Still At It

So Happy New Year! Yes, I also cannot believe that I’m actually sitting down to write a post. It’s been WAY too long, my four readers…….way too long…..

It’s a funny thing because after having so many fun summer adventures, I really thought I’d get back into the swing of writing once I was on a regular routine again with the school year. But several things happened….first of all, last year I was having difficulty sleeping and I would typically write a post before I went to bed. This year, I’m a medication that makes me very tired (which is a good thing), and we moved our 2 year old out of his crib, to share a room with our 4 year old which now makes for very long bedtime process and later bedtimes for all.

That is not conducive for me droning on about zero waste.

I have so many things I would have liked to have talked about in a zero waste post – like how we handed out soda and apples for Halloween:

(And while I liked it and I think some older kids liked it, I really felt like we needed something more for the wee toddlers.)

How I revamped my filing cabinet instead of buying a new one – turning this rusty, old thing:

Into this blue beauty (this picture really doesn’t do it justice, by the way):

I wanted to write about how my mom and I also hosted the Women’s Fellowship Christmas party at our church this year and I convinced my mom to have a zero waste party – using all reusable table setting things. EVEN, gathering up a mismatch of red table cloths, reusing garland and decorations for the center pieces, and reusing old jars to make nativity candle votives that we gave away in a drawing (I made one for myself though, obviously):

I didn’t get to even touch base on sustainable wrapping and Christmas presents for people. I mean – I wasn’t awesome at either of those because I legitimately have enough wrapping paper and gift bags to wrap things for the next like 5 years. As for presents for my friends and family, I won’t force my views on them. If they asked for something plastic – I bought ’em something plastic.

My kids were a different story…..they definitely got some new stuff, but I bought some of their gifts secondhand and tried to be as eco-conscious as I could…without you know, depriving my children so that they turn into super villains.

Anyhow….I didn’t get to discuss any of that in lengthy posts where I ramble and whine on the internet, I have been wanting to at least write a post about this past year and my goals for this coming year.

There’s always a lot of talk about resolutions at this time of year, and here’s a few facts for y’all. 88% of people do not follow through on their resolutions and January 18 is the date that most Americans give up on their fitness resolutions.

This past year, I’ve been referring to my zero waste-ness as a resolution and I’ve had several people ask me in the past month if I would be giving it up with the new year (and move on to something new). Really, it’s been more of a life change than a resolution. I can honestly say that the changes I’ve made this past year….have just been amazing! I would say that I LOVE them, but as my Dad likes to say – saying “love” should be reserved for people because if I say I love Dorito’s and I love my kids – well I want my kids and my husband to feel the weight and meaning of that word.

So…if we had another word for “love” in English, I would use it now. So let’s just say that I happen to REALLY REALLY REALLY LIKE the changes I’ve made. My zero waste razor, shampoo and conditioner bars, zero waste deodorant, my face lotion bar, bringing with me my own zero waste kit….. it’s been amazing!

Oh – another thing that could have been a post. A lot of the time, I’ll go to Subway for lunch with my co-teachers and the people there now know me and they let me bring my own cup to fill up my own drink there (other places have let me do this too….if I have it on me!) and they don’t put my sandwich in a plastic bag. And then I throw the wax wrap into my wood burning fire place as a fire starter.

My shower went from this:

To this:

I have no plans to return it to its previous state any time soon (or ever!). My toiletry bag went from this little case of plastic:

To this:

Oh – and since this picture, I now have 2 reusable silicon swabs to replace those Qtips. One for my ears, one for make-up – which was supposed to be another post.

And that’s just a small, small taste of the impact this has had on me. But it’s a new year and it’s time to both reflect on the past, and look to the future.

My plan is to maintain and go even bigger with sustainability this year.

So first of all, I want to get better at composting. I don’t do it right. I would like to study more, but more now, I’m still happy that my food is somewhat breaking down outside rather than sitting in a trash bag in a landfill.

Next, I want to get better at sustainable food.

Food has absolutely been hands down the toughest part of trying to be zero waste for me. I wish I had easier access to some more zero waste, bulk stores and have the freedom (aka – not worrying about children who only want to eat chicken nuggets and cinnamon rolls) to experiment a little bit more with other foods.

So my 2nd resolution this year, is to experiment a little bit more with other foods.

Ha ha ha! Take that, children!

If my kids are just going to eat chicken nuggets, I’d like to branch out into more sustainable food. Specifically…..incorporate more vegetarian meals (….well, at least 1-3 times a week) and decrease our use of red meat.

Notice I said “incorporate” and “decrease” because there is no way we would be able to go cold turkey on red meat or be completely veggie right away. I would definitely be giving that up by January 18. But more sustainable food that will be healthy for us and for the environment.

And the last thing I want to work on is sustainable fashion. Wow…fashion and sustainable food makes me crazy nervous. It’s estimated that 20 – 35% of the microplastics in the ocean are from our clothing. Not to mention, clothes and waste from the manufacturing of clothes is a highly wasteful industry.

Most of our clothes are made out of plastic. And then they get thrown in the trash.

Apparently it’s referred to as “fast fashion”. Trendy clothes mass produced and sold at astonishingly low prices…..and made in a not-so-sustainable manner. Made out of plastic and likely to not last long.a

This makes me so nervous. Have I mentioned how cheap I am??? I REALLY like a bargain.

Most of clothes currently come from Amazon. Not just like – ordered on Amazon – they are the AMAZON brand of clothing. Not to mention that I own like 10 pairs of Converse.

But I want to support companies that are sustainable and eco-friendly. So this is the year to explore those brands. And I’ve already started actually because surprise – some of them do sell their items on Amazon.

It all started because I was thinking I need some new sports bras. Let’s take a look at Exhibit A, shall we?

Oh, don’t think they look that bad? Well….I’ve had most of these since high school. Or got them as hand-me-downs from my sister after she finished with them after she finished high school. They are literally falling apart and recently, I ran a race with my sister and had her listen to how the elastic would break and crackle when I stretched it out.

So I started shopping and realized, I should look for sustainable companies. And I found several companies I was interested in, but as I filled up my cart with about $70 worth of sports bras….I realized I don’t really need new sports bras. I have only ever been busty when I was pregnant and nursing, and now that that has passed….well, my breasts are more like shriveled little raisins. I don’t need a lot of support. So I’m actually going to wait on them a little more until they’re like totally totally kaput (…..wait….did you hear that? That was the sound of my sister sadly saying, “No….Julie….No…..just get the sports bras…..just…..No).

My hope and purpose in this is that as essentials wear out in my closet, I replace them with a sustainable brand, something that can be recycled easily, is made out of recycled clothes, or I get them second-hand.

So naturally, the first thing I plan on doing is trying to make my current clothes last as long as possible. I’m not really the type to go shopping every week, so that shouldn’t be a problem. But in addition to my sports bras, I have my dress pair of black flats that are looking a little grim.

Yeah….see the holes in the padding of my shoes? I have a weird callus on the bottom of my feet, right beside the ball of my foot, but not on the ball of my foot and they literally will wear through shoes (see Exhibit B above).

So I’m imagining that they will be saying their final farewells, possibly at the end of the school year and that I will replace them with either some Rothy’s or AllBirds which are both sustainable brands. Which means spending around $100 for a pair of shoes. In comparison, I bought the cheap pair above in Exhibit B for probably around $25 at Marshall’s and I was probably upset that they weren’t cheaper.

I do have a few exceptions – first of all, I’m a runner and it took me a long time to find my running shoe fit (Asics, in case you’re wondering) and so I will always buy those new and never look into whether they’re made sustainably (I’m sure they’re not). I feel like runners are very serious about their shoes and I’ve had enough running injuries to not want to mess with anything with that. It’s also why I never want to go skiing with my husband when he asks – I just want to be able to run.

