The Trouble with Tiny Soap Bars

As an Airbnb host, we debate, long and hard, about how to offer guests toiletries—things like shampoo, conditioner, and soap.

For the first year, we went through our stash of hotel toiletries, the ones we had snaffoodled during various trips. Little bottles of shampoo and conditioner… sometimes body wash. Sometimes matching, sometimes not. We also had little individually wrapped bars of soap, also from hotels. Then a friend of ours, who also runs an Airbnb, gave us a big stash of small soap bars she had bought from a hotel supply place. That works!

Except… it doesn’t.

Little plastic bottles of shampoo and conditioner end up in the garbage. And the bars of soap? Guests would unwrap them, use them once or twice, and then check out. And we were left with a small bar of soap that still had plenty of use in it—but we weren’t going to offer it to the next guest (ick), nor were we going to use it ourselves.

What to do? Well, when you’re cleaning a suite and facing a deadline, you take the easy way out. They ended up in the trash as well. Ouch.

We’ve faced the dilemma from the other side, too, when we’ve stayed at Airbnbs and hotels. At one Airbnb, there was a lovely bar of Oil of Olay soap in a box on the soap dish. I had brought my own soap, so I used that. But on the last day, my niece opened up the bar of soap. Now what?

Well, I did what any considerate guest would do—I took the bar of used soap with me. It was a full-size bar, and I just couldn’t face the idea of it ending up in the trash. So now it rides around with me in the soap container in my bathroom bag when I go on trips.

All of this got me wondering. It’s one thing with an Airbnb, where the host deals with a bar of soap and little bottles every few days, but what happens at hotels? Who are dealing with dozens (hundreds?) of rooms, day after day after day? What happens to all those little half-used bars of soap and containers of shampoo and conditioner? Do they end up in the trash?

Maybe. Or maybe not.

I came across a soap recycling organization. It’s called Clean the World, and many hotel chains partner with it. Little soap bars and plastic toiletry bottles get collected and sent to a processing centre. The soap is sorted, ground into pellets or noodles, sterilized, sent to a lab for testing, and pressed into new soap bars. These bars are hygienic and safe to use and are distributed to developing countries or homeless shelters.

The plastic toiletry bottles are recycled into flakes that are then used to manufacture new products. Not quite as glamorous as the recycled soap bars, but… every little bit helps.

As an Airbnb host, we don’t have those economies of scale. Hotels go through millions of bars of soap every day. So what can we do?

We switched from little toiletry bottles to regular shampoo and conditioner dispensers. They last for months and, when they eventually wear out, can go into our municipal recycling program. As for soap, we switched to liquid hand soap for the kitchen and bathroom sinks. In the shower, guests can use a large pump dispenser of body wash. There’s still a soap dish in the shower if they want to bring their own bar.

It’s not perfect, but it feels like a better balance.

Further Reading

Clean the World's website page

YouTube video outlining the soap recycling process

What's with the Price of Bananas?

There. I’ve asked the question that probably everyone is wondering, but few are actually asking: what the heck is going on with the price of bananas???

If you don’t know, let me lay it out.

I do the grocery shopping in our family, and for years — before Covid — bananas were a stable $0.65 per pound. Without fail. Full stop. Apples, by comparison, were generally around $1.00 per pound. (Prices are from Superstore, may vary in other grocers)

We grow apples in British Columbia. We’re next door to Washington State, which is a major apple producer. We have apples coming out of our ears. Bananas? Not so much. They don’t grow in Canada. They don’t grow in the USA either. The bananas we get have to come from Mexico or Costa Rica or somewhere warm and moist and tropical.

So why is it that after Covid, apples have doubled in price? A five-pound bag now costs $9–10. Inflation? Increased transportation costs trickling down? Who knows. But they’ve doubled.

Bananas? Yeah. No. They’re $0.68 per pound. Essentially the same price as pre-Covid.

Why???

They come from way farther away. They’re fickle to transport — can’t be too cold, can’t be too hot, and don’t bruise them.

What the heck is going on?

I was in England for two weeks in November, and bananas at the local Sainsbury’s were £0.27 each. That’s about fifty cents per banana, or roughly a dollar per pound. Not outrageous, but still more expensive than here.

