Ep. 60: Rethinking Sustainable Living — Care, Community, and Interdependence with Laura Danger

Sarah Robertson-Barnes (00:01.068)
We’ve been taught to think of independence as a strength. But nothing in nature thrives alone, and neither do we. Today, author Laura Danger and I are talking about what sustainability looks like when we move away from hyper-individualism and start thinking more seriously about care, reciprocity, and interdependence. Welcome to Sustainable in the Suburbs, a podcast for the eco-curious who want to live a greener life and are looking for a place to start. I’m your host, Sarah Robertson Barnes.

A soccer mom with a station wagon and a passion for sustainable living. Each week I’ll bring you practical tips and honest conversations to help you waste less, save money, and make small doable shifts that actually fit your real life. Because sustainable living doesn’t have to be perfect to matter, and you don’t have to do it all to make a difference. Hello and welcome back to Sustainable in the Suburbs, the podcast where we start where we are, use what we have, and live a little greener, one small shift at a time.

My name is Sarah and I’m happy to be spending some time with you today. And if this podcast has become part of your routine, the best way to support the show is by leaving a rating and a review wherever you’re listening today. You can also click support the show in the show notes or share your favorite episode on social media. And if we’re not already connected, you can find me on Instagram at Sarah Robertson Barnes or head over to the Sustainable in the Suburbs page on Facebook.

And leave your thoughts on the episode post. You can also find links to the newsletter, blog, and everything else in the show notes. Okay, on to today. One of my favorite sustainability quotes comes from Anne Marie Bonneau, a fellow Canadian that you may know as the Zero Waste Chef. She says, We don’t need a handful of people doing zero waste perfectly. We need millions of people doing it imperfectly. And yet,

So much of sustainable living is still presented to us as an individual project, something that we are supposed to manage inside our own homes through things like how we shop and how much we throw away and all the associated habits that we build. But what if sustainability is actually asking something bigger? What if instead of focusing only on how we live within our own four walls, we also started thinking about how we care for each other in our communities, how we share resources.

Sarah Robertson-Barnes (02:25.536)
And whose labor keeps things running, who gets supported, who gets left carrying the work, and what it actually takes to build communities that can sustain themselves over time. Because care is not separate from sustainability. Care work is a part of the infrastructure that allows households, communities, and societies to function at all. And when that work is pushed into the private sphere disproportionately onto women and then treated as invisible,

We end up reproducing many of the same systems that sustainability is supposed to challenge. And that is where today’s conversation begins. My guest is Laura Danger, an educator, facilitator, domestic equity advocate, and the author of No More Mediocre, a Call to Reimagine Our Relationships and Demand More. You may also know her online as That Darn Chat, where she talks about mental load, weaponized incompetence, care work, relationships, and the larger systems that shape how we live together.

Laura’s work begins in the home, but it doesn’t stay there. Her writing asks much bigger questions about care, power, responsibility, reciprocity, and what happens when we stop treating independence as the goal and start recognizing how deeply we depend on one another. In this conversation, we talk about the labor involved in circulating resources among neighbors, the gendering and devaluing of care work, hyper individualism, consumption.

Mutual aid, reciprocity, and what sustainability might look like if we stop treating it as something each of us has to do alone. Here’s my conversation with Laura.

Hey Laura, welcome to sustainable in the suburbs.

Laura Danger (04:06.659)
Hi. I’m really excited to be here.

Sarah Robertson-Barnes (04:08.812)
Yeah, I’m so excited. And as we were just talking off mic, we’re gonna keep this to not ten hours, but for folks who are just meeting you today, girl, I can’t even yes, absolutely. I’ve listened to your book twice in the last week, so it’s top of mind. Amazing. but for folks who are just meeting you today, can you tell us a little bit about yourself and the work that you do?

Laura Danger (04:31.114)
Yeah, hi, I’m Laura. Thank you for giving me your ears. And I’m I’m just so excited to be here. how do I describe myself? I am an author of the book No More Mediocre. I am a Chicagoan, I am a mom, a partner, a hiker, gardener, neighbor, organizer here in Chicago, somebody who loves hand-me-downs, which we’ll talk about for sure.

but my work, most people know me as the person who ha popularized weaponized incompetence and the nag paradox over the past couple of years online. And through some of my work, I’ve worked with Fairplay, Eve Rodsky, who wrote Fairplay and developed a method for dividing domestic tasks. so a lot of my work generally just centers around the work that sustains our lives.

And that’s domestic work, care work, organizing work in our communities, homes, neighborhoods. I’m wearing my care work makes the world work hoodie right now. yeah, I’m my life centers around how we can create a more caring world in our households and beyond it.

Sarah Robertson-Barnes (05:49.806)
So I that’s actually how I came across your work on threads was a post about hand-me-downs and not in like the it’s cute way, but specifically about the labor involved in circulating them and why that works is radical. And I was just like, yes, because hand-me-downs do seem so ordinary, but they’re just there’s so much more than just being thrifty. There’s a whole network of care and labor underneath, just that simple act of passing something along. And you describe that as revolutionary work.

So can you explain a little bit more for folks who might not have thought about it that way before?

Laura Danger (06:25.706)
Yeah. as many people are probably experiencing, I would say now more than ever, the quality of everything is really bad. Like the furniture is a million dollars and it falls apart.

Sarah Robertson-Barnes (06:41.454)
The inshidification of everything.

