Guilt-Free Green Living
My family has been undergoing a shift toward minimalism over the last year. Our initial reasoning was purely financial, but once you start making an effort to buy less stuff you begin to see what a huge environmental impact our consumer culture has.
All You Need Is Less: The Eco-Friendly Guide to Guilt-Free Green Living and Stress-Free Simplicity by Madeleine Somerville, is a straightforward and down to Earth guide to minimalism. Somerville discusses her own family’s journey towards simplicity, including resistance from her husband Adam when she tried to implement some of her more radical ideas.
All You Need Is Less is part memoir, part guidebook, and part recipe book. Somerville shares personal stories, tips for downsizing, and her own favorite recipes for things like homemade laundry detergent, all natural toothpaste, and eco-friendly shaving cream.
Some of the tips and recipes were ones I recognized from other resources, but I did find a few new ideas. The DIY newspaper cat litter recipe is on my list of projects to try this summer.
Somerville is funny and non-judgmental, so you don’t come away feeling like a failure if you’re not willing to give up your salon shampoo to wash your hair with baking soda and apple cider vinegar. Somerville’s philosophy in regards to green living is similar to my own. She believes that going green is a process and that whatever small steps you choose to take will eventually add up to a real difference.
I found Somerville’s breezy commentary enjoyable enough that I read the entire book from cover to cover, but All You Need Is Less is nicely organized into chapters if you want to skip around and focus on just one subject area:
- Home
- Body
- Lifestyle
- Food and Drink
- Gardening
- Relationships
- Health and Wellness
- Baby
- Pet Holidays
Disclaimer: A review copy was provided by the publisher.
Photo credit: Amazon