Also, I will make exceptions for my kids. Most of their clothes are hand-me-downs or from Goodwill or yard sales, but they grow like weeds, they go through clothes fast, so I’m not going to spend $40 on a pair of pants that they are going to draw all over with Sharpies (…or in the case of tonight, dry erase markers) and only be able to fit into for a few months. I will still try for second hand clothes – especially since they have no awareness of fashion and fitting in right now.

This to me also extends to bigger items as well. For Christmas, my husband and I just got ourselves a new King bed. I did feel bad for buying new but our old bed was very old and causing back pain for both of us. It was time. We did buy an eco-friendly mattress on Amazon though (or at least that’s what the internet told me….and the internet never lies).

We’re currently in the market for a sleeper sofa, and yes, I’m searching on Craigslist and Facebook Marketplace for one that will meet our needs (essentially to be slip-covered in a play room and occasionally serve as a guest bed).

So there you have it – setting my intentions for 2020. Compost, food, and fashion. I’m worried…..especially since it’s January 4th and I pulled out meatballs and a beef stew that was frozen in my freezer and also had 2 sweaters arrive today from American Eagle that are made of Polyester. I’m off to a great start, huh?

If there’s one thing I’ve learned this year though, it’s that I’m going to experience setbacks and occasionally forget a cup or my silverware when I go out and I just have to make the best of it. I won’t be perfect, but that’s no reason to quit. Progress over Perfection.

2020 – Here we go……

Halloween Buggin’

Yesterday, I went to a craft show (the Prairie Peddler) with my mom and on my Friday post, about soap, I was pretty sure nobody would make it to the end except my mom.

It was revealed, during our drive, that even she didn’t make it to the end of my blog post. I can’t say I blame her – or anyone else – because yeah, all I did was recount every bar of soap that I’ve bought in the past 4 months.

I don’t know why that’s not everybody’s idea of a GREAT Friday night….it was fun for me 😉

If you had read to the end, I basically put out a cry of help to my mom to not allow me to buy any soap at this craft show (Hi, Mom!). But since she didn’t read it….I was free like a disease-carrying bird who was in desperate in need of some anti-bacterial soap.

The first booth we went to – H.K. Watkins – not only had some plastic free goat’s milk soap, but had shampoo bars and conditioner bars. So I snatched up 2 conditioner bars and a shampoo bar right away.

The shampoo bar was named Florida Sunshine and the conditioner bars were this amazing Mango Pineapple scent and I am SO excited about them. They smelled so good I wanted to eat them (I didn’t).

I think I may now have enough shampoo bars to last me all through 2020. And I was talking about shampoo bars with my mom yesterday, and I may get her to try a shampoo bar. 😉 Score!

The Amish Soap Company was there with a great deal on soaps – 5 for $20 – so I bought 5 of their soaps:

And I bought 2 bars of this AMAZING pear Goat’s Milk Soap. I used to wear the pear scent from Victoria’s Secret when I was in high school – I seriously had the spray, lotion, bubble bath, and talcum powder (I was basically a giant walking pear) – and this reminds me of it, but a purer, non-toxic smell that hopefully won’t be as overwhelming as I was in high school.

That was all the soap, but since I’m recounting purchases, let me just show off my amazing, hand-made, teal, black, and magenta broom that is amazing and much better than all the plastic brooms I have floating around my house currently:

Apparently, even though I haven’t performed my baton twirling skills in over 14 years, I will never be able to pose without popping my knee ever again.

But let’s get on to what I really want to discuss…..Halloween.

Last December, when I was going back and forth between making this my New Year’s Resolution or not, I wish I was joking when I say, that Halloween was one of the first things I thought of.

I’ve been thinking about it every so often every single month since then because…

HOW on EARTH do you have a zero waste Halloween????

One of my original proclamations and boundaries that I set with my determination to cut out as much plastic as possible was that I was not going to deprive anything from my children that would over time, turn them into super-villains.

There’s no way I would deprive my children of the joy of trick-or-treating because I don’t want the plastic.

I can’t be that mom and I refuse to be that mom.

What I can control, is what I hand out at my house.

But when you actually sit to look at your options….wow….they’re still pretty bleak.

I actually have it a little better off than many people out there because at our house, we do not get many trick-or-treaters. The first year we handed out candy, we bought a giant bag of candy and only had like 30 trick-or-treaters. Every year now I keep a count to base off of for the next year. Last year, we had about 24 trick-or-treaters.

And it took me two years to learn – if we’re going to hand something out, let’s hand out mini-chip bags because we have SO MUCH CANDY from our two kids who we (try) to regulate how much candy they eat and I hated having the leftovers. At least with chips, I would maybe take those in my lunch to school (I’d rather have a savory treat than a sweet treat….unless it’s chocolate).

In fact, one of those first years – trick or treat had ended and there were two teens skateboarding down our street and I chased them down and asked if they were trick-or-treating (they said No) and I asked if they wanted candy and they just started stuffing it into their dirty and holey cargo short pockets and army-sanctioned shirt pockets.

I’m not trying to stereotype….that is literally what they did.

Earlier this year, I had the thought of handing out bamboo toothbrushes and I was so incredibly jazzed about it….but I transferred back to my kid-Julie brain and thought about getting a toothbrush while trick-or-treating.

And how thankfully, I wasn’t the type who would go egg a house after receiving said toothbrush….but I would have been disappointed at not having another Kit Kat or 3 Musketeers Bar.

Harumph.

But with October 1st coming this week…this conversation officially happened today.

Husband: “When are we committing to Halloween costumes?”

Me: “I don’t know….[youngest son] is pretty set on being a blue cat (yeah…I don’t get it either…. and I can probably make that, but [oldest son] changes his mind every day”

[I was also at Goodwill the other night and I could not BELIEVE how many costumes were there!!!! It’s making me wonder if we should go buy a used one and hope to find something he’d want to be over buying something new that’s made of plastic….]

Me: “Well, while we’re talking about it – what do we want to hand out this year?”

Husband: “Uh….candy….duh!” mocking laugh at my stupidity

Me: “I’d like to try to do something zero-waste…..I had been thinking bamboo toothbrushes…..”

Husband: “I’d rather not hand out anything than hand out a toothbrush….we’re not doing that….”

Me: “Well, if we have to hand out a treat, I’d rather hand out chips than candy because we always have so much leftover.”

Husband: “What about the cardboard boxes of candy – the like Junior Mints and Dots and stuff?”

Me: “Eh, maybe….”

Husband: “What if we hand out a treat and we buy reusable straws and give each kid a reusable straw in addition to a treat?”

Now he’s talking my language!

I would buy the children silicone straws in a rainbow assortment and give each of them a straw brush – probably in a bag since I have so many left over from when we handed straws out at a parade.

While not ready to commit at this exact moment, I searched google (and will continue to google it), but I found the Wild Minimalist blog with ideas on what to hand out. Since we have so few trick-or-treaters, we can go a little bigger. In fact, most of the houses in our neighborhood hand out full size candy bars (one of my town’s most hidden gems).

One of the ideas on the blog was to hand out cans of soda (bought in a cardboard package). I LOVED the idea – my husband was a little iffy….(“Think of [our two year old] getting a can of Coke….” to which I said, “We would drink it!! Just like we eat most of his candy!!!” 🙂 )

He’s basically our candy beard. 🙂

But then I thought of cans of juice and we could have a combination of soda and juice depending on the age:

They also recommended like bulk candy (I would be iffy about that as a parent….), candy in foil wrappers (foil wrappers are recyclable!), and candy in cardboard boxes.