Turns out there’s a reason — or rather, a few overlapping ones — for this odd price freeze.

There’s currently a banana supply glut, and even though fertilizer and shipping costs have soared, producers have very little leverage with large grocery chains to demand price increases. For retailers, bananas are classic loss-leaders: keep them cheap to get people in the door and hope they buy other things. They’re also wildly popular in Canada, produced year-round, and moved through an extremely efficient logistics system.

It still seems wonky to me.

And rumour has it the price may finally start creeping up, because producers are now operating on razor-thin margins.

Time will tell.

Wielding Economic Power in the Kitchen

Cooking at home is cheaper than eating out.

True or not true?

Well… it’s obvious, right? Cooking at home is almost always cheaper than eating out—unless you’re eating filet mignon every night. And even then… a filet at home is still way cheaper than ordering one in a restaurant.

As inflation hammers our pocketbooks and drains our bank accounts, most of us are looking for ways to save money. Or earn more.

There are really only two ways out of the “not enough money” conundrum: spend less, or earn more.

We don’t eat out all that often. During Covid, we kind of lost the habit. What we did discover were meal-prep services like Fresh Prep. For about $50, we’d get two chef-y meals—often with leftovers—that were genuinely delicious. Fresh flavours, new tastes, and no guesswork with spices (the Big Cooking Mystery!). Even better, once we’d made a recipe once, we could recreate it again without paying another $50.

So when Covid faded and we started eating out again, we were… underwhelmed. The food often wasn’t as good as what we could make at home. And it was a lot more expensive.

We’ve gone out for special occasions—like my birthday. There’s nothing quite like a perfectly grilled medium-rare sirloin, especially when you don’t own a BBQ. It was expensive, but worth it. Ongoingly though? Mostly disappointing—and occasionally shocking.

A few weeks ago, we went to our local pub. One half order of nachos and one beer for me (water for my partner). Happy hour beer: $6.25. The half-order of nachos: $17.99. With tax and a modest tip, the total came to $32.

One beer. Half an order of nachos.

Pre-Covid, pre-inflation? Maybe $20. It was good. But it’s not becoming a weekly habit.

And then there was Domino’s.

A small gluten-free meat-lovers pizza for me. A medium veggie pizza for my partner. Delivered.

$57.

For two very small pizzas.

Highway robbery.

Dining out: convenient? Yes. Easy? Yes. Cheap? Absolutely not.

Our culture prizes anything that saves time and energy. DoorDash and UberEats do exactly that—we just trade our time and energy for cash.

So if cooking at home saves money, why don’t more people do it?

Partly because cooking has quietly become a lost art.

Basic cooking skills are no longer mandatory in high school. People can graduate without ever picking up a spatula. I remember sewing and cooking being lumped together under Home Economics. What the heck did cooking and sewing have to do with "Economics"?? It didn’t make much sense to me then—but now it does.

Sewing your own clothes used to save money. Fast fashion changed that. Cooking, though? Cooking still saves money. Treating it as optional is short-sighted. And honestly, I’d add gardening to the Home Ec curriculum too.

Another reason cooking fades out is logistics. Two working parents. Conflicting schedules. Soccer practice. Violin lessons. Someone forgot to take something out of the freezer. It’s often easier to order in, eat out, or give up and let everyone fend for themselves. Getting everyone to the table at the same time can feel impossible.

The cook loses it when someone leaves just as dinner’s ready.
“But you haven’t eaten yet!”
“Don’t worry—I’ll grab a burger.”

But often the real issue isn’t that people don’t know how to cook. It’s that they don’t know how to cook flexibly.

A stir-fry calls for sirloin—have you seen the price of sirloin? What about tenderizing a cheaper cut? Using chicken thighs instead of breasts? Or legumes—chickpeas or lentils? When ground beef gets expensive, lentil bolognese gives the meat version a serious run for its money.

It’s the difference between buying the same things out of habit and fainting at the checkout… versus seeing what’s on sale and adapting. Or—gasp—trying something new.

