Taking Advantage of At-Home Courses During COVID

Just a quick PSA that if you were ever considering taking a class or course in something but the schedule or distance put you off, to look into it again. So many courses out there that were in-person only have been converted to online-based during the pandemic. College courses, continuing education, licensing for various things, etc. Of course not everything is available online now but a lot is, making it more accessible than ever - so stop putting it off and get to it, whether it’s something personal or professional.

What courses have I done, you ask? Well, nothing too crazy - but I was able to finally check a few personal goals off of my list. For years I’ve been wanting to get my OHRV (Off-Highway Recreational Vehicle) License and Boating Safety License but never seemed to find the time to line up taking the courses on a weekend. However our state is now letting you complete these online which was great, so over the summer I was able to complete both of them as well as my Paddling Safety Certificate (for canoeing/kayaking) all online and at my leisure which was wonderful.

I really enjoyed finally checking these courses off of my to-do list and hopefully you will find something you’ve been wanting to accomplish available online too!

Goal: Use Less Plastic in 2020

As I had mentioned previously in my “Goals for the New Year” post, one of my goals is to use less plastic in our daily lives. We already make an effort to recycle as much as possible and not be wasteful but watching the documentary “Broken: Recycling Sham” on Netflix was eye-opening. So much of what people put in the recycling bin ends up in landfills or the ocean in the end, as a lot of plastic is too difficult or expensive to recycle and it’s sorted out and discarded. (PS - if you haven’t watched this documentary yet, I highly recommend it!) If everyone were to decrease their use of plastic in small ways it would eventually decrease the demand and less plastic would be made and end up in the environment. Here I’m sharing some small ways we’re working towards less plastic in our lives. | This post contains affiliate links |

As Emily Ley would say, I’m striving for “progress, not perfection.” I am not planning on eliminating all plastic from our home overnight - after all that wouldn’t be environmentally responsible either. We have plenty of BPA-free Tupperware, kids plates, reusable bottles, containers, etc and they are serving us well - there’s no need to go chuck them in the trash now. It’s also impractical (and arguably impossible) for our family to totally eliminate plastic from our lives. - But moving forward, we will try to consume less plastic, and as things wear out and need replacing we will look to non-plastic or high-recycled-content materials for replacements.

Here are a few eco-friendly “swaps” we have implemented or are planning to in the future:

• Reusable Water Bottles. This is a very easy one... find a Reusable Water Bottles that you like and carry it around with you, refilling it as needed. I personally prefer stainless steel bottles, but others prefer glass or plastic. Not only is a reusable bottle good for the environment, it's good for your wallet too as you'll never have to buy an overpriced bottle of water at a gas station or cafe again. Most office buildings, schools, and malls have bubblers (AKA water fountains for all you non-New Englanders) where you can fill your bottle, and most cafes and fast food restaurants will refill your bottle with water for free too.
• Reusable Grocery Bags. This is another easy change - in fact, I can almost guarantee you have some Reusable Grocery Bags kicking around in your closet or car trunk this very minute since businesses often give out reusable bags for promotions and advertising. Dig those bags out and make a neat stash of them in your trunk or car door pocket and make a mental note to grab them before heading into the grocery store. (Side note: It's a good idea to periodically wash your reusable bags to keep them clean and reduce the spread of potential germs.)
• Reusable Produce Bags. Purchase some small cotton Reusable Produce Bags to use when you go grocery shopping. Produce bags are often overlooked since they're small but they add up fast during a weekly grocery trip. By using reusable bags you're reducing your plastic consumption (and not to mention no more busted plastic produce bags when you're buying a decent amount of potatoes or apples - yay!).
• Reusable Travel Mug for Coffee/Tea. Find a travel mug that you love (personally I love my Yeti Rambler - worth every penny in my opinion!) and take your coffee to go. A lot of coffee shops will give a small discount for bringing a reusable mug in too - it pays to be green ;)
• Silicone "Plastic" Bags. Plastic snack and sandwhich bags are another thing that quickly add up, especially if you pack your own lunch. Switching out plastic for washable and reusable Silicone "Plastic" Bags will cut back on a lot of the single-use plastic in your life.
• Silicone "Plastic" Wrap. Plastic wrap for covering leftovers also quickly adds up but can be replaced with washable and reusable Silicone Covers.
• Glass or Metal "Tupperware". We have plenty of good quality plastic tupperware for packing lunches and leftovers, but as they need replacing we'll look to switching to glass or stainless steel.
• Sustainably Made Wooden Toys. Our kids will still play with plastic toys (legos, action figures, etc)... we're not going to forbid it. But we're definitely being mindful about what and how much plastic toys we do buy - and when we have the opportunity to provide them with sustaibably-made wooden toys like play food for their kitchen set or blocks we definitely will. (Side note: I had recently partnered with the company Lovevery to review their sustainably-made Block Set and was super impressed! Feel free to check out that previous post HERE, I highly reccomend them).

