About this show:
This show, I share tips and ideas to make the month ahead feel less intense and we wrap up the calendar year.
Often late November/early December have two energies battling it out in our brains:
- It’s the end of the year – I have so much I still want to/have to/must DO – gah… Go Go Go.
- I just want to slow down a lie on a beach, in a field or under a blanket and CHILL
So this week, I talk
Money Saving, Time Saving, Meaning-making and Joy bringing strategies for a happier end of year.
Being real about what you can and want to do is the first step and from there: We design with intention from feasts, to gifts, to donations, to family and festivities.
I hope you find it useful and would love you to also share your tips and ideas on socials + YouTube if you have great ideas.
Low Tox Love,
Alexx
Recipes I mentioned in the show are:
My vanilla shortbreads – https://www.lowtoxlife.com/vanilla-bean-short-bread-biscuits/
My coffee body scrub – https://www.lowtoxlife.com/40-second-home-made-coffee-body-scrub/
Krissy’s magnesium oil – https://krissyballinger.com.au/recipes/magnesium-oil/
Up top on the home page of lowtoxlife.com you can download my SUPER easily DIY gift recipes FREE – https://www.lowtoxlife.com/
Gifted E-Book containing feasts, table settings and drinks ideas for simple and easy festive season: https://www.lowtoxlife.com/product/celebrate-pdf-ebook/
Your host and founder of the Low Tox Life,
Alexx Stuart
Founder of Low Tox Life and the Low Tox movement
Join me on Insta @lowtoxlife
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Thank you to this month’s show sponsors for helping you make your low tox swaps easier:
@ausclimate gives you 10% off their range for the whole of 2024, with brilliant Winix Air Purifiers, the best Dehumidifiers I’ve ever used and their new energy-efficient heating range. code LOWTOXLIFE https://bit.ly/ShopAusclimate
@ediblebeautyau has a bumper Low Tox Swaps Aussie beauty offer with 40% off their huge Black Friday sale + extra freebies depending on your cart amount, such as the Body Whip, LED wand, Silk pillow case and mystery gifts – Code LOWTOXLIFE and you’ll see it as an extra 5% off their already loaded 35% off. Massive thanks to Anna, Daisy and their team for the extra low tox love. Enjoy! https://bit.ly/Edible_Beauty
Be sure to join me on Instagram @lowtoxlife and tag me with your shares and AHAs of this week’s episode.
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About Alexx Stuart
Alexx Stuart is an educator and change agent who founded Low Tox Life in 2010 after seeing the lack of transparency in our food system, personal care and cleaning products. She’s built a movement that’s non-judgmental, positive and says low tox peeps are a force to be reckoned with! A columnist for Wellbeing magazine, she is also a sought-after speaker and consultant to businesses committing to change for good.https://www.youtube.com/user/DrRobertBray
More about this month’s sponsors:
Thank you to this month’s sponsors for partnering with our show and helping you make your swaps with their special offer:
Ausclimate’s highly recommended range of WINIX Air Purifiers is the ideal solution for cleaner, healthier indoor air. Easy to use, reactive features and settings with a truly comprehensive 4-5 stages of purification, including Hospital Grade True HEPA Filtration and Winix’s unique PlasmaWave® technology. Perfect for smoke, dust, pets, viruses, bacteria, household odours, and allergies (covering a variety of allergens). Breathe easier, sleep better, and feel better. Winix; is the most complete air purifier on the market!
Offer: Ausclimate is now giving all Low Tox Life followers an EXTRA 10% OFF their already discounted prices. Simply enter the discount code of LOWTOXLIFE on check out via: https://www.ausclimate.com.au/
This discount can also be redeemed for over-the-phone orders verbally.
Website: www.ausclimate.com.au
Facebook: www.facebook.com/Ausclimate
Instagram: www.instagram.com/ausclimate
Edible Beauty is a brand I discovered a couple of years ago and a couple of products in the range have become firm favourites.
A little more about Edible Beauty:
- Pure and Edible: All products are made with organic ingredients, vegan, and food-grade ingredients—formulations so pure, you could eat them! BUT also high performance!
- A wonderful planet-conscious business using recyclable packaging, FSC-certified paper, and low-waste, eco-conscious formulations using ethically sourced ingredients.