So right now, this is what we are debating in our household (keeping in mind, we are not rich, we just have minimal trick-or-treaters….

Movie Theater candy in cardboard boxes
Cans of Soda and/or juice (I know they have Welch’s juice in cans – I get them every time I donate blood….)
Some treat wrapped in plastic with a reusable straw and a pamphlet about how these kids are killing the Earth by enjoying their trick-or-treat outing 😉 (I’m JUST kidding….)
Mini boxes of candy that come in cardboard (Nerds!) or something foil-wrapped – even though both of these will come in a big plastic bag
Apples. Don’t know if the husband would be on board with this one, but my kids personally love apples – they’ve gotten them before and literally, it was the first thing they reached for in their treat bag

Other ideas out there are to hand out crayons or money or even some fair trade candies….but I am just not feeling any of those right now.

So….we’ll continue to process these ideas for awhile – and the costumes! and see what we can come up with. The countdown has begun!

So Fresh and So Clean, Clean

So something funny has happened in my house.

Lately, a popular sight at our local Giant Eagle is this one:

Yep….that’s the spot for Hartzler milk that comes zero waste style – in a reusable glass bottle. It tends to be empty now.

I’m not complaining! Well….maybe I am a little…. but really, I choose to believe that more people are buying Hartzler milk (and not that their deliveries are more in frequent) which means more people are trying to embrace a more zero waste, eco-conscious lifestyle.

Game on! I just need to find out their delivery days and get to the grocery store on time (….like that could/would ever happen….)

But since milk with young children is basically a non-negotiable, we’ve been having to purchase milk in the plastic gallon jugs instead since the supply of Hartzler milk has been out when we’ve been going recently.

Multiple days on a row, my 4 year old was coming up to me saying, “Mommy….this milk is bad.” And I was just dumping it because I trust him and who wants to taste the bad milk on purpose?

Not this girl!

But after a couple days of this, I was wondering what was up….cautiously sipped his milk and then tried it and realized it was fine.

I’m wondering if he is no longer used to the ultra-pasteurized milk that my husband I grew up on; he was used to the taste of Hartzler milk and thought “regular milk” was bad.

At least I think so…..anyways, it’s a better story this way so let’s roll with it.

But let me revisit two topics right now – summer vacations and zero waste soap.

In the spring, I lamented that it’s challenging to find a “regular” bar of soap that doesn’t come in some sort of plastic and is a good price. Like a bar of soap that you can buy at the grocery store or Target or Walmart. Sure, there’s Bronner’s soap, but that runs about $5 a bar!

A fun coincidence happened this summer with all of the mini-vacations that I took. On our first trip to Florida, near where we were staying in Englewood/Lemon Bay was the Lemon Bay Soap Co. and I knew I had to stop by and check them out.

Turns out, the woman who currently owns it (and was there) was from Ohio and her ex-husband and son live within 15 of my house and she’s driven through my town multiple times.

I mean….I was already sold on buying some of her soap, the connection just made it extra pleasant. 🙂

While many of the soaps were glycerin and wrapped in plastic, I came home with 3 cold-pressed soaps all reminiscent of Florida smells – Grapefruit, Florida Sunshine, and Deep Sea.

And so it was born – a desire to get Localish Souvenir Soap.

I didn’t buy any in Shenandoah since it was just me and the boys, but when we headed up to the Adirondacks, I got a collection of 4 soaps – blueberry (just unwrapped and is in my shower), cranberry, pine, and another forest scent.

And who am I kidding…I will be trying to use all 3 of those scents around Christmas. That’s just who I am.

Oh – and I’m kicking myself a little bit because while up there, I saw a stain remover bar of soap in two different stores and I didn’t buy it. And now I had to resolve to buying this stain remover bar on Amazon, which is still yet to be tried:

All the more reason to go back to the Adirondacks next summer, right Mom & Dad? (Hi Mom & Dad!) 🙂

On the last weekday of summer vacation, I took my boys and my mom to Amish country for a little shopping and to go to a cheese factory and watch cheese being made and while there, I stopped by the Amish Country Soap Co. where I picked up the most amazing scented bars – Dirty Boy (manly scent), orange-berry, Love Me (Sweet, flowery amaze-ness), and Bug Off.

The Bug Off scent isn’t necessarily a bug repellent, but it’s meant for camping and has bug repellent essential oils so the scent that it leaves on your skin should be seriously detestable to bugs. I had to try it out, but at this point…probably won’t try it til next summer.

They also had these lovely, wooden soap blocks and I bought several to hold all the various bars that now have permanent residence in my shower.

The Amish Soap Co. also had shampoo soaps, and while tempted – I skipped them.

When I moved back to Ohio from Washington state and was bunking with my parents for 7 months with my husband and 2 dogs while we engaged in a prolonged search for the right house (….ah…..THOSE were the days…..), my mom asked me if I wanted to go to the Yankee Peddler which is a giant artisan/craft show in the woods somewhat nearby.

We have gone every year since and have added even more out in the woods craft shows to our agenda. In fact, we’re going to a new one tomorrow (Hi, Mom – can’t wait!!).

It’s become a fun tradition for us in the fall – something we look forward to every Autumn – and this year, we had 2 generations of sisters attend Yankee Peddler (sadly, minus one):

I have always enjoyed buying soap at these craft shows, but I was never picky about them being wrapped in plastic and I tended to only use these soaps like if I was soaking in a tub, Victorian Maiden-style, or to set out on my counter to help promote holiday scents.

But now it’s become my every-day soap and it’s awesome! Why was I saving the nice soap only for special occasions? The questions in my life that will remain unanswered….

At our first craft show (Shaker in the Woods in Columbiana, OH), I bought 3 soaps. There is something that just feels right about buying handmade soap (not wrapped in plastic) in the woods. Like that’s the way life is supposed to be.

2 bars from Make Peace Naturals and then some miscellaneous “end” soaps and I don’t have the name of the company unfortunately, but every year I have loved smelling their soap. This year I went to this festival….knowing that this was my year to buy some of their goat’s milk.

I was determined. And when I saw their miscellaneous bags that were cheaper in price for smaller hunks of soap (PERFECT for ME!)….well, you better believe I sat there and sniffed every canvas bag until I found a bag containing 3 hunks of the soap I wanted – the peppermint oatmeal soap.

Have you ever held a block of soap and could tell, without any water, that it was going to be both moisturizing and invigorating? I hope this soap lives up to the high expectations that I have for it.

…poor little soap hunks and their over-bearing parent….

One of my soap booths that I used to only buy soaps from at Shaker in the Woods wraps their soap in Saran Wrap. I really liked their soaps, but I walked away this year…

At the Yankee Peddler, I came home with a little package deal from one of my favorite booths – Morning Song Gardens (they’re the company that makes my pumpkin spice soap and a peppermint swirl soap that I have out for holidays):

I was disappointed that their lip balm comes in a plastic tube, but I wanted to try their shampoo bar (it’s much cheaper than Lush’s – I think $7.50?) and since I’m 36 with arthritis and my hands are scrunching up into old lady witch claws more and more with every passing day, I wanted to try their arthritis lotion and a travel lotion bar in a little tin (for my purse….when I start carrying one again….). Every purchase comes with a free sample of their soap and/or shampoo bar, unfortunately in a little plastic bag.

Even though I swore I was done purchasing soap….we stopped at a booth (Edens Showers) on our way out and engaged in a looooong conversation with the owners about their soaps and all 3 of the younger generation of sisters left with at least one of their shampoo bars.

I wasn’t going to buy one until I asked, “Do you have conditioner bars too?” ….not seeing any and not being too hopeful that they had them. The woman replied, “With our shampoo bars….you don’t need a conditioner.”

