Extreme Recycling

With Earth Day on the horizon, we always give a little extra thought to how we can reduce waste and improve our energy efficiency in our house. Of course, we all try to take our re-usable bags with us when we go shopping, but somehow there always seem to be a few plastic grocery bags that get into the house. Rather than throw them away, we’ve made an extreme sport out of re-using a bag as many times as we can before finally abandoning it to the waste stream. The trick is to find uses that allow the bags to be used over and over again until every possible use has been exhausted. Here are our favorites:

• Use them as packing material instead of Styrofoam or bubble wrap. And be sure to put a note in the package reminding the recipient to reuse the bags.
• Make a soft nest for your Christmas ornaments while they’re in storage.
• Pack some in your suitcase: they’re great for isolating your laundry and shoes from the rest of your clothes.
• Tuck them into your beach tote for wet towels and swimsuits.
• Use them for your toiletries when you travel. I wish I could say that I have a snazzy, monogrammed cosmetic bag for travel, but I actually use the same plastic grocery bag (or sometimes a big Ziploc) over and over again. Who’s to know?
• Line the bottom of something that needs filler: a flower pot, a basket filled with candles, and shredded plastic bags make great confetti for a gift bag.
• Cushion your china while it’s in storage.
• Store your outdoor pillows inside them during the off-season.
• Put one in your carry-on bag when you travel. How many times have you purchased food at the airport for your flight, and had it leak all over the contents of your carry-on?
• Our dog Jasper likes to eat the fluff out of his dogbed. When it starts to deflate, a few plastic bags make it nice and puffy again.

We stop just short of this:

Although we do admire the industriousness and creativity of Tyler Velten, an architecture student at Yale who designed and created the chandelier, we're not quite that extreme. Yet.

Tips for a Healthy Family Home #2

Recycling is certainly more work than just throwing everything in the trash, but it pays off in all the obvious ways. One payoff that's not so obvious is this: when we require our trash to be sorted in our house, we require our children to pause and make a decision before throwing something away. Considering the impact of your actions, however small, is a skill that my kids will draw on regularly later in life.

Real Simple magazine is a great resource for ideas on how to set up simple and usable recycling systems in your home that also look great, how to reuse just about anything, and information on what is and is not recyclable.

I especially like their 10 Smart Uses for Old Plastic Bags.

Bringing My Own Bags to the Grocery Store is the Least of my Worries

How have I never noticed this before? It's not just the grocery stores -- everyone gives you a bag when you shop. On a recent shopping trip, if I hadn't taken some control, I would have ended up with about ten bags for approx. $100 worth of purchases. I bought a tube of lipstick and the salesperson tried to give me a bag for it. I realized then that I need to bring my shopping bags with me everywhere.

I love FreePeople, because they give you a very cute reusable bag when you shop there.

However, I'm a little old to shop there regularly and, while I wish they would sell their bags, they don't.

I've had my eye on some shopping bags for awhile and haven't managed to buy them, but now I think I will.

I like these because they're cute, but also because:
They don't look like grocery bags
They are sold in a set of 5 that roll up into a pouch that's 9"x6" so they're easy to carry around
The website I like ReusableBags.com, participates in 1% for the Planet, an organization that inspires it's members to donate 1% of their sales to environmental causes around the world
A very cool green living expert Antoinette Nue likes them too

And best of all, I won't have to feel compelled to carry my lunch to work in a giant Nordstrom shopping bag, just so the bag won't go to waste.

Five Things I Forgot I Had

The swap meet at the Furber house last weekend was a moderate success. JP,Jack, Andie, and Katie all got great things that they were very excited about. One man's castoff is another man's treasure, it seems.

I rate the event as only moderately successful because I didn't get the inbox I was hoping for. Maybe next time. However, as always happens when I start looking in closets and under sinks, I found some pretty good and useful stuff I had forgotten about. For example:

Some plastic storage drawers that were nearly empty under my bathroom sink are now in the garage holding JP's odds and ends on his workbench.

Some empty wine crates are now holding table linens in my dining room.


I found a supercool corkboard that now makes a great addition to my command center in my laundry room.

I found stashes of notecards all over the office. When I gathered them all together, it seems like we've got enough to get us through about the next five years of thank you notes. We now have a drawer in the office dedicated only to notecards and thank you note writing supplies. Stand by Grandmas and Grandpas -- thank you notes are on the way.

I found dormant frames all over the place -- in the garage, in the office, in the hall closet. Next time I think I need to buy a frame, I don't. And the next time after that, too.

Cleaning out my closets looking for stuff to trade just wet my appetite for a bigger excavation. I think I'll venture into the garage next -- maybe my inbox will be in there.

Swap Meet and the Furber House

Now that the resolutions are done, it's time to get back to my topic of making the most of your $$ during a recession.

Andie and Jack have been making noises lately about needing (or wanting) new things for their rooms. I've fended them off, as I feel like we don't need any more stuff in our house. In fact, I've noticed that whenever we move, we find great things that we'd forgotten about, or didn't realize we had.

That gave me an idea: this weekend all five Furbers are going to find ten things in our rooms that we don't need or want anymore. All 50 things are going on the kitchen table, and all family members can shop from the table for new things for their rooms. Anything that doesn't get swapped will be donated to charity.

I need a new inbox for my desk in my office. Wish me luck!