Kezia Neusch - The Green Edit: Home: Easy tips for everyday sustainable living

Thank you for picking up this book. Maybe you are skimming through it while standing in a bustling shop, bringing it home as a gift for someone or working your way through the pages yourself . Whichever person you are, thank you for wanting to look at your home and way of life in a new light. Welcome to a journey that may last the rest of your life, and one that I think youre going to love.

Now, a confession: I didnt find it easy to edit my home in a green way, but I did love every step and I wouldnt change a thing about what I did. More than creating a list of products to buy, things to do, or the different ways you need to cut down on or switch to new things, this process is about a shift in our mindsets. Its a process of letting go of some of the things you love, of considering how you could change the way you do things, then slowly finding new approaches that you might find you prefer to the old ways.

I have a close friend who was attempting to lead a zero-waste lifestyle long before it became a hashtag, and definitely before it had any hint of cool. Her goal was to create no rubbish in every area of her life to put nothing in the bin and bring nothing into her home that had to leave again destined for landfill. Whenever she brought something into her home, shed make sure she could either recycle it, compost it, or bury it in her garden at the end of its useful life. And, at first, I never quite understood it.

I suppose some part of me was intrigued and thought it was noble, but ultimately I thought she was choosing a hobby in life. I thought she just liked that way of living. One night, as we were making dinner together in her home, I scooped out a carton of sour cream into a bowl and found myself standing in her little kitchen holding the plastic container in my hand, not wanting to be caught. I looked around quickly: was there a bin?! What did I do with the carton? Did I need to take it away with me? I poked my head inside a cupboard You can put it in the box in there, for recycling. Busted. Shed caught my clueless looks. I didnt think she was crazy, but at the time I thought that she definitely did things differently.

My own journey started from a different place. After having my first child, I was a stay-at-home mum, but also working running a baking business from our tiny kitchen. One day, I stumbled through the front door, baby in tow, with the weekly food shop and plonked it all down on the kitchen table. Tired, I breathed out a done-for-another-week sigh, as I sat down and ignored putting it all away. And I just looked at it. It was a sea of plastic so much so that I couldnt even see our food. Instead, I saw plastic around vegetables, plastic supporting food, plastic tying fruit together, plastic sealing things, plastic labelling things, plastic plastic everywhere.

Id already read about the environmental damage caused by food being packaged in plastic and was starting to question its potential effect on our health.

I grew up in a home very focused on using food as a tool for health and I have always kept that value close to my heart. It led me to always choose food for myself and my family that was beneficial to our health in every way. I knew I had to make a change to how I shopped for food, but I also knew that we had a very rigid grocery budget to work with. Honestly, the idea of reinventing our shopping habits in an economical way to what was, at the time, radically different to the habits we were used to, felt totally overwhelming. I wasnt ready to give up having a rubbish bin in my home.

When I was 12, my dad shared a fact with me that changed both of our lives. We were delving into the stash of chocolate that was kept in the high kitchen cupboard, out of reach. He told me about how much chocolate was likely made by slaves. I was shocked. That cupboard had held a secret story. That night, we agreed that we would never again buy or eat chocolate if we didnt know that it had come from somewhere where people were properly taken care of. It was one of my first interactions with thinking about how each thing that we bring into our homes has a story before it gets to us; and after it leaves us, too. Ive turned down a lot of chocolate since then, and the decision to think about the before and after life of products has slowly led to changes in other areas of my life over the years.

It also brought home another truth to me: that Im not entitled to everything in life. Chocolate is a luxury, not something that is truly needed. I recognised that if our need for chocolate surpassed the importance of ensuring that people were not being exploited in the production of what was for us a treat, we really needed to shift our priorities and definition of needs.

So, back in my kitchen, staring at that mountain of plastic, I took my first step towards making a change. Being greener doesnt happen at once, but we can all take a first step. Id heard local people talk about a veggie box service, so I sat down with my laptop to find out what it was and sign up. I didnt really know what I was doing. Not getting to choose exactly which vegetables I would receive, and only getting what was in season felt a bit scary and completely out of my comfort zone. It was certainly not convenient. I mean, was it going to work for us, or work for our lower-than-average budget? I didnt know, but what I did know was that the plastic mountain wasnt working for us, and that this would be food with less plastic, fewer food miles and would have been saved from wastage, so it felt like a good place to start. A lot of my familys green journey has panned out like that not really knowing if or how something is going to work but knowing that we were up for trying.

Sometimes things work, sometimes we have to find another route, but keeping it simple and having the freedom to express how we feel has helped us feel empowered to try things and make so many changes that all add up to a greener way of life.

Honestly, that veggie box took some adjusting to. We had to shape our lives a bit differently. It didnt come on the right (read: easy) day for our schedule. It didnt always have the right (read: what we were used to) foods in it. It didnt always leave room in our food budget for the other things we were accustomed to having. We had a choice: go back to plastic, find another way, or find a way forward with this veg box.

Even though it was inconvenient and a little more than wed normally spend on produce, we knew we were moving away from making convenience our number one goal. Instead, we worked out what we could cut from the edges of our usual shop to make the numbers work. We found ways to eat more fruit and veg, so the extra spend in that area still fitted within our budget. We switched our usual meals around and found new things to cook. We worked out how to meal-plan with random veggies. Quickly, it began to feel normal and natural. I got into a routine of picking up the box, delving inside, letting the contents inspire a recipe, googling ingredients and what to do with them, shopping for the rest of what we needed, then using it all up.

Within just a few short months that scary box didnt seem complicated and unknown, inconvenient and abnormal. Pushing through the hurdles for what it