Living a good and happy life is what we are all trying to achieve, right? A good and happy life might mean different things for each of us but if you are interested in introducing more of the Scandinavian lifestyle habits into your daily life, you are getting closer to living a more sustainable, healthier and I hope happier life for you.
In a previous post, A Scandinavian Guide to Sustainable living I wrote about how adopting Scandinavian lifestyle habits can lead you to a sustainable life with a focus on fashion, but with this post, I’ll continue by sharing other Sustainable Scandinavian lifestyle hacks that you can easily adopt.
Food
Food is a big part of our lives, in my case one of the biggest as I love to eat and experience new tastes in addition to having such a big appetite. But how many times did you buy something and ended up not eating it, as it’s expiration date came and passed and you had to throw it out? How much money do you actually spend on uneaten food that you could maybe use for something else?
Until 2 years ago, we had a bad habit in my house of not looking at the price when shopping for food. By the end of the month when we checked our bank accounts, we were always shocked of much money we were spending on food and we were not even eating very fancy or extravagant, just simple normal food. But we did throw out a lot of uneaten food and bought products we already had because we didn’t check the refrigerator or freezer before shopping, which we did almost every day. However, 2 years ago my mother in law was telling us how she has a set amount of money per week that she uses for food, the rest she saves. And so we tried it as well, game changer!
How does this work – we have a set amount of money allocated for food each month, this way we know that every week, this is what we have to spend. We plan our meals in time, we go to shop once or maybe twice a week, instead of everyday, we try very hard to not end up throwing out food and it has actually helped with diet as well. While Copenhagen is an expensive city to live in, we now spend one ⅓ of the money on food than what we used to a couple of years ago, we eat much healthier and we learned to budget.
Have you ever considered making a monthly/weekly budget for your food?
‘’You have two homes, Earth and your body. Take care of them. ‘’
Eating out
A great way of saving money and live a bit more sustainable is cutting down on dining out and instead cooking at home with your loved ones. We love eating out and trying new restaurants, but having dinners out in the city in Copenhagen is quite expensive. When it comes to enjoying a restaurant experience, unless you have a very high salary, most people here can’t afford it on a weekly basis, and for many much less than that.
In an attempt to save up more money, we decided to cut down on eating out and instead have friends over and cook fun meals together or simply cook together as a couple. We still go out but not even half as often as we used to and to be honest with you, these years our favourite thing to do is cook together, have some wine and listen to music followed by a movie in our dear sofa. For us, this is the meaning of hygge! When we manage to do that with friends over, it’s even better.
Biking
While in other countries, biking is seen as a sport or just a fun thing to do in the park on a Sunday, in Scandinavia it’s a central method of transportation. Even though the weather here is one of the most annoying issues you have to deal with. For example, in Copenhagen it’s almost always windy, but neither the wind or the cold winters stop danes from biking to work or anywhere else they have to go. Biking as a way of transportation gives you the daily exercise that you need, saving you money on transportation but most importantly it doesn’t damage the environment which is something that danes care about a lot.
Contrary to many other countries that I’ve visited, Copenhagen’s sustainable way of transportation such as biking is also helped along by the government. There are bike paths lining absolutely every street, in fact I often wonder if there are more bike paths than roads for cars and vehicle parking places in Copenhagen. The whole city is designed so that if you don’t have a car, you can get around using a bike without any issues. While in the USA for example, I’ve only seen a few bike paths around the beach, parks and some in the very central streets. To top it off, the price of cars here in Denmark are extremely high, making it extremely hard for people to be able to afford one. Electric cars are becoming more and more popular and I think in a couple of years Copenhagen will have more of these than regular cars.
How many of the habits shared in this post and my previous post HERE, have you already adopted in your lifestyle? Or which ones do you think it would make a good impact into your lifestyle?
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