- Holistic and Synergistic: Each product is naturopathically formulated to promote a synergy between inner health and outer beauty.
- Everything is Pregnancy and breast-feeding safe
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ediblebeautyau/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/EdibleBeautyAu
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Title show track, by LIOR.
Love the podcast music? You will hear excerpts from Lior’s track “Caught Up” – go check it out on iTunes or Spotify if you want to hear the whole song or album, Scattered Reflections. Co-written with Cameron Deyell, it’s a great song and I love the reflective energy of it – perfect for the show, right? Enjoy. Lior is always touring, so do check out his website. It is wonderful to hear him sing live, trust me.
Low Tox Club – The place to bring your low tox life to life.
Want to join a community of like minds and enjoy all the perks of being in the Low Tox Life inner circle such as an online membership platform, 50% off all our Low Tox courses, an awesome chat group, my monthly Q&A, and special guest star interviews for just $49AUD ($29USD/28EUR/23pounds) per YEAR? We have created a special place and set of resources to help you achieve your goals and it’s a wonderful place to be – MORE DETAILS AND REGISTRATION HERE.
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If you would love reading like me or you just simply want to go through the full transcript, you can check below.
[Alexx Stuart] (0:00 – 42:58)Hello and welcome to the Low Tox Life Podcast. I am Alexx Stuart, your host, founder of the Low Tox Movement and today is a solo show. I want to wish everybody a wonderful end to your year as we start to wind things down but we’re often still in that space of, ah, how am I going to get it all done?
What have I still got to do? How many things do I still need to buy? How many people do I still need to see?
It’s a really, ah, tricky time where everything about our physiology often wants to wind things down and take things slow and simplify but everything about our culture tends to go into hyperdrive. So I wanted to do a quick solo show, you don’t need hours and hours of podcast listening time this week, I’m figuring, on just a few key thoughts as we head into December, regardless of what background, religion, ah, cultural beliefs you have, hopefully these principles are going to help us all in this, ah, often tumultuous brain split situation, um, we experience this time of the year. So I want to remind you that we of course have Oz Climate, our major sponsor of the podcast, who we could not do this sponsor thing without, ah, they’re awesome, they give you 10% off all year round and it’s Black Friday week at the moment, so on top of their incredible sale prices, you have 10% off with code LOTOXLIFE.
If you need dehumidifiers, pro tip, you do, no matter where you live, no matter what your humidity situation, whether you have active leaks or not, that you’re waiting to fix, every home needs a dehumidifier or two, or four, depending on your house size, ah, or the Winix A Purifiers, incredible for everything from allergies to bushfire risk to, ah, VOCs from new builds or renovations, brilliant, brilliant air filters, and then of course the new air circulators, keeping fresh air moving through your home, 10% off code LOTOXLIFE, big thank you to Oz Climate. And then the second offer is our amazing edible beauty offer, 40% off code LOTOXLIFE, they’ve got incredible products locally Australian made, but also this offer applies to the US and the UK, ah, so I’m excited because that means lots and lots of listeners get to enjoy this incredible Australian beauty brand, ah, my son, 15 year old boy, young man, I should probably say, tried the edible beauty sunscreen on the weekend for the first time and gave it a shocked thumbs up, he was like, this is actually really good mum, thanks. I was like, I think that was approval, brilliant, ah, so I’m a big fan, it’s gorgeous, it glides on really easily, even great for the face and neck, um, and of course their core four system, which has number three, my favourite, favourite serum, the exotic goddess ageless serum, don’t want to get the name wrong, um, but they have wonderful enzyme peel products that are much more gentle than going and doing all that freaky stuff at the dermatologists or the beauty therapy people that charge you hundreds and hundreds to burn your face and make you feel really uncomfortable for a week and have to stay out of the sun, ah, there’s some, some pretty intense things that, um, people make women go through thinking we have to, but I honestly think that the products that edible beauty have in their serums and their peel and exfoliating genre of products are so great, they give your face a big drink, they give your face a freshen up, ah, gorgeous brand and 10% off, ah, sorry, 40% off Code Lotox Life and the way it’ll show up is it’ll just bump up any existing offers on the edible beauty website to 40% with your code. So enjoy guys. And then let’s talk about this time of year.
