to market to market to buy a fat... bottle of laundry detergent?

I was at the Blim Market on Main last weekend. I had only been planning to drop in to say hi to a friend who was selling her Chai tea there, but fate intervened....

Earlier that day I had run out of laundry detergent, and I hadn't quite decided what to do about it. Going plastic-free has had the side effect of making me think about the consequences of what I buy in a wider than just plastic way, and I wanted to buy some sort of "green" detergent in, obviously, a non-plastic container. I should also add I'm rather partial to liquid detergent. For no particular logical reason. I just like it.

Anyway, the idea of researching what was the best detergent to buy and where I could get it seemed daunting to me, so I had placed the 'what will I do when I need to do laundry next' problem safely in the back of mind.

I arrived at Heritage Hall, a beautiful big old building on Main Street that looked more like a church than a place to hold a community market. The place is gorgeous. I started looking for my friend by heading left, which took me past T-shirts, jewellery and... soap. Handmade, all-natural ingredients soap. And, there on the table, in a great big mason jar: laundry detergent.

Perfect timing, anyone?

I was pretty excited.

Obviously, I bought a bottle.

Unfortunately, I have misplaced the card of the people I bought it from, but when I find it, I will add their names, and a link if they have one.

I was also reminded of what wonderful places markets are for living plastic-free. If there's one place you don't have to worry about plastic packaging, it's a place where the people behind the tables are the ones who hand-crafted the stuff in front of you. You can bet they're not wasting their time and money on excess packaging!

I'll be trying to hit them up more often in future.

The soap folks also had shampoo bars, which got me thinking about what I'm going to do when I run out of shampoo, which will be soon. Fake Plastic Fish uses baking soda, as does Life Less Plastic. Lush also sells shampoo bars.

I'm still considering.