Weekly diary #38: I bought all zero waste groceries

Hi! Great that you’re here again. It has been a lovely, sunny week. The past week I bought ‘new’ secondhand shoes, was denied for a plasma donation and bought some groceries all zero waste. Want to read along? Here’s weekly diary #38.

Thursday

School started at 11:45 AM and so I could sleep till late and that makes me happy. Classes only lasted till 14:45PM so it was a short day. I brought leftovers from yesterday’s dinner to school. That’s an easy zero waste tip: always save all your leftovers from dinner and eat them the next day for lunch. Put in your own reusable lunch box and tadaa, you’re done. After classes I did stay in school to work on some exams. Now that I do this a lot, I am well on track. The weather was very sunny today and that always gets in me in a good mood. Once back home I cooked myself a simple vegan meal and went to handball practice. It’s the last practice before a holiday of two weeks, Sunday is our last game. Once back home I went to bed but decided to let my phone downstairs and not take it with me to bed. I want to make this a new habit because I tend to look at my phone still when I go to bed. I am addicted. Luckily I have an alarm and so I don’t even need my phone in the bedroom. It’s one that runs on water! Cool, right? At dad’s I don’t have an alarm yet and so that bring me in a dilemma. I don’t want to buy anything (even if it’s secondhand) but I don’t want to have my phone in my bedroom either. I don’t know what to do yet.

Friday

Because of my train times I’m always very early in class. I’m usually there at 8:09AM even though class starts at 8:30AM. And at one point I was even scared today if people would show up or not. Eventually 4 others did show and we had class with 5 people. It helped me a lot because you can ask more questions. After this one class I went home, let the weekend begin! At 2PM I had an appointment for my first laser treatment to remove my armpit hair. I was so nervous! But eventually the pain was fairly okay because I expected it to be worse. I also saw some amazing secondhand shoes on Vinted today. I bought them right away because I had been looking for shoes like these for a while now. Simple heels which I can wear with every outfit. Secondhand shoes, great! For 25 euros. I always ask people to send it to me plastic free and it usually works, just like this time. There weren’t many fun classes in the gym tonight so I decided to an Urban Yoga class.

Saturday

I worked another full day, from 7AM till 17PM. At work I saw that I missed a goodbye-event from one of my colleagues. That was yesterday. Sh*t, I felt really guilty for missing it. However, I couldn’t change it anymore. After work I went to the market in Enschede. I made a deal with mom. She gives me money so that I can do my own groceries and cook myself since I’ve gone vegan and she, my brother and stepfather did not. I decided to do these groceries as plastic free as I can since I have choices myself now. I went to the stand of a local, organic farm but I was too late, it closed at 17:00PM. And so I decided to go to one of the other stands. Not organic, but plastic free. Update: months later I learned that it’s more important to buy organic than package free. Want to learn more about that? Read more about it here. I tried to buy things from The Netherlands since local food is very sustainable but it didn’t all work out. I bought cauliflower (Netherlands), spinach (Netherlands), leek (it didn’t said so where it came from), parsnip (also no idea) and two sweet potatoes (from South-Afrika). This cost me 5,50 euros and it can serve me two meals. For dinner I boiled and fried the cauliflower, threw in some spinach and curry herbs. I added some applesauce and it was a lovely meal. The shoes that I ordered yesterday came in already and they fit me perfectly!

Sunday

The alarm ran at 8:30AM, I was a referee for two handball games. Someone else couldn’t make it, that’s why I did two. It feels good to be able to help and make sure these children get to play a handball game. Afterwards I went home again for an hour because if I stay for too long in the sports-hall I get a bad headache. But after an hour I got back to play my own handball game with my team. We lost by 15-14 which sucked big time. We are listed 10/11 this season. I guess first class is just a little too high for us. At night we went to dinner. We decided to go to dinner with the team to celebrate the season. A lot of players are quitting next year, which sucks. We ate at Senzasia, a restaurant in Enschede. It was an all you can eat concept so that there is something for everybody. I had enough vegan choices and it was a good night. After dinner some of us als went to the Fun-fair again. That was fun!

Monday

A new school week and my plan for this week is to finish all my exams because I have fun things planned for the weekend and the deadlines are on the 17th of April. I had school quite late and so when I got there I was full of energy. I had class and worked on my exams afterwards. Once home I went to the gym. I did a short abs attack class because I had muscle pain still. Once home I threw in some fries in the oven and took a quick shower because I didn’t have much time. My first plasma donation was at 6PM. I switched from donating blood to plasma because the blood bank really needed that more. But, I didn’t pass the test they do before every donation. My iron levels were too low. Strange, that has never happened before. But it became clear quite quickly why this is so. Normally there’s 4 months in between every donation, since I gave blood. Your iron levels need that time to recover. But since I switched to plasma I didn’t wait this 4 months, even though I have donated blood not too long ago. I can come back to donate plasma in 4 months. I was a little bit disappointed.

Tuesday

I woke up in a hurry! Overslept! Sh*t, I had set the alarm wrong, at the time that I had to be at school. I got dressed quickly, had no breakfast, missed my first class and started the day quite hectic. Once at school my second class was cancelled … Well, since I was at school already I decided to work on my exams. And my boyfriend had an important resit today and so I was planning to stay anyway. I made some good progress on my exams and he passed his! Once back home I went straight to the gym again to do an XCORE class. Back from the gym I made some dinner with the things I had bought at the market on Saturday. I tried to make fries from the parsnip and baked the leek to serve along. I didn’t really like it, the taste of parsnip is not really my thing. Right now, I do have the sweet potatoes left and so I can make another meal from this purchase I did.

Wednesday

I went to the gym and did some chores in the house. After that two people came by to buy my longboard. I had sold it via Marktplaats (an online platform to buy and sell secondhand stuff). I once bought it new because it seemed like a great new hobby. But I didn’t really use it and so I decided to sell it. The people that picked it up seemed really happy with it and I earned 20 euros and have one thing less that I own. Then I went into the city center to buy some compostable tooth picks. My dentist advised my to use those instead of wire. I found a type that was packed in cardboard and so it is a good plastic free option. At night I worked on my exams again.