Our Live LAGOM Story – Some New Year’s Resolutions

We’re kicking off 2016 with a series of resolutions as part of a project with IKEA that is called Live LAGOM. The project aims to help you live more sustainably, and following a recent project we got involved in with Hubbub and Tesco NI we can’t wait to find ways to try and be more sustainable.

The project we did with Hubbub and Tesco NI involved us looking at ways to be more sustainable with food. For a week we had to get as much from our food as we could, trying to cut down on waste. If we’re being honest, we often act with haste when it comes to throwing out our food, so this project made us think more about waste and less about haste (do you see what we did there).

This has got us thinking much more about other ways to cut down on waste, and as a result we’ve got involved in the Live LAGOM project and can’t wait to kick things off.

About Live LAGOM

LAGOM is a Swedish word meaning ‘just the right amount is best’ and that is exactly what this movement is about. Finding a way of being more responsible for the environment without sacrificing things that you love.

We’ve joined a selection of IKEA staff and other customers from Northern Ireland (and other parts of UK and Ireland) in picking some New Years resolutions to focus our sustainability efforts on. With £500 worth of goods from IKEA, we have been tasked with living more sustainably over the next 6 months. Wish us luck, and keep checking back to see how we get on. Our resolutions are outlined below.

What are our resolutions?

We are looking to focus in on two primary areas as part of our resolution and these are food waste and upcycling of old furniture. The recent food waste project we did with Hubbub made us realise we waste too much money simply putting food in the bin so we want to start being more economical when it comes to food, and reducing the amount that we waste.

Helen suffers from a chronic illness called Fibromyalgia which can sometimes impact on what she can and can’t do in the kitchen and as a result we often go for the convenient option when it comes to food. By focusing on food management, we hope to reduce waste and be much smarter when it comes to food as we plan to eventually grow a lot more produce in our garden so this project will only help further our knowledge here.

As part of the project we have got a pressure cooker to help prepare meals quickly, and a number of food containers to help us better plan out our weekly meals and store leftovers. If we can begin to do this right, and shop for food much smarter we project that we can save between £10 and £20 a week on our food bill alone. We also do a lot of baking (mainly due to our blog), and have acquired a JÄMFÖRLIG handheld rotary whisk to cut down on the electricity we use in the preparation stage of the baking.

Our second focus area is upcycling of furniture. Helen loves being creative and enjoys upcycling and craft projects and to help with this we have got an SY Sewing Machine and storage containers to organise materials and craft supplies. This will enable us to use old fabric that we have to inject new life into old furniture we have sitting around our home and garden. This furniture can then be used in our new home as a way of reducing the money spent on new furniture (we aim to keep this to a bare minimum), while also adding a touch of character to our home.

Challenges and benefits:

For us the big challenge is going to be on food waste as we need to continue improving how we approach our weekly food management and this won’t be easy but we are confident we will get there. We would like to start reducing our electric bills during the project as well but foresee challenges ahead due to the fact our current home is very old with very little insulation so our electric bills tend to be higher than average due to the need for additional heating.

With a new rug and duvet as part of the project, we hope we can start to see a saving in heating and electricity at some point as well. We are hoping to learn from others in the project to find ways of reducing heat and electricity costs, with a view to using some of these learnings when we build our new home.

We can only see benefits coming out of the Live LAGOM experience in terms of food management and our general approach to beginning to live more sustainably. We hope to learn a lot from others in the project and also share our own findings to hopefully inspire others as well. If we make a small change for the better in terms of how we live on a weekly basis, then the project will be a success in our eyes. We’re hoping for much more though, off course.

Follow our story on the blog

We plan to share our experience on a regular basis here on our blog and also on our social media channels which are listed below. For anyone else involved in the project, please feel free to stay up to date with what we are doing by following us on these channels, and even share your own progress with us as we’re keen to take as much away from the Live LAGOM experience as we can.

Facebook – PikalilyBlog

Twitter – @PikalilyBlog

Thanks and all the best to our fellow LAGOMERS

Nial and Helen

Any views and opinions expressed during content shared as part of this Live LAGOM project is entirely our own, and the results will reflect what has (or hasn’t) worked for us as we try to live more sustainably.

For more information on the Live LAGOM movement visit ikea.com, hubbub.org.uk or search Live LAGOM in Google, Facebook or Twitter.