Laura Danger (06:43.742)
Exactly. and so even if you wanted to go out and buy new things, things are really expensive. Things again fall apart. They’re made of really crappy materials. but I have I I have a 10 year old and a seven year old. And even before I had kids, I was very much a let’s keep things in rotation among friends type of person. But I’ve had incredible

hand-me-downs of like really important things, strollers. I’ve had spare car seats, I’ve had garbage bags full of clothing of three spanning three years of sizes, shoes that were on a child’s feet for a month and then they grew out of them. and I mean I’m still I have all of these clothes that have saved my family thousands, thousands of dollars over the years.

But they’re also clothes that are high quality. They’re items that are really high quality that I I didn’t need to buy new. And it really those types of hand-me-downs help financially. They are good better for our environment, better for our communities. They also are threads of community. They are things that genuinely connect us as people and humans. And

so there it’s it it’s a labor and it’s a labor of love. It is work to actually keep these things in circulation. Everything from when my kid gets a stain on one of those hand-me-down pieces of clothing, I treat it immediately so that it can go to the next kid on the block. And so there’s that work behind it, which it’s that revolutionary work. And what I mean is.

I’m connecting with my neighbors. My neighbors are connecting with me. It’s a very tangible act of caring for each other. That is, hey, I want you to thrive and survive. And other people wanted me to thrive and survive. They’ve made it so I don’t feel as stressed. I don’t have to work as many hours. I don’t have to go out and shop again and again for more crap that just goes to the landfill.

Laura Danger (09:09.078)
And it makes more sustainable, strong communities in every facet. And as much as we can be divesting from the grind culture and again, like giving all of our hours away to the bosses and the corporations and buying and buying and working and working, the more we are better for it. Though that’s what I mean when I say that it is, you know, the stain treating, packag packaging it up and coordinating with people of

With kids a size down, that’s all really revolutionary work.

Sarah Robertson-Barnes (09:43.512)
So one of the things that I really try to highlight on the show is that these sustainable swaps like clothing swaps are really gateways into understanding the systems underneath. So when we keep things circulating instead of just automatically replacing them with something new, add to cart, what does that create within our community beyond just being less wasteful?

Laura Danger (10:04.406)
boy, I mean, it’s a big question. And it I I wanna say it’s a gateway because when I sit on my porch with my kids in the summer, I see the family walking down the block in the shoes that my kids used to wear, or riding the bike that my kids learned how to ride their bike on. And it is there is a just a sensation, just this feeling of, my God, like this is where I live.

This is the people I build my life with. This is where my kids feel safe and I’m really invested here. This is home. That is a feeling you can’t you can’t buy that. That’s not coming from the the cart. but even more than that, are teaching my kids that. I don’t have to explain to them what that is. When they, you know, we talk about what it means. We talk about, how like, you know, it’s so nice that we can pass these down.

But when we clean stuff out of our house now, my kids know it’s going to some other kid and they’re happy to do it. And they will see another child in their clothes that they got from another child. And it’s it really is teaching that connection to our youth. And again, I it to me it just feels like an investment in a place, which is like that’s

That’s to me what sustainability is all about is how can we make our communities sustain.

Sarah Robertson-Barnes (11:36.458)
Like you’re literally putting down roots and when when I see the kid going by and something that that I donated or someone sends me a photo or what have you, that just reinforces to me that they’re all of our kids in a way because we are helping to clothe and teach and outfit them. And I mean, if if buy nothing group is your way into that, do it. Join join your local buy nothing group today as you are listening, please.

Laura Danger (12:03.278)
Sleep.

Sarah Robertson-Barnes (12:03.554)
Please. Please. There’s so much good stuff in there.

Laura Danger (12:07.564)
Yeah, seriously. What a blessing.

Sarah Robertson-Barnes (12:09.716)
Ugh. And I’ve never had somebody not pick something up. You can give away the most random stuff or ask for the most random stuff and someone has it within hundred kilometers of you. Someone’s got it. So we don’t really need to add to cart. Yeah.

Laura Danger (12:25.384)
yeah, absolutely.

Sarah Robertson-Barnes (12:27.278)
so one of the main themes in your book is that care work is deeply gendered, and that gendering is part of what keeps that invisible and undervalued and taken for granted. And that goes way beyond our individual households. And I just, as I was listening, I just kept thinking about the way that environmental care work seems to be really gendered too. So sustainable living spaces, I mean, my audience is 95% woman identifying.

And that’s been the case for the last ten years. Well, I notice that the climate tech spaces are still very heavily male. So what what do you think’s happening there?

Laura Danger (13:06.85)
Well, I mean, when you bring it back to we can if we talk about the hand me downs. for for a couple of years I was doing a lot of couples coaching and like consultations with couples within the household on how to divide tasks and things like that. And it there often was a gendered divide. I will also say that I worked with plenty of queer families that

dealt with inequity and troubles around balancing things. And one of the themes that I found was money. And when it comes to wealth accumulation and this mindset of we can solve problems by accumulating more or buying something. or yeah, like as if we can find safety in having enough stuff or yeah, like having enough of a financial cushion.

So I would talk to couples about sustainability things or like with the hand-me-downs. And a lot of times in a gendered way, there was a misunderstanding. It was one person would understand I’m doing this work because it makes life easier on someone else to not have to spend money on this. It also is just a kind and connecting thing to do. One person understood that. And the other person would say, but if it

doesn’t really matter. It’s like a three dollar shirt if you stain it, recycle it, or throw it away. Why why would you waste all of this time and it just sits in a pile until you can donate it and like that’s so much work. Just buy another one. And I I think that that really that’s if you zoom out, I think that is what’s going on outside of the household. And there is this idea like not understanding

the value of taking care of and sustaining communities in a way like, you know, you need to do the work, you need to invest time and energy in that work. And on the other hand, there are people who think we can make ourselves more productive. We can get more productivity. Exactly. So there’s just a made like a a misunderstanding there.