So I’ve made a stack of notes here, but I really wanted to focus in on a couple of key concepts that I often have found myself struggling with in the past. I have massively simplified my festive season personally, because I knew I wanted and needed to, I think of, you know, the slow movement and, and really getting in touch with what matters. Sometimes that’s easier as you get older as well.
I’ve got to say when we’re like high oestrogen, high, want to please all the people and do all the things for all the tiny people and, you know, a bit younger, we can often find ourselves not only, um, wanting to show up everywhere and do everything and be all the things and get all the things and cook all the things, but also being able to cope better with that. And I think there’s a real beauty to this phase in life that I’m in just turned 49 last Friday. If you’re watching this live, ah, is the capacity just isn’t there.
And therefore you are forced to sift what stays above the line, what stays below the line, what you let go, what you prioritise. And I think there’s a real power in recognising perhaps that we could do that a lot younger. And I, to be, to be honest, I’ve, this has been a project of a decade’s work of going, what really matters here?
Who do I really want to give something to? What do I want to make versus what would I like to buy and really just being very intentional. And through that process of analysis and questions, I’ve realised I am not the person who wants to make every single tiny food item from scratch.
It’s lovely to be able to, to have the skills and know-how, but the reality is, is if I made everything from scratch and I did everything, when it came to festive feasts, I would be exhausted. I was exhausted. And I remember often thinking, gosh, it sounds like everyone’s having fun while I worked my butt off.
And of course, there’s a mindset piece where you can pop your Christmas carols on, have a little mocktail or a cocktail glass of wine, whatever you do over the festive season and lean into the happiness of providing for your family. I get that, of course, but if it leaves you drained, then tune into that reality and change something. Outsource with good outsources.
There are fantastic low-tox whole food outsources, artisans doing Christmas markets, schlepping their products across your state to get them to you locally, relishes, sauces, salsas, dips. You don’t have to shop the supermarket. And in fact, if you want to, you also can.
I think there is so much judgement in, you know, this undertone of homemaking as a statement of success, where if you scratch make everything, then you’re a better person. And I am just here to say that is not true. And everyone has different places.
They want to channel your skills, your motivation for showing up for your family and friends at this time of the year. And it may not be the same as the next person’s. And you may be capable of doing certain things, but you may also decide to draw a line and say, I’m not doing that this year.
That’ll make that couple of days too crowded. And I want some space there. So I’m going to think of a good outsource, something I love to support, a small business artisan I love to buy things from.
Friends I want to swap and say, I’ll make six chutneys. You make six cranberry relishes and we can swap three for three and distribute. You know, just start having more smart conversations, realistic conversations about what you can and can’t do, do and don’t want to do, can and can’t afford in your budget.
And I think we’re going to have a much better time. And I think one of the things is I wrote a note here. Let me just pick it up because it was a good little thought.
A lot of the time there’s martyrism and there’s this like reality bites kind of vibe of, oh yeah, the woman’s doing all the things, but we’re also allowing that to continue to happen. And one of the most powerful things I’ve ever done is sat down with my family and all put our heads together as to how we can not end up with me and my mom in the kitchen for hours doing all the things or my sister buying all the expensive stuff like the cheeses and how can we share cost, share effort, share love and care and distribute evenly. And then, and how do we get men in our lives who often aren’t called naturally?
I’m just, it is a generalisation, but I’m 49. I’ve had enough conversations to know that there’s some accuracy to that generalisation in my circle of extremely progressive men, might I add, who share lots of loads. And so we’re still finding in a lot of these relationships and families that the women are responsible for entertaining and everything that goes with that.
How do we share with the men? Could they do a few more pickups and drop-offs with a list of items that need getting or a list of kids need to be here and there. And that’ll free me up to do something at home that I wanted to do to prepare for whatever celebration you’re having, be smarter.
And the best way I know how to do that is with lists, lists, lists, lists. If you have a very active December and a very active holiday season, make lists, make lists of everything that’s in your, look at everything in your diary right now, look at everything that people are asking you to also add to your diary and be very real about what you would absolutely love to show up for, what you would absolutely love to give your time to and give it wholly and what you know you need to do because in life there are needs. It’s not all about happy, happy, joy, joy all the time. There will be a couple of things that you are doing out of duty and that’s completely normal.