I used to hate eggplant parmesan. Not because I’d eaten it, but because… eggplant. Mushy. Suspicious. Then in 2006, at a conference, it was the only option. I poked at it, tried a corner—and oh my god. Amazing. I found a recipe later, and it’s now a regular.

I’d never have called myself a chef. At university, I had six reliable meals: chili, corned beef hash, fillet of sole, baked salmon, round steak, and tuna mac’n’cheese (KD-style). Over time, I added chickpeas, curries, lentils, eggplant. Spices still trip me up—I cling to recipes for quantities—but beyond that? I might even call myself a chefette.

And yes. Cooking at home has saved us a lot of money.

Which brings me to Starbucks. 

At Starbucks: 12-oz chai tea = $2.68

At home: $0.18 (tea bag) + $0.12 (milk) = $0.40

I’m paying for convenience. For someone else making it. It’s a trade-off.

And hey—it’s still the cheapest thing on the menu.

Further Reading

A couple of news articles about the decline in cooking skills and it's impact on home economics...

https://www.cbc.ca/radio/cooking-skills-decline-1.7064348

https://globalnews.ca/news/5155947/how-to-cook-at-home-more/

The Year I Stopped Trying to Do It All

Sometimes I just need a reality check. It's odd though, to get it from an Artificial Intelligence, and somehow, harder to ignore.

2025 was a shit year. Mom died. Aunt died. Someone else died. Dealing with Mom's estate. Clearing out her apartment. Going to her funeral and then the laying of the headstone. Grieving (oh yeah, grieving). Along with some health issues. And the Airbnb. Working 12 hour shifts on some gig work for a few months (out of town for some of it). And I don't even know what else.

In the middle of that, I was beating myself up for not being able to stay on top of our Airbnb social media and newsletter campaigns. And lamenting the fact that the 3 or 4 blogs I work on were falling by the wayside.

Looking back, the problem wasn’t that I wasn’t trying hard enough. It was that I was treating everything in my life as if it all needed to run at full speed, all year long.

I took my inadequacy to ChatGPT who, after a pregnant pause, suggested, quite sweetly, that I was expecting WAY too much of myself. There was NO WAY anyone could keep up the pace I had presented. In essence... it suggested I was just a tad out of touch with reality.

This idea that I can do anything... but I can't do everything... all of the time. That's a hard lesson to grasp. In my skewed memory, I had done anything and everything, all of the time. To the point that my mother-in-law saying, "Everyone needs a Gigi", was a badge of honour. Not only could I do everything I wanted to do... but I could do everything that everyone else wanted me to do! And some things that they didn't even know that they wanted me to do...

Yeah. Well. This year jerked that rug out from under my feet. That explained why I felt like I was lying flat on the floor pinned down by a mountain of grief and expectations and demands, pretty much all of it self-imposed.

I thought I just needed some time to get caught up. Hah! I thought I just needed some good mornings at Starbucks with a hot chocolate. Nope. I thought I just needed life to stop for a few days or a few weeks. Yeah, right. Since when has that ever happened.

There was no pathway through this murky year. And I was carrying wayyyy too much. Not just emotionally — but logistically. Everything was expected to keep going, regardless of what the season actually was. Too many expectations and demands. Too many of these laments... "but I used to be able to do all of this!!"... My partner tried to give me a reality check but it didn't really stick.

Someone bringing all of this to ChatGPT, and it's electronic objectivity, hit me hard. And, honestly, when I laid it all out for it... I could see it a bit more objectively as well. It gently suggested that it was no wonder I was overwhelmed and flirting with burnout. No one could maintain that pace. On top of that... it actually had a most helpful suggestion.

Rather than trying to keep all of my balls in the air, all of the time... why not think of my projects as "seasonal".

Say what?

You know... seasonal... so rather than trying to do Airbnb social media posts 3 times a week, 52 weeks a year... and failing miserably and crashing out in July... why not plan for that? Why not do social media posts from Christmas to end of July? We usually have a longer term booking in the fall anyhow, and don't really "need" social media then. Why not just run it for a "season".

Huh. Why not, indeed? Good question and... well... huh. It's kind of what happens anyhow. Because even though I buffer and pre-post things a month in advance, by the time July and August hit, we are in full-blown garden and high- Airbnb-turnover mode. Plus, I'm usually sick of trying to drum of social media content ideas by that point.