Sarah Robertson-Barnes (15:25.326)
Yeah, whatever that means. Yeah.

Sarah Robertson-Barnes (15:34.476)
It’s interesting too. I’m thinking about years ago, The Guardian had a piece about how men avoid looking, like looking environmentally friendly because it’s perceived as feminism. And there’s just so much casual sexism that’s just like deeply ingrained in the dominant culture, but also in sustainability spaces and who climate advocates seem to be. one of the examples that you gave in your book was eco friendly dish soap.

Laura Danger (16:01.781)
yeah.

Sarah Robertson-Barnes (16:03.798)
And so if we make that example even bigger, that poses questions like, well, who makes what we buy and who deals with what we throw away and who bears the greatest climate impacts. And so what does that reveal about whose labor and lives are treated as valuable?

Laura Danger (16:22.166)
boy. And I want to hear your take on this. Cause I can go, I can yap about this for a long time. I will say that I think that I got into this work. and when I initially got into understanding care work, the division of labor in our households, I also come from a background, like I said, of like community organizing. I’m a career educator. I’ve been in the classroom. I’ve that’s also

care work. That’s a lot of feminized labor.

Sarah Robertson-Barnes (16:55.214)
Yeah, I’m a former teacher as well. So yeah.

Laura Danger (16:57.62)
You totally get it. Yep. I wasn’t necessarily connecting the dots between all of that initially. and the more I have come to understand care workouts not valued in our homes, the more I’m like, this is totally like connected big picture to I mean the way that we exploit.

agriculture workers and we exploit immigrants and we exploit domestic laborers in our society. And it’s like the most precarious work. These people don’t have worker protections. They are paid the least amount. You know, there’s trillions of dollars of primarily women’s unpaid domestic work running, literally running our lives as society. So when you start to look at it that way, it’s like

Sarah Robertson-Barnes (17:44.822)
ID. Yeah.

Laura Danger (17:50.392)
Quite literally what you’re saying is who is being most impacted and exploited in these systems and who benefits the most when we don’t see that labor. And when you look at it that way, it’s kind of un you can’t unsee how integral it is to how our entire world works.

Sarah Robertson-Barnes (18:10.442)
Yep. So you asked what my sort of opinion was on it. And basically it was just like so I I was like ten years ago, I was like, we are going zero waste. you know, and I’d always been a tree hugger and whatever, but I found the zero waste hashtag and I was like, Great. So there’s all these cool swaps I can buy. I can just buy better. And that lasted for like two months, and then you start to just sort of peel back that.

you know, bamboo veneer, as it were, and be like, man, it’s just like white supremacy and patriarchy and race and gender and ableism, just all the way down. There’s no bottom. and again, you can’t unknow that. I can’t just be like skipping along with my wooden dish brush and not mention like, well, where does all this plastic go? Where is it made? What are the communities that are impacted by these factories and so on? Like I can’t not see it and I can’t not talk about

Laura Danger (19:04.138)
Yeah, I find it interesting. Like you said, like there’s a lot of advertising and marketing that goes into sustainable living. Mm-hmm. And in the meantime, I think this is something that just comes with age and experience for me is like what I would have seen as, you know, the all-natural loofah sometimes is not what it seems on the surface. Like sometimes the thing that seems the most eco unfriendly

actually has been like the plastic toy that’s been around the block literally fifteen times is actually much better than the person who is hoarding the water bottles. Yep. The the reusable all water bottles.

Sarah Robertson-Barnes (19:46.634)
Used. It’s staying in use and out of the landfill. That’s in my opinion, the most eco-friendly thing. Yeah. It’s already made. It exists. So use it. Yeah. So again, like we were just saying, you can’t unsee it. So we know that care work is fundamental to existence in society. And it becomes harder not to notice how many of the systems around us work against that. So we’re talking about marketing. We are constantly pushed toward convenience and consumption and productivity and doing everything on your own.

Laura Danger (19:55.0)
Yeah, definitely.

Sarah Robertson-Barnes (20:17.004)
And then the the costs are going through the roof. Yeah. you know, to ourselves and to the planet. And we but we still sort of largely keep that out of sight. So like again, the deeper you go, the harder it is to pretend that any of this is about making better individual choices.

Laura Danger (20:32.11)
Yeah, you know, this is I I saw something literally five minutes before I got on this call that really like I’m gonna be thinking about it for a long time. there is this organization called Echo Mundo, and they study a lot of times they study men, fatherhood. They come out with an annual state of fatherhood, state of manhood report. And on the cover of the press release I saw today, it was that.

Something the number is something like six six sixty or seventy percent of men think about finances every day. And they worry about not having enough and they they deeply, deeply worry about finances every single day. And at the same time, it was like fifty-four percent of men that they surveyed believed that the American dream is possible for them.

I found that so interesting. and if we’re gonna talk about marginalization and we’re gonna talk about the cost of things going up, you mentioned ableism. Yeah. I the more we look at people who need care, elder people, people who are disabled, children, we all need it, but the the most vulnerable in those situations, I think that those people are.

The most important for me to learn from because they understand that it it doesn’t matter what you do, if you need care, you are disposable. Yep. And there is no working yourself to safety. You are there is nothing you can do to ultimately guarantee some sort of American dream. There’s no merit that you can have.