And then think about who will understand if you say no, who can you have open and honest conversations about feeling strapped for time, feeling strapped for cash. If people have invited you for a lunch, oh, wouldn’t it be great to get the girls together for lunch? And you’re thinking, that’s a hundred bucks that I really need to put on my Christmas grocery list.
For example, if you’re doing a big Christmas feast, any good friend is going to understand that and say, of course, honey, don’t worry about it. And you can then say, why don’t you come over for a cup of tea? I would so love to catch up with you.
I think we often feel when we haven’t made our lists, when we haven’t done our own spiritual and mental and practical stock takes of busy times ahead, that we can very easily end up in situations that we don’t want to be in, feel too stretched to feel happy to be in, whether that is financially or emotionally. And we can often find ourselves getting caught up in things. I don’t know about you, but who has been shopping on the 23rd of December when you didn’t have a plan for either food, gifts, whatever, and you get caught up in everything that you see.
I remember very specifically, I don’t go to shopping centres for Christmas anymore, but I used to and look, and this is because I’m in a big city and there are other options in your town or in a regional area. Sometimes the local shopping centre is the only place to go. So it’s not a judgement thing, but it was a thing I knew of myself that that was often the situation where I would tip over the edge.
If I didn’t have a plan, if I hadn’t made both a mental list of what I did and didn’t want to buy, get, do, source, and a budget on which I needed to come in at, then I could easily get, oh, we should get some more dips. We could, oh, you know, we’re probably not going to have enough salad. Let me just get another couple of this, that, and whatever’s.
Oh, have we really got enough? Have we got anything for boxing day? I should probably get a few packets of sausages.
I mean, who doesn’t have a tonne of leftovers on Christmas? If you do Christmas for boxing day, you do not need extra food for boxing day in most situations. So I used to just get caught up in things and it was so easy to spend an extra two, $300 on gifts that my nephews didn’t need as extras.
I’d already bought them their principal thing or food that no one needed that would end up being leftover and often wasted. So make those lists, make them in a slow environment. Do not make them in a busy cafe, make them in dead quiet, preferably grounding in your backyard or at the local park with a nice takeaway coffee or a cup of tea in a flask.
Be in nature. If it’s cold where you are, be somewhere cosy and quiet by the fire maybe, and make your lists, make your gift giving list and think, will it really mean something to that person if I get them something? Or will a sincere handshake and eye contact and a few words via email be just as powerful and important to that person?
Will it be important to that particular friend for me to be at that lunch and everything is riding on my being there in terms of it being successful and wonderful. And they really need me right now because they’re in a spot, or will it just be me as another one of the group? And I could actually skip that one.
I get together with those people often, they know I adore them and I’m a bit stretched for both cash, time, either or, and I can skip that one. Are there things I can practically make to save money and to do something heartfelt from my kitchen, instead of buying things and adding to packaging and plastic waste and all that jazz? The easiest things you can make are things like Epsom salts with a few little essential oil drops through them and a nice little ribbon that you’ve saved from a bunch of flowers or another gift that you’ve received over the year in a jar that you’ve saved.
And you can either make tags very simply with some cardboard from packaging, or you can buy some simple Christmas tags. Another thing that you could do is you could just get really good at one recipe. A lot of people think, oh, I’m going to make all the gifts this year.
So you then buy hundreds of dollars worth of different dried flowers to press into soaps, to press into bath bombs, to press it. If that’s not your natural skillset, you will end up overwhelmed and you will get the shits that you’ve spent a tonne of money on making gifts that you are now out of your depth in, and then they’re not even going to get the gifts because you’ve run out of time. Does this sound familiar to you?
I’m probably saying that because I’ve been there. I am a natural cook, not a natural DIYer, although there are some fantastic and super simple DIYs like my coffee body scrub that always go down very, very well. And that if I can make it in 40 seconds, you can make it in 40 seconds.
So I’ll pop the recipe under here. Magnesium oil is another very cheap and fantastic product you can make that is idiot proof. And I’ll pop my good friend Chrissy’s recipe under this video if you’re watching on YouTube, but I’ll also pop it in the show notes, lowtoxlife.com forward slash podcast, and then click on today’s show if you need that. So there are a couple of things you can make, but please don’t over overwhelm yourself with things that are really tricky or that require a lot of different ingredients for you to put things together because then you end up, well, you could have actually just bought a lovely little something from a local artisan and it would have been the same price and you would have been supporting a small business. So always think about your toss ups when you’re making this list and be very realistic about the implications of what you’re choosing to put on that list and how long it takes to make, what you would need to buy in versus what you already have at hand.
