recycling – What's Next?

Eco-conscious travel is on the rise. People want to vacation sustainably, and accommodation is a significant part of that initiative. It’s the perfect opportunity to turn your vacation home into an energy-efficient stay. You’ll attract customers, save money and most importantly, aid to the preservation of the planet. This noble endeavour does not have to be costly: you can differentiate your offering by making a few adjustments to your home. Here are 10 easy and affordable ways to make a sustainable home:

*SaffronStays Whispering Windmill, Nashik*

1. Provide reusable supplies instead of single-use

Access to kitchen supplies and cutlery is a must for every guest. Make sure you provide reusable ceramic/melamine/glass dishes, cups, and plates rather than single-use plastic ones. The same holds true for toiletries like shampoo bottles, soaps, and other bathroom supplies. Choose reusable bottles or packages that can be refilled rather than disposables that would be discarded after a stay.

2. Install energy-efficient light fixtures and appliances

Equipping a vacation rental house with power-saving hardware and appliances is one approach to reduce its carbon footprint. Making the switch to LED light bulbs is a simple place to start. Another great choice would be to upgrade your heating and cooling system by installing an automatic thermostat that controls the temperature when visitors aren’t staying in the villa.

3. Install solar panels

SaffronStays Glasshouse Celeste in Ranikhet — *SaffronStays Glasshouse Celeste, Uttarakhand*

Installing solar panels is another cost-cutting strategy. Although they are not as simple and affordable to install as a faucet, they do assist in saving energy costs all year. Being energy independent allows you to avoid reliance on the traditional energy infrastructure. This will have a considerable influence when prospective guests scroll through.

4. Introduce an organic garden to your rental home

Growing an organic garden with local produce, veggies, and native plants within your rental home is one of the best ways to go green. This provides an opportunity for your visitors to learn about the area’s local flora. One could even make an exciting experience out of it: you can urge them to use the outdoors and even engage in fruit/vegetable picking. Who doesn’t love a little gardening, eh?

5. Invest in smart home technology

Another way to make your vacation home more environmentally friendly is to invest in smart-home technology. By investing in energy-efficient lighting, appliances, and systems, you can reduce energy use and cut down on your energy bill. This can be done in a number of ways:

Instead of leaving the temperature control to your visitors, you can operate your smart thermostats from anywhere. Analyse the patterns of energy usage and present your guests with a crisp, warm home in the winter and a cool home in the summer.
Similarly, you can provide your guests with smart locks. It helps you reduce your carbon footprint by saving on gas emissions on the drives back and forth to check-in and check-out your guests.

6. Collect rainwater to water your garden

Once your organic garden is set up, place a rain barrel to collect rainfall that you can use to water the garden later. This is a practical approach to saving water in vacation homes in areas with a lot of rain.

7. Encourage guests to reduce water consumption

Even though it’s nearly difficult to monitor water consumption of your guests throughout the stay, you can still opt for ways to save water. Start replacing your fixtures because an outdated bathroom can significantly increase water waste. Additionally, you can install low-flow showerheads in every bathroom. Although the water pressure remains unaffected, this showerhead still uses less water than conventional models.

8. Provide recycling protocols

More often, eco-friendly vacation homes provide simple, easy recycling choices. You can quickly establish your recycling system by designating separate containers for wet and dry garbage. You can also take it further and sort your trash into plastics, paper, and glass. Moreover, a significant portion of rubbish is made up of food waste. You could compost the food waste to make your organic garden fertiliser. It will undoubtedly impress your eco-aware visitors.

9. Use real plants when decorating

*SaffronStays Mirissa, Socorro, North Goa*

Plants are always an attractive addition to any indoor or outdoor setting. So instead of using fake plants to beautify your vacation rental house, why not use real ones? Some indoor plants to think about are calatheas, snake plants, philodendrons, and aglaonemas. They can give the area a more natural and green appearance and require very little maintenance. Additionally, plants contribute to indoor air purification by raising humidity, generating oxygen, and removing pollutants.

10. Provide sustainable transport & activities

Ways To Create A Sustainable Home — *Picture Source: Google*

You can provide a range of environmentally-friendly transportation alternatives and activities depending on where you are. These can include rental options for kayaks on lakes or ocean fronts, bicycles for travelling around town, directions to hiking trails, and a list of places to visit that are close to the house on foot. Provide eco-friendly items that guests can take with them on their outings, including recyclable garbage bags and reusable water bottles.

The Takeaway
It’s important to realise that the path to environmental sustainability in vacation rentals isn’t about achieving perfection on the first try. Sustainability is a process rather than a destination. Small improvements with quick executions that add up over time are what matter on a bigger scale. It is also critical to be open about the actions you take. Your acts will generate momentum and others will follow suit. Include them in your home’s description so that your guests can see them when they book.

Take advantage of this chance to market your vacation rental home to eco-conscious travellers. If you want to draw more clients who share your interests, emphasise the various benefits of your environmentally-friendly accommodation. In doing so, you help create a more sustainable planet for the future while simultaneously aiming for larger profits.