The system may convince you that you can just work hard enough and you will be rewarded with safety and health and all of that. but it’s just not true. And as the costs go up, I th and jobs are more precarious, and the white men who have that belief and really, really do believe that they can work really hard and it will all be okay, are realizing my boss who treated me like family, actually.

Laura Danger (22:53.944)
When the business isn’t there, they’re gonna cut me. Yep. And they’re gonna say it’s not personal. Don’t take it personal. But it’s very, very personal. Yeah.

Sarah Robertson-Barnes (23:02.974)
our our culture is so our the dominant culture is so incredibly isolating that way. Mm-hmm. That again, like just work hard for yourself and you’ll get there. And that’s just not possible. Like no no nothing in nature survives on its own. But these these systems that we live in that keep us isolated, they benefit from keeping us disconnected and exploiting our real needs. And something that you said in your book that I like have bolded, highlighted, capitalized.

Capitalism has nothing to gain when we invest in each other. Oof. I was like yelling in my car listening to that. and then of course, one of the main themes of your book is weaponized incompetence. But then I started thinking, and I’m curious about what you think about this, that it almost feels like with in terms of sustainable living, there’s weaponized incompetence at a cultural scale. So we’re trying to buy something and use it.

Laura Danger (23:36.642)
Yeah.

Sarah Robertson-Barnes (24:00.808)
And throw it away and then replace it and not really know or need to know anything about how it got to us or what happens when we’re finished with it. But also, I hear this so often, you know, like, well, but I can’t do anything. It’s just the corporations and the government. Like, but could you try? but but also like, well, if I can’t do it perfectly, I’m not gonna do anything at all. Mm-hmm. And that just when you boil it down to like the division of laundry in the house versus

who is actually out there trying and who is not, that kinda punched me in the face a little bit.

Laura Danger (24:36.29)
Yeah. Yeah, I think I see weaponized incompetence as an umbrella of which underneath is not learning something or not making an effort and then ex excusing it or doing something to avoid accountability for it. And so we in the book I also talk about, you know, the the really good example of that is white women.

White woman tears is i if you are offensive and racist unintentionally, then you can just cry about it and say, Well, I didn’t know. I’m so sorry. How how would I have known? and it’s and my my thought process is with weaponized incompetence, there is this emotional element of it and this defensiveness, deflection, and harm that goes when you’re called out on it. So yeah, when we wanna talk about sustainability.

And there is this like, well, it’s too hard. I’m not gonna try. And then you just the not trying causes a huge amount of waste. It you know, I just I think about like shopping local. It’s like I often encourage people to buy my book, get it from the library number one. It’s on Libby in most library systems. Yeah, amazing.

Sarah Robertson-Barnes (25:58.934)
That’s right.

Laura Danger (26:01.7)
and if it’s not on Libby, you can request it from your library. But there’s that. share the book with people, get it from bookshop.org or Libro FM, which all support local bookstores. Yep. And I say that because it is really easy to get books on Amazon. And it’s easy, it’s so easy to get it on Amazon. But and I want to live in a world with bookstores. And if I want to live in a world with bookstores.

I have to pay the shipping fee to have a bookstore get it to me, or I have to actually go in during their their open hours and actually get it from there. So it’s that extra investment of time and energy that ultimately isn’t that much for the thing that I want, which is a city and a community with bookstores.

Sarah Robertson-Barnes (26:54.892)
Yeah, if if yes. I’m just like yes.

Laura Danger (26:59.266)
And I can’t be I can’t I can’t com like I feel like I can’t complain in the future if all the bookstores close because I didn’t make the effort. Mm-hmm. And I think that that makes people feel really guilty. and that’s okay to feel guilty about it. Just don’t then go on Amazon to buy more stuff to make the guilt feel less.

Sarah Robertson-Barnes (27:21.39)
Guilt is a huge thing that I notice in sustainable living, even having conversations with people face to face, they really shut down with because the problem is massive and quite serious and quite urgent. so there’s a little bit of, you know, cover your ears and cover your eyes. but also I run into like, well, I didn’t do it. It’s like I say I mean the same, but I just sort of look at it in in terms of like, well, it’s not my fault, but it is my responsibility.

Laura Danger (27:50.7)
Yes.

Sarah Robertson-Barnes (27:51.34)
To build a better world for everyone’s children and that includes you. You are someone’s child. Yeah. It’s a it’s and I never quite know what to say.

Laura Danger (28:03.052)
I mean, I feel guilty again, like it’s normal to feel guilty because I think we all have values that we want to live up to. Yeah. and again, I think this is as I get older and as I just live more life and think about things, everybody’s got their own way of moving toward the world we want to see. Yeah. And where like I might feel guilty that I use

more paper plates than the next person, I also use things until they crash and burn and die. And like that’s what I doing the paper plates to a certain extent affords me the the capacity to do other work. And a little bit of guilt about things that I do that might not be as sustainable or as caring or as anti racist even like that’s I think motivation.

That is just a little bit of a flag saying, Okay, it’s actually good that I’m feeling a little guilty right now. It’s okay. if I turn that into shame, I’ll shut down and I’ll just think something’s wrong with me. But feeling guilty is like, yeah, that just can find a way somewhere in my life to do a little bit better.

Sarah Robertson-Barnes (29:15.554)
Means like

Sarah Robertson-Barnes (29:21.112)
Yeah, it’s like a little red flag, like, ooh, I actually do care about this. So let me think about it a little bit more. And it does require like confronting our habitual behaviors rather than simply going on autopilot. And I’m just wondering, like, how can we interrupt that conditioning that like, well, I I can’t do it well, so I’m just not gonna do it.

