Weekly diary #80: Celebrating 'Carnaval'

Hi there! It’s great that you’re here, reading my personal weekly diary. I am trying to live an eco-positive lifestyle, doing more good than bad in this short life I have on this planet. In this diary I want to show you what that looks like on a daily basis. The past week I tried to celebrate Carnaval zero waste, went to Amsterdam to see the production of the sustainable plantbased snack I am writing a marketingplan for and donated some plasma! Want to read along?
Thursday
I woke up quite early to go paint a door in my room. There are parts of this door that are pink, and I hate that color in my room now. My perspective on decoration is changing and I don’t like flashy colors anymore. I like earth-ish colors, a lot of plants and minimal decoration. So, the pink had to go. I used some paint we still had in our home. Using up old things is more sustainable than buying something new. Even though this brand we still had is not sustainable and there are sustainable brands available, like Fairf, I am happy to use op something old, that is zero waste to me. I didn’t finish the whole thing, so I’ll have to do some more soon. Also, today the newsletter of our local library came online and I am in it! I am doing a lecture about zero waste soon. I had presented at an event a while back and I absolutely loved that! I decided to more of what I love and so here I am. Spreading the zero waste message! You can read more about the lecture here.

Friday
Today I went to my thesis company, to work on my theses (duh). At night I read and I watched a lot of video’s from Sofie Senden. The video’s are in Dutch, but I would recommend her Youtube channel! This girl is amazing, it’s mostly about veganism, saving animals and zero waste. She also told about the app Cronometer which I now use. It’s an app on which you can see if you meet all your needs when it comes to food. Vitamins, minerals, protein, it’s all in there and super useful.

Saturday
First, I had to work. It is the weekend before the opening of our new store, Jumbo. So, we had to walk around the neighbourhood and hand out plastic bags and pens. I was not a fan of that, but in the end it’s work. After work, I went straight to Den Bosch by train. My boyfriend, some friends and I were going to celebrate ‘Carnaval’ there. I don’t know if you know it but it’s a party that starts around 1 pm (I’m a fan) where everybody dresses up. I had a blast, but I didn’t manage to stay zero waste at all. We got some drinks in the supermarket, in a can so I was delighted about that. But, at the bars you’d get plastic cups. I was prepared, I brought my own cup! It worked quite well, exept for one time when the bartender did not understand it and poured the drink into a plastic cup and then in mine. But that’s fine, I tried. We also got a snack, french fries. I was a little bit, how should I say it, tipsy. So, I didn’t really watch if the place served the fries in plastic (I didn’t order the food myself anyway and it took a while before we actually found a place were I could eat something vegan) and so I ate french fries out of a plastic thing. And a friend gave me some glitters for on our faces, not zero waste, but quite fun. Lesson for next time: if not tipsy, search for french fries in paper.

Sunday
Today my boyfriend actually suggested to go declutter his room. He kind of questioned wether I would like that or not, but the minimalist inside me was exited of course. I helped him, by sort of telling him about the KonMarie Method and so he did the decluttering himself (it is his stuff in the end). He got rid of sooo much stuff and so I was very proud in the end. It is good for me too if we decide to go live together one day. I did kind of force him to bring all the stuff that was still good to the thrift shop. Less waste! Today we also discovered that they’d put The Walking Dead back on Netflix and so the bingewatching will begin.

Monday
I guess today was quite boring. I went home and worked on my thesis. At 5 pm I had to work, but once I got there they sent me home since they were already done. I had a whole free night and I basically spend it doing nothing. Reading and watching some Youtube video’s again hah. I am not very comfortable with doing nothing productive and that is such a bad characteristic of me. I can’t really let go since I am a entrepreneur and a blogger. There is always things to do. But, self care is important. And so, I did good today.

Tuesday
Such an exiting day! I went to Amsterdam to go visit the company that makes the vegan and sustainable ‘Bitterballen’ (a Dutch snack) for my thesis company. It was so cool to see a factory from the inside, intriguing. We dropped of an order after and I went back to Enschede after that. I missed my handball training unfortunately. I had a delay and so I spend 5 hours in the train that day and I think 1,5 hours in the car. In the train I did some productive things, but after the delay I was quite done. That’s the downside of trains. I did run into an old collegue of mine so time went by fast in the end too. Once in Enschede it was 8 pm and I went to the supermarket to get some comfort food. I have lost weight again (not on purpose) so I figured this would be in place. I had some new vegan ‘chicken’ stick for in the oven, it was packed in a cardboard box so it was okay to me. I also had some canned black beans and cocunut soy yoghurt which was packed in plastic. I only buy things in the supermarket which I can’t get from my own package free shop Loose of course. Below you can see the wonderful desert I made with the yoghurt. But, I am not very happy about the waste. Making my own plantbased yoghurt has been a goal of mine for quite some time now and so I hate buying it packaged. I hope to have some time in coming weeks because the past and coming week were and are busy. It’s a work in progress. I forgot to make a picture of the ‘chicken’ sticks but honestly they were soooo good. I’ll make a picture next time, I promise (I still have two left in the freezer).

Wednesday
I didn’t anticipate on this day being so busy. I woke up early and went to the gym. Then I prepared half of the coming orders for Loose (my package free webshop) for tomorrow. I vacuumed the house partly, but then I had to leave for a group interview for someone else’s thesis. It was volutary. I love helping out someone who is writing their thesis. I would appreciate it if it were my thesis. Then I did some grocery shopping for Loose and then I had a appointment to donate some plasma. Donating plasma always feels good, you can save a life with it. Today my computer also sort of crashed and so I didn’t manage to do anything for my thesis. I am now writing this weekly diary at 5 pm at a computer at the school’s library. So. I hope I can fix my laptop soon. I am now going home to cook dinner and so that’s it for this weekly diary.