no meaaat no clean cloths... ugh

Here I am again and I have to start with a confession: I ate meat yesterday, buuuuuuuut by accident! Now, how is that possible? I can surely distinguish a chicken from a tomato. For my defense I have to put forward that I was trapped by my mom. It was my dad’s 60^th birthday this weekend, so I visited them to attend the party. I arrived at my parent’s home and my mom, loving and caring as she is, had already prepared a little plate with some sandwiches. Since I had been travelling for quite some time I was very hungry. I just stuffed myself with the sandwich as fast as I could and only after chewing for about a minute realized: S*** there is meat on it!! My most favorite though.. and it was delicious!!!! I was startled how easy it was to just forget about the whole experiment thing for a few moments once you are really hungry and placed in a totally different environment where no one knows about the thing you trying to do. Then I felt guilty and then I just ate up.. I just couldn’t face my mom’s disappointment if I wouldn’t. Even though this is a rather bad example of my endurance and mental strength, I generally behaved quite well with respect to being a veggie. Quite well, not very well though. I do not miss schnitzel or steaks, since I don’t eat that much meat anyway, but I love stuff like ham or salami. I generally eat a lot of sandwiches so I had to switch to cheese or vegetables there, which was ok. I discovered quite a few new cheese sorts. But I missed it. Being quite sure that I will not become a ‘real’ vegetarian in the next time, I still want to reduce my meat consumption a bit more, since I feel that this is a contribution to sustainable consumption which I easily make.

Washing without a washing machine: difficult!!!!!!!!! I did not disobey this rule during the experiment, but I washed all my cloths right before starting it. The real challenge for me is now how to economize with my cloths so that I don’t have to break the rule on the last day. I know that this is not the right way of approaching the issue of ‘having-clean-cloths-without-using-washing-powder-and-the-washing-machine’. Furthermore, I think that there lies probably one of the most striking problems sustainable consumption faces: social norms and conventions. On the one hand we want to save our environment but on the other hand we have to or want to live up to a few very basic social requirements like not wearing stinky or dirty cloths. No one could say stinkyness is a social construction, but I am sure that bad smell is a social construction which is very hard to overcome..