Laura Danger (29:44.258)
I mean, you tell me. Yes. I’m working on it all the time. I mean wha how do how do you I wanna hear from you.

Sarah Robertson-Barnes (29:52.012)
Yeah, I try to do do you know the climate Venn diagram? it’s by Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson. No. And so she it’s three circles Venn diagram, not a visual medium, but I talk about it on the show all the time, which is what am I good at? What brings me joy? And what is the work that needs doing? And where those three circles intersect, that’s your climate action or that’s your community action, or what have you.

And so, you know, like if are you like into fashion, then maybe it’s thrifting. Are you into cooking? Then maybe it’s you know, working at the food pantry or seedling swapping, things like that is just sort of thinking about, yeah, what am I good at and what brings me joy? What am I good at? I was a teacher, I was a science teacher. And that’s ultimately like I I want to do communication, I want to do climate communicating. That’s what I’m good at. I’m not good at reading inter like in interpreting the report.

And saying, like, we’re cooked or we’re not cooked. I don’t really know. I rely on other experts for that, but I do want to encourage folks to do the thing that they can do. And if you so like I live in the suburbs, I have to drive a car. We don’t really have public transit here. Fine. I can’t. I’m just gonna let that go. And I’m gonna work on other things that are are within my control. And that does actually make a difference. Nobody can do everything, but everybody needs to do something.

Laura Danger (31:13.378)
I love that. yeah, one of the stories that I tell in the book, that’s it’s one of my favorite things about my neighborhood. I love my neighborhood, but is when it snows. I have a snowblower and it’s like a it’s not a very good one. I got it from Aldi and it it works. Like you gotta charge it. I’ve got a good forty thirty minutes on it, maybe. but there’s somebody with a a really big one at the end of the block.

And there’s a landlord on the other side of the block that sometimes does a really good job, but sometimes they don’t snow blow at all or shovel. And so anytime it snows in my neighborhood, someone on the block will go out and do one full strip, just walkable strip all the way down the block. Yeah. And if somebody has more time, they will do the spot in front of their house and then they will go one or two over.

Sarah Robertson-Barnes (32:07.928)
Yeah, just up and down the sidewalk.

Laura Danger (32:09.842)
And it is like when we have days where it is just s inches and inches of snow, it’s covered by somebody throughout the day. Sometimes you get a couple of inches, especially if it’s a work day. But then like when I had babies, I just couldn’t I couldn’t go outside because I couldn’t leave the baby inside alone. And my next door neighbor would do it for me all the time.

And now years later, my kids are older. I take them out with me and we shovel for him every time we can. We hit the the elderly neighbor behind us. It’s an incredible showing of community support. And there are people who I have never seen step outside their homes. And that’s not what I’m I don’t do it so that other people will come out and do it for me. It’s some of us are able-bodied, some of us are not. Some of us work triple shifts.

Some of us do not. And it’s a way that we show up in some way. even if somebody’s on the porch and it’s just like sharing a conversation that’s energizing and it’s do it is doing something, even though it might not seem like it on the surface. It’s showing up. We all show up the way we can.

Sarah Robertson-Barnes (33:26.894)
And it is how you continue to build connections within your neighborhood. It’s not just about shoveling the snow. In the summer, you’re gonna be like, hey, there’s Gary or whatever, right? And then so it’s just Gary’s my neighbor. So we do the same thing with the snowblower. You know, I’ll be out there. I’m out there with I have two teenage boys, we’re out there. And if he’s not done, we go over. And if we’re not done, he he brings the snowblower down. this is a very relatable example for me as a as a Canadian. But then in the summer.

he’ll come over when he can hear us processing tomatoes in the backyard. You know, he just wanders in, he’s like, it’s it is it time? And then he’ll help us, you know, stab the tomatoes and then we send them home with jars, and then he brings them back, leaves them on the porch. There’s no transaction there. Right. We’re just being neighbors. And in the suburbs, especially, that can feel it can be really isolated in our little postage stamps in our in our individual homes with our fences all around us, that it is.

Laura Danger (33:58.221)
Nice.

Sarah Robertson-Barnes (34:24.322)
I I don’t see a lot of people talking and so I have to be the weird neighbor that’s like, hey, love those flowers or whatever just to so that you know, like I’m here, I work from home. So if you need anything, just yeah, don’t hesitate. Yeah.

Laura Danger (34:39.906)
And I think it’s I mean, you made a really good point about the seasons. I think it’s a long game. Like I’m I struggle with depression and and like I bipolar too. So there are times where I am super energized and I am like at every community meeting and I am like doing I’m all in on everything. And then there can be years where I am so isolated. And the connections that I’ve built,

in the times where I’m energized are really important. But also there are times where just sitting on the porch once a week is as much as I can do. And because I’ve sort of laid the groundwork in other ways, it I have a community that watches out for me. They see when I haven’t been to the meetings in a while. They offer to like they’ll say like, Hey, how are you doing? They’ll check in on me. it

It there are just in the times when I’m not able to show up as an organizer, I’m there. I do show up to things as someone in the room. And I think like there is the person who is waving and like you call yourself a weirdo, but like the person who is introducing, shaking hands, being the social connectors or organizing the neighborhood swaps is really important. But also that can’t happen without people also coming to the event.