Yeah….I’m gonna take on that challenge. So I was sold right there.

AND then she let us feel her hair.

It was wicked soft, bro.

Is it natural? Is it the shampoo bar? I will let the one person out of my 4 readers who is still reading this know at a later time.

So I’m happy to report that my soap supply is currently at this stage:

And this stage:

With the expectation that it may grow more tomorrow.

I am loving this idea of souvenir soap though. It’s fun to buy, support some local businesses, and you get to use it up so it’s not some random carved wooden dolphin with painted stripes on it from your Honeymoon in Jamaica that you’re not sure if you should keep for sentimental reasons and because it’s a funny story, or if you should get rid of it because it’s UGLY.

Not that that is a personal experience or anything.

Well, if you made it this far – you must be really bored on your weekends because I’m pretty sure recounting every bar of soap that I’ve bought in the last 4 months is right up there with my un-posted rant about how all thread now comes on plastic spools instead of sustainable wooden spools.

So….thanks for reading. 🙂 Maybe just my Mom – HI, MOM!!!! Thanks for reading, Mom!

….And don’t let me buy too much soap tomorrow….just a few bars….unless I’m really into it, then just walk ahead a few booths and circle back for me….you know the drill….

Freezer Meals

I feel that the title of this post could be a little misleading, so let’s make something clear right from the get-go with this post….

I am not one of those women who has their life “together”. I am pretty positive that NO ONE looks at me at any point in my life and thinks, “Wow….that Julie girl really seems to have her life figured out…”

I’m usually the one carrying so many things in her hands – not in the 3 bags that she is also carrying – with 2 little kids in tow….eating breakfast while being 5 minutes late to a meeting with wrinkled clothing and probably something dribbled down my shirt that I’m not aware of until after the school day.

I’m the teacher who is constantly fast walking/running down the hall while telling students to not run in the halls.

So when it comes to meal prep and having “things” stored in the freezer…..

…….yeah…..I’m not that girl.

(And I get internally crazy feminist angry at the unspoken expectation that women have to plan and prepare and cook meals when we also work full time too. In fact, I’ve kind of stopped cooking and planning in the past year because I just got tired of it.)

But that’s not what this post is about.

This is about freezing food. Zero waste style.

Something I barely ever did – even when I allowed myself to use plastic with minimal concerns.

The only time I really froze food was when I was pregnant with my second child. And having meals in the freezer at that point in my life was AWESOME!

The Bitmoji doesn’t do it justice. It was a magical experience.

One that I haven’t relived because I don’t have my life together enough to plan ahead to have food in the freezer.

OR I put things in the freezer and forget about it because I tend to be a pack rat and forget about it in the freezer. And it goes bad.

My sister asked me if I had an interest in making freezer meals before the start of the school year and we tried to get together to do make them…..multiple times….and it just didn’t work out with our schedules. Over the course of the last 8 days, I’ve been slowly making them and freezing them.

Also….. it seems like the topic of plastic-free freezer storage has been a popular one with some of my 4 readers and I thought it was time to test it out.

My sister had notified me of a sale of some reusable, silicone freezer bags on Amazon:

So I bought them because I’ve been really into online shopping with the start of the school year.

And naturally, that online shopping led to purchasing more reusable, silicone freezer bags in larger sizes so I could make freezer meals. To test them out. For the sake of Science.

I got this set of 4 gallon size bags and I was concerned about the ziploc bag type top and that they wouldn’t be as high of quality since they were so inexpensive (*cheap*). I figured I would test them….for the sake of Science.

And to make this a true experience, I felt like I needed to purchase some higher-quality gallon-size silicone freezer bags. So I spent double what I spent on the above four pack on these two HomeLux Extra Large bags:

Which amazingly came wrapped in a canvas bag inside the hybrid plastic/paper mailer from Amazon and really made me wonder if I needed to ban myself from my Amazon account (I really should….) because I couldn’t remember ordering a canvas bag.

I finally carved out last Sunday afternoon and started cooking. I didn’t finish all the recipes I wanted to make. I kept cooking occasionally throughout the week, decided to dump 2 recipes, and finished up last night with a batch of Parmesan Meatballs.

The two sets of bags that I ordered have a sliding bar top and can stand up on their own. They are made of a really thick silicone and seem to be really high quality.

The Extra Large HomeLux bags were massive. MASSIVE.

This was a batch of Honey Garlic Chicken and I had SO MUCH extra space. The Extra Large bags may have been overkill.

You can see the comparison here of a batch of beef and broccoli (without the broccoli) and a batch of beef barley stew (without the beef broth). Perhaps the Extra Large bags would be beneficial if you grow your own food and have a ton of strawberries or broccoli pieces to freeze or you have 5 grown-up sons who make an entire Varsity basketball team and are training for the State championship and eat 20 pounds of beef a day to keep up their energy levels.

Oh – I also tried my hand at beef stock because Giant Eagle had these soup bones on sale:

But when I finished with the broth, I realized I probably should have added a little more beef to my stock (I really should have looked up a recipe…) because my beef broth looked like chicken stock:

Eh…we’ll see how it tastes later.

I also froze about 4-5 casseroles in glass Pyrex dishes which I’ve never done before. I didn’t wrap them in additional Saran Wrap – just popped the lids that they come with on them and put them in the freezer. Along with a metal pan and lid that I got a few years ago when my first Grandma passed.

At the time of this writing, I’m not sure exactly how many meals I made and prepped – it’s somewhere in the 15-20 range; enough to make my deep freezer look plenty full:

It’s my first time freezing things in glass, metal, and reusable silicone bags – and this is honestly an experiment that I think I may cry if anything goes bad. LOL – I mean the time and money put into the freezer meal prep….all the garlic cloves, onion slicing, and meat cutting….yeah, I’ll be disappointed if some of the meals suck or go bad. This isn’t like just a one day of bad mascara kind of deal.

I’m trying to give them an adequate amount of time in the freezer to really make them freezer worthy, instead of just jumping into the freezer meals this week like we’ve wanted to. Since we’re never prepared for dinner on any given weeknight.

We are not those people.

(And if any of my 4 readers want to know the meals I made, I could share those on another post, but it’s late right now and I’m not going to take the time to link back to them all.)

I’ll report back both on the recipes and the freezing method (since one of my newly acquired fears that is less intense than my fear of spiders is the fear that my new silicone freezer bags will adopt the garlic and onion smell that seem to be essential ingredients in all freezer meals).

Laundry, Revisited

With the start of school, we are all still adjusting to the new schedule and routine change. Like most teachers….I’ve been exhausted.

That exhaustion just seems to compound itself…..I’ve been getting home late, skipping a run, and going to bed as early as I can.

Then last week, I got a sore throat and a nice head cold – started losing my voice – and I started going to bed even earlier…

(ya, gotta love the reintroduction of about a million little kid germs into your life…)

So even though I’ve been having ideas for blog posts on an almost daily basis….the blog’s been one of the furthest things from my mind.

Besides the slight guilt about not maintaining it.

But let’s get into the main topic of today – it’s Laundry, Revisited.

See, in the past month or so – we’ve finally gotten to our last bottle of laundry detergent.

Ok…that picture doesn’t accurately represent that it’s our last bottle of detergent, but I’m not really sure how to show that. But it is! Trust me!

Not only is the beginning of the school year exhausting (at least for this teacher), but the added stress had led to doing some online retail therapy. I’ve actually been window shopping necklaces on Etsy – but then I’m like “eh, I don’t need one and shouldn’t spend the money on it…”

And then I go and buy something of the zero waste variety, because that’s “useful”.

Yes….I am well aware of the irony and irrational-ness of my thoughts.

