I know this is dumb. Like, REALLY dumb. But it makes me feel like such a fraud. My whole online life is about being zero-waste. Blog, Instagram, the whole deal. Husband's all in too. Says he's proud of me, you know. "You're an inspiration," he says. My mum, she still thinks it's a phase. "Why you make things hard for yourself?" she asks. But I believe in it. I really do. Most of the time. Except... in the basement. Down there, hidden behind boxes of old baby clothes and my dad’s tools, I have this stash. Scented candles. Paraffin, not even soy or beeswax. The cheap kind from the big box store. Apple cinnamon. Ocean breeze. Vanilla cupcake. I buy them when I do the "big shop" for my parents, so no one sees them in my trolley. Sneak them in the back door, down to the basement. It's ridiculous, I know. My kids would laugh if they knew. My husband would just look disappointed. And my followers? Forget about it. I only light them when he's away on business. Like right now. He's in Singapore for two weeks. As soon as his plane takes off, I go down there. Light them all up. The basement smells like a cheap department store in November. It’s so... NOT zero-waste. It's chemicals and waste and all the things I preach against. But for those few hours, I sit on an old upturned bucket, just breathing it in. It's like a secret little party just for me. My mum always had those things burning when I was a kid. Not the fancy ones. The ones that came in little glass jars. She said they made the house smell "good." She'd be cooking lamb stew and lighting a pine candle. It was always a bit much, you know? But it was home. And now, sometimes, with all the compost bins and reusable everything and the endless talk about consumption... I just miss that smell. Is that crazy? To miss something so... wasteful? I feel like a bad person. A fake. An embarrassment to my own principles. I blow them out before he gets back, of course. Air out the basement for days. No trace left. Sometimes I wonder if he can smell it when he comes home, a faint hint of something not quite right. But he never says anything. Maybe he just thinks it's the old house smell. Or maybe he just doesn't notice. I throw the empty glass jars in the regular trash, not the recycling. Can't risk someone seeing them. It’s my shameful little secret. What's wrong with me? Am I just... weak?