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A collection of things I sometimes write about. Comments? Questions? Get in touch.

Atiqah Nadiah Zailani

13 min

My Personal Waste Audit 2 Years Later

Assessing my own zero waste progress - gotta walk the talk! I started this Zero Waste series in 2018 with an audit of my own personal waste. Almost 2 years later, and having written almost 20 articles later about this issue, where am I with my own Zero Waste effort? It’s easy to spout out a list of things to do and tell people that they should do them, but am I walking my own talk? Time to find out! *** STATIONERY Most of my stationery are actually hand-me downs from my mothe

10 Zero Waste Principles To Keep In Mind in an Extremely Wasteful World

Atiqah Nadiah Zailani

8 min

10 Zero Waste Principles To Keep In Mind in an Extremely Wasteful World

Moving beyond specific categories, here are overarching principles when attempting to go zero waste in any part of your life. I’ve been writing about how to go zero waste for specific categories (see them all here), and if you have been following, you will notice certain themes or principles coming up in each and every one of them. (If you’re not sure why we need to obsess about waste in the first place, just know that our trash is overwhelmingly large and is EVERYWHERE, and

Atiqah Nadiah Zailani

7 min

Zero Waste Parties

Eliminating, substituting and/or reducing our waste from the parties we throw for fun and human interaction. I’ll be honest, I’m not much of a host, and being increasingly anti-social the older I get, I hardly ever put on a party, not even small intimate ones. So I am probably not one to write about this. However, I did throw a surprise party with a couple of friends recently, and it got me thinking about ways to do this in a better way. So while I may have zero tips on how t

Atiqah Nadiah Zailani

5 min

Zero Waste Gift-Giving

Eliminating, substituting, and/or reducing our waste from giving gifts to our loved ones. Aaah, the joy of receiving and unwrapping gifts! We love it so much that a whole new business has popped up: subscription boxes, in which we buy ourselves (or other people) gifts that get mailed in a nice box every month or every quarter. While I have my reservations about the wastefulness of such subscriptions, there is absolutely nothing wrong with wanting to give ourselves or each oth

DIY Multifunctional Sofa for the Meraki Tiny House

Atiqah Nadiah Zailani

5 min

DIY Multifunctional Sofa for the Meraki Tiny House

Putting together a custom Do-It-Yourself sofa because why not make life hard for yourself. My initial hopes and dreams were to DIY most of the interior of my tiny house, having participated in the building of the structure and exterior. In preparation, I must have watched thousands of YouTube videos on how to DIY everything from doors to shelves to dining tables. The people in the video made it look so easy, surely I can do this too? Well, turns out, no, I can’t. While YouTub

Atiqah Nadiah Zailani

10 min

Zero Waste Crafting

Eliminating, substituting and/or reducing the waste from our artistic and crafty endeavours. As a kid, I enjoyed arts and crafts. The earliest piece of artwork I recall making was in kindergarten, and it is the most Malaysian thing ever: a drawing of a durian, covered with glitter. Something like this, but smothered in lots and lots of unnecessary glitter I continue to enjoy working with my hands well into adulthood, and have branched into many other areas of craft: painting,

Atiqah Nadiah Zailani

6 min

Zero Waste Home Improvement

Eliminating, substituting, and/or reducing the waste from our home improvement and DIY projects. I have been continuously, if sporadically, working on the self-sustaining tiny home that we built two years ago, and am swaddled with all sorts of home improvement bits and bobs, from paints to cabinet doors to nails and screws scattered all over the place. The house that gets bombarded with my home improvement schemes Looking at all the mess, I find it difficult to imagine a zero

Atiqah Nadiah Zailani

6 min

Zero Waste Travel

Eliminating, substituting, and/or reducing the waste from our around-the-world gallivanting Once upon a time, someone once asked me: “If you had to choose between Prince Charming and travel, which would you go for?”, and a much younger me had answered without a shadow of a doubt: “Duh, travel of course.” You see, I enjoy travel in roughly the same way Malaysians enjoy food. This cat must be Malaysian! One foreign colleague who visited Malaysia had this for an observation: “Yo

Atiqah Nadiah Zailani

7 min

Zero Waste Ramadan

Eliminating, substituting and/or reducing the waste resulting from our greedy, hungry and demanding stomachs in the holy fasting month of Ramadan. Source It’s that time of the year! Much anticipated by Muslims and foodies alike, the fasting month of Ramadan has come around again. While some of us will be preparing for a spiritual experience, most of us, let’s admit, will be preparing for the gastronomic delights that the month brings in its wake. Ironically, the fasting month

Atiqah Nadiah Zailani

5 min

Zero Waste Clothes

Eliminating, substituting and/or reducing our waste from one too many obsessive, compulsive and impulsive clothing shopping sprees. Source I used to be a fan of cheap clothes. The cheaper the clothes, the more I could buy, and the less I cared when I threw them away when they turned out to be a horrible fit. After all, I could easily buy more next month without feeling too much of a dent in my wallet. My ignorant bliss was interrupted when I found out more about the horrible

