To nourish body, soul and planet, add more luxury to your life
Luxury is ease, abundance, comfort and pleasure—and it can come from simple and nourishing places. Here’s how more luxury is better for you and the planet.
We rush around so frequently that nourishing ourselves feels more like a chore that happens on the way to some other event. Maybe we order coffee at a drive through and drink it on the way to work, or pre-prep a wrap so it’s ready to eat during a busy working lunch.
We often frame those most essential parts of our lives as necessities in need of convenience. We seek to minimize time spent cooking, cleaning, grooming, dressing and exercising. And what does this leave us more time to do exactly?
What if we flip the script? What if we spend our time focusing on the art of those things we actually need to live? What if we frame necessities as spaces of luxury and seek conveniences elsewhere?
And the cool thing? When we inject luxury into the necessary daily acts of living, the planet benefits too!
Here are 2 ways to nourish your body, soul and planet.
Luxurious mornings
Coffee and tea are two of life’s simple pleasures, and perfecting your cup can be a fun, simple and sustainable way to enjoy the craft of a simple brew.
We’ve written before about the healing power of slow coffee. All it takes to inject luxury into your morning caffeine is your five senses.
To anchor in your senses brings you out of the jammed space of your head, out of the past and away from the future, and back into real life now. It’s a transformative habit, this pause. It offers clarity, calm, and healing. There are many ways to experience this. By far one of our favorites is the ritual of slow morning coffee. It’s a daily act of self care that costs little money and requires no special tools. When the world feels overwhelming, it provides 10 daily minutes of calm.
To bump up the luxury factor
Any store-bought coffee will work for this daily ritual. Of course, coffee from your local roaster is a good way to experiment with different flavors, roasts and smells. And even a more expensive bag of $15 beans comes out to .50 cents per cup.
How it helps the planet
Coffee at home saves movie and time while keeping trash out of landfills. When you’re skipping a takeout cup, replacing paper filters with reusable cotton, and choosing beans grown at sustainable farms, you’re doing yourself and mama earth a daily favor.
Fine dining
Food is so much more than a necessity that happens in the stoppages between life—before school, on a short break, after work, on the way somewhere. Food is life itself.
Similar to a 10-minute luxurious morning brew, cooking can nourish the senses and provide a space to gather together with loved ones and enjoy time together.
Cooking for one another is an act of service and love, nourishing our relationships. Cooking together nourishes relationships in a different way, giving us time together in a meaningful shared experience that is wrapped into our daily lives and not a separate event.
The brilliance of cooking is that you can engage the senses with simple and inexpensive ingredients—a go-to lemony pasta or a homemade pizza sauce cost less than a drive through meal.
To bump up the luxury factor
Transform your $5 pasta dinner for four with a weekly farmer’s market find or go shopping in the cheese section of your grocery store. A $6 hunk of fancy cheese will last for a few meals and bring fun, please, and experimentation to the meal.
Try growing and drying herbs and experiment with herb blends in your soups and sauces.
How it helps the planet
If you’re eating in more and out less, or if you’re buying less convenience food, you are doing your body and the planet a huge favor by tossing out less trash and eating fewer processed foods which require more resources to produce.
Bonus points if you’re experimenting with making your own milk, soup stock and other essential ingredients that use lots of packaging.
And for every trip to the farmer’s market or purchase of local foods, you support more sustainable agricultural practices!
Luxury is everywhere
We’ve come to a collective habit of seeing luxury as a distant and periodic goal, or worse—as something only a few people can attain (think fancy cars and trips around the world).
What if we’ve got it all wrong? Whether you’re slowing down to soak in a tub instead of jumping in a quick shower, or you’re savoring a new playlist on the walk to your daily commuter bus, you can inject more ease, comfort and joy into your everyday life.
Where do you find daily luxuries?