It almost feels like yesterday that I removed my Motorola razr phone from my school trouser pocket and tried my hardest to flip it open with one sudden movement of the wrist to answer my mum’s phone call, or received my LG chocolate slider phone one Christmas morning.

The majority of us have just spent the past two years indoors, but do we have any idea how clean the air is we have been breathing?

Poor air quality can be caused by a number of things. We may automatically assume poor air quality is a result of pollution from factories and cars but the truth is it can be from what we clean with, the nail polish we choose and the candles we’re burning.

As with most things, living more sustainably often takes a mindset shift. With the switches below, it’s unlikely that in a year 4 craft competition Heppy won’t have a shiny, glittery, luminous green offering (there’s nothing wrong with this), but she certainly will have something just as cool made from things we can find, probably cost less and is way kinder to the planet.

I thought I’d write a quick blog with some ideas on how it’s possible to reduce waste with art supplies. Before you know it it’s so possible to have a cupboard full of googly eyes, glittery craft paper and plastic glue sticks. I’ve found some really simple solutions that will mostly save you money but more than that, cut down on plastic and toxins too!

I remember the days when TRESemme took off. I was in high school, straightening my hair between classes in the girls’ toilets whilst applying lancome lipgloss. I was washing my hair every day because somehow it seemed that overnight it got greasy; I had no idea that was probably because of the particular products I was using, and I gave no thought to how many bottles I was throwing away every few weeks.

I’m a secondhand geek. There’s a running joke in our family that if you want something, anything…i’l be able to find it second hand for an absolute bargain price. Like the Kayak we got from facebook marketplace for my father in law’s Christmas present, the le creuset frying pan my dad really wanted but was way out of budget new and the cashmere ‘Caramel coat’ that I got from ebay for £5 but was on their website for £200- oh and let’s not forget the double medela pump I needed whilst in New Zealand because mine had stopped working and after scouring multiple used sites found a lady on the other side of Tarunga selling one barely used.

Thank you so much for joining me for the non-toxic home series. I had so much fun preparing it, and it was so encouraging to hear everyone’s responses and to get product recommends and tips from you guys too!

The message I probably received most in response to my posts was something along the lines of ‘this is great, where on earth do I start?’ and ‘how do I do this on a budget?’

I thought I’d write something quick (she says…three weeks later) just to address those questions.

You may have read it in the intro, but my journey with clothes really started over 2 years ago after watching a documentary called ‘The Trust Cost’. It made me re-question a lot of the things I was buying; who had made my clothes? Was I buying on impulse? What effects were my purchases causing to people and the planet? I’d already bought a lot of second hand clothes at that time, but the 20% of clothes I did buy new were from Zara mainly, and though hard, I decided the night of watching that movie that I would never shop there again. Dramatic I know.

When it comes to having babies there is a lot of information thrown around and a lot of product suggestions too. Many brands sell many things making many claims and usually at an increased cost. There is often a-lot of unnecessary ingredients in those products and just because it says ‘baby’ on it doesn’t even necessarily mean it’s safe.

I remember seeing Heppy’s newborn skin and feeling such a responsibility to treat it well, and govern well what passed into it! It felt so pure and untainted- so that’s what I committed to do; to do my research to make sure I could look after it, and in turn teach her how to too.

Is there a room in your house that you dislike cleaning the most? The bathroom is probably high up there on mine as it feels like so many things are begging to be deep cleaned in such a small space?! The bathroom was hands down the area we used the most plastic in and probably the most amount of chemicals in before we started this toxic-free journey.

I’ve trialed the lot when it comes to washing powder; throwback to the days of Fairy and Ariel giving me crispy whites and super soft towels and then with the realisation of those particular things probably actually causing harm then moving on to soap nuts and an eco egg to no avail. I so wanted these options to work for me, but with a newborn at the time, they just weren’t cutting it and left my clothes coming out of the washing machine no different to what I had put them in. I then moved onto Ecover for a season, and while I think it is a better option than many, it still didn’t sit quite right with me and neither did SMOL a subscription service we received through our door, which coincided with a bad outbreak of eczema on Heppy’s skin and made me look even more closely into what was written on the back of bottles.

We live in a cottage in the West Sussex countryside and while I wouldn’t say our house is clean or even in any particular order, I can’t seem to rest until the washing up is done or sleep until the surfaces are somewhat clean.

The kitchen is probably the place where people find the majority of their cleaning products. One thing I’ve learnt in this process is shops are selling a lot of things! There’s a cleaner for your counters, and your sink, and greasy surfaces and sticky surfaces and scummy sinks and products to clean your bin and clean your dishwasher. The result of seeing so many products on shelves is that it makes us believe we need a new product for every single different area in our homes.

Back in mid- April just before Hephzibah’s second birthday it suddenly crossed my mind that lockdown was the perfect place to potty train.

Hephzibah had shown zero signs that she was ready to potty train. She hated having her nappy changed, seemed unaware of when she needed a poo or wee and would have happily hung out in a diaper with either of those in all day!

6 weeks into lockdown I committed to the thought that was flying around my head to start potty training Hephzibah. There had been no real signs that she was ready to potty train I just thought it would be worth a shot because we were at home all day with no where to go and liked the idea that there was very low-expectation so we could just see how it went.