The unexpected glee that comes from refilling odd-ball items
And the peace they bring in times of stress.
When I started my refill journey back in 2011, I focused mainly on food because, well, I love food. At the time that I started along that path, I was also interning at Seventh Generation in Burlington, Vermont and got to take home some of the laundry detergent, dish, and hand soap I QA/QCed (I spent all day in a lab measuring the pH of these items and titrating to make sure they were up to snuff!).
With these items taken care of, the remaining refills I wanted or needed really were food-related: things like beans, rice, oats, spices, snacks (obviously), coffee, and sometimes maple syrup and almond butter. While the local grocery store did have a bulk section, I found it easier to bring my own jars/bags/containers to the co-ops, and that is how I fell in love with co-ops!
It was only after moving to Canada and exploring the two refilleries in my city, that I started to really explore non-food refills. I have dry skin in the winter, I wash my clothes with some degree of regularity, and I wanted to develop a better flossing habit. And, only very recently (as in, the last year) have I become Someone Who Takes Baths…with bubble bath and bath salts and candles. 🕯️
As it turns out, I can fulfill (😂) all of those needs through refill, canyoubelieveit?! This has been satisfying on an existential level. It’s that sensation your brain gives off when something just fits. Things click.
Keeping my skin hydrated through refills
Face cream and body lotion have probably become my favourite refills to date because I use them every dang day and without refills, I’d be going through a lot of plastic containers. Before discovering these as refills, I would buy big, plastic bottles of lotion that I could never get all the product out of.
For many years, I was an Alba Botanica face cream girl. If you aren’t familiar, the company makes a line of body lotions and face creams that smell like plumeria and other tropical scents. The Hawaiian islands hold a special place in my heart (SEA, 5IMDC, Midway) and the face cream instantly brings me back to my time there.
Unfortunately, the cream comes in a little plastic tub and there is no way to refill it with more Alba Botanica. Believe me, I tried. Below is the response I received when I asked.
I guess I’ll be embracing a Healthier Way of Life™ with something else, byeeeeee.
“Dear Ryan,
Thank you so much for your suggestion, at this time we do not offer a refillable option for the Alba Botanica Aloe & Green Tea Oil Free Moisturizer. We love your passion for our products and applaud you for embracing a Healthier Way of Life™. We are always looking to develop products that meet the evolving needs of our consumers, so we’ll share your idea with our product development team. Unfortunately, please know that we cannot offer any compensation for these ideas or suggestions. Thank you again for taking the time to reach out and for making Alba Botanica part of your great choices.”
Nytia P.
Alba Botanica Product Specialist
(If they do end up rolling out refills, just know that the idea started with me and I am receiving no compensation, LOL.)
Sorry-not-sorry big corporation, I choose to refill!
You can imagine how high I jumped when I found out that FILL, one of my local refilleries, carries a refillable face cream VERY SIMILAR to my Alba fave, and—bonus!—it’s made in Invermere, a BC town about six hours from where I live! I love this so much.
It’s more expensive than Alba Botanica and I have no data on how long either brand has lasted me because I’ve never thought to keep track of it. (My hunch is that it’s probably about the same.) Even if the cost is higher though, buying this cream as a refill means I eliminate plastic tubs from my life and support a regional, independent small business. With relish, I’ve been reusing an old plastic Alba Botanica tub and I think I’m on my third refill. Endlessly satisfying.
Oh, and as for the body lotion, I’ve found a lovely, lightly lavender-scented option from Oneka, and have completely lost track of how many times I’ve gotten the same, small-ish pump bottle refilled. I still can’t get the lotion out of the bottom of the bottle though, can someone please advise on any hacks for this?!
Tiny jars of floss
In 2018, Jan and I were in Kimberley, BC, where we stumbled upon two amazing small businesses: Full-Fill Co and Stoke Market. While at the refillery (Full-Fill) I bought a teeny tiny glass jar of biodegradable floss, yes floss, and then promptly forgot about it for…I won’t admit how long. 🤓
This year (2024) after a trip to the dentist for the first time in um…again, not admitting, and being told I was lucky I didn’t have any major damage, I decided to put on my big girl pants and start flossing regularly. I’m proud to say that it’s been seven months and I’ve been mostly consistent! One thing that’s helped? Dusting off my teeny tiny glass jar of floss and using it. Buying refills for my floss feels like I’m pulling the wool over the eyes over Big Floss*.
True, the biodegradable floss does tend to break while I’m flossing more often than a plastic floss thread. But, perhaps I’m just an aggressive flosser. Who’s to say? It works 98% of the time, I can refill my floss container, and compost the floss when I’m done. Those are good enough reasons for me to make the switch! There is a bit of packaging associated with this particular refill, a tiny, stitched paper bag, packed in a tiny cardboard box. I compost the paper bag and recycle the box.
*(There is no Big Floss but you get it, right?)
Refilling the jar of self-care in an age of 24/7 anxiety
As someone aware of and concerned with conserving resources (I say this from my adult perspective, probably when I was younger and less aware, I was not as considerate?), it has taken me some time to openly admit I am a Bath Person.*
In every place I’ve ever lived, there has been a bathtub. And yet, before my current residence, the last time I took a bath on purpose was in the house I grew up in, and it was an oatmeal bath to get my skin to calm down after an apricot-induced hives episode. Bleccccc.
I’d pretty much written off baths, but not necessarily because of the oatmeal experience. As I learned more about the environment, baths felt like a waste! But also (and honestly, this might be more to the point) the bathtubs I had access to weren’t…that…great? (*cringe*) I guess what I mean is that all my many previous dwellings were on the older side and the bathtubs weren’t something I wanted to hang around in.
