Reuse It!

We're often encouraged to practice the three "R's": reduce, reuse, recycle. I think the easiest of the three to practice is recycle.  If you have a recycle bin, you can do it almost without thinking.  Of course

Recycle, or can you reduce?

recycling is better than having everything toted to a landfill, but recycling isn't as good for the earth as reducing, re-using and re-purposing is.  Briefly, a lot of fossil fuels are used in recycling.  To read more about it, please go to my left side bar and follow the link there or use this link.  Instead try to focus on these three "R's"; reuse, reduce and re purpose.

Those shampoo and conditioner bottles, what can you do with them, besides put them into the recycle bin?  What about finding a shampoo and conditioner that come in bulk sizes, say a gallon container (check the warehouse stores like Sam's or BJ's) and then refill the smaller bottles from them?  I really can't think of any way of re purposing those bottles, but if you can, I would love to hear about it! 

How about the cardboard tube inside of toilet paper or paper towels?  The first strategy is to reduce.  With paper towels, it is quite easy to replace their use as much as possible by using rags, sponges and dish towels.  However, I can't imagine anyone wanting to reduce toilet paper use in that way, not to

                                          Reduce?  Reuse?  Recycle? Re purpose?


mention how unhygienic it would be, and the massive amounts of bleach, actual soap - not laundry detergent - and hot water to clean them for toilet duty again.  One solution could be to buy larger rolls of toilet paper to reduce the actual amount of toilet paper used.
      Another idea is to re purpose the cardboard tube.  There are a lot of sites on the Internet that will tell you how to make Kaleidoscopes for the kiddies or to use them to separate cutlery by taping the tubes together.  Not having anyone in my home that would enjoy a kaleidoscope, and preferring to use an empty, cardboard wine cooler carrier for my cutlery, I'm not particularly receptive to purely crafty uses for anything that I try to re purpose.
   I have seen where the paper tubes have been cut into approximately 4 inch sections, and the bottoms cut to have four sections, then bent over each other like you would close up a cardboard box, filled with dirt and used to start seeds.  They can be planted directly into the ground because the cardboard will disintegrate into the ground.


                  Re purpose?


        Perhaps the easiest and conversely, the hardest things to re purpose is old clothing.  I am of course talking about clothing that is too stained, torn or worn to donate to a charity.  Clothing in good condition should always be donated. 
        Clothing can always be torn or neatly cut into handy squares to use for cleaning, dusting, in the garage etc.  But what if