Three months in!

So, we're 3 months in to the project and its gone really quickly!

I'll start this mid-point round up by being honest - we've hit a bit of a wall with our Live LAGOM journey. We are in the process of buying our first house and after a few bumps in the road (including having to pull out of our offer) we're still in home limbo. As a result, we haven't made the most use of several of our products as we dont have the space to install them properly where we are.

We're currently in rented shared housing, so its been tricky to get everyone on board. We've not really seen any reduction in bills as only some of the household are really behind the project, but have been forward planning for when we're in our own space to make sure we are more LAGOM when we're not fighting an uphill battle!

We've also not really made much progress on growing our own, partly due to time and partly due to not wanting to transport lots of growing plants in the move! I used to grow a lot in our greenhouse, so we're looking forward to the grow-your-own workshop coming up next week to give us the kick to get started!

That said, we have been making lots of small bits of LAGOM progress......we've been recycling more (particularly food waste), have implemented some of the cosy home ideas following the fantastic workshop (there are cushions everywhere!) and recently replaced our old washing machine with a more energy efficient model.

We've been taking the "not too much, just the right amount" attitude to decluttering our possessions, and have been steadily streamlining what we own ready for our eventual move. This has included taking a bag of old phones to electronics recycling at our local supermarket, donating 4 bin bags of clothes & accessories to Leeds Community Clothes Exchange, donating some of my unused fabric stash to a friend starting a sustainable clothing business and sorting through our many bookcases and donating the unwanted books to charity/friends/family. Spring cleaning is one of my favourite activities to make yourself feel good - there is nothing more therapeutic than getting rid of things you no longer need. I'll never be a minimalist (no Kon Marie method here!) but we're feeling a lot lighter knowing we just have less stuff to worry about.

We've also been eating our way through the cupboards and freezer to use up our supplies - many cakes have been made to use up baking ingredients and meal planning from the freezer has also been going well! The glass Korken jars have been great for this, as we can clearly see what we have and mean we're not buying more than we need each week saving us a bit of money. I've been meal planning too, making sure leftovers are used up and anything not eaten in the evening is boxed up and eaten for lunch the next day or put in the freezer.

Now that the weather is turning we've been able to start drying more things outside, avoiding using the energy eating tumble dryer! The 'sock-topus' in particular has been put to good use to dry our socks!

I've made the decision to avoid disposable plastic items as much as possible too. My office has a water cooler with disposable cups which is a terrible waste of resources. Instead, I invested in a cool bottle to keep on my desk to drink from throughout the day - meaning I don't waste plastic and make sure I'm drinking enough water. Win win! After the move we'll be upgrading all of our plastic storage items to glass too, which should be more durable and encourage us to be less disposable.

So to round up - although we've not been able to make all of the changes we'd planned by this point, we've made lots of small improvements to help us on the LAGOM journey. Most importantly, we know what we need to do when we're in our own space, so we'll have a running start at setting up a sustainable home for the future.

(image credit Katie Abey)