New Year’s Resolutions

Even after the car crash that was 2020, people are still excited for 2021. As per tradition, people are starting to talk about their New Year’s Resolutions. Those of us who make resolutions tend not to keep them, with only a quarter of us keeping all of them. We know the usual ones – lose weight, save money, bake more etc, but maybe there are some that we should really consider giving some thought to this coming year. Unsurprisingly, the top category for resolutions this year so far is health, but one that we don’t often talk about is sustainability. The key with resolutions is to make them flexible, simple and achievable – otherwise we end up not doing them because life is busy and hectic and we’ve got other things to do.

I thought that this week I’d share my New Year’s Resolutions in the hope that it will inspire you to create some of your own. And ‘resolutions’ are a bit formal – I see it more as things that I’d like to do, get better at or try next year. And, if you forget to do your resolution one week, that isn’t a failure, you simply try another week. So, here are mine:

• Go for a run once a week
• Keep email inboxes tidy
• Bake something once a fortnight and share with friends/family
• Switch to non-dairy butter and yoghurt permanently
• Investigate zero-waste make-up as I use up current make-up

What I tend to end up doing is adding resolutions on to this list as I go, as I find that there are things that I didn’t think about the year before. As you can see, these aren’t all sustainability inspired, and that is really ok. All of these resolutions are things that make me happy when I achieve them, therefore I should do more of them. The running is something I started in the first lockdown, having never run before in my life. I loved it, but once I went back to work, I lost the momentum that I’d gained – I’d go occasionally but I was never as good as I was. I recently cleared out my email inboxes, as I still had emails from 2015 that I just didn’t need. It was an unexpected relief to delete them all! So, I want to keep them as clear as I can. I have always loved baking, and I did some during lockdown, but now I want to challenge myself with more complicated recipes. I tend to bake something every couple of weeks or so anyway, this is just a more concrete promise to myself. The non-dairy butter and yoghurt one has sustainability in mind, as I can see myself cutting out dairy 100% of the time in the not too distant future (I’m currently vegetarian, but vegan about 50% of the time). These are two dairy based things that I’m not that bothered about and I like the substitutes, so it’s just a change of habit. The last one is potentially the most interesting. I love make-up, and I’m coming to the end of a lot of products. I don’t buy make-up often, but I’d like to find some more sustainable products so that I don’t have to just stop wearing make-up altogether (if anyone has any brands they would recommend, let me know).

So those are my resolutions. Now that I’ve put them all out there, I guess I’ll have to stick to them! I’ve tried to keep them relatively small, shown the most with cutting out dairy yoghurt and butter – I could vow to go vegan, but at the moment that isn’t realistic for me, so it’s better to have a smaller goal and work my way up. Never discourage someone for their New Years Resolution, even if it seems small to you – it might be a huge deal to them. Good luck with the New Year, regardless of whether you have any resolutions or not – let’s hope it’s better than 2020 right?