Even though I would really have liked to have gotten an oxidizer so I would never have to buy laundry detergent again, we’ve had the common homeowner excitement of having necessary, expensive repairs happen in groups of 3 recently, so I didn’t feel it was the best time for that kind of splurge.

So I went with the EcoEgg.

They used to have a lavender scented one which I could no longer find since when I first looked at them last winter, so I went with the Spring Blossom.

When I first opened the box, the smell was a little overwhelming but a few loads in, there’s no noticeable smell.

Granted, my sore throat – possibly transitioning to a sinus infection right now – and head cold has made me stuffed up so perhaps it is still overwhelming and we’re all walking around smelling like this completely artificial bouquet of flowers.

The EcoEgg is small – it fits in my hand – and the ease of just tossing it into the laundry basin is pretty sweet.

It’s full of these little detergent pellets – one bag of these dark gray…tourmaline? pellets that never get replaced and then filled the rest of the way with the white detergent pods. Those get replaced as they disintegrate and then you can continue to buy replacement pellets.

I believe those plastic bags are recyclable with the flimsy plastic recycling at grocery stores (but I’m not 100% on that…).

So far, it’s been great. I mean, it’s not like my clothes are literally sparkling when I pull them out, but I haven’t noticed a difference in the look or feel of my clothes. Which is awesome. And I’m hoping that this $35 EcoEgg will literally last for 3-4 years and the 720 loads it says it will (not that I will track all those loads…I mean, I love data as much as the next special education teacher, but that’s just…..yeah….)

Additionally, I cut out fabric softener years ago and we’ve never really been a fabric sheet kind of family.

In the fall, my mom and I like to go to several big craft shows and we recently went to the Yankee Peddler festival with all of our sisters (well, minus one of her sisters who we really missed).

That’s not the point. I’ve been wondering about using some of my wool fabric scraps and trying to make my own dryer balls.

Well we were at the Yankee Peddler and we came to one of my favorite tents with all of these cute, little ladies all spinning wool in their period costumes. Last year, I chatted with them for a long time and ended up buying my own wool roving to felt my own soap (which I did and it was a really cool experience!) and I enjoyed their conversation so much.

So this year, I bought some more roving from them (blue this time, last year I bought white and green) and I saw that they had dryer balls for sale. I was planning on making my own, but I thought of my exhaustion levels and my lack of time and the fact that I would really love to support the cute little ladies who spin wool together and have fun with it and will talk at length with strangers and tell them how to felt their own soap and dye wool…..so it didn’t take me long to decide to buy 3:

We have an interesting situation with our dryer. Our dryer vent is open and close to the ground…..and we believe earlier in the spring/summer…..we maybe had a chipmunk crawl into the dryer vent….and….die.

And we know this because there was a funk and my husband took apart the vent and found some bones….

Yep….apparently that’s a thing.

Even with cleaning it out, there’s still a lingering funk.

I’ve been putting drops of lavender essential oil on each of my wool dryer balls before tossing them in, which helps a little with the funk, and I’ve noticed the clothes are a little less static-ey. But after going so long without using dryer sheets or fabric softener, I don’t know if I’ve noticed a difference.

The last thing that I want to transition is finding a zero waste stain remover. I still have a bottle of Shout spray that I’ve been using and I previously made a recipe on Pinterest using blue dawn dish soap to help with stains, but I’d like a bar of stain removing soap that is already available and I can use it in the moment.

So far, the prices seem to range from like $20 to $6 for zero waste stain removers, but my search has just begun. If anyone happens to know of a good one – I’m all ears.

It feels good that a zero waste laundry routine is feeling within reach. Slow transitions, but good transitions. 🙂

Next goal transition – become accustomed to being back at work so I’m not exhausted by 6 PM each night.

Straws for Sea Turtles

Today I had the opportunity to hand out reusable straws in the Lyndhurst Home Days parade.

It’s funny because I didn’t know where the parade was or what it was for until I arrived this morning.

My sister was walking in the parade with her church and when I was worried about being able to get rid of my reusable produce bags after being denied at different grocery stores, she mentioned this parade as an option.

Then the produce bags flew off the tables and encouraged me to sign up for my last do-gooder grant of 2019 quickly so I could hand them out at this parade.

I wanted to do reusable straws. Since I didn’t know the name of the parade, it was marked on my calendar as “Straw Parade”.

Compared to my turn around time with my last do-gooder project, this had a fast production. I knew what I wanted to buy – I found the straws and brushes I wanted quickly, calculated the number of sets of straws and brushes I needed faster than one of the nerds on the Big Bang Theory, and I was able to format a new smaller flier super fast.

I didn’t use my seed money for the fliers and opted to print them at home since they were all black & white and I was able to fit 4 to a page. I really wanted to maximize the amount of straws I could hand out, in order to promote zero waste and change everyone for the betterment of the planet. And the sea turtles.

School had started and to be honest, with the start of the school year…..my stress level has increased….causing an uptick in the amount of online shopping I’ve been doing.

There seems to be a package arriving daily at my house and I don’t always remember what it is, until I open the package.

So when this big, heavy box was sitting on my kitchen table….and I had no idea what was in it….I had a brief wondering that maybe I really should seek some medication or professional help for my memory….

I bought 20 boxes of these reusable straws from Amazon and I bought extra brushes too since through discussions, we thought people needed a way to clean them and not get disgruntled with their free reusable straws and complain about them on social media.

Now there’s no excuse angry people on social media!

Some of the items came wrapped in plastic…..sigh……

But they were a most beautiful rainbow bouquet of straws! I kind of wanted to put them in a vase and admire them on my dining room table for awhile.

Putting the silicone tips on the straws and wrapping them and tying these tiny little bows with my hemp string ball that’s leftover for my teens/20’s was no small feat. I started wrapping them last weekend and had to force myself to do a box or two each night this week (hence the lacking blog posts) and thankfully my husband started helping too, which sped up the process.

My thumbs still hurt though.

I went with one tall, one short, one straight, one bent straw per pack and a straw brush, so each person got 2 straws. They looked like this:

I was anxious before the parade because I knew people would probably decline them and as we turned the corner at the start of the parade, my comforting thought was, “well….when I have extras – I can always take them to work because I know there would be lots of people who would like them there.”

And I think we were just both excited to get out and do some good and promote something that we both believe in.

The first couple of people on my side seemed interested and there were a few “what a great idea! this is amazing!” comments which made my heart happy.

I came up to some dudes and I offered them to the first guy I came to, “Would you like some reusable straws?” and he declined – but all the next 4 people took them. While I was handing them out to those people, the first guy walked over to me and was like, “Actually I would really like those!”

And I knew we had a hit on our hands.

Especially when I looked at my sister across the street getting mobbed by a group of teenage girls who wanted to choose the colors of their straws. I barely eeked out a picture as the girls were walking away from her.

We had people asking for an extra set for their children – people were saying things like, “They come with a straw so we can clean them??? Awesome!” “I can throw these in my purse!” “I’m saving a sea turtle!” We even had people getting out of the floats around us to ask for some.

Soon we were at least 100 meters behind our designated float area and we barely made it through one third (maybe even a quarter) of the people watching the parade.

So at the end of the parade, where everyone was sitting because it was close to the festival, I was just this weird lady with a toddler on her back who was picking up candy in the middle of the street for her children.

I think both my sister and I were really encouraged by doing good and the reception the straws received. I told her next year, she should spearhead this as a project for her church and add in their church flier with the zero waste flier. And since it’s a Lutheran church, more people have the opportunity through Thrivent to get these small grants so they could do a bunch of mini-zero waste projects for the parade.

Even 8 months into this journey, I still feel awkward sometimes when I am in public doing zero-waste things, but this is just more reinforcement to be an example for everyone and to keep promoting the small things that people can do to make a positive impact for the planet.

