I Just Could Not Do It

I tried.

I really did.

I tried to tell myself, it's organic!

I even had it in my cart for awhile.

But I looked at my children, looked at them and sadly said, put them back.

What was it?

Pints of Blueberries. 5 of them to be exact.

It isn't that I dislike bluenerries.

We love them and they are rare treat around here because organic blueberries tend to be costly.

These weren't though. Organic and only $2 a pint, that is cheap.

So cheap in fact that I put 5 plastic tubs of them in my carts.

Did you catch that part?

Five plastic tubs of them.

I think the real name for them is plastic clam shells.

Sigh.

I just kept looking at all that plastic.

Why why why am I at a earth friendly-green-organic store and seeing such wasteful packaging?

I looked in my cart again.

And then I saw this...

More plastic.

Lots of it.

Some of it we can not avoid or so I think at this point, I am sure I am wrong.

But I just could not justify these purchases when it so covered in single thing I am working feverishly to erradicate from my home. It felt wrong.

So, I put it back. ALL of it back.

Much to the man in the green apron confusion, who was working in the produce department .

Him : "Changed your mind?"

Me : "Yes. I can't buy it cause it is wrapped in so much plastic."

Him ( blinks hard) : "Not sure we have organic cauliflower that isn't wrapped."

Me : "That's okay. I can do without."

Him (blinks harder) : "..."

Nothing my friends, nothing.

I know this confused him. How do I know?
As I walked away and went about looking for non-plastic

encased produce he went over to the flower girl, in her nifty green apron,
with my organic cauliflower in his hand.

To which they had a 5 minute conversation about I am going to safely assume was
 my ridculous notion that produce shouldn't be drowning in plastic.

Afterall, how do we keep it fresh?!

I tell you how.

You buy in season and locally as much as possible.
Cauliflower is not remotely in season here.

But blueberries are.

We have a whole U-Pick of blueberries at our disposal.

Cauliflower is harder to wait for because I am not sure it is even grown here in Floirda.

However I am pretty certain if I wait until Fall & go to the Farmers Market I can find some without plastic and then ask where it is grown.

(Note: Florida has the opposite growing season. Our winter is your summer and our summer is your winter)

But until then, things continue to jump out of my cart because I can not unlearn this stuff.

I find myself really examining my items. Thinking about alternatives to what I assume is necessary.

I am finding that I can make a lot more things then I think I can.

I can do without things I thought was necessary.

In the process, I can do better things for someone who isn't me.

And that feels good.

That feels better than eating blueberries.

 

I Fired My Dishwasher

In my quest to lower our electric consumption we have stopped using some 

of our modern conveniences. One of them is the dishwasher. 

I know there is an argument that dishwashers save money, water and energy.

I am not sure I believe that but I do know in our case, it wasn't saving us any of those. 

We have a rental and we are stuck with the relic that is installed here. 

On top of that, we have very hard well water and even when the dishwasher runs half way decent, 

the hard water drowns any attempt at cleaning. What should take one wash, takes two sometimes three. Wasting water, wasting electric, wasting soap and wasting my time. 

So, we hand wash.

Mostly the girls do and I help now and then. But we are seeing results.

Last's months electric bill was down $80 from the previous months. I am sure the dryer 

being off, the AC is off for 8 - 12 hours a day (it is getting harder to do 

that with temps in the upper 90's) and the dishwasher not running all dang time helped.

What it has also done is made us aware of our resources. 

Water is a precious resource. Clean water even more precious. 

And something that most Americans take for granted that it will always be available.

 Our family knew if we were going to be serious about using less resources and under consuming water 

was an important area to start with. Plus, whether you are on a well (like us) or on city water, when 

you use less water somewhere there is less electricity being used. When you have a well you see

the electricity reduction first hand, on the city water maybe not but it is there.

We are using less water, I know we are. 

Maybe if you have a highly efficient machine that runs once a day, then I can bet that 

hand washing would use more. But most of us run our dishwashers more than 

once a day. We home school so there are three meals made at home on any given day. 

Which resulted in the dishwasher being ran at the very least three times a day. 

More than likely it ran more like 5 times because the size of our family or it just wasn't getting clean. 

Most people I know pre-rinse before they load their machine.

That water should be taken in account when weighing which uses less. 

We could talk about convenience.

 But if our family was worried about making our lives more comfortable we wouldn't be 

doing half the things we do. 

Sometimes simpler isn't less work. 

It is however sometimes, better.