Right. Or waving back or like yes, it really is. even if your capacity is teeny tiny, looking up from your phone, greeting the barista, like yeah, there are very small little things. I mean, there’s data about this, literally being present in your neighborhood and going on walks, or again, depending on your your a ability to sit.

Sarah Robertson-Barnes (36:12.706)
Feeling welcome.

Laura Danger (36:39.224)
to check in on your online forums, like whatever it is to be present builds that connection. And it it’s not passive. It’s not passive.

Sarah Robertson-Barnes (36:48.59)
Right. That’s w so what we’re talking about here is being part of a village. Yeah. Right. But you make the point in the book that if you want a village, you also have to be a villager. Mm-hmm. So what does that ask of us? I think we were just really talking about it, but something that you talk about a lot in the book is reciprocity. So can you tell us a bit about that?

Laura Danger (37:05.984)
Yeah, and this is an interesting one. I’ll give my notes, but I want to hear yours. I do think that that’s a lot of what we’re talking about. d if we take notes from nature, one of my favorite stories is I mean, Robin Walkimer has a million. Yeah. But one of my favorites is she tells a story of cattails. And if you can imagine like anyone, picture them, they’re tall, thin rods. And

I don’t know. The last time you saw something that’s tall and thin standing on its own, but it’s not very sturdy, it will fall over in the wind. but the way that cattails like grow, they have their root system. If there’s one part of this big glob of them, this big network of them, they all grow together in bunches. If one is very much submerged in water and there’s part of it that is not very much submerged in water.

They can share. Yeah. And they through the seasons as the water level rises and falls, because of the way that this network is structured, because they are connected, they have strong roots, they are spread out in a swampy area. They can share nutrients. They’re stronger against the wind and the storms. it’s just such a great, like a visual. I always think about that. Then if you like anyone here, if you haven’t seen it.

look up the root system of the cattails and it’s just beautiful. And the visual structure of how, you know, one area has more of what they need. And so they share it among the rest of it that doesn’t have enough of what it needs. And it’s not always the same. Right. And it’s very fluid. Yeah. So that’s how I see it.

Sarah Robertson-Barnes (38:55.096)
Conditions change. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I I was listening and just thinking about trees do the same thing. trees of the same species. And I I believe in Braiding Sweet Cross she talks about this as well. with the root systems and they can warn each other about insects that are taking over and that will send, you know, something that will help them ward off the insects where they’re sharing

water or resources. And then on top of that is the mycelium network. So a network of fungi that are also working in conjunction with the trees, which just to show you that it’s not just one type of community, but there are overlapping communities that also serve each other.

Laura Danger (39:36.152)
Yeah, that’s I love that. The the idea. I mean, yeah, I she’s got every s every story for every life lesson. Yep. We all we all have something unique to give. And to me, I I treat the household when I think about domestic labor in the household, I don’t think of it like I think there’s something valuable to having shared language, like talking about the mental load, you know, or talking about do you

Can each of us own a task fully? This is important language to learn. And that’s not the full picture when we’re sharing work. I love what you were talking about with the climate Venn diagram. That’s I think how it works at home too. My husband is working extra hours. he has a big event coming up. I’m working from home. So

I’m gonna do more of certain things. There are still gonna be certain tasks that he’s always gonna be better at, that he likes more. There are gonna be things that neither of us want to do, but both of us know are very important. Yeah. we each respect each other’s needs, each other’s skills, challenges. We also think about the collective and what the needs are of the collective, the resources of the collective. And I don’t like do the dishes and then think.

I don’t treat it as I’m doing the dishes for you so that you will do them for me right in the future. It’s a better way to think I’m resourced in this way. And if I give this resource of myself, the household has more resources. You have resources which you can then pour back into us. And it’s that whole ebb and flow. It’s it’s care work, it’s life work. And I mean, there there can’t be a transaction there. It’s like not the natural way of existing.

Sarah Robertson-Barnes (41:35.126)
While still maintaining the conversation of these are the resources that I have right now and this is the time and this is what I need from you. And that’s something that I don’t feel like we are doing in our communities necessarily, that we’re still just so siloed. and but ultimately everyone is responsible for everyone. You know, a sustainable community is not a collection of like perfect little sustainable households. That’s not possible. It’s right.

Their separate cattails. Mm-hmm.

Laura Danger (42:07.596)
Okay. Yeah. Yeah.

Sarah Robertson-Barnes (42:09.97)
Too smart. Yeah. By the time I got to the end of your book, all I could think about was like, what if we stopped accepting this version of life as normal? So this was the one that had me being like, my God. The world was never meant to be consumed. Oof.

Laura Danger (42:26.817)
Yeah. Yeah.

Sarah Robertson-Barnes (42:28.632)
Cause that’s it. We’ve been conditioned to view this version of life as normal, just constant consumption, constant productivity, whatever that means, being isolated, doing everything on our own, expecting less and paying more. And I feel like we’re all kind of losing our minds about it. Yeah. I mean, we’re not okay. Yeah, I want to talk about what happens when we stop accepting ac accepting it. Yeah.

Laura Danger (42:44.141)
Yeah.

Laura Danger (42:48.246)
No I

Laura Danger (42:53.632)
I t I think that that is the that’s the foundation of it all is what happens if we just consume? Cease to exist.

Sarah Robertson-Barnes (43:02.978)
We exist. Yeah. We’re just we’re we tried that. It’s not working. Yeah. No one no one’s happier.