A Hodge Podge of Zero Waste

After a summer of nearly no writing at all, it’s time for some updates of this journey.

This morning, my husband was a sweetheart and let me sleep in. In fact, I woke up to my 4 year old setting my yellow yarn skein for reusable water balloons on my belly and saying something along the lines of, “Mommy, you need to get started making balloons.”

In my head, I wanted to gently push him aside with my foot, but nothing was functioning on my body at that point except for my ability to produce drool and flutter my eyelids as I came out of a dream of my Superintendent coming up behind me without me knowing while teaching a lesson and yelling at my students.

#teachernightmares

Actually – side note – I don’t watch zombie movies because when I watched 28 Days Later, I had dreams for months of being trapped in school as a substitute during a zombie apocalypse.

Ahem….

But today we had a family reunion in the Toledo area on what would have been my Grandmother’s 98th birthday. I used the time in the car to crochet with my yellow yarn.

I think my Grandma would have really gotten a kick out of these crocheted water balloons. 🙂

By the time of this writing, as we lost daylight outside, I crocheted 12 yellow balloons.

And even though it was 67 degrees outside, my sons and nephews were promised a pool party, so gosh darn it – they got in the pool. And they got to try out the green water balloons.

They floated at first, but as they became saturated with water, they sank in the pool.

There was talk that when thrown hard at close range, they can hurt. But there was lots of laughter and diving for the balloons, which I think was the goal. And I personally have always thought they’d be better running around the yard throwing them at each other.

My chicken stock from yesterday froze beautifully in my mason jars. No worries whatsoever, which makes me hopeful for some more zero waste freezin’ fun.

My hand looks super creepy in this picture….it was cold….

There seemed to be some need for clarification on my honey lemon jar that I keep in my fridge. First of all, I think I read about it on this blog way back in the day. But basically, you infuse the honey with lemon and keep it in your refrigerator. The lemon never gets bad (at least not in my experience). As you use it, you keep adding new lemons and new honey to it. I need to add some more to my jar, since it was lost at the back of my fridge.

Over time, it kinda starts to crystallize and become glumpy and I’ll scoop those glumps up and put them in a mug. Pour some hot water over top of your glumpy scoops of honey and lemon and strain out anything you don’t want (for me….usually lemon rinds.). I’ve also heard of putting ginger root in there which would probably be yummy and really good for you too. I think everyone except my youngest has used this while sick.

One thing I’m still not feeling great about is my chapstick.

There were 2 things that really started to bother me about my chapstick from FreeWheelin’ Market on Etsy. First of all, it started melting in my pocket.

Wop wop…….

It’s since been demoted to my bedtime chapstick because it is a gloopy gloopy mess, but in order to not waste it, I use it for my pre-bed application.

Second, as a white lip balm with no tint, I wasn’t happy with the white tint it was putting on my lips. I felt like I looked like one of the zombies from my teacher nightmare instead of the substitute teacher who led the few living students to safety by shooting her way out of the building (how I got a rifle at school….don’t ask me….). My lips naturally have a darker color and I wanted something to blend a little better.

Essentially….I want Burt’s Bees pomegranate chapstick in a cardboard tube.

Hmmm…..I should send them an email and suggest that….

After searching and searching on Etsy, I finally found some red tinted chapstick from Rainwater Botanicals that was flavored pink grapefruit and paid $8 a piece for 2 tubes.

Ouch….not a fan of the price….

And then it showed up in this tiny cardboard tube! I completely expected it to be the same massive size as my first zero waste chapstick. I did feel better after comparing the amount to my last few remaining Burt’s Bees chapsticks and found that the grapefruit was larger in quantity.

I’ve been rarely using the grapefruit stuff. First of all, I keep misplacing it. I currently cannot find it – all I remember is packing it for school one day this past week.

Second of all, it’s not super glossy – it’s more of a matte finish and one of the reasons I wear chapstick is because the glossy finish feels soothing to me.

And it’s a little too red.

(I know, I know – will anything EVER make you happy, Julie???)

I’m a firm believer that the perfect Zero waste chapstick is out there waiting for me somewhere.

….Perhaps……we are just two ships…..passing in the night…

I am STILL loving my Merkur, zero waste safety razor. Seriously – it hasn’t been one of the most uncomfortable switches I’ve ever made (it’s been relatively easy) – but one day over the summer, it was still in my travel bag and I still had a lingering disposable razor in my shower so I used it.

It was terrible going back. I hated the way it felt. So I put it in my stockpile of trash in my basement to send to Terracycle.

I think I have finally found my preferred razor blade from my little variety pack that I ordered. Granted – I still haven’t tried EVERY blade in the pack to know for sure….but I think my blade is The Shark.

There was one blade over the summer that I got a lot of knicks from – of course, I didn’t save the wrapper so I could remember to never use it again – but the Shark has given me a nice shave with minimal knicks.

But perhaps….one of my favorite things this summer was the feedback I got from people. I’ve been told by many people how they’re starting to implement some zero waste changes in their own lives.

My absolute favorite has been hearing from TWO of my friends that they have purchased Diva Cups.

My one friend asked me about it way back in May (ironically, we were on the same cycle), so last month, I remembered to follow-up with her to see how she liked it and she said (and I quote):

“LOVE it. Total game changer. I haven’t had any trouble with it so far. It’s only been 3 cycles though. I tell all my friends about it.”

My other friend and I go WAY back and we live far apart now, but occasionally get together. So this summer, when we got together she brought it up and said she had bought a Diva Cup.

Cue my internal nervousness about seeking the approval of others and hoping that things I recommend work for everyone and I can make everyone happy and the world will be filled with sunshine and rainbows.

I mean…..it’s not asking for much….

And she said something along the lines of it’s only been this summer, but it’s been great. She also said that her only regret….

….Sharp inhale…..oh my goodness…..this is the longest pause ever…..

…..Is that she didn’t get one sooner. If you recall, I’ve had mine for about 11-12 years and we’ve been friends since 2nd grade. She said, she remembered me talking about it when I first got it and thinking, “Oh my gosh – why would anyone EVER want to use that??” …….and now she said she wished she had gotten one before.

So seriously….if you are a menstruating female….just know that I have not heard from anyone who has bought a menstrual cup and not liked it and wished they had done it earlier.

I mean….I don’t really want to break my winning streak now by any means…..BUT it’s one of my most highly recommended zero waste items.

While I have more updates, it’s almost midnight – I’m not editing this (typical) and I’m going to bed. Night y’all!

Chicken Stock

Two quick updates before I get to something I did for the first time today.

First of all, last night I finally finished my green skein of yarn for the reusable water balloons.

As you can see, I did not have enough yarn to fully create my last water balloon – so instead it’s this somewhat deformed water balloon but as always, we will welcome it and use it because it can still perform it’s duty which is to hit my husband and splatter him with water.

While I can’t confirm this and (I’m not taking the time to confirm it now), I thought I had read somewhere that one skein would make 8-9 balloons.

I got 17.5 out of this green skein:

I feel like my balloons have the Cheerleader Effect from How I Met Your Mother. Together, they all don’t look so bad, but when you pull one out individually and look at it….yeah….there’s a lot of flaws.

And I thought it was odd that I got SO MANY more. But I ordered more of the yarn on Amazon because I saw some great prices (around $8 a skein. I’ve seen them for $4 for ONE water balloon on Etsy or like $6 for FOUR – made with much superior quality, let’s not forget that).

But perfection is not the goal with these. Fun is the goal.

