Wednesday, November 19, 2008

calling all creative minds...

reduce, REUSE, recycle

I know that many of us recycle but i think the reduce and reuse part of the campaign toward a better earth are often forgotten. I am definitely one to feel good about myself when i recycle my plastic propel bottles. ha! landon reminds me that water flows freely from our kitchen faucet and i shouldn't 1.spend the moolah, and 2.create the waste of a gazillion plastic bottles. yeah, i need to ponder the REDUCE idea a little more. (did you know you can buy propel in a powder and just stir it into a glass of cool water - eureka! now landon and i are both happy)

So i've been trying to be re-using things around here. I think we've made major improvements. We use cloth grocery bags so we don't use plastic, we use cloth napkins as well and i try to clean (haha -WHEN i clean) with cloth rags.

I save the old toilet paper rolls and slide my folded appliance cords into them to keep each cord with its host instead of entangled (my grandmother's idea). It's great in my drawer full of curling irons, straighteners and hair blow dryer!

I've decided to save glass jars (from peanuts, jelly, salsa, spaghetti sauce, etc...) to put left-over soup or whatever in. Also, i've noticed that they keep my coffee fresher than the bags that come with the coffee. So i get my coffee beans ground at Starbucks and then put them in their own glass jar marked "espresso", "whole beans", "decaf espresso", "french press", etc... it's great.

I've converted a metal tin that we received from the boy scouts popcorn fundraiser into our cookie jar - i've just covered it with some pretty paper.


But i can't for the life of me decide what to do with this thing. Surely it's worth keeping for something. It's air-tight and 24oz. What shall we do with my Quaker Yellow Corn meal container? Now, the most creative people that i know in the world read this blog every now and then. I'm not even kidding - you ladies and gents can surely come up with a really resourceful idea for this. Please help!

1 comment:

Anna said...

OK. OK. It may too late but I will admit I did save mine, although I think it was a grits container. I cut a slit in the top and then printed out letters on the computer and laminated then. I bet I made this thing 2 years ago but the boys love putting them into and taking them out of the container. Not to mention, it was a great start to learning the alphabet for Patrick...I have saved the peanuts containers and instant tea containers that are metal and have a plastic lid, cut a slit in the top and used lids to cans (I have a can opener that breaks the seal and leaves a safe edge) and frozen OJ lids as well as big coins to put in. They are loud when they drop which they love. And one of these days, I'll draw on them to represent real coins to learn money. So isn't there a kid out there that you can make those things for?!? Ah the joys of cheap toys.