IKEA #LiveLAGOM - The Sustainable Living Project

Hi everyone, this is my first post about #LiveLAGOM IKEA program... it is also a very first blog post in my life so please, be gentle in your judgments and comments :) hahaha

So it all started sometime in September or October when I got an email from Ikea Family asking if I would like to participate in a new Ikea sustainability #LiveLAGOM program and why do I think I would be the perfect candidate? The idea of the program was that each participant would receive £500 gift card from IKEA and use it, with the help of the IKEA sustainability team, to make house and life more sustainable, greener, healthier, more organised while learning how to grow veggies and herbs, cut electricity and food bills and generate less waste. Who wouldn’t want to be more organised and healthier while paying lower bills???

Why did I think we’re perfect for #LiveLAGOM program? A little bit about us:

I’m Anna and a few months ago me and my husband Andy we have bought and moved, along with our Boxer puppy, Franny, into our first house together. As a typical young couple and first time buyers we had a lot to do in a new house before we could call it our home and not enough funds to do everything what we wanted. When you need to choose between having your shower fixed and new green energy efficient LED light bulbs installed (and we needed 64 of those!!!), the choice is simple, you choose what you really need for your everyday life and fancy (as we thought about those at that time) LED bulbs are put on the “we will get it one day”- list.

On the top of that I work as a research scientist and although I do work on optimizing and increasing the efficiency and sustainability of the biotech processes on the everyday basis I didn’t know much about how I could make our house more sustainable and always though it would take up a lot of our time, energy and funds to do that. I think I couldn’t be more wrong.

So I have sent our application for #LiveLAGOM program sometime in September/October without even telling anything to my husband and forgot about it… And then one day in November I got an exciting email that we have been chosen to take a part in the IKEA sustainability #LiveLAGOM program!!! Yay!!! And since then the ball was rolling… we have attended an amazing and very inspiring workshop at Warrington Ikea shop organised by Greg Fletcher and the IKEA sustainability team where we have met other #LiveLAGOM program participants and performed a Quality Control Study on the Ikea Swedish meatballs (results confirmed that meatballs are as fabulous as always!). Greg also visited us with one of his colleagues in our home, to get to know us a little bit more and help us to decide which parts of our home and life could be improved and become more LAGOM!!!

IKEA Warrington

Taking into consideration our as well as Greg’s/IKEA LAGOM team ideas, we have decided what we will focus on and made ours New Year LAGOM resolutions:

• Cut down the energy bill by at least 15-20% by replacing all the halogen bulbs with energy efficient LED light bulbs (as I said before, we needed over 50 of those, I’m sure the person who has design the lightning in our house must have been mad, hahaha) as well as getting a LED floor and table lamp (we got the STRANNE ones and we love it!) along with getting a pressure cooker which is supposed to shorten up the cooking time and so use less energy than while cooking in a standard pot.
  
  
• Cut down food bill by again 15-20% (and hopefully losing some weight!) by eating healthier, reducing the amount of meat in our diet (hooray to the IKEA veggie balls, I have stocked up those in our freezer already!!!), growing our own herbs (thanks to SOCKER greenhouse), cooking at home rather than eating out or ordering takeaways, cooking bigger portions and freezing the leftovers to have it ready for those days when we’re too busy or just can’t be bother with cooking.
  
  
• Sort out our pantry! Yes, we’re lucky enough to have a pantry although as it not very organised we tend to just drop stuff in and hardly take anything out. Thanks to that I wasn’t even sure what I have had there until I started sorting it out last week. I ended up having 20kg bag of dog food, a pile of sweetcorn and beans cans, 5 large jars of pasta sauces and at least 4 opened and another 4 unopened pasta bags that I never managed to use up as I simply forgot I have it there (in the past when I wanted to make pasta for dinner I would just go to the shop and buy a new bag, and if I didn’t use the whole one, I would just stick it into a pantry and forget about it). Thankfully IKEA has loads of amazing storage ideas and we have chosen quite a few of those to sort out our pantry (wait for the before and after photo, it will be major!

Just to clarify, we didn’t need to focus much on decreasing our food waste as we simply have hardly anything wasted thanks to our year old Boxer bitch, Franny, who is always well happy when she can utilize our leftovers and quickly turn it into all natural compost for out garden and grass:) hahaha

Franny, our food waste utilizer :)

Those are our goals and aims for the next few months of our LAGOM life. We have picked up the stuff we have chosen about 2 weeks ago and we're working on putting it in place and starting our #LiveLAGOM Adventure!!! 

Our trip to pick up all the stuff from our shopping list...

...and Franny on a mission to bark at every single new thing we brought :)

Please come back shortly to check out on our #LiveLAGOM progress, before and after photos as well as other LAGOM ideas and home improvements!

All the best
Anna & Andy