Anyways, I got yellow right away because it was in the $8 range and then I ended up buying the light blue about 30 seconds after I ordered all my reusable straws for my next do-gooder event because I saw it also went to the $8 range. And then red. But here’s what red looked like when it arrived:

It’s so dinky in comparison. I mean….if you don’t require your own chair as a skein of yarn….I’m not sure if I want you around.

Not to mention, I’d like to have a somewhat equivalent number of each color, so I may return the red and get a larger one. But moral of the story is, I’m on to yellow now. And I can crochet them a lot more quickly now and I have about 4 hours in the car tomorrow….

So today, I cleaned out my refrigerator. And not like just getting rid of expired things – we like emptied the WHOLE thing and gave it a good scrubbing.

I didn’t get a before shot, but suffice it to say that the bottom of our fridge had pooling, gelatinous soy sauce and other substances – sprinkled with a mixture of crumbs and little broccoli leaves.

All easily cleaned up with a wet microfiber cloth and nothing else. No chemicals – no soap. Just water.

Food waste makes me really sad and in full disclosure – it still happens at my house. We try to compost everything we can (including our rotten food) and I try to put the things we don’t want in our compost into our “weed bin” so they decompose outside and not in a landfill, but we still encountered things today that simply got trashed.

Our kitchen was trashed for awhile and I refound MANY items including one thing I wanted to share. In my refrigerator, I keep a mason jar with lemon slices and honey.

I never toss it – I only add to it – and over time it makes this lovely, sugary honey lemon mixture that is great when you have a cold and/or sore throat. Just spoon some into a mug, add some hot water, stir it up and it makes a lovely, soothing beverage. It’s especially great if you regularly use lemons and have leftovers – then they don’t go to waste. For me, it’s rare I buy lemons and I tend to buy them only for this.

As you can see, my mixture is a little low and now that we’re getting into the full swing of school, I’m going to add to it so I have it prepared by the time my first cold hits.

….it could be at any time…….germs lurk everywhere in elementary schools….

Anyhow – I also found a rotisserie chicken carcass from this week in our fridge (so it was still in good shape), and some veggies that were on their very last leg and I decided to make something that I’ve been WANTING to make for a LONG time – chicken stock.

I don’t use a ton of stock in general, but homemade chicken noodle soup happens to be one of my favorites as the weather starts to cool. So today was MY DAY to make it.

It was ridiculously easy.

I directed my husband to put the carcass in our Dutch Oven and then to roughly cut up some celery and carrots while I was wiping out the refrigerator.

Then we switched roles and he wiped out the door of the refrigerator while I added an onion (roughly cut), some bay leaves, and some peppercorns to the mix. I then, filled up the Dutch Oven with water on the stove, brought it to a boil, then took it down to low and simmered it for an hour.

It filled our house with some amazing, Thanksgiving turkey smells. I wanted to turn on the Macy’s day parade, put on my stretchy pajamas, and snuggle.

…..I didn’t get to do any of those….

After it simmered for an hour, I turned off the stove and left it sitting on the stove because I was fearful for my safety of trying to strain the stock while it was still ridiculously hot.

…..It had nothing to do with the fact that I wanted to take a nap during my window of opportunity while my youngest napped and my husband took my oldest to go miniature golfing……

So about 5 hours later (….you guys….the first week of school is really exhausting….stop judging….) I sleepily stumbled out of my cave and strained it. It was no easy task and some of it went down the drain, but I ended up with 2 full quarts.

And then, since I knew I was going to freeze them and started to panic about my first time freezing things in mason jars, I sloppily poured some into this old salad dressing jar that I haven’t quite finished getting the label off of.

I labeled the lids with the date and what it is and set them in my freezer. I will report back if they shatter. And if it tastes good or if it just plain sucks (that could still happen as I did not sample this after my Saturday hibernation). Oh, and I used this website (Garlic and Zest) as a reference – although I didn’t have parsley and I think I added a lot more water. And they gave options for making this in a crock pot or instant pot also.

I’ve been realizing that to be truly zero waste in the kitchen…sigh…I feel you have to make everything homemade.

Yeah…..I’m not doin’ that……

But this was super easy and I think definitely something I could add to my homemade routine since A) it will be so infrequent that I would do this B) it’s so easy and your chopping and preparation doesn’t have to be nice and C) I could stop using the plastic/foil cartons of stock from the store and use what I have instead.

I’ve been hearing a lot about bone broth lately also – which I’ve been wanting to make for awhile – but this I feel was my first step into the world of homemade broth. And to think, all these years, I’ve been making turkeys at Thanksgiving and sometimes Christmas and I was missing out on a great opportunity to make it go further.

While I have some updates I want to post, I really need to start talking about my frustration of cutting out plastic in the kitchen. It will (hopefully) be coming soon.

Summer Reflections…and…Confessions

On this, the eve of my having to have a 5 day work week (Eep!)….with the windows open and the Nickel Creek station playing on Pandora (or as it was affectionately called this weekend, “Julie’s hootenanny music”)….it feels like Fall is right around the corner.

Even if it is going to return to be blazing hot this week, the start of school just screams FALL!!!! At the top of its lungs.

Tomorrow is my first day of school and it’s making me reflect back on the summer.

I had an AMAZING summer! Even though the blog suffered this summer….I have no regrets – except for maybe not squeezing in more trips and adventures.

We swam in the ocean:

We climbed mountains:

We saw animals (I Fangirled loudly with the bears):

We slept in a lean-to!

The red head lamps I got the boys for Christmas were all the rage too (lots of monster attacks while wearing those….)

Just GREAT MEMORIES that I wouldn’t trade for anything.

However….

With all the travel I did…..I feel like I have a major confession to be open about….

Here it goes…..

There were many many moments this summer that I was thankful for plastic.

I know, I know – I was shocked too.

But there it is….out on my little corner of the internet for my four readers. I said it.

Whew – I’ve been wanting to get that off my chest.

I only feel slightly bad about it.

If you haven’t been following along (I can’t blame you…..) we traveled from Ohio to Florida, from Ohio to Virginia, and then from Ohio to New York/Vermont/New Hampshire. With small children.

I’ve been attempting to buy as much food and snack-type things as possible in bulk (not totally possible….) and I’ve been storing them in glass jars in my cupboard (oh boy, do they look purdy!).

…..Yeah…..I wasn’t going to take glass jars on our trips…..

At this point, I own ONE stainless steel bento box and while I did pack some snacks in it, I needed more. And I also had the thought, if they’re all stainless steel and you can’t see inside, how do I know if I’m grabbing the almond/cashew mixture instead of the gummy bears?

Can any other mom see the disaster lurking in that situation??

After the briefest moments of panic, I felt completely stupid because like most suburban American people…..I have an entire cupboard full of plastic Tupperware.

And as I was transferring all my bulk foods into the Tupperware, I was super thankful that they stacked together and that I could see what was inside each of them. (The gummy bears naturally got the prime spot in the stainless steel bento box – like other bears, they stayed hidden.)

I also forgave myself for buying food that came in single use plastic, but was a little more travel friendly. For example, when we travel – my boys will just eat croissants. Croissants for breakfast, croissant sandwiches for lunch – I have to hide them so they don’t just go sneak around eating croissants while wearing berets and doing terrible French accents. (Where did they learn to stereotype so horribly???)

They’re SO CONVENIENT…..and I wasn’t about to make them myself. Nor do I know of a bakery nearby that would sell them in a paper bag or let me bring my own.

I also bought……ahem……applesauce pouches……

Oooh……that confession hurt……

To the chagrin of my husband and my basement, I’m still collecting them all to send them in to Terracycle when they’re finished. But they are also a very convenient way to travel and get fruits and veggies into my children.

So I decided to be thankful for them and realize that I’m not at a point of perfection and I also don’t want to turn my children into supervillains by depriving them of certain things.

