By next week I will have written my third, and final ‘blog’ for the lagom project. In a maximum of 500 words I have to discuss how we are managing to live a more lagom lifestyle and how we are going to keep carrying on doing so- and mention a few IKEA products that have helped us along the way.
All fine, except I am not so sure I know what lagom is. I started out thinking it meant getting the balance of life correct, finding a common ground between living frugally and living well- the image we were shown was the 3 Bears’ porridge- Daddy Bear’s was too austere, Mummy Bear’s was too rich and wasteful, Baby Bear’s was in the middle, just right. Then the concepts of living a more sustainable lifestyle were introduced- finding the balance became using as little energy as possible and recycling as much as possible. This then became buying as little as possible- and if you did have to buy then make sure it was recyclable. There is a Live lagom facebook page- filled (as facebook pages always are) with pictures of peoples acheivements and links to stories about things other people have done that would be a very good idea to do and why didn’t we think of it first type stories. It has been interesting to see how the idea of lagom has evolved.
It does however, make it very difficult for me to decide how lagom we have been, I keep thinking of my NYR- to get organised so that the whole family can live more sustainably- I am not sure how close we have got to that. We have had several successes- reducing energy usage by over 20% year on year has been one- that was through some very small changes. Other successes have included keeping the laundry area tidy and not having piles of things waiting to be recycled, I think we also have less waste- I plan meals more rigorously and often use ingredients for more than one meal- we actually had a planned leftovers meal last week – just pie not all eaten earlier in the week, the children loved it. I have started washing clothes at 30 degrees, I have started saving the water when running the hot tap and using it to water plants, I have…. (notice a theme here).
I think when I started this I wanted all the quirky things we already did- the saving bottle tops, the never throwing things away, the reworking of all old clothes into the pants rug to become normal things that the children would do when they are older. I wanted sustainability to be part of their lives and the decisions that I naturally make would be decisions that they would also learn to make naturally when they grow up. I am not sure I have described it very well, maybe legacy is the word I am looking for, the lagom legacy. It is a tiny bit of a faff sorting out what can be recycled and what can’t but hopefully they never think there is any other way.
I have just noticed that even this tiny bit if deciding what lagom means has gone over 500 words. Lets say then that it means living more sustainably.
Did I achieve that? Yes, I think so for all the reasons I wrote above, but the house is still difficult to live in and we have boxes of things everywhere waiting for the building work to start and finish. There is a lot more I would like to do to make life more Lagom, but right now I am happy to settle with tidier recycling and less waste.