And while the recycling business is far from perfect, you should still always recycle whenever you can. That way your waste has a chance of being reused. If items are reusable things in good shape (toys, containers, etc), donate them to local charities or a "drop 'n swap" where people leave items to be taken for free by someone that can use them (check your local dump/transfer station to see if they have one).

If they are single-use items (like plastic bags, milk jugs, food packaging, etc) then sort and recycle as best you can. Setting up an in-home recycling system can make sorting and recycyling second-nature so everything (plastic, glass, paper, cans, etc) makes it to recycling center with the best chance of getting recycled.

Are there more ways to go plastic-free? Oh heck yes. But I’m personally looking for doable, attainable changes that fit with our lifestyle. I feel like these are changes most people could accomplish as well too. If everyone just reduced their plastic consumption with simple changes it would add up and make a huge difference.

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Related Posts:

• The Biggest Money-Saving, Eco-Friendly Change We’ve Made During Quarantine

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Happy 2020! Goals for the New Year

Happy New Year! Can’t believe a new year is here already. Overall 2019 was great and here’s hoping 2020 is even better and more productive! This morning we went out to breakfast with family and then the kids and I went on a short snowshoe hike, which was a fun start to the New Year!

I have several personal and professional goals for 2020 and thought I’d share a few of them:

• Learn to ski. Even though I’m a life-long New Englander, we didn’t grow up doing winter sports so I never learned. Now that our kids are learning (and doing amazing) I need to catch up ASAP!

• Use less plastic. We already make an effort to recycle as much as possible and not be wasteful but watching the documentary “Broken: Recycling Sham” on Netflix was eye-opening. So much of what people put in the recycling bin ends up in landfills or the ocean in the end, as a lot of plastic is too difficult or expensive to recycle and it’s sorted out and discarded. (PS - if you haven’t watched this documentary yet, I highly recommend it!)

• Purge, purge, purge. Every year I have a renewed sense of motivation to go through our house and purge un-needed items. It feels so good to get rid of things you don’t need and make your house a little “lighter” and cleaner. After the holidays our house feels too heavy again, so it’ll be good to go through toys, books, etc and reevaluate what is getting used, what has been outgrown, and what is no longer needed.

• Post more regularly. This last year I’ve just been feeling busy with the day-to-day… and the blog wasn’t updated as much as it should have been. I want to be better about sharing DIY projects and our day trips around New England, and hopefully 2020 will be much more consistent and productive!

Do you have any goals for 2020? I would love to hear them!

First Day Hike - 2020!

Merry Christmas from Birch Landing Home!

Wishing all of you a very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year from Birch Landing Home!

We’ll be spending the next week with family and planning goals for the year ahead. Please let me know what kinds of blog posts you’d like to see from Birch Landing Home next year.
Happy Holidays and see you in 2019!

Hand-painted Lobster Buoy c/o The Lost Buoy.

Mission Accomplished: First Half-Marathon

Well, I finally did it!  I ran my first Half Marathon :)  

Finally completing a Half has been about seven years overdue.  I got stress fractures training for one in 2009 and gave up running long distances for awhile after that.  But this time with a great plan by my sister-in-law that focused on interval training over long distance runs I was finally able to accomplish my goal injury-free.  I'm very thankful that I was able to do it, along with all the support I got from family and friends, and especially my husband.  

Before the start of the race, so nervous!  

If any New Englanders are looking for a great Half Marathon to run, I'd highly recommend the Maine Coast Half.  It was great, fun race with beautiful ocean views - and you get Shipyard beers at the end ;)  

Now that I've done this Half, I'm looking forward to focusing more on the blog and my Etsy shop again - so look for more coming soon from Birch Landing Home!  