Laura Danger (43:11.508)
No. Yeah. And I I love like, you know, there are all these theorists, there’s storytellers like Robin Walkimer, who talk about like the cannibalism of how a lot how we live. can there’s capitalism, you know, is this cannibalism. We just consume, consume, consume, and we end up you know, it just kills us. It really does. and

Again, I having worked in this world of like domestic labor, having done coaching, having worked with fair play, which again I think has some really good principles and really good shared language and can be a really important piece of talking about the labor that goes into our lives at home and I mean even in the PTA, like you know, in our community meetings, talking about who’s doing the mental tasks, who’s doing the planning. we talk

All of those things are really important. but a lot of times when these conversations are had, it’s how can we have the goal is to have a certain standard. Having a nice clean home, how do we organize our lives to share the labor to have a nice clean home? Which is kind of a consumption outlook. It’s kind of a how can we both have a career and a

And again, that’s like, is that the end goal really? Yeah. If you dig a little bit deeper. My house, as I have gone from a bit more of an accidental traditional situation to now a much more equitable and something that’s rooted in reciprocity, our house is not cleaner. it doesn’t necessarily like we let we leave stuff undone.

We reorganize our priorities. We do both have passions and professional lives that we pursue, but not for the outcome of having more money so that we can pay someone to come in and do things for us. Sometimes we outsource work, but more so it’s like how do we shape our lives in a way that meets most of our needs, more of our needs, contributes to connection and thriving.

Laura Danger (45:33.92)
And so it’s like reorienting in a way of not just how do we have another version of the American dream where we it’s two careers now and it’s more like how do we shape our lives in a in a way that works for us.

Sarah Robertson-Barnes (45:51.118)
Because all like American dream, we know what that means, whether you’re American or not, but it’s like there’s these rigid ideas of how life should be organized, what it should look like. And that discourages us from imagining different ways of living. So what happens when we start questioning those things of how life works? What could be possible? Yeah.

Laura Danger (46:15.0)
What happens?

I mim formi.

Questioning that can be really disorienting. like I said, like I I come from this background of teaching and I sort of had my breaking point, my moment of like, wow, I didn’t understand things at all the way I thought I did. I had that moment in the first year and a half-ish of the pandemic, and when so many of the social

structures and safety nets I thought existed. It was very clear that they did not. Yeah. and that was destabilizing. it challenged a lot of my beliefs about what it meant to be giving. because I think I was more giving than I was reciprocal in how I showed up. so yeah, I know I mean if I talk personally, it it just really can be a challenging and

emotional and disorienting time to question and challenge those beliefs about how to show up for yourself and others. How about you?

Sarah Robertson-Barnes (47:32.67)
Yeah, no, the pandemic broke me, as I’m sure it did for a lot of people. and I’m also kind of at an inflection point with this because my kids are teenagers and so I only have this much time left. And then it’s then who will I be? Which is on a per on a very personal note, it’s like, well, then who will I be? I’ll still be their their mom, but they won’t be here anymore. So then who do I mother?

And that’s what I’m really grappling with right now is how do I how do I mother? That’s what I do. And how can I apply that out into my community? Does that mean I go back into the school system as a teacher or as a volunteer or what have you, working with teenagers in some other capacity? I don’t know what that’s going to look like now. I just know that that’s going to take me out of mothering in my home to mothering in the community more.

Laura Danger (48:33.292)
Yeah. And it’s good that you I think it’s important that you are questioning that now. I I love the idea. I think that women because because we have this motherhood thing forced on us. this these expectations forced. if and I say women, if other people perceive you as a woman, they’re thrusting it on you. Yep.

I think we have this interesting opportunity because we are told simultaneously that this work of mothering is essential, essential in innate and really, really, really so important. And also that it’s nothing. Yeah. And it’s easy and it shouldn’t weigh you down and like why would you ever need support with it? And we have this forced, I think, moment.

That oftentimes goes on for years and years and years of reckoning of like, whoa, what role is this playing in our lives and society? And what does it mean to mother? What parts of that is a relationship to this person? What parts are the labor? And what does that look like within and beyond our relationships with the little people that are reliant on us? Cause there, I mean, I’ve read a million books with different people’s.

perception and thought process beyond that. And I don’t and when you’re talking about deconstructing gender and like does my husband, mother?

Sarah Robertson-Barnes (50:13.462)
No, yeah. I don’t think that mine would perceive it that way.

Laura Danger (50:17.516)
And that’s I it’s a really essential question, then.

Sarah Robertson-Barnes (50:21.494)
Or parenting even beyond their own kids.

Laura Danger (50:24.034)
Right. Yep. Like what how how do you define a mother? How do you define a parent, a caregiver? And what are the boundaries of that? What is the definition of that? I do not have the answer. But I think it’s a really important question to ask.

Sarah Robertson-Barnes (50:40.79)
Yeah, I don’t have any answers either. I just keep taking these urges that we have to perform care in some way. And how do we apply that in the Venn diagram to what is the work that needs doing? And a couple hours in a week makes a huge difference in your community. yeah, it does. This is what we need in our local communities is resilience. So that when shit goes down, like the pandemic or God knows.

What else? we can rely on each other because hyper individualism will not save us. We save us.

Laura Danger (51:18.23)
And you make a really important point that so I’m in Chicago and in Chicago we’ve been hit super bad by immigration terrorists. Yeah, I mean like yeah of ICE. Yeah. So these these agents have been just absolutely scaring scaring people rightfully.

You know, people are rightfully scared of what’s been going on in our city. And it’s made it really hard for for families to go out and get groceries. It’s made it really hard for kids to walk be walked to school because they’re afraid that some that their parents are gonna be taken, that they’re afraid that something awful is gonna happen to them. and a network of caregivers, of other parents at school, of neighbors, of people in our mutual aid groups.