One of those things that I do deprive them of is juice boxes. In fact, if my son is somewhere with other kids with juice boxes, he will ask for one. Nothing is cooler to him than a pouch of Capri Sun.

I have these:

Reusable, refillable, washable PLASTIC juice boxes. If you’ve followed for awhile and have a phenomenal memory, I previously lamented about how my son took the marketing of line of “nearly indestructable” as a personal challenge and broke the lid on the green juice box relatively quickly.

I really didn’t want to pay for a replacement lid that was plastic…..

But after many pained arguments in my head and wallowing about it to my sister, I bought a replacement lid for our trip to Florida.

And I am a little ashamed to say that I loved it. Each kid had their own juice box at the beach and in the car…..less fighting = happier mom. (I still feel like I should have bought something stainless steel, but I didn’t like any of the options.)

The problem was…… each kid only. had. one.

So when they finished their juice, unless we brought along the bigger container – they were out of juice.

We were in Florida.

In JUNE! Do you know HOW HOT it is in Florida in June????

My 2 year old, who could barely talk at the time, quickly learned the phrase, “too hot” and we would open the van door at the beach and when we got him out he would turn his head in disgust and say, “too hot! too hot!” (I shamelessly taught him to say Mommy Hot – hoping people would interpret that for my looks instead of temperature ;))

So on the drive home from Florida….are you ready for this???

.….sigh……here it comes…..

I ORDERED MORE.

That’s right. Amazon Prime – two day shipping – I got a 3 pack of the updated version (which I like a lot more).

And when I took the boys and the juice boxes to Shenandoah….they were everything I could have dreamed of and more!

Those little plastic suckers were amazing.

Not only did each boy have 2 juice boxes at their every beck and call…..I got one too!!!

Which is why I took peach and white grape juice with us. And let me tell you…..I have some great memories of sucking that juice out of the purple juice box under a tree at the visitors center with our croissant sandwiches spread out on the beeswax wraps I made with all our plastic tupperware containers spread out with grapes and gummy bears and cashews with craisins. Including the memory of my two year old deciding to stand on the bench of the picnic table and then jump up and down out of excitement and fall down.

And since I’m just confessing all of my dirty little secrets on the internet right now…….I ENJOYED EVERY SECOND of holding him on my lap while he cried afterwards and rubbing my cheek on his head and sniffing his head and taking in EVERY SINGLE MOMENT that he would still let me do that.

That’s right – that’s the mom I am!!!!

(Oh come on…..I didn’t push him off the bench so I could do it….I even warned him he would fall….I gotta get some points for that – he learned a lesson and I got snuggles. Just…stop judging, ok??? Geez…..it’s confession time….pretend you’re a priest….)

Ok, where was I???

I was also seriously thankful for my plastic Bumkins reusable bags this summer.

I really wanted to LOVE the waxed canvas bags that I got off Etsy and could compost when they’re finished…..but yeah….Bumkins are the winners for me.

I do use the waxed canvas bags to carry wet wash rags to wipe up my children after they eat (since it looks like they ate out of a trough with just their faces). So I don’t consider them a waste whatsoever. I just feel like with the beeswax, it made the food taste different, so maybe over time that will fade.

Ok, this isn’t a summer confession – but while I’m spewing my guts I’m getting this out too….I haven’t been back to Duma’s meats to push the issue of them packing meat in my own containers.

And the thing is, even going there and getting their wax paper wrap would be better because I’ve been throwing the wax paper from our butter wrappers into our fireplace as fire starters. I’d do that with the Duma’s packaging instead of the plastic Giant Eagle or Aldi packaging. It got to be too much. Maybe this Fall, I try a little harder with that again.

My craft stuff is mostly put away and I can’t wait to share some of the upcycling/crafting I’ve been doing in my evenings instead of writing blog posts. But we start back in our routine tomorrow, so I imagine the blog will be slightly more prevalent once again.

I also like to dip sour cream and onion potato chips in cottage cheese…..I occasionally put a slice of cheddar cheese on my french toast….I watched both Pretty Little Liars and Long Island Medium A LOT while I was pregnant with my first kid…..and I don’t need to be pregnant to watch Ghost Hunters or The Girls Next Door.

That may be everything that I’m prepared to share on my corner of the internet. Happy?

So as the sun sets on my summer vacation and my reflections….(eh? eh? see what I did there??)….I can only look forward to carrying them into the Fall weekends.

2019 was a Summer to remember. On to the next.

Doing Good

I forgot to mention in my birthday post from 7 days ago (that was 3 months late), that my sister-in-law also got me these reusable bags from Target:

And they work really well! After a summer of travel and trying all these different reusable food containers, my absolute favorite are the Bumkin brand snack bags:

Santa can ABSOLUTELY bring me more of these for Christmas. Especially the turquoise mountain pack. 😉

#noshame

So last Sunday, I followed through on my project of handing out reusable produce bags at my church. I FINALLY got my flyer finished. It was challenging because I had so much I wanted to say, but I didn’t want to sound too much like a granola munching tree hugger (even if that is what I am) or too elitist.

…Or just stupid.

But I think where I landed was OK, even if I had a lot more to say. I stuck with the teacher principle – KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid). And I decided to be proud of it, make all my copies, and move on.

In total, I had 270 reusable produce bags in 3 different sizes. The sets that I ordered from Amazon had 3 Large, 9 Medium, and 3 Small. It didn’t take long for me to have them sorted by size….

And then to have my 4 year old “help” my laying on top of them all and saying he had to nap RIGHT on top of the bags and that I had plenty of space.

#lifewithlittleones

I had no idea how to go about bundling them. Should they just be a single hand out? Hand out 2 to everyone? How can I attach 2-3 together without plastic or rubber bands?

With being declined by 3 different grocery stores to hand them out, I got nervous about getting rid of them all. I really didn’t want to be left with a lot leftover or have to drag this out for a long time.

So I finally opted to bundle 3 together (some had one of each size, and some were all 3 Medium-sized), while wrapping my flyer around the outside and securing it with the cinch string from one of the bags.

Is it weird to say I was proud of how they were bundled? I’m going to say it anyways: “I’m the most amazing person in the world for figuring out how to bundle reusable produce bags and a flyer and nobody else could have done it like this.” 😉

So after setting some aside for people at school who said they were interested in having some, and after several episodes of Paw Patrol and the Handmaid’s Tale (depending on who was in the room at my house at the time) – I had a reusable grocery bag full of my bundles.

I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to get rid of all of them. In fact, before handing them out at my church, I even checked with a couple other people about handing them out at their churches too….just in case.

During church, I got up and made a little spiel explaining what they are and why I was handing them out. My husband took a lot of pictures of me (and my boys) and apparently, I just walk around looking odd and making crazy faces when I talk or interact with other people, because I look absurd in every photo he took (except for the one that I’m posing for).

My boys were so excited to hand them out and did a fabulous job! We only had one bundle left over after we handed them out. People were really interested in them and several asked to take some for their kids or grandkids that were “really into this kind of stuff”.

I had such an amazing feeling afterwards and I kept thinking….if each of these bags gets used one time and only one time, that’s 270 plastic produce bags that won’t be used, have to be recycled, or that won’t end up in the ocean or in a tree.

That’s enough to put a smile on my face. 🙂

I liked this “project” so much, I went home and applied for the next one.

We’re already approved for something I titled, “Straws for Sea Turtles”.

I found a great set of 16 reusable stainless steel straws on Amazon and I’m hoping to pass them out at a parade/festival on September 8th. If I print my own flyers and don’t buy any straw cleaners (still debating on that though….I feel those are necessary….) I can buy 400 reusable straws.

Spreading the love….one straw/3 produce bags at a time.

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