It’s really important. So you can kind of see now why making these lists in quiet, reflective times and spaces of your day is really important because you can think much clearer, right? But if you want to cook, make one thing, make it really well and make a shed tonne of it and then distribute it into brown paper packages, you know, a little bit of unbleached parchment paper, brown string.
You could stack four brownies, one on top of each other. For some of your friends that have a family of four or family of six, you do six brownies and or, you know, for teacher’s gifts, three brownies, a lovely little stack. My vanilla shortbreads also good.
So I’ll put those two recipes under this video as well. They are tried and true classics of my entourage of family and friends. Everybody loves my vanilla shortbreads.
Everybody loves my mom’s brownies when I load them up with walnut and macadamia and big choc chunks for Christmassy extra treats in their vibe. No one is ever like brownies. What am I going to do with that?
Whereas, you know, sometimes with those DIY gifts, bath salts, bath bombs or even even more expensive things that you buy like candles, you know, sometimes people like, yeah, OK, there’s another one of those. Of course, not scented candles, but you can end up being tokenistic rather than something delicious that people can consume and just have a great moment with with a cup of tea. I mean, how good.
Right. Makes me want to have a cup of tea right now. So lists, lists, lists do not overcomplicate if you’re making.
That is the key point here. Reduce the amount of variety of things you’re making and make a lot more of those things and then streamline your packaging. Brown paper packaging.
You can get it at your local news agent or if you’re keeping packaging from Lotox brand deliveries over the year, chances are you’ve got some in your wrapping drawer. Simple brown string or saving any ribbons from any gifts over the year in a drawer. And now’s the time to use them.
If you haven’t done that before, don’t worry. You can actually just start to do it from now and and you’ll notice how how much builds up and how you don’t need to buy extra new things. It’s brilliant.
And then get really good at a signature Christmas gift. If you are a maker, then people really look forward to receiving those vanilla shortbreads at Christmas or receiving that little stack of brownies or those delicious bath salts that you made for them. These are the sorts of things that can be really, really lovely.
Very, simple, relatively low cost. I mean, the coffee body scrub, you can get some spent grounds from your local cafe or your coffee machine, a little bit of olive oil or coconut oil, some vanilla bean and salt. Boom.
Very, very cheap. About two dollars a gift. And yet in a jar that you’ve collected with some string and a tag, a beautiful, heartfelt and excellent quality beauty product.
So really think, how much time do I have to make stuff? How much money do I have to buy the ingredients that this will require? If it’s actually looking exy in terms of what you have to spend to get all the ingredients to make all the things, think, is there an equivalent artisan small business locally at the markets this weekend that I could buy from instead and support their efforts in their small business and get those gifts for that circle of people that you wanted to give a little something to instead?
A beautiful local soap maker. I mean, the options are endless. Just trying to open us up to less packaging, less waste, less stuff, less cost, less overwhelm and more lists so that we are actually really well planned.
I think the next thing I wanted to talk about was special things, not tonnes of things. Right. So this comes back to thinking about the people that you want to thank and would some really heartfelt email words, couple of lines.
I did this just last week to one of my son’s teachers who if I gave, you know, in year nine when they’ve got like seven, eight teachers, that could get quite expensive or time consuming or both. And so sometimes I just really like to write them a couple of lines in an email and take the time if they really made an impact on my child. And they and my child had a really fantastic time in their class and developed and pushed through some limiting beliefs.
I’m so grateful to have a couple of teachers that really supported said this year in different ways and writing them an email to acknowledge that I guarantee would be better than any tokenistic box of chocolates or whatever. As nice as chocolates are. If that’s what you have the time and the budget for, do it.
It’s still meaningful. In fact, will mean just as much, if not more, because you’ve taken the time to write beautiful words about how they show up in the world for your child. And I just love that.
I love taking the time to do that. I’m very big on communicating anyone who’s been a great role model, a great leader and mentor and focussing positively on my son’s development. I’ve always taken the tack that words mean a thousand gifts, really.