We fill our entire week doing serious stuff, finances, decision making, strategy, studying, planning meals. But how often do we let go and give our minds rest, let the hands do the work and calm ourselves, ease our minds and relax? Art does this. Painting and crafting heal us, rejuvenate and refresh us. While doing it alone is great, doing it with the entire family helps create memories and keepsakes while enjoying the company of everyone. This #SaffronStaysSunday, lets dedicate ourselves to art. Lets make a mess, use our hands to paint, recycle, mould and actually de-stress, so we can look forward to welcoming the week ahead with excitement.

Amongst the plentiful art activities, here are 10 simple ones where you and the entire family can do with simple paints and material lying around the house, and watch how they turn into beautiful, colorful keepsakes.

1. Shaving Cream Marbling

Shaving cream marbling is a totally engaging art project for both kids and adults alike. It’s creative, messy and fun and a nice way of using dad’s shaving cream without being yelled at for it! You will need this, liquid colors, water color paper, a tray to paint on and hold the mess and a paintbrush or icecream stick to swirl the colors around. Lay everything out, spray the shaving cream on a thick paper, mix in the colors and swirl them with the brush. Watch how the colors blend together for a pretty marbling effect.

2. Clay Modelling

Source: https://www.familyeducation.com/

Clay modeling can be very engrossing and therapeutic, calming anxious minds, settling everyone down. If you think it’s child’s play, watch how you get addicted to making shapes and perfecting forms from clay. All it needs is clay or dough of various colors which have to be shaped. Better still, you can make safe dough right at home by mixing baking soda and cornstarch with a little water. Craft all kinds of animals you like, add glitter and beads and see who makes the best one!

3. Nature Stamp Painting

If you thought fruits and vegetables are just for eating, then this art is going to surprise you! Nature produces foods and vegetables with very unique forms. The core of an apple, the shape of a leaf and even petals of a flower when dipped in paint and applied on paper look very different, producing their own art. Get your family to gather all they can find and sit around dipping these forms into paints and making something entirely new and different.

4. Oil Pastel Art

Source: Caran d’Ache Neopastel – Oil Pastel Techniques – YouTube

Crayons have been our go-to art materials since kindergarten. Pastels are just the grown-up version of them! Using either of them is reminiscent of childhood, making a mess, scribbling over walls, drawing for hours. Use pastels again this Sunday to create artworks; beautiful mesmerising pieces that will leave your children stunned! After all, there’s a hidden artist in everyone of us. Don’t you want to find out if yours is still in there?

5. Blow Painting

Painting with brushes is tried and tested. Making predictable patterns and forms is so yesterday. Why not experiment with unpredictability? Here’s where blowing art comes into play. Dribble some watery colors on your paper, splash them around randomly and use a straw to blow into them. You’ll see the paints going in all directions, creating their own enticing patterns. It is fun blowing colors all across the paper and seeing color run onto the table, the floor and on everyone.

6. Paint Rocks

Found everywhere around the house, aren’t of interest to anybody, yet as little children our pockets would be filled with sticks and rocks. Remember collecting the smooth ones from river banks and streams? Now take them and paint on them anything you like. You can create simple dot paintings or complex sceneries. Stones and rocks are canvases that absorb paint well, look good when painted and be stored away as a keepsake or paperweight. What’s more, you don’t have to spend any money on getting them too!

7. Abstract Art Painting

Art that does not represent an actual visual representation of reality is abstract. It can be anything – from the form of a bird as it casts its shadows on the water to the way a little child imagines the shape of an animal. If you’ve never painted in your life, then this is the time for everyone to sit together and try your hand at something. Take whatever form you like and paint it, give it any color you wish and you’ll see something surprising emerge on the paper infront of you.

8. Recycled Bottle Craft

“Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without.” If we’re to build a more sustainable world, then reduce, reuse and recycle we must. The easiest things to recycle in our own homes are plastic bottles. Everything from juices, to water to drinks come packaged in them. Instead of throwing them in waste bins, why not make a hanging garden out of them? All you need is a scissor or knife to cut and shape the bottles, some ropes to tie around them, mud and plants filled in and viola! you have your own little plant nursery made entirely by your family!

9. Candle Making

Candle making is incredibly engaging and calming. Watching wax melt, scenting it, filling it into jars and seeing it dry can be quiet a family activity. It is good to be cautious and have adult supervision around candle making, never leaving it unattended with the kids around. Even so, making a candle needs a few materials which can be easily sourced from any arts store. What color you choose for it, its scent and fragrance are limited only by your imagination.

10. Warli Painting

Source: THE HISTORY AND ORIGIN OF WARLI PAINTING | by ANAND VILHAT | Medium

An indigenous art form from Maharashtra, Warli art is a simplistic drawing of sticks and figures depicting the human form. This art was created by tribal people adorning walls of huts, floors of homes and villages as a visual representation of their celebrations since centuries. Draw and paint Warli art on anything you like, even taking up the wall of your home as a special project. All you need are basic acrylic colors and a paper or canvas to draw anything, from children playing to celebrations like festivals and marriages.

Let’s destress with art this Sunday, forget our worries and splash paint around, make a mess. Nothing better than this to prep us for the coming week, isn’t it?

If you are looking for more fun things to do, check out these Outdoor Games from your childhood to bond over, watch some wonderful Hollywood movies, read these Inspiring Books or just get the family together to make these delish Salads

Tag: recycling

How To Make A Sustainable Home

10 Exciting Art & Craft Activities To Keep Your Family Busy This Sunday