Atiqah Nadiah Zailani

5 min

Zero Waste Gadgets

Eliminating, substituting and/or reducing our waste from the never-ending obsession around the latest gadgets that we can't live without. In my teens, my gift requests saw a pronounced shift from toys to gadgets - it started with a cell phone (the ever reliable and indestructible NOKIA, woot woot!), and progressed to digital cameras and mp3 players and laptops. These were often granted to me after a particular achievement (getting good grades, getting into college, getting a

Atiqah Nadiah Zailani

4 min

Zero Waste Cleaning

Eliminating, substituting and reducing the waste from keeping our homes and surroundings sparkling clean (or just clean enough!) Cleaning, for one reason or another, has become far more complicated that it really is. We’ve been convinced that different parts of the house require different products, hence the need to buy a floor cleaner which is different from the wall cleaner which is different from the glass cleaner which is different from…etc All shapes and sizes (and price

Atiqah Nadiah Zailani

7 min

Zero Waste Personal Hygiene & Beauty

Eliminating, substituting and reducing the waste from our daily hygiene, body-care and beauty-enhancing activities. While walking through the supermarket aisles, one can actually get overwhelmed seeing the confusing array of shower and beauty products, all promising to make your hair shiny, your skin smooth, and your armpits fragrant. There are products specifically for the oily hair or skin, which is different from the one for dry hair or skin, which is also different from t

Atiqah Nadiah Zailani

5 min

Zero Waste Dental Care [+ GIVEAWAY]

Eliminating, substituting and reducing the waste from our twice-daily (or more) dental hygiene routine. A few items that consistently appeared in my trash can was the waste from cleaning my teeth, which, because it’s done twice or more a day, can generate a surprisingly amount of trash without me even realising it. Luckily, there are a number of options out there to alleviate this. *** Toothpaste Eliminate & Substitute: DIY Toothpaste For the enterprising DIY enthusiast, maki

Meraki Tiny House: What I Would Do Differently

Atiqah Nadiah Zailani

5 min

Meraki Tiny House: What I Would Do Differently

All the things I would do differently if I were to build a house again Last week marks the anniversary of the start of the Meraki Tiny House build. We kickstarted the build in September of 2017, after approximately 1 year of doodle sketching on my own and another 1+ year of actual serious planning with actual professionals. The skeleton of the house was completed in late September of last year, and the finishing work has been sporadically ongoing since then. Now, a couple hun

Atiqah Nadiah Zailani

7 min

Zero Waste Shopping & Dining Out [+GIVEAWAY]

Eliminating, substituting, reducing and/or recycling the waste from our shopping and dining trips. While I like to think that, as an adult, I have left behind the awful habits of mindless shopping and endless eating out that I did a lot of in my teens and twenties, the truth is I still very much enjoy strolling through a mall for hours and eating food that I didn’t cook myself. These activities, however, can generate a significant amount of trash - especially if you have a ha

Atiqah Nadiah Zailani

5 min

Create Your Own Personal Finance System

Not all of us are accountants, but all of us, whether we like it or not, need to manage our money - here's how. Previously, we discussed how to allocate your paycheque into certain percentages to suit your priorities and lifestyle. If you haven't done this already, this article won't make much sense, so go do that first. My own allocation consists of 6 different categories (and even subcategories within those categories, just to make life more exciting), but for the purpose o

Atiqah Nadiah Zailani

5 min

The Personal Waste Audit

Know thy enemy. In this particular case, the enemy is the mound sitting inside your trash can. Discovering others who had successfully reduced the trash they produce to practically nothing has been incredibly inspiring for me. Source It was proof that with a little effort and a few conscientious choices, we don’t have to be mindless consumers, trash producers, and unwitting contributors to the junk piling up on our soil and in our oceans. Hopefully, you being here and reading

Atiqah Nadiah Zailani

7 min

The Emergency Fund and the Stupid Fund

A piggy-bank to save your day, or week, or month, or year. Before we get to anything else in this series, let’s first figure out your emergency fund situation. If I took away your job tomorrow and cut out any means of receiving future income or pity money from the doting parents or the concerned boy/girlfriend, because I’m mean like that, how long can you survive with the money you currently have? A week? A month? A year? If you answered a year, then you’re good to go. You ca

First time taking on the Inktober Challenge

Atiqah Nadiah Zailani

7 min

First time taking on the Inktober Challenge

Upgrading my doodling skills from nonsense to some-sense via a month-long inking challenge: Inktober. For the longest time, I was only good at doodling - decorating the margins of my notebooks with random lines and shapes that often made no sense. (Most people think I am not paying attention when I start doodling, but ironically enough, it actually helps me to concentrate more by giving my restlessness an outlet. So honestly, I’m listening, guys!) At one point, it occurred t

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