Day 2. the plastic wars April 15 2011
My Mom re-uses everything. Yogurt tubs, bread bags, all the itty bitty scraps of soap she mashes together into a bar that becomes my Dad's "garage soap" for washing machine grease off his hands. She saves the rinse water from her laundry cycle and buckets it out of the laundry sink back into the washing machine to become the wash cycle for the next load.
This is where I have learned these awesome frugal habits.
They will save you many dollars over your lifetime.
Sometimes I use my bathwater to flush the toilet, even bucket it into the washing machine, but I am a bit afraid I will slip and fall going down the basement stairs hauling giant pails. A broken arm incurred by saving a bucket of H2O is not going to serve me as a single mother with a 6 month old baby.
I last cleaned through my "plastic bag and container collection" in mid summer. I have not accumulated a crazy amount since then, (I use re-use-able shopping bags and usually just toss my vegetables right into the cart) but still have enough baggies to explode everywhere each time I open the "plastic bag drawer." I have been purchasing everything I buy at the bulk barn in 3lb polybags and re-purposing them as "stasia's healthy homeade instant oatmeal mix" bags but now I have way more bags than oatmeal portions and they aren't wearing out fast enough.
So I'm switching to buying all my bulk and vegetables in mesh or cotton bags. I currently have three, that came wrapping baby stuff given to Zoraya. I'm going to ask my mom if she can help me sew some more. Until then I will re-use the plastic bags that I have, which I will be doing anyways until they are all gross enough to get rid of for good.
When grocery stores stopped giving out plastic bags, I hoarded all the ones that came into my possession, to use to line the wastebaskets throughout my house. I don't use them fast enough either. I usually carry a few on me, to put wet cloth diapers into, but most of the time I just toss the used diapers onto the car floor, otherwise I forget about them for weeks before I have a chance to launder them. That was fine in the winter, discovering a random days worth of cloth balls of frozen pee, but now with the season change... the smell of cooking baby urine in my car on a hot day...
So. my new challenge is to bring no more plastic bags into my life. I have attempted this the last 2 days in preparation. Pre-packaged stuff is going to be the hard one. I can tell. I guess I'm going to have to buy only fresh bread... Maybe hit up With the Grain on a more regular basis
Why do I hate the stuff so much? because I don't need a body full of Xenoestrogens. (You should wikapedia it if you've never heard that term before) Furthermore, I want to stop contributing to that garbage patch in the ocean. I actually think every family should be forced to live with their garbage for a year, just to get a sense of it...I must say, I am proud of my household. it usually takes us over 2 months to fill one these days. Even when there was 6 people living here, we only produced one every 4-6 weeks. Way to go guys!
Tomorrow's exciting challenge: Cancel the Tribune and the Penny Saver, and put a note on the mailbox for no advertisements!!!