And they’re always so grateful as well. So that’s kind of what I mean by special things, not tonnes of things, special things or emails where you really take the time to just articulate how that person has shown up either for you or a family member and how much you appreciate that. That is a gift, that time and that expression of appreciation and gratitude.
Special things, not tonnes of things also speaks to children’s gifts. Now, being a low toxer in the world of children’s gifts is a tricky one because there’s a lot of plastic in children’s gifts. There’s a lot of packaging in children’s gifts.
There’s a lot of landfill in children’s gifts, i.e. consoles that are only going to last a few years and then become landfill. It can be a very yucky time for parents to think, oh, we have this set of values, but then we have this set of like social belonging and integration being important. And where do we draw the line?
I really think we draw the line at quality, not quantity. And just thinking about what warrants a fantastic secondhand purchase. We got a refurbished PlayStation last year.
Well, Seb actually saved up for it. But as an example, there are so many fantastic mint condition tech things that you can buy as refurbished, one or two years old. I mean, sadly, a lot of people always buy the newest, greatest, quickly, quickly versions of things.
And so it means you have fantastic things that are one or two years old that are still in boxes and look fantastic as gifts. And then you’re not contributing to new petroleum-based landfill products and expense that is often attached to brand new. So really exploring if it’s one of those really good quality things like technology pieces and consoles and phones or tablets or anything in that genre for teenagers, then that is a fantastic way to save money and save landfill, to buy something that already exists, that’s ex-demo or that’s been used for a year and the kid lost interest and then it’s in a resale.
I think EB Games is where we get secondhand things from in Sydney, if anyone wants a tip there. But do you have to buy new, right? Often not.
A note on gifts, if your kids are younger and they tend to get a bit of an influx from all the relatives because everyone wants to get them something, you can be really intentional and send a group email and say, here are the things the kids are really, really after. And here are the things we definitely don’t need more of. And by the way, you don’t need to get them anything or at the absolute maximum, one thing is plenty.
If you’re strapped for cash, don’t be afraid to ask for new clothes, especially once kids are tweens and teenagers, they love new clothes. Favourite shoes from a tennis star or a basketball star. So don’t be afraid to get family members in on actual necessities, if that’s going to really help you out and you know your kids are going to love those things anyway.
I know my kid absolutely loves getting a couple of new t-shirts to play tennis in as a part of his Christmas loot. And we go for pure cotton. Adidas tends to do pure cotton, so it’s still a trendy brand, but at least it’s not a petroleum-based t-shirt material.
So just really think about cost, about family, about leverage and about those things and where you can meet with your values, where you can bend. So yes, it’s petroleum, but could I get secondhand? And then where you think, you know what, we do what we do most of the time, so we can go with the flow some of the time.
And this is something they’ve wanted all year. It’s one special thing. It is plastic and that’s okay.
We’re doing so well in all these other areas. And I think judgy, judgy, judgy internet makes us just feel terrible about ourselves for anything that’s less than perfect in any version of perfect that you could pick, whether it’s homesteading, low-toxing, dietary protocols. The perfect is always shoved in our face, but the reality is no one’s perfect.
So just remember that and go with the flow sometimes and that we’re all doing that, whether we’re admitting it or not. And that’s okay. Right?
It’s, it’s just, it’s okay. And then the last thing I want to say on GIFs is if you know, there’s going to be an influx, please right now, this week, I saw this on the internet. I can’t remember if it was a friend who shared it or an account where I saw it, but it was such a good idea was that now is the time that you do the present, the, the toy cupboard cull.
If there is something your child hasn’t played with in over a year, if they’ve lost interest in something, if they’ve moved on from things, if developmentally they’re in a new bracket and certain toys just aren’t stimulating for them anymore, clear them and get them to charity and secondhand toy distributors now, because so many families are going to be so grateful that you did that now so that they have Christmas options rather than, Oh, we got all this new stuff at Christmas.
Now let’s do a sort out of the cupboards and get rid of what we’re not using. And then it’s after Christmas. And then those families didn’t get those things that they could have given to their children.