The seasonal idea is all about pacing... it's all about times of productivity and times of rest. It's about taking a break and coming back later with fresh ideas and new energy. 

And so we sat down and mapped out seasons for my various projects. The Airbnb social media season was mapped out. My espionage blog, which is insanely research heavy and can suck hours out of a day... that one got a season from August to December. I had had similar expectations with it... that I should be posting 1 blog a week for 52 weeks. Yeah. In reality, not happening. But for 6 months? Definitely doable.

One of the things I am a firm believer in is building buffers into things... or parking downhill. If can have one or two months of blog posts pre-scheduled... I have breathing room for when life throws a monkey wrench or a boomerang... or it just goes sideways. And with a gap of 4 or 5 months... it's easier to build in a buffer.

There were other projects, that only need output once a month, and those... we agreed... were better to keep going throughout the year. Like a monthly newsletter for our Airbnb. 

All a sudden, it all looked a bit more manageable. There was less self-imposed pressure. Less expectations of myself. Less shoulda/coulda/woulda. More breathing space. More rest space.

I was able to lay down some projects and say “not now”. I was able to look at my overwhelming to-do list and kick a number of things down the road and say “not this month”.

There were days in my calendar with nothing scheduled. I could sit back and read a book, or get up and go for a hike, without projects calling my name.

Noticing the Sugar Hooks

I've been at this point soooooo many times in the last few years. I'll quit sugar and do well for a few weeks, maybe even a few months. And then... oh so slowly... it will sneak back into my life. A beer here (alcohol converts to sugar), a chocolate brownie there (pure sugar), a little treat everywhere. And then... just like that, I'm back on the sugar train... craving snacks and treats and indulging in junk food binges.

I am so tired of this roller coaster. And I KNOW that sugar is bad for Hashimoto's. The whole sugar/insulin thing... it attacks the thyroid gland. Sugar tanks my mood. It makes my joints ache. I can't think straight. I'm overwhelmed. All linked to Hashimoto's and sugar. It's just, as another Hashimoto sufferer said, one big clusterf*ck!

We're heading into Christmas Season... or should we say Chocolate Season. The holidays are a time to indulge in so many yummy things... chocolate, sweets, delectable feasts. But they all have a cost.

I bought a bunch of chocolates in late November, for Christmas. But now... I'm thinking about the box of Toffifee and the Lindt chocolate balls and... I feel a tad ill. I can't keep doing this. I need to take charge of my health. I am the only one who can do it. I know the consequences too.

And... I've been here so many times. In 2009 I quit Coke (sugar!!). And then started drinking hot chocolates at Starbucks. In 2019 I quit hot chocolates (sugar!!). And promptly started indulging in double chocolate fudge brownies at Starbucks. A few years ago, I ditched the brownies and started eating 85% dark chocolate squares (but too many). It is now 2025. Do I really want to wait till 2029? Probably not.

I see the pattern too... I get myself organized, I find my rhythm and balance and I'm going through life, so proud of myself and then... something happens. Stress at work. A death in the family. A pandemic. And I crave the comfort, the energy, the je ne sais pas that sugar brings. And it’s harder to bounce back than it used to be.

I've done it before. I've gone several weeks without chocolate or sugar and... then... as noted earlier... I crack the door a tiny bit to let in a birthday cupcake or a celebratory hot chocolate and... very quickly... the floodgates open.

I don't want to accept the fact that I need to go cold turkey. For life. Or at least to the point where I don't crave the stuff. And could I have a piece of birthday cake in the future? I really don't know. Maybe I should be joining an SA group (Sugarholics Anonymous). (OMG... there actually is such a group! I thought I made that up.)

I thought that I could be one of those people who can eat chocolate and sugar in moderation. Perhaps not. Genetically... some people can have one piece of chocolate and leave the rest for another day. Genetically, some people can't.

And I know that part of it is environmental as well. That is why I don't keep chocolate in the house. Going down to the store to buy it is an entropy hurdle that works for me. But if it comes in the house... I am hooped.

For now, noticing that feels like enough.

