Guilty pleasures

[ailbhe]

My worst one has to be baths.

Second to that is buying food, usually bagels, from mainstream supermarkets, especially Tesco, which I've finally caved in and done this month. Not a whole grocery shop, but bits and pieces.

And first-hand toys, especially ones with plastic in, especially if they don't offset the evil by being from Oxfam or UNICEF or similar.

I'm not really ashamed of any of it, but I do recognise it as being in direct opposition to my ideals, and I try to minimise it. Except the baths. I've had a bath (varying depths, but more than a shower) most days this past fortnight.

What do you do that you know you oughtn't?

Comments

[ai731.livejournal.com]

Food from packets rather than real food. Not often, but there are a couple of "full of salt and fat and MSG" packet foods that unfortunately fall in my comfort food category, and so I buy and eat them more often than I should. Taras and I have a "once a month" rule for foods that we like but aren't good for us or for the environment - we're 'allowed' to have them once a month. I fail to stick to that regularly. He's made an exception for chips, and is allowed them once a week because he's tried to give them up many, many times and failed.

I also feel quite bad about how much imported beer (from England, Germany, The Netherlands, etc.) we buy, because it has to be shipped here using masses of fossil fuel, when we have perfectly good, local organic beer available. But we *like* Old Speckled Hen, and Fiddler's Elbow, etc., and I have the added excuse that I *miss* them...

[ailbhe]

I don't feel too bad about our packaging but I'm sure I will. It's all True Food goods, which helps. And even our recycling bin only needs to be emptied once every four weeks, so it can't be that much, really.

I just honestly don't feel bad about it. I probably "should" but I also eat bananas perfectly happily. And avocados.

I don't have any rules about unhealthy foods, because given what we eat normally we can probably afford the odd uranium cookie, honestly, but I do need to work out a better way of minimising my labour in re baking while still having the cakes, biscuits, bagels etc I feel I need available. I have a real cyclical need for carbs and chocolate.

I still want to get a smaller wheelie bin for our landfill bin but the council won't play ball. I guess the other simple option is for me to stick a label on it with the "last emptied" date and try to maximise that timespan...

Bathing?

[sinboy.livejournal.com]

Is this a water price issue? It's not something I deal with in my city unless we're in drought conditions.

Re: Bathing?

[ailbhe]

We have an unmetered water supply, but the environmental cost of filtering and heating water is one that's easy to minimise by not running and sitting in unnecessary deep baths.

Re: Bathing?

[mollydot.livejournal.com]

I was about to feel guilty about the big bath we've just had installed, but then I remembered it'll be well water. And geothermally heated, so that cost won't be as bad as many either.

Re: Bathing?

[mollydot.livejournal.com]

OTOH, I'll be making up for that by not being able to use public transport.

Re: Bathing?

[ai731.livejournal.com]

*nod* We've just made the same trade off. We've had to buy a car, as there is no public transit out here, but since we can now buy almost all our food from extremely local sources (most of it <50 miles), our food miles have dropped dramatically. So hopefully it evens out.

Installing goethermal is something we're going to look into soon - it's either that or wood-fired heating.

Re: Bathing?

[baratron.livejournal.com]

Can you put small people in the bath after you've finished? Use the same water to wash several humans?

Alternatively, use a bucket to bail it out and water plants with it, or use it to flush the toilet with?

Apparently you can actually get plumbing now that takes the run off from your bath/shower and uses it instead of clean water to flush the loo. I want.

Re: Bathing?

[ailbhe]

I usually have my short, hot baths after the girls are in bed, and in summer I do use bathwater to flush the loo (we got a little siphon hosepipe specially) and today I used my cold bathwater to wash a huge rug/carpet.

But in general, it's very wasteful. We generally use a bath for more than one person, but I have this thing about luxurious hot baths before bed.

I'm wondering whether I'll use them less after we turn the heating on on 1 October.

Re: Bathing?

[ailbhe]

I would LOVE greywater flushing, yes. LOVE LOVE. But it's apparently tricky to make sure your pipes don't get all germy and ick, using used water full of skin cells and things.

[kcobweb.livejournal.com]

I was just thinking - for me, it's got to be food too. I've been thinking a lot about high fructose corn syrup and trying to cut it out (or at least, *down*). (In the U.S., the Corn Refiners Association has started running these horrible commercials about the glories and benefits of HFCS and how gosh-darn *good* it is for you......) At the grocery store this morning, I was trying to be good about reading labels - but I still got a few things that have it. They are things we love (or Elena loves), and I am just not willing to cut them completely. I'm just going to try to be aware of it and try not to eat too much of those products.

Unless it's potato chips. Or crackers. Or anything else salty that comes in a bag or box..... Mmmmm. :)

[ailbhe]

Sugar contains calories, which are necessary to sustain life, ergo HFCS MUST be good for you?

[kcobweb.livejournal.com]

They mostly are a set-up of 2 people - one of whom refuses X food b/c it has HFCS, and "you know what they say about that" - and the other person says sunnily, "No, what do they say??" Person A is silent, stunned, speechless. Person B: "That it has the same number of calories as sugar or honey?" And Person A is still staring at the ground.... um, uh.

So there you go. What else would you need to know?

[dreamalynn.livejournal.com]

I think that their point is that there's not much difference between liquid sugar refined from corn, liquid or granulated sugar refined from cane and liquid or granulated sugar refined from beets. They're all sucrose, all refined from a plant material. In that regard, their right.

I've seen a lot of stuff about how HCFS is chemically very different from cane sugar, for one reason or another, and I've yet to determine how much of that is legitimate and how much of it is about pushing an agenda.