So please, please, please this week, let’s just have a team effort to look through everything, make an hour or two of it together. Think about how powerful and special that is going to be for other children in your community who might not have anything under their tree this year or in any other setting of, of holiday celebrations, other religions, et cetera. And, and really step into thinking of others at this point, which is incredibly important for our kids and think about what food drives you can become a part of.
Think about what charity centres you can develop relationships with, with your kids, do not go and drop those off yourself on your own, without your child involve them. So they are being charitable. They are getting things out of the car and giving it to the people and saying, here you go.
I hope someone loves it. It’s really important to switch that light of giving to others and showing up for others in kind and compassionate ways to our kids. And there are going to be people in our community who are going to benefit from that.
So please have a think, have a think with your friends. Maybe you have friends who have kids who are younger than yours or nephews and nieces who are younger than yours that you could on give things that really meant a lot to your kid. And now they’re going to have a second life with that other family.
And then you save money on giving them presents because it’s moving things on. Well, you clean it up. You care for it.
You wash the sneakers that lasted a hot minute on your fast growing child and dry them out in the sun. So they’re good as new and back in the box and you give them on. You don’t always have to buy stuff.
So really doing this stock take now of what fits, what is no longer being used, what no longer fits and how can we make the best of that for our community and for younger children in our families is a great way to budget stretch if you need to and to community give if you don’t need to and you can actually really help a family out. Now on the food front, I have so many tips. I’ve done some fantastic, super low key, very, very chilled.
You know, I don’t do professional cameras. I don’t do two different angles. Sometimes the lighting sucks and sometimes I drop things.
But I think my club member community adore our cooking videos and always mention things and comments. So if you want a bit of a bank of past cooking at Christmas gift demos, recipes, et cetera, in the low tox club dashboard, you have several because the club’s been going for a few years now. And when you join as a member, you get all of the past archive videos of member master classes with show guests going into different practitioner topics and things, but also of my cooking classes and demos and Q&As over the years.
So if that’s of interest to you, no better time to jump in and become a club member. There’s actually a tonne of club perks and shopping codes all year round as well, where you would easily save $49 just making the most of those, including the gorgeous clean nectarine. Irene gives us 20% off for our clubbers all year round.
Waters Co has a permanent discount. Killer Pillar, cotton, organic pillows, chiropractor designed all year round, tonnes of perks, but also all of the club member archives. So that you can jump in lowtoxlife.com and then the explore tab. And then the very first option is join the club. $49 a year Australian. So it’s the price of like less than a takeaway coffee a month these days and a brilliant group.
Everyone’s workshopping ideas for this time of year already in there. And if, if you ask just a couple of questions a year and it saves you hours of searching on the internet and you get a great recommendation from a fellow club member, boom, money saved. Or if you attend one of the master classes and a practitioner really helped shed some light on something that was very tricky for you, and you were able to ask a couple of questions live, boom, I mean, so much cheaper than a practitioner visit, right?
Now I’m not saying it replaces that, but. Club members routinely say how much money and time they save simply being a part of the club and having that brainstrust and that ability to often show up to practitioner calls and ask live questions. So if that’s of interest, do join us.
It’s a wonderful way to support the podcast as well, which I so appreciate. And I love our club member community, but I will also put a couple of my go-to recipes for cooking and for Christmas under here, as well as the celebrate ebook that I wrote with the gorgeous Steph Hinton years ago. I think about five years ago.
Now we wrote it and it has a lot of tips on how to dress tables. You know, using things like rosemary from local community bushes, saving your toilet rolls and making Christmas crackers in house. Tonnes and tonnes of ideas there as well, if you want them.
So I hope you enjoyed this little solo show and it gave you some things to think about. It helped you reduce your overwhelm. Please remember you do not need to show up to everything.
You do not need to give everyone a present. You do not need to make everything yourself and you do not need to buy all the things. And then the last thing I will leave you with is think about how best you want to bring joy.
A lot of this season’s communication culturally is around food and gifts, but think about what is joyful to you and your family and how you can bring that in the mix. And some of the things that we have done is we love to sing. We absolutely love harmonising and, you know, we would totally be a TikTok family if we had the time.
But we really make a point. My brother-in-law, Rhys, is awesome. And he makes a point of giving us a Christmas list of a couple of things that we can work on or listen to in the lead up for part harmony.
We give it a crack at Christmas. We record things. The kids get involved with percussion.
