What is Minimal Effs and why should I give an eff?

Hello and welcome to Minimal Effs, a blog dedicated to living a low-waste life without a huge impact to every day life - minimal effort for maximum environmental impact.

I am Kristin, a 30-something mother of one little cyclone who we affectionately refer to as The Bear. I've been married to my favourite adult human for almost 15 years and we've been together since we were 16. We adopted a vegan diet 11 years ago and our little Bear is a vego with limited amounts of dairy and occassional egg. We'd always made half-hearted attempts at being environmentally aware, making sure that we recycled, growing veggies and limiting our food waste.

Minimal Effs came about following my family's move into our new home. The three of us had been living in a tiny one-bedroom 'cubby house' while we waited for our home to be built - a process that took longer than any of us has expected. What was supposed to be a 12 month stint blew out to 2 1/2 years!

Tiny living was TOUGH and I was in no mood and had no space to be environmentally responsible... At least that's what I told myself. Just before we moved, my sister-in-law made an off-hand comment about making sure I took time to recycle my soft plastics once we were in the new house and I solemnly swore that I would.

After the move, I was happy to be in our new home but I despaired at the amount of waste our move had generated and the sheer volume of 'stuff' that we owned, half of which we didn't even need! And, I was still feeling the shame of my lack of environmental care-factor that I had while living in the cubby house.

I immediately started to take more care with sorting our waste properly, including soft plastics, and before I knew it, I had developed a simple habit that the whole family was on board with. I started to think of other ways that we could look to make changes that took minimal effort but that still made a difference to our planet. The more I looked and asked, the more I found and I was over the moon to find out how many easy swaps and changes we could make that would make our lives less impactful on the environment, made us healthier overall and also helped me to clear the enormous load of guilt I was carrying from my recent history of not giving an Environmental Eff.

Since sharing is caring, I thought I could kill two birds with one stone and indulge my love of writing with my new found excitement around minimal effort, environmentally-friendly life changes by writing and sharing these via a online presence - Minimal Effs. The name refers to not only my recent history of giving minimal f**ks about my environmental footprint, but also my new found perspective on the power of minimal effort changes to have a positive impact on the planet. Thanks for checking Minimal Effs out ❤️🌏😘