The Ring never Lies

For the last 8 years, I've worn a commitment ring on my left-hand ring finger. Last year, my partner and I were married and we exchanged the rings in a formal ceremony. The ring slipped off and on again, no problem.

A few months ago, I noticed that the ring was harder to get off. I play with it on occasion, twist it around my finger and then slide it up and down my knuckle. Just an idle toying-with when I'm watching TV.

But then... slowly, over time, I noticed that I couldn't get the ring over that knuckle. And it was a tight twist on my finger. What the heck?

Did the ring shrink? Did my finger swell? Was I perhaps retaining water? Did I have early arthritis starting in my knuckle? Or had I gained weight?

It's not been an easy year, 2025. It's actually been a brute of a year. My Mom died, my aunt died, and there was another death. On top of work. And running an Airbnb. And other stuff.

Looking back... I see how I turned to Starbucks hot chocolate for comfort. It was a well-trodden, comforting routine that made me feel cared for and soothed. I turned to chocolate, because... why not!? 

Add to that, my feet have been bothering me this past year. And the advice was to ease up on the walking and hiking. So I have been more sedentary this past year, waiting for the feet to feel better.

That might explain why my belt is now in a different hole... and why I've had to wear the stretchy jeans rather than my regular ones. Ugh.

So... when I gathered my courage in my hands this morning and stepped on the scale, I wasn't shocked to find myself a good 10 lbs over my stable, standard weight. Bugger.

The clouds have been brewing for a while... emotionally turbulent year... belt holes... stretchy jeans... shrinking ring... less walking... more chocolate. It's a perfect recipe for weight gain. But I've been here before and I've turned the ship around. 

It's almost the end of the year... a perfect time to take stock, assess priorities and directions and choose a different path. I don't have to wait for January 1. I can start now. Today. Which is 12/12/25...

Faithful readers of this blog will know that I have gone on various sugar detoxes multiple times. Sometimes they work. For a while.

On a positive note... 15 December (tomorrow) marks 150 days with no hot chocolate. Which is a major win. Now I need to work on the chocolate cravings that pop up elsewhere. It's kind of like whack-a-mole. Sit on the hot chocolate mole and some other chocolate mole pops up... Lindt 85% dark chocolate squares (far too many in one day) or Ritter Sport dark chocolate with hazelnut... also too many in one day...

I guess mindfulness is the key. It's been too easy to ignore the belt holes... and the tight jeans (they're always tight after being washed)... but the ring thing... it's in my face, in my view... all the time. And it's not comfortable. There's no way to make it bigger either. No stretchies... no extra hole to make it expand. It's firm and immovable. There's only one option... shrink the finger!

It's time to turn this ship around. To pivot and make different choices. 

The Lost Art of the Mix-Tape: Why Spotify Playlists Can't Compare

I miss mix-tapes. I really do.

Yes, I have Spotify. I know I can make an endless number of playlists which function similarly to a mix-tape. But I miss mix-tapes.

When I was a teen, I would sit in front of our stereo system at home - which had a receiver, record player and cassette plater, plus big speakers. The system was from Sears and... my Mom is still using the speakers!

Anyhow... I digress. I would sit in front of the stereo system with a big set of headphones on my ears and I would go through my records, both the LPs and the 45s, as well as bought cassettes, and pick out songs to put on my new mix-tape.

This involved a number of decisions... did I want to use a 60 minute or a 90 minute tape? I would then have to figure out the order of the songs, which is important you know... and then total up the play time of the songs (complete with the gap time between tracks)... Did I have 30 or 45 minutes? Or was one song too long? Tweak the playlist a bit... cause there's nothing worse than having a mix-tape where Side 1 ends in the middle of a song!

Once I had my playlist mapped out, then I would have to physically put the record on the turntable and line up the song and then hit record on the cassette player. Wait until that song finished, hit Pause on the cassette player and then get the next record (or 45) lined up. Or the next cassette too... because I had most of my Abba albums on cassette and luckily we had a double cassette player so I could tape off of the bought cassettes too! But finding the start of a song on a cassette is way harder than on a record! This took time and effort.

