Category: Thoughts

How to get a better shave, while saving money and the environment

  By

The title might sound like a bit of hyperbole, but it’s actually true.
And now that it’s dark November it’s a good time to spend more time treating yourself to a good shave, or maybe get ideas for Christmas gifts (also for gifts to yourself).

But first a bit of backstory: For many years I used the Gillette Mach 3 and canned foam that I got as a gift when I first began shaving. That worked, but having thick and stiff face hairs, it hurt a little every time. So eventually I began looking for how to get a better, less painful shave. That took me to this discussion thread (in Norwegian) that had some helpful advice and pointers on where to begin. As a first step I began to “preheat” and soften up the hairs with warm water before shaving, and I replaced the canned foam with a real shaving soap and a brush. Just doing this made a huge difference. Then later I also replaced the Gillette Mach 3 Turbo razor with a traditional Mühle R89 DE (double edge) razor and have never looked back. These days I only bring a cartridge razor when I’m travelling.

Saving money

The initial cost of a shaving brush, soap and a double edge razor may seem a little steep, but these are items that are built of durable materials and last for years with a little care. When using a brush very little soap is needed for each shave. I have literally used 5 years to use up a big block of shaving soap. The second big save is on blades. A 5-pack of Astra blades cost 2,5 €, while a pack of Gillette Mach3 or Fusion blades cost around 20€. Over the long term using traditional shaving equipment will probably save you a lot of money.

Saving the environment

Shaving soaps are typically long lasting, and can be bought as refills in a cardboard box, which produces much less waste than pressurized cans. Shaving soaps or creams can also be made with natural ingredients and without any of the chemicals that canned foam contains, and which I believe are also better for the skin. The truth is that almost any soap can be used to shave, but a soap that foams well with a brush will last longer.
The same goes for the blades. They are typically sold wrapped in paper in a small cardboard box, and the blades itself are just a piece of steel that can be recycled. Unlike cartridge blades that have the blades encased in plastic and can’t easily be recycled. The razor itself can be bought in a big range of designs, is built to last for decades and is usually made of recyclable materials like steel and wood.

Getting started

There are many resources for how to get started with traditional shaving. The before mentioned discussion thread got me started, and shaving shops also have some good resources. After a traditional razor won and gave a better shave than the latest Gillette product in a consumer advice show on TV barbershop.no made a guide to help people switch to traditional shaving. They have also made other guides and videos about shaving. And as always Youtube is a good resource. I found the videos on this channel to be helpful.

It doesn’t take much to get started out. A good soap, a brush and a razor is all it takes. For me that’s enough. But then there is also a world of soaps, aftershaves and razor designs if you want to treat yourself or someone else to some finer things in the bathroom. The equipment can easily be found online, like at barbershop.no for a huge variety, but I recommend buying locally if possible. There are more and more barbershops (at least here in Trondheim) that usually also sell shaving equipment, and the Body Shop also have some good stuff. Both my synthetic brush and shaving cream comes from them. Here’s the extent of my shaving equipment:

From left to right: 5-pack of blades, razor and brush in a homemade stand, a soap and a cream, a bowl from the kitchen to presoak the brush and a small towel that I use with warm water to warm up and soften the hair before shaving.

I hope this post inspired you to try out traditional shaving, or wetshaving as it is also called. You too can go from paying a lot without getting “the best a man can get” to a truly good and comfortable shave. And if you’re a woman, fear not! Wetshaving can also be done on legs with this kind of soaps and equipment instead of using plastic razors. Here’s an article on exactly that, and Mühle have also designed a razor now that is made to be truly unisex.

The month I got paid to cycle

  By

My bike, with the pannier and lights I use every day.

Back in September I took part in a cycling survey and experiment that wanted to see if people cycled more if they got paid for it.

Here in Norway, if you have a long way to drive to work you can get a tax deduction for some of your driving costs. Similarly, if you use a private car for work travels you can get those costs covered by the employer. But those cycling to work or people who use a bike for work travels gets nothing. Based on this, The Institute of Transport Economics wanted to see if rewarding cyclists economically made them cycle more, and I decided to sign up to take part in their research experiment. The way this worked was that I had to to fill in a survey about my weekly physical activity and specify how much I had walked and cycled in the week before answering the survey. Then I was to use a phone application to log all my travels for the next 3 weeks. At the end of the experiment I would get 2 NOK (0,20€) per km I had cycled in those weeks. I would also compete in a lottery among the participants of the experiment to get a bigger price of money.

This application used was a Dutch application called Sense.dat that ran as a background process on the phone and logged all my travels each day. It was clever enough to automatically recognise if I walked, cycled or drove a car, and I could manually edit the travel logs if the application had done any mistakes. Based on the logs and my editing the application learnt where I travelled regularly, and after just a few days it began to label my workplace as work in the daily travel logs. On a typical day the logs could look like this:

2 screenshots of the application, the first one is a full day, and the map is one of the trips that day.

I was really impressed with how good this application worked. The application was made to use as little battery as possible on the phone, and I didn’t notice much difference in battery usage on the phone in the weeks I used the application. But I made sure to charge a little more often. The distances logged by the application also matched well to the distance I would get on google maps.

At the end of the 3 weeks I had cycled 180 km, and was told I would get 360 NOK (around 37€) as a reward for taking part. I just received the money as a universal gift card that can be used in lots of different shops and restaurants, and was pleasantly surprised to see that my reward had been rounded up to a gift card of 400 NOK. I found it interesting and cool to take part in this experiment, and I think it is a good idea to reward cyclists for being environmentally friendly and more healthy in their work travels. This also acknowledges cycling as a means of transport that is treated equally to cars. They are considering to do this in the Netherlands, and I would be happy if they did that here as well.