 

Ditch The Package

Last few posts we have talked about many ways to recycle items. I just
learned a staggering statistic : one person generates 400 lb of waste a day!
A DAY!
This is not just your personal trash but when you consume items it accounts
for the waste that was made in that process. Things we don't think about.
It can be overwhelming but if we take one area, work on it, we can do better.
Today we are taking on food & grocery packaging. 
When I tackled our trash problem I became nut-so with reducing our trash output.
I recycled, composted, reused, donated or whatever with great flair.
Then the day came. The trash man only had one lonely half filled can to dump.
I had such a sense of pride.
Until I looked over at my recycling pile. Two cans and overflowing.
Ouch.
We all know recycling is great. But the best alternative to recycling is under consuming.
We have to understand even if we recycle plastic, it never leaves the earth.
It can never be destroyed. It will just keep showing up in one form or the other.
That piece of knowledge is hard for me to forget.
When I see all the plastic that "green" products are packaged in, I get a bit upset.
We have come so far. Too far to be buying organic vegetable shoved in plastic bags
at Whole Foods people. It makes no sense.
The sensible thing is to reduce your packaging.
Here is some simple ways to do so.....

No more plastic produce bags. 
I have these that I got at Target of all places. They were clearance, you can find them at Amazon now.

Even better, support small businesses and get some of these off Etsy!

Buy in bulk, use reusable bags.
We use homemade muslin bags for dried goods like bean, dried fruit and grains.
Buying in bulk lets us not only control the packaging but the amount
we need as well. Whole Foods again has a good area of bulk items.
You can make your own bags, or again support some small business on Etsy. :)

Find a butcher/cheese shop that lets you bring your own container.
We haven't found one that carries clean meats that allows us to do this yet.
In the mean time we purchase in bulk (no single slices of cheese bought here!) and
hope that it lessens our waste.
Ask your butcher/deli person if you can bring your own container. If so what they
will normally do is tare weight your container before hand or weigh your items without
the container then fill it up. Your going to get questions. Tell them your aiming for
zero waste not only in your home, but your aiming to help them lower their cost as well. :)

Reusable shopping bags.
This is a no brainer. You can buy them, thrift them or make them.
Either way, even recycling these horrible bags is not good for the environment.
Besides. the bags can be used for many things. They are our beach bags, library
bag, make shift luggage (oh yes, we are that family!) and sometimes lunch bag for all of us.
They just make a ton of sense and affordable to all.
Tip: Keep them in your car if your like me and tend to forget them if they are stored elsewhere!

Skip out on single serving items. 
While its easier to pack your kids lunch with a single yogurt, the waste is staggering.
Buy a larger container and use a reusable container for lunches.
Things we stopped buying.....bottled water, single serving snacks, yogurts, granola bars and so on.
Make your own, buy in bulk or just do without!

Ditch the water bottles.
Those single serving water bottles are your worst friend. They are wasteful in their packaging.
They also tend to be left in the car and the plastic heats & leaches into your drink. UGH.
Can we say cancer? No thanks.
Tap water is perfectly fine. And in case your like me who has well water that is not fine or if
drinking straight from the tap weirds you out, get a large water filter. No waste and great healthy drink.
We are personally are saving funds for a Berkley Water Filter.

Other tips :
* Make your own detergent.
* Save all your glass jars for food storage.
* Go to your Farmers Market for even less packaging & to work with smaller vendors who
are more than likely willing to work with your packaging needs. :)
* If you can't avoid packaging, buy in bulk and share with a friend.
* Buy bulk cheese and slice it yourself.
* Make your own reusable snack bags, buy in bulk and save money & packaging!
* Find items that have multiple uses. For instance we don't purchase cold cereal. We use
oatmeal instead. Not only for breakfast but we use it in our homemade facial cleaners & soaps.
We use oatmeal in meatloaf and so on. When items have more than one use, it eliminates the need
for multiple items in multiple packages.
* Make your own cleaners. It easy, cheap and much better for your family.
* Cooking from scratch! Ditch those pre-made boxes of rice pilaf, your a better cook.
* Buy seasonal produce in bulk then freeze or can surplus when it is out of season. Homemade
apple sauce from organic apples is so much better than store bought and better for you.

My suggestion to make changes in your home is always going to be the same whether we are
talking about recycling, going all cloth or eating healthy food - start small.
Take one area your concerned about, work on that until you are satisfied then find the next
area to work on. Eventually you will get there and you won't be overwhelmed in the process.
Our family still has a ways to go. Confession : When I was sick I bought single serving applesauce.
But we are doing better and we continue to look for ways to do better.