And of course, as each song was being recorded, I'd need to write it's title and artist very neatly (and in very small print) on the cassette playlist label. Neat and small... not always easy!

It was a process that could easily take an afternoon, but a very enjoyable afternoon. Sometimes, after the mix tape was done, I'd be listening to the radio (on that same stereo) days later and... a new fave song would come on!!! I would hit Record immediately and tape the song on the radio... which of course messed up the mix-tape but... I got my new fave song on tape now! 

I'd also make mix-tapes for others, for friends, for my sister, or my Dad. These were gifts given to share songs that I thought they would like. I once made a Nana Mouskouri mix-tape for my Mom. A lot of time went into making these mix-tapes, time and love and attention. Heck, I used to get mix-tapes from friends and family. It was a personal gift that gave me a window into their music interests. It was personal. And profound. And EVERYONE had access to a cassette player... be it on a stereo, a ghetto-blaster or a walkman... the medium was the same.

Back to Spotify. Yes, it can all produce a similar result, a list of songs in a playlist that I can play whenever I want. For a subscription fee of course but hey... cassettes weren't cheap back then either. If I hear a neat song on the radio or in Starbucks, I will Shazam it and then search for it on Spotify and add it to my latest playlist.

But my latest playlist often has a title like... 2024 Faves... 2019 Faves... I just add a new song to that playlist without any real rhyme or pattern. It just becomes the last song and onwards.

I did make one "conscious" playlist a few months back, my Cleaning the Airbnb playlist, where I wanted peppy, fast, zippy songs. So I went through all of my annual Spotify playlists and created a new playlist and added in some peppy instrumentals in between. I took some time and effort and even added a cover image and gave it a real name.

What about sharing a playlist? Well... does my friend have Spotify? Or are they Apple? Or Google Music? Or something else again? And sharing a url link isn't quite the same as wrapping up a mix-tape and gifting it at Christmas. Seriously. A URL link?? Sent in an email? Or write it out on paper and mail it? Meh. Not very personal. And I can tell you now... my mother is NOT going to be listening to a Spotify playlist. Just. Not.

The other thing I've noticed is... I don't really know who the artists are on many of these songs. I like the song, I Shazam it, I search for it in Spotify and add it. Back in the day, if I liked a song, I would have to listen to the radio announcer and get the name and title and then go to the record store and search for the artist and either buy their 45 or, more likely, buy the entire album as an LP or a cassette. And then... with their whole album, of course I would listen to their other songs and maybe even find another one or two (or more) that I really liked. I might even buy more of their albums (Hello Abba).

But now... with Spotify, that doesn't really happen... I might look at other songs on their albums, but I might just do a quick preview play of each and then move on. I don't ever listen to their entire album. So I never really connect or bond with the artist.

Something has been lost. Something has been gained.

I've gained more time, that's for sure. I no longer sit in front of a stereo for hours with my headphones on, happily making mix-tapes. But I've lost that experience as well. I've lost those happy afternoons.

I've gained a HUGE pool of songs and albums and artists. I have a whole A&B Sound in my smartphone!! I don't have to buy an entire LP album for just one song. My horizons and musical tastes have broadened. Spotify will actually suggest new songs based on my listening preferences. There's always a new artist, a new song and so the old playlists very quickly become... old and out-of date. I've lost a connection to the artists, to the bands, to the albums. There's always something new, something better and there is no time to sit and let a song or an album simmer and soak in.

Although... I do have to admit... I love the Repeat One Song feature in Spotify!!! I love playing a new song on repeat for hours. That was impossible with cassettes... well... I guess not... I never did it, but I guess I could have made a mix-tape with one song on repeat... But I never even thought of that back then.

I've gained the ability to share my Spotify playlist with everyone! Like... everyone and their dog. I just post the link on Facebook and... boom... everyone can listen to it. But it's lost that personal touch... I don't make a separate playlist for this person, or that person... based on what I think they will like. No, I just share MY playlist... the songs that I like. It's not the same as a mix-tape. Not at all.

Whipping up a playlist can be superfast now... but it's different than creating a mix-tape. Producing a mix-tape used to be a creative act, a personal act, an intimate act and now... it's not.

I miss mix-tapes.