The practicalities of living an organic life on a budget
Take a stroll through the average grocery store, and you could be forgiven for thinking that organic is a choice that’s only available to high wage earners. Walk next door into the health food store and your suspicions would be confirmed. One organic living site recently proclaimed that choosing organic was “only” 20 to 60 percent more expensive than going with regular brands.
Yet it doesn’t have to be that way. Here, we explore how anyone can choose the natural options, regardless of budget. In fact, if you play it smart, you could even end up spending significantly less than you do right now.
DIY where possible
If you put something together from raw ingredients, you can’t get more natural. Instead of buying that overpriced dishwashing liquid and household cleaner with an “organic” logo on the label, simply make your own. All you need is baking soda, white vinegar and perhaps a few drops of essential oil if you want to be really impressive!
The same applies to food. Not all of us are in a position to start keeping livestock, but if you do have the space, there is nothing better than freshly laid eggs from your own hens. Growing vegetables is also mentally therapeutic as well as cost effective and eco-friendly. Even if you don’t have a garden, you can still grow some herbs in pots.
Shop around
Not really the homesteader type? That’s fine, and besides, there are always going to be some things you need to buy in. The trick is to shop around. The whole concept of organic equating to more expensive is largely an illusion perpetuated by the major retailers.
Take the growing CBD market as an example. Here’s a product that is massively popular as a natural remedy for everything from anxiety to arthritis. As such, the health food and complementary medicine stores are going crazy over both CBD and its pricing. Online suppliers such as Cibdol cut the hype and bring things back to reality.
Get your priorities right
If you go through the above steps, you will find that you’re using more organic and natural products while spending less. Yet there could still be some things that you can’t create at home and where however much you shop around, the prices are still higher for the organic option. This is the point at which you need to start making some hard-nosed decisions on what is and is not a priority.
An example might be your meat shopping. Suppose you have ground chicken and ground beef on the shopping list, and the price of going organic is 50 percent higher for both. Here, it would be more important to buy the organic beef because USDA rules are stricter for chicken, meaning that even if you buy “non-organic,” you can be sure it will not contain additional hormones or antibiotics. Where beef is concerned, there is no such guarantee unless you take the organic option.