My gift card!

 

Climate confessions

  By

“See Norway. Take the train” – an electric locomotive

I want to confess on some climate “offences” I have done recently.

The weekend before this I was in Romania for a wedding. I did it as a long weekend, from Thursday to Monday. As I usually do these days when travelling out of the country I took the night train to Oslo airport and flew from there. I do that mostly so that I can take an early flight from there, arrive early in the other country and have time to continue by train or bus all the way to my end destination within the same day. I also try to not fly within the country to limit my flights for climate reasons.

Not my flight, this plane was going to Mexico.

Then on the way home my second flight was delayed and I missed the night train home. My plan had been to be in Trondheim Tuesday morning and then go to work that same morning (no matter how tired I would be). So instead of taking one more day off from work and take the train the next day I decided to spend the night at the airport and take the next plane from Oslo to Trondheim early the next morning. I arrived home just a little later than planned.

Then for the next week I was dog-sitting for a neighbour. That gave me one more thing to do in the morning as I had to walk the dog. Since I consider myself a b-type person and like to sleep in I usually already don’t have much time in the morning. So, since I had access to the family car I decided to drive to work and back. I ended up doing that for the rest of the week.

Our family car is not this old, then I would for sure not use it.

When it comes to the wedding travel the destination was far away, so I didn’t have much other choice than flying in order to get there in a day. But when I came back to Oslo I did have a choice of taking the train. I used getting home in time for work as an excuse, bought a plane ticket on my phone and slept some hours in a big armchair at the airport. It was fast, easy and convenient. Similarly, with the driving I couldn’t help but notice how easy and comfortable it is to just get in the car and drive to work even if the time I save on the way to work is only 10 minutes compared with cycling (and no time saved on the way home).

I couldn’t help but think that I was the kind of car driver that I like the least while cycling as I think it is wasteful to use a whole car just to carry one person and a lunch box (or lunch box drivers as I like to call them). I would have felt better if our car is electric, but it’s not and I could see the exhaust fumes in the side mirror. I tried to tell myself that a few days of driving isn’t that bad and doesn’t matter much when I cycle year-round the rest of the year.

In the same week I could read in the news about a new report from IPCC that states that rapid and unprecedented action is required to stay within 1.5ºC of global warming. In the same week as I was flying across Europe and driving within the city centre. For a whole week I did not take personal actions to make the climate better. It is just too easy and convenient to fly or drive, and I think that touches on a part of the climate issues. I think too many thinks “I only take a few flights per year” or “a few days of driving won’t matter”. But we should all try our best to limit our emissions, and also tell our politicians to do the same. For being a member of the green party and the Cyclists Association I feel ashamed of myself, tomorrow I will cycle to work!

On the topic of luggage, or to luggage or not to luggage?

  By

And when I write luggage I mean of the physical, carryable type, not the figurative baggage (but that’s not any less interesting). As I have travelled my relationship to the luggage I bring with me and the stuff I put in it have changed over the years. I have gone through a few levels (or stages), and I’m beginning to feel ready for the next level.

Level 1 – beginner

Back in 2010 I became a member of EGEA, and that gave me a reason to travel all over Europe. As a newbie I thought a suitcase, and a backpack as hand luggage was a perfectly fine way to carry stuff while travelling. But not just any suitcase, the one I used back then was a big plastic monster that weighed a few kilos by itself. And next to it, I used to bring my Boblbee hardshell backpack as hand luggage. This suitcase was big, bulky and seriously annoying to carry for any distance due to the small wheels and the low handle.

 

 

 

 

 

Which brings me to:

Level 2 – more experienced traveller

The last time I used that suitcase was in September 2012, when it was so full that I had to pay for overweight and I had to walk home from Trondheim train station with it. After that I told myself to stop using that plastic beast and go over to use a big backpack for my travels. By that time I already had a Bergans Rondane 85, which is a very useful backpack for travel as it has panel loading. That means that the full front of it can open up like a suitcase so I don’t have to get to everything from the top.

 

 

 

 

I have travelled with that backpack many times now and also hiked with it, and when travelling I have used a Mono Producer shoulder bag (that I have written about here) as hand luggage (as I’m not a big fan of carrying two backpacks). It’s on the big side for a hand luggage, but it means I can bring everything I have wanted to bring for working away from home (which is why I call that bag my mobile office). And that have worked well and been easier than hauling a suitcase as I then can actually walk with the luggage on me, and a backpack is also easier to fit in trains, buses and cars.

But I have began to think that I want more, in that I want to bring LESS. I want to travel lighter, more flexible and without the hassle of checking in luggage. Which finally takes me to:

Level 3 – onebagging?

Onebagging is, as the name says, about travelling with just one bag which is a hand luggage bag. Some resources about it can be found here and here. What got me interested in this in the first place is first of all that I want to carry less, simple as that. I very recently went on a four day trip with only hand luggage and that was really nice. I could arrive to the airport one hour before my flight, get through security and not have to wait at arrival for my luggage. But I have also been a long time reader of this excellent blog that reviews carry on bags and writes about minimalist travelling.

So now I’m in the process of finding out if one bag travelling can be something for me. I know I can make do with only a few sets of clothes in a week, I do that every week. And then theoretically if I have a few spares and wash the other clothes on the way if needed I should be able to travel forever like the minimalist travellers rave about. I have read many posts on the blog mentioned above, seen a few video reviews and read a longer review by the excellent review site Wirecutter. As I walked into a sports equipment store today to see if they have one of the winners of this review I found out that they not only have one, but two of the review winners there in the store for me to look at. Is it a sign? Should I take the big step of carrying less? All I can say now is that it’s very tempting.