Of tons of people from the gardening groups, like clubs and sports teams, even. People are showing up and saying, like, hey, can I walk your kid to school? Don’t even leave your house. Or like, getting each other groceries, get picking up each other’s medication, driving them to work so they don’t have to take public transit, doing their laundry for them because they don’t want to be sat at a laundromat for an hour and a half. These that’s

To me, such an incredible, incredible example of the ways that the key connections that you meet with the people in your neighborhood of valuing the work, being recognizing and noticing that that work needs to continue to happen. And then showing up and saying, I’ve got the capacity and I’m gonna do that for you. I hate doing laundry, but I know how valuable it is for us to have a safe and healthy, it’s like

It’s your well being. so it I just it’s in it’s been incredible to see Chicagoans and like neighbors show up for each other in that way. And a a devastating reality, but but really is beautiful to see it.

Sarah Robertson-Barnes (53:27.33)
Yeah. I mean, I just want you to know that we see that here. I know we get sort of different news, but like shout out to the folks in Minneapolis as well. And that’s been s watching that has been really obviously devastating, but just goes to show you that like when shit hits the fan, we take care of each other. Absolutely. Yeah. And community is an action. Mm-hmm.

It’s not something that just exists that you get to slot yourself into. It’s you gotta be the villager.

Laura Danger (53:59.842)
Yeah, absolutely.

Sarah Robertson-Barnes (54:01.088)
Yeah. So before we end off, I just wanna ask you, what’s giving you hope lately?

Laura Danger (54:08.002)
I would say, I mean, those examples of the ways that neighbors have shown up for each other gives me hope. but I mean, on a very personal level, I my book has been out now. It was published in January 2026, and I regularly get private messages on Instagram or direct emails.

From people of all genders and all ages who say things that are just so I mean, it makes my heart swell. Like d you know, I didn’t see these things before. I feel so validated. I feel equipped to be more involved in caregiving in my community, or people saying, like, they find me because I talk about mental load online or whatever. And then people will say, my god, I

I didn’t realize the big connections that you’re making. I didn’t expect to be so for so many of these important things to be revealed to me. That is why I wrote the book and it’s incredible to see people also connecting the dots. That’s all I ever wanted. It is and it makes me feel very hopeful.

Sarah Robertson-Barnes (55:24.866)
Laura, thank you for caring for us in that way. Like I almost made it without crying. We did it. Okay. Thank you so much for sharing your time and your expertise with us today. And where can folks find you and your work?

Laura Danger (55:27.854)
Thank you for

Laura Danger (55:42.002)
well, you can find my book, No More Mediocre, a call to reimagine our relationships and demand more at your library online, ask your friend, buy a copy for yourself, pass it around. or I am on Instagram at that darn chat. I’ve got I haven’t recorded in a long time, but there’s like a hundred something episodes of my podcast, Time to Lean, that you can go back and binge also.

Sarah Robertson-Barnes (56:06.434)
Which I did and I highly recommend doing that as well. Yes. Yes. Whenever I find a podcast that I’m like, yes, and then it has like a hundred back episodes. and it’s just it’s really got me thinking about the work that I do in a in a different way as well, which is so important that we just keep re energizing so that we can keep contributing. Yes. Thank you so much. Awesome. Thanks.

Laura Danger (56:09.998)
Thank you.

Laura Danger (56:30.542)
For doing this. Yeah.

Sarah Robertson-Barnes (56:35.672)
Thank you again to Laura so much for such a thoughtful conversation. And be sure to check out all of her links in the show notes. One of the things that I keep coming back to from that conversation is the idea that sustainability is not something that we will solve in our own homes. We can absolutely make thoughtful choices and reduce waste and consume less and pay closer attention to what we’re doing. But if we stop there, we do miss the bigger picture. A sustainable community is not a collection of

Perfectly self-sufficient sustainable households. It’s a community where people share resources and care for one another, notice what needs doing, and understand that none of us is meant to do this all alone. So your one small shift for the week is to find one local sharing network and actually use it. So join your local Buy Nothing group or look for a clothing swap, your local tool library, maybe a seed exchange.

Another neighborhood group, another way that people are already sharing resources where you live, and then participate, offer something, or ask for something. Let something you no longer need keep moving through your community instead of just automatically replacing, storing, donating, or throwing it away. If you want to explore some more ideas from this conversation, go back and listen to episode 11, where I chat with Angela and Regina from Women’s Personal Finance about enoughness and community care.

Or check out episode 32, which is my conversation with Gillian Gabrieluk about slowing down, reconnecting with what matters, and building a more intentional life. And as always, you can find more resources, past episodes, and loads of practical sustainable living ideas over at sustainable in the suburbs dot com. Thank you so much for listening today, my friends. Until next time, start where you are, use what you have, and live a little greener.

Sarah Robertson-Barnes (58:32.258)
Thanks for tuning in to Sustainable in the Suburbs. Every small step adds up, and I’m so glad we’re doing this together. If you enjoyed this episode, please make sure to follow the show, share it with a friend, and leave a review wherever you get your podcasts. You can find me at sustainableintheburbs.com or at Sarah Robertson Barnes on all the things. Until next time, start where you are, use what you have, and live a little greener. This podcast is produced, mixed, and edited by Cardinal Studio.

For more information about how to start your own podcast, please visit http://www.cardinalstudio.co or email Mike at mike at cardinalstudio.co. You can also find the details in the show notes.