(I get nothing for the links above. I am not an affiliate and those are not my friends or families Etsy shops. I just happen to like those products. )

How to stop using trash bags

I told you in a previous post that I would talk more about how 6 months ago we
stopped using trash bags. Well, here we are.
I am guessing the first question everyone will ask is...
"Why?"
Just like the TP question. Everyone wants to know what is so
wrong with what many consider a must have, can not live without,
your nuts for not using it, household item.

Here's why....
It's made of plastic. Duh, I know. Many are not biodegradable or
can be recycled. That means it fills a landfill never to break down or
never to be recycled into anything else.The EPA estimates that nearly
100 billion to 1 trillion bags are used each year with less than 6% of
them being recycled. That is a lot of plastic. We won't even address
the process of making plastic and the air pollution. The fact is, we are
running out of room to bury this stuff. Consuming less or even better
stop consuming at all is the answer.
The next question we always get when we challenge the status quo on
things is always this :
"Well, what do you use instead?"
Our answer always causes that rapid blinking look that I find so entertaining.
We don't use anything.
That's right. Our trash cans are naked. Naked naked naked.
Now, some of you probably just threw up a little bit in your mouth on that
thought but I assure you, I am a germaphobe so it isn't all that gross.
I am going to show you how to get unhooked off those bags. But before
we go any further I wanted to say, if your using recycled or biodegradable
bags, kudos for you. I know that biodegradable ones exist, I just can
not justify the price on our income. And our thought is, it is best just to learn to do without. 
Want a naked trash can? Here is how.
Compost. Easy enough. Nearly all of our food that is not edible goes into our compost.
We also add in grass clippings sometimes. Shredded paper as well.
We must have a wicked garden, right? No. We don't garden! However, that soil gets
used in potted plants, flower beds and the like. Even if you do not do those things here
is a great idea to get rid of your compost....give it away on Craiglist/Freecycle. You
will be overwhelmed at the people who will want your crap...I mean compost!
Recycle. We had up to that point recycled in a lazy way. We knew the basics. But
I went to our county recycling website and got a break down of the recycling. Now nearly
75% of our trash is recycled. Paper, glass, cardboard, plastics all go into our curbside
recycling program. Any plastic bags we get go back to store recycling. We try to avoid them
at all possible by using cloth shopping bags and mesh produce bags. Sometimes it is
unavoidable. Our county does not recycle Styrofoam but our local grocer, Publix does
recycle the egg trays. We have drop off points for magazines & newspapers. Office
supply stores recycle our ink cartridges, old cell phones and so on. The point is if you
take 15 minutes to research you can recycle nearly all of what you toss. With very little
effort on your part.
Donate. Anything that is useable, we donate, sell or give away. There was a time
that we would just put the old beat up table down by the curb, *gasp*, I know.
Even things you think are not worth it can be used by someone else. Like I mentioned
above, old cell phones are recycled by organizations. Shoes , even beat up ones, are.
Our area has a diaper bank for any unused diapers. Whenever I see something in our
home that we no longer have a use for and I am not sure its worth anything to anyone,
I put it on Craigslist for free. I have never had an item not taken & used. There is always
someone who can use what you can not, I assure you.
What does that leave? Not a lot. We went from being a 4 curbside trash can family
a week to a half filled one can a week. We realized the #1 reason we lined our can was
for messy messes, like food. Once we eliminated that, we saw clearly that there
was no need to line our trash can. The poor thing is naked all the time now.

Is it easy to stop using trash bags? No, not at first. Because let's be honest,
do you really want to have to focus that much time on how to dispose of your
trash? Not what I enjoy doing either. But when I realized the key to conserving, less
consuming was all just a matter of a lot of brain work and little physical work then it
was just a no brainer for me to give it a try. Our transition from 4 curbside cans a week
to naked trash can took us 6 months. It was a constant process of, "where does this go?"
Looking for recycle symbols, referring to our local recycling center and digging yogurt
cups out of the trash while yelling at the kids & hubby. Fun times. But soon it became
second nature to question it. Soon it became the norm for the recycling can to be taken
out more than our trash needing to be taken out. It became our norm.

