Although COVID-19 has brought in a lot of problems, one good thing it has done is to encourage people to live a healthier and more organic lifestyle. When your access to processed and ready-made items is limited, people are forced to become self-reliant. Homemade things are often healthier and more environmentally-friendly, too.
The pandemic may be here for at least a few more months, just enough time to get into a new organic hobby. Try out these new activities to have a more organic lifestyle.
Grow your crops
Normally, an organic lifestyle means buying from locally-produced farmers, but it may not always be possible to go out during a pandemic. Well, that just means now is the perfect time to learn how to garden and raise your own produce! This way, you can be sure that there are no chemicals in your food, and it even teaches you how to live more sustainably.
Vegetables sold in supermarkets and stores often have to travel long distances. While there are still a fair amount of nutrients in them, it can’t be helped that their nutrient content has degraded over time. On top of that, each fruit and vegetable has optimal temperatures for storage. Unfortunately, they are all shipped together, and that also contributes to the degradation of the fruits. This won’t be a problem for homegrown items.
You can start off with easy ones like potatoes and tomatoes. Herbs are also great to start with because they grow fast and easy to harvest.
Make your own compost
If you are already into gardening and such, then you can step it up by learning how to compost. To put it simply, composting is making your own all-natural fertilizer using organic wastes. You can make fertilizer that is free of chemicals and also has more nutrients. This process can take weeks to a few months because it needs to develop.
Composting only requires three things: a container, brown plant matter, and green plant matter. The container can be any bin that you have around that is large. Next, just add in any organic materials. These materials will produce oxygen and decompose into manure.
Examples of things you can add are vegetable stems, leaves, twigs, fruit peelings, and anything that naturally grows. Meat and fish are possible but not recommended as they attract pests. Cardboard boxes and paper are also items you can compost. You can even use humans sheddings like hair or nail clippings. If you recently got a haircut, you can ask them to put your hair in a bag to add to your compost.
Create your own skincare items
A great hobby to have is to make your own soaps and skincare products. Survey says that 76 percent of consumers have been misled by commercial organic products, so why not just make your own? It can become a lucrative career after you’ve mastered it. The great thing about this hobby is that it often requires basic ingredients found at home.
There are a lot of recipes you can try online. Some of the most common ingredients are cocoa butter, shea butter, honey, fruits, and apple cider vinegar. The ingredients would vary depending on your skin type and desired results. Aloe vera and butters are best for hydration, while oats are often used for exfoliating.
Experiment with cooking
Organic living is often associated with eating habits. It naturally follows that cooking is one of the best ways to live organically. Now that you have a lot of time at home, you can try experimenting with recipes. If you are vegan or vegetarian, then one thing you can do is making meat-based recipes with meat substitutes.
Cooking also helps you limit the number of processed ingredients you use. The pandemic is a great opportunity for this as well because you can avoid going out to eat. Paired with gardening and growing crops, then you can live a more organic lifestyle.
Get into sewing
Fashion also has a big impact on the environment, and this can be avoided by either reducing the number of new clothes or reusing old ones. Thrift shops tend to have a lot of people, so some people may not feel safe going there for the time being. What you can do is learn to sew and turn your old clothes into something new.
There are tons of shops that sell durable and affordable sewing machines and equipment. Craft stores are a good place to start, especially if you are looking for novelty yarns or fabrics. It’s an extremely cheap and fulfilling hobby. You can take old clothes and put them together to make something modern.