After the race is done!  Ahhhhh...

Related posts from Birch Landing Home:  

• Getting Back into Running

Reusable Weekly Planner - Plan your week, meals, and goals! {Free Printable}

For a while now I've been striving to get better about meal planning, so a few months ago I designed this weekly planner to keep in our kitchen and see if it helped.  After using this method for several months I'm happy to report that it has been a HUGE success and wanted to share it with all of you who may have staying organized, planning meals ahead of time, or reducing your grocery bill as goals for 2016!  

This weekly planner can either be printed and written on directly - or you can print, frame it, and simply write on the glass to keep reusing it (which is what I have done).  I love having it under glass because it means it's always on display and easy to refer to, and it saves a lot of paper and ink.  I didn't include too many photos of it it in our kitchen because it was so hard to photograph.. the glare from the glass makes a decent photograph nearly impossible.  

Pro-tip:  Write on the glass with a Sharpie to avoid smudges, then erase with a little 91% rubbing alcohol.  

To write on the glass, you can use a fine-tip dry erase marker or a Sharpie marker.  I prefer the Sharpie because it writes cleaner and won't smudge.  

"But how to erase it!" you ask?  

No problem at all:  simply put a little 91% rubbing alcohol on a paper towel and it wipes off with no problem and no residue.  

Example

Every Sunday I sit down and first fill in all the daily "to-dos" for the week.  These are things that have to happen that day, like appointments.  This gives me a sense of what the week will look like and how much time I may have to cook dinner that day, etc.  Days we won't be home means I don't have to cook (wahoo!).  Because I lay it all out ahead of time I can plan ahead for groceries... leftover potatoes from Monday can be thrown into Tuesday's chili.  The chicken I buy can be portioned out for dinner on Thursday and Friday.  Planning ahead means less waste and saving money in the long run (and you know how hard I try to save money on groceries).  

"Goals for the week" is where you put in projects and goals you can pick at over the course of the week when you get spare moments.  I feel like this list makes me more motivated (and accountable) to be productive when I have down time.  

Reusable Weekly Planner

{Download free PDF of our Reusable Weekly Planner HERE}

So that's my Reusable Weekly Planner!  It's been a huge help to keep me more organized, more motivated, and save more money on groceries.  I hope that it will be as helpful for you!  

Cheers to 2016!

Every time the New Year comes around it really gets me motivated.  I want to overhaul everything in the house, with Birch Landing Home, and my fitness goals and this year is no different.  

I've decided to take most of January to focus on our home:  it's time to do our yearly closet purge, deep clean all the carpets, and reorganize the dumping ground that our basement has become.  While I haven't read the book myself yet, I have read a lot of articles on The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, and I'd like to try to use these techniques to purge more unused items from our home.  Though I can't make too many promises on this front.. I can be pretty sentimental about little things so we'll see how far I get.

I have big goals for Birch Landing Home too and I want to grow my Etsy shop and blog in many ways.  I'm planning on expanding to more New England-inspired decor in the shop including signs, handmade boxes, and painted sap buckets (don't worry, we'll still have our signature hand-etched ornaments available).  I'd also like to get our products carried at more local retailers too.  
The blog will still be a mix of DIY projects, product reviews, and lessons learned as first-time parents but there will a be a stronger underlying New England vibe to it.  I'd like to blog more about our favorite places to visit in NE as a family as well as showcase more great local products and makers (by the way, if you're a New England-based maker and want to collaborate this year please send me a message).  

And then there's fitness goals.. every year I say I want to get back into running and while I did run a lot more this year than I have in a while, I still didn't get to where I want to be.  So this year I want to make the push to finally run a half-marathon!  For those of you who aren't familiar with my running backstory, I was training for a half-marathon about six years ago when I suffered a couple stress fractures, mostly due to a structural issue with my foot (which I now wear orthotics for).  
We're hoping to expand our family again within the next year or two and so I feel this year will be my last chance to try for a half marathon again before I'm too pregnant or busy with a newborn to seriously run for awhile.  

Whew, so those are my top goals for 2016!  Wishing everyone lots of health, happiness, and success in the New Year - cheers!