If you think this all too much for you. Then please, switched to biodegradable bags. If you
can't justify the cost (and they are a bit more than those hefty ones) then go to a landfill
just one time. I dare you. It's gross. I don't want my children's children to live on top of one
nor do I want that stuff to keep piling up. It was enough for me to know I had to do something.
Is it extreme? Maybe. But that is how I roll. I don't do things half way or to the norm extent.
But when I see how this earth is being taken care of, I question our stewardship to God. Or
rather, our lack there of. I am as far from a PETA tree hugging vegan as your ever going to meet.
I am a God fearing, raised in the South conservative folk who likes a good ol' juicy hamburger.
But I can't help but think, is this how God intended us to use what He blessed us with? When
it takes so little for us to do better? It is like the old saying...
When we know better, we do better. 

~This post is being linked up over at Frugally Sustainable Link party "Frugal Days, Sustainable Way's #20" this week, go take a peek....it's awesome sauce!~

How to Become a Paper-less Kitchen

First, let's get the most ask question out of the way....
'What's the big deal anyways? It's just a few paper towels.'
If you have ever handed a guest a cloth napkin or a dish towel for a mess,
and your not at a Crunchy Mother Play-date, then your going to get this.
Or maybe I just have strange people in my home.
It never fails, someone has to ask.
I use to say something cute like, 'Because I love doing laundry.'
But that is an lie and it also does not deter the more adamant ones.
So, how about some facts instead?
Did you know that 40% of the landfill is made up of paper products?
That is always shocking to me when I read that. That means 40% of what
is in there can be recycled. But people choose not to. Mindlessly tossing their paper
items in the trash. I use to be one of them. Using cloth deters that lazy mind of just tossing.
Besides, paper towels can NOT be recycled.
It is estimated that if each family cut back one roll of paper towels a year it would save over half a million trees each year. Just one less roll.
Because I am all about going big, my first thought was....if I forgo all of them think of how many trees would be saved??? And I like breathing air, so I am all about saving some trees. ;)
Furthermore, it take one or sometimes two WHOLE trees to make one roll of paper towels.
Let that sink in.
I will wait.
Mind boggling isn't it?
That is the effect I was going for.
At this point in the conversation I am usually faced with a person with their mouth agape.
Now it's time to sell this paper-less show!
I do one extra load of laundry a week for my cloth kitchen products. Not even a full load.
I was in cold. A little bit of homemade organic detergent (yes, another post, another time) and
if they are icky, some homemade oxyclean/bleach (yes yes yes, another time) helps as well.  
I line dry and I'm back in business.

What do we have in our cloth only kitchen?
Various cloth napkins. All picked up from the thrift store for less than $.10 each at the most.
We are a family of 5 , we eat 3 meals a day at home so for me I am comfortable with about 50
napkins. We don't need them every meal so this lasts a week.
Cleaning Cloths. This is a modge podge of rags. Some are worn out wash cloths. Some are towels that
had holes in them that I cut up for rags. Some are some neat microfiber cloths someone gave me. I save those for cleaning mirrors and windows. These cloths are used to scrub counters, wipe up messes, dampen use for BBQ fingers at the table and so on.
Cloth Kitchen Towels. Again, all bought used at the thrift store for less than $.50 each. I have about 12 and need more. I have found after a few years doing this that traditional dish towels are nice but good quality hand towels meant for the bathroom are much more absorbent. Often they are tad bit larger. I am not a person whose hanging towel on her stove must match the throw rug at the sink, so this works for me. These cloth are use drying dishes, cleaning up spilled drinks and whatever else you can think of.

Laundry like I said is once a week. Maybe a half to 2/3 of a load. I wash in cold and then line dry. It
really isn't an issue. Maybe because I have solved the laundry battle in our house is why I can say this!
YES, another time and another post. It's a recurring theme around here.

Reducing Our Output

One area of concern for us is our trash & recycling. We have downsized our trash output
greatly but we seen an dramatic increase in our recycling.
Which means we haven't bought less but just recycled more of what we bought.
So now the issue comes down to buying less packaging.

Here are the things our family has already gave up:
Bottled Water (large or small bottles)
Produce bags (we use reusable ones we bring with us)
Ziplock Bags (Mason jars are my new friend)
Shopping Bags (Reusable ones)
Paper Towels
Paper Plates
Toilet Paper (insert EWWWW in here, go ahead.)
Trash Bags (I will have a post on this later on)

This has helped a great deal but food packaging is still an issue. Such is meat packaging.
How does one get around this? And how does one freeze meat safely without plastic?
Maybe this is a stupid question but I truly do not know.
I get how to get around veggie packaging - buy right from the farm.
Doing that right now.
Also buying bulk helps reduce packaging, which we do.
I am open to any suggestions.
I will be posting about any solution we have found. :)