A love letter; bringing your own ceramic mugs to the cafe can change your life
Dearest reader...
Back in my trash free days, I would bring my own ceramic to-go cup everywhere I went. I would count every coffee or tea trip I went on and then added it up after a month to calculate how many to go cups I diverted from the landfill by just bringing my own. I KNOW, pretty wild. However it was a bit more dreamy and romantic for me than you may be thinking.
This ideal of diverting waste from the trash was paired with wanting to create more intention around the items that I owned.
For instance; when I would go to museums, I would have such a bittersweet and profoundly tragic feeling as I browsed through different ancient cultures and eras. Eras of humans creating or acquiring an object to keep for the rest of their existence - and then passing it down from generation to generation. Whether it was a brass mirror or comb, a wicker basket, a clay mug, or a beaded necklace - it was all so special to them.
Our overconsumption with everything in our lives has my head spinning and I fall prey to it all the time, so being able to really connect with a piece and then utilize it feels like I am bringing back our human desires to appreciate, connect, and bask in something we own. How would our world look if we adopted the principles of the generations before us - buying less, appreciating the few items we own more, and instead of looking at our items as a commodity, saw each item as our forever buddies to take care of?
Anyways, it is even more special when your friend and talented ceramicist, Steffenie Jones (Slow Studio Ceramics), creates the most beautiful and intentional mugs, all pictured here. I have a handful of her creations and every time I use her pieces, I feel present and sweet.
On another note; I think it is equally important to talk about how OKAY plastic and trash fails are. When I forget my mug, I have never gotten down on myself and instead, encouraged myself to try to bring one next time! I think it is easy to be hard on yourself, especially in an economy with a throw away infrastructure. We can all definitely work on our plastic consumption, but without some true changes from the top, we will just keep swimming upstream. HERE is a great place to start if you want to make waves at the top. This global movement is working to achieve a future free from plastic pollution and has many ways to volunteer, petitions to sign, learn and educate etc…
WOW - what a tangent there, haha.
Anyways, in a society where we are constantly taught that in order to be happy, we need to be in a constant state of consumption and perpetual rabbit chasing, I am here to remind myself and perhaps you, that an item that we invite into our lives should be rare and invoke the best part of being a human; gratitude, spaciousness, connectedness, and sweetness of existence.
I am being extra but IDGAF.
