciously even during the festive season. 

And if you could all meet together around a table, make sure the shopping for this occasion was done in a packaging free shop.

The majority leads a fast and very stressful life, so the most valuable is your time. That is why we think that one of the best gifts these days is just the precious time of yours. 

Time, which you give to your close ones and friends. Moments, which you spend together. Precious time, which you allow yourself to enjoy in the circle of the loved ones during the most beautiful holidays of the year, without unnecessary rush and waste. Time, which seems to stop at that moment and connect everybody together. Did you know that who shoppes less, has more time for common baking, reading, drawing, wrapping and other activities? Holidays are also about you to be together and not about you to hurry after something that you will give to someone.

If you would ask your close ones what they really want you might find out the big truth, that their biggest wish is to be together, with people important to them, with people they feel safe with and loved by them.

Our common wish is that you will put less strain on yourself and on your surroundings.

Merry and happy holidays from our Live Consciously team.

P.S.: Don’t forget to Live Consciously - Žiť Vedomo, behave responsible every day, put less strain on yourself and your environment.