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

Your guilty pleasures are not very evil.

What are mine...also baths, though I don't have time very often :(

Cakes, biscuits, etc etc etc - mainly because I eat them at work in between meals which doesn't do my teeth much good. However, in a similar line to "at least theft is not as bad as murder" - at least I've given up drinking fruit juice instead of water all day now.

Getting the bus when I could feasibly cycle.

Oh yes chillis. Cannot sustainably grow them here, still want to eat them. And fish, because it is all endangered but I cannot stop wanting sushi.

[ailbhe]

We have access to sustainably farmed organic fish. It's at sustainably farmed organic prices, mark you.

It costs a fair bit more than red meat.

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

Ooh, that sounds good. Where is it from?

[ailbhe]

We get it from True Food, who get it from Graig Farm, but I don't recall where GF get it.

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

Thanks! I will have a dig when I have some spare energy...

[tiggsybabes.livejournal.com]

I buy luxury treats to put in baths & wallow. I have some new bubble bath coming tomorrow morning in the ocado shopas a treat, but it's organic, so hey, that's ok, right? *g*

I did buy Kate some Woolies Worth it t-shirts for a pound each last year, but can't bring myself to do it again, as I just can't see how they can make them for that price. I looked at them last week when I was in there buying her a school leotard.

As I broke my GF diet yesterday with home-made apple & cinnamon muffins, I had the remaining 2 slices of pizza tonight. That is a definite no-no & no doubt I will be complaining in lj tomorrow about being unwell. Tasted good though :-P

[ailbhe]

The feelings of "got a bargain, was very frugal" and "bought a sweatshop item" are in direct opposition, yes. I hate that. I'm trying to like charity shops again. I used to love them.

[tiggsybabes.livejournal.com]

Charity shops are fab for Holly's age group, but not so for Kate. Holly doesn't need that much new or new to us, as has Kate's outgrown things though. I love my favourite one for books & videos :)

[dreamalynn.livejournal.com]

I wonder if those pound t-shirts are sweatshop labour or if they're a loss leader (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loss_leader). Any ideas?

[ailbhe]

Both, quite likely. Garment production *in general* is a very nasty industry. So's computer manufacture.

[dreamalynn.livejournal.com]

Oh yes. Computer manufacture at least has the benefit of not allowing for home piecework, which is even more worrisome than sweatshops, in some ways.

[ailbhe]

And then there's the rape war over - is it tantalum? I can never remember.

[dreamalynn.livejournal.com]

I'm completely in the dark about this. *goes to search*

[ailbhe]

nooooo. Not at bedtime. Search during daylight.

[dreamalynn.livejournal.com]

It's still daylight here. Sadly.

[tiggsybabes.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure. The quality was good, the t-shirts are still fine a year later, but are no too small for Kate. Holly will wear them next summer possibly.

[dreamalynn.livejournal.com]

Sadly, quality is no longer a reliable indicator.

[esmeraldus-neo.livejournal.com]

Very long, very hot showers.

[pauamma]

Making faces. Confusing people.

[sidheag.livejournal.com]

Baths also. And buying sparkling mineral water. We like it, so there ;-/ I have given up buying still mineral water. (And yes, we have tried a sodastream and chilled tap water. It isn't the same - the bubbles aren't the right size, or something...)

[browngirl.livejournal.com]

Doughnuts, junk food in general. Tropical fruits; I'm from the Caribbean, plantains taste like the good parts of my childhood.Taxis rather than public transit. And the people who say I should give up my books to a library are probably right, but I still hate them for saying it.

[ruthi.livejournal.com]

Taxis rather than public transit, yes.

[radegund.livejournal.com]

Hmmm. Sad pig. We have a tradition now of having a piggy lunch with K of a Monday, which is lovely, as K eats such an infinitesimal subset of foods that it's really quite startlingly rare to share a meal with her. I found organic rashers in M&S, but we all thought they tasted vile, whereas we really like Shaw's.

Also, Maya Gold. But I've cut right down. This is easier than it might be, given that Fiachra still gets (what I presume is) a caffeine high if I have more than a tiny amount of chocolate.

Other than that, I'm having a hard time coming up with pleasures, as such. Owning a car, shopping in Superquinn, consistently failing to get up and running with cloth nappies, etc. - these things are more about staving off total death of cope than anything else.

But, oh, brightly coloured children's clothes, bought new. For the dyes and pesticides, as well as the labour.

I definitely don't count baths, because when I'm having them regularly I'm in so much less pain that I consider them genuinely therapeutic.

[ruthi.livejournal.com]

Oh, nothing big.
Living in a first-world country.
Having several computers.
Owning lots of stuff.

Breathing.

[the0lady.livejournal.com]

... and eating and sleeping in a bed and having central heating and a job with a bank account and pensions and not being a warzone rape victim and redaing and having medication and riding in cars and shaving my legs and makeup and and and ...

[ex-serenejo.livejournal.com]

Eat meat/dairy/eggs.

Interrupt people.

Take a bus when it's in easy walking distance.

Lie.

[naath.livejournal.com]

Baths. Although I don't have that many.

Cheap clothes from Tesco when I'm too lazy to spend the effort looking for clothes that are more ethical, not as if I don't have enough money to buy better clothes.

Food, in fact pretty much everything about food from too much 'bad' (non fair-trade, non organic, over packaged) food to days spent without eating anything to not being assertive enough so that "eating out" always means "eating what someone else wanted and I dislike and that is probably unethical" and eating more meat than I think is "right" because of LAZYNESS.

Ordering shinystuff from the US rather than going with things that are available in the UK. Especially eg; nice yarn for knitting with.