It’s so much fun and it has brought so much joy to our Christmas celebration. And another thing we love is quoting movies and silly shows and acting, like doing parts. And so one of our all-time saves, we’ve got a British background, many of us in our family, and we love Blackadder and Rowan Atkinson.
So we often act out Blackadder the Third or Blackadder the Fourth, which were our two favourite series, and all take different parts and just have the biggest laughs. But you could then pick your favourite show, like I think Schitt’s Creek or Parks and Recs would be hilarious for a couple of American faves over the years as well. I mean, who wouldn’t love to play Ron Swanson at Christmas time?
The ultimate stooge. So just think about your brand of joy as a family and make sure you are really intentional about owning that and putting it in the mix. It’s not just about food and gifts.
Joy takes on many, many shapes and sizes. It looks different for everybody. Get some family nominations happening.
If family is not your favourite place to be over celebratory times, bring that joy in with your friendship circle, with your community groups. Find a way to bring the joy in and be really intentional and proactive about it. Because then joy happens, right?
If we all are proactive about joy, it happens. And we laugh together and we share and we connect with people that matter to us, whether that’s your born family or your chosen sense of family. It’s really just so powerful to move beyond the gifts and the food and think, well, what are the many colours of joy for us and how are we making sure that happens and we make it happen?
So with that, we still have a couple of shows left for you this season before we wrap up for the year. But I really did want to share those ideas with you just in case it resonates. I used to be the biggest stress spot, always overspending, always overworking at Christmas.
And the lists and the sharing of the load and the more ways I show up to say I care and to say thank you, rather than just giving things, doing things or cooking things, has really taken the stress levels down a massive load for me over the years, as well as my family all sharing the load in what we do, what we bring and how we show up over the season. So it’s a good time to think about it now. Do not delay because it gets harder to think clearly the longer you leave these lists and this planning.
And then I’ll see some of you, hopefully, in the club where we’ll continue the chats about the holiday season, including leftovers and how we ensure that we don’t waste things over the holiday season. Have a beautiful rest of your week. Lots of low-tox love from me.
Bye. I hope you loved today’s show as much as I loved bringing it to you. I want to remind you that if you are someone who craves a low-tox community that is judgement-free, full of empowerment, has health professionals and building health professionals that can support you, as well as me in there answering questions multiple times a week, I want to invite you to join the low-tox club.
For the price of less than a cup of coffee a month, you have an annual membership for $49 Australian. So it’s about $30 US or Euro that allows you to have a member masterclass every single month with a health professional or global expert from the podcast, where we have them to ourselves for an hour to ask questions and deep dive further. You have the beautiful supportive chat group.
You have Q&As with me, me answering questions. We read books and talk about them and a whole bunch more. You can head to lowtoxlife.com, hit the explore tab and join the club is the very first option on that list. Of course, we have over 10 evergreen courses that you can jump into anytime, whether it’s navigating everyday low-tox swaps with our Go Low Tox Signature Course, whether you have kids and you’re wanting to know how to best support them with our Low Tox Kids Course, whether you’re planning a family and looking at a healthy low-tox preconception journey, reducing inflammation, especially the chronic kind with our Inflammation Ninja Course, many, many other courses.
You can again head to lowtoxlife.com, hit the courses tab and you’ll see all of the options, which includes a business course, my Low Tox Method Programme. A lot of people don’t know, but I was doing a lot before starting Low Tox Life in 2009 and I was a business consultant across hospitality, health, retail and cosmetics. I have been in business consulting for a very long time, so I absolutely adore helping people move into the low-tox space or develop their low-tox businesses.
So that’s a way I can support you. And then of course there’s our wonderful social media communities at lowtoxlife on Instagram and of course the website with over 250 gluten-free recipes, blogs, downloadable PDFs to help you navigate wanting to get rid of synthetic fragrances in your school or office. I could go on.
So head to lowtoxlife.com, see what takes your interest or fancy and thank you so much for being a part of our podcast community. I love, love, love reading your reviews. I appreciate every follow and subscribe and I want to just remind you to finish off that if there’s anything you heard that you found interesting from a medical or scientific perspective, it is intended as education only, please always chat to a health professional who knows you and your situation best.
I’ll see you next week. Bye.