But in the last year, I’ve become a Bath Person. The bathtub I have access to now isn’t anything special, there are no jets or fancy features. What it is though, is ceramic and very pink. That 60s-era (or is it 70s?) shade of light pink that is at once very specific and also bland at the same time. It hit me when I visited my childhood home last month that I grew up with the exact same shade of pink – our entire upstairs bathroom was the same colour! That oatmeal bath was in a pink bathtub. Nostalgia!
The journey to becoming a Bath Person
Where did the obsession with baths come from? Part of it was friend influence, certainly. Some of my friends are Bath People and they rubbed off on me. But a bigger part had to do with my skin starting to experience random rash outbreaks under very specific circumstances, but for unknown reasons. Figure that one out! This has been ongoing since 2018 and while I still don’t know why my skin decides to mutiny, taking a bath really helps calm it down.
Of course, another contributing factor to my becoming a Bath Person has been the state of the world over the last several years reaching a fever pitch that I simply can’t mentally or emotionally handle. Baths are my escape. In fact, at present, I’m trying to devise a way to stay in the bath more or less continuously until 2026, or whenever the current nightmare is over. If anyone knows of any anti-skin pruning technology, let me at it.
(re)Fill the bath
Thank you for coming along with me as we embarked on the Journey to Make Me a Bath Person. The whole reason for explaining this to you is to tell you that once again, the refillery is here to the rescue with refillable options to keep me in baths. Not only do they stock refillable bath salts and bath bombs in bulk, but they also carry refillable bubble bath! I know, I know, I’m swooning too.
These are absolutely luxury items and I realize it’s probably ridiculous to talk about them for this long, but in an age where our stress levels are high and we need healthy outlets to diffuse our panic attacks at the thought of democracy crumbling…*ahem* having the option to refill bath supplies feels like a tiny little sanctuary for my soul.
*(By the way, if you’re wondering why I keep capitalizing Bath Person, know that it’s a play on one of my favourite author’s posts on Medium about becoming a Bed Creature™.)
Refills keep me enjoying my chores
As I mentioned at the start of this article, before moving to Canada, I hadn’t done as much refilling of household cleaning products. But now, I am all in!
Laundry treats
I recently inherited several older, green glass bottles that once housed fizzy water and they’ve taken up the mantle as my liquid laundry detergent vessels. The detergent I put in them smells so good (but it’s light and neutral at the same time?) and is made by a company on Vancouver Island (Mint Cleaning). Laundry time is a treat!
Cleaning becomes fun
A new discovery for me on my household-cleaning-products-journey has been tub and tile cleaner. For a long time, I would buy a natural product in a plastic bottle from whatever grocery store I had access to. Now, I use a heavenly-scented refillable liquid spray cleaner in a lovely glass spray bottle. I use it in the toilet bowl, in my pink bathtub/shower and on the shower curtain itself. Similarly to the laundry detergent, cleaning time is 100% more pleasant with this cleaner along for the ride. Of course, with this being in a glass bottle and using it around the bathroom, I do have to exercise more caution and expend more mental energy to remember not to drop the bottle. It’s worth it!
Because I refill these items so much, I’ve sort of forgotten that plastic bottles of detergent and cleaner still exist. They now feel foreign to me, and I love this very much.
The Great Turning
Depending on where we are in the world and where we’re looking (out a window, on our screens) things can look a little grim at the moment. We’re up against a lot right now and things are feeling…a little off, to put it mildly. We are experiencing multi-faceted, converging crises and honestly, it’s scary.
In a recent post at my Substack blog (Food and Other Mind Snacks), I talked about a podcast I was recently introduced to called, “We are the Great Turning,” narrated by Jess Serrante in conversation with environmental activist Joanna Macy (who is 95 years young!). I want to keep talking about it because it has so much relevance right now. Jess talks with Joanna about The Work that Reconnects, a framework of practices Joanna has developed over the decades for use by leaders and activists to aid in the healing of our world. The work is paradigm-shifting.
Three stories of our time
One of the key components of this framework is understanding “the three stories of our time” that drive the way we see the world: “Business as Usual,” “The Great Unraveling,” and “The Great Turning.” The podcast episode below will give you a more fulsome explanation.
What is probably the most difficult to hold in your brain is that we are experiencing The Great Unraveling right now (it feels like the world is, well, unravelling!) because of Business as Usual (think industrialization, slavery, colonization, extraction, pollution, etc) and the work is to acknowledge both of those things at the same time all while transitioning to The Great Turning, a way of being in relation with the world that is life-sustaining, regenerative, and equitable.
If that sounds like old wisdom, that’s because it is. First peoples around the world had been living this way for a Very Long Time before settlers came along. So if you’re thinking, “Hogwash, there is no way we can get out of business as usual!” I will respectfully disagree.
I listened to this podcast series while training for a marathon and let me tell you, I cried a lot during my runs. I also laughed and felt inspired and uplifted.
Refills as sanctuary
In a world that feels like it’s unravelling, refilling a jar of floss starts to feel like a bit of a lifeline, for me at least. It feels like I’m turning towards something better. Refilling is a circular act: I empty my jar, I wash my jar, I refill my jar, I empty my jar… All the while, when I dip back in to refill my jar, I’m also refilling my soul, by connecting with Gabi at FILL or Allisha at Chickpeace, or one of their awesome staff members.
Refilleries are my sanctuary. Human-to-human connection makes me feel grounded. Physically filling my jar with products made by independent retailers grounds me on another level: they support me and I support them. Together, we both support our planet, for whom we are indebted for this life.
Refilling, to me, is something we do in service of The Great Turning. It is the better future we are striving for.
Plus, it’s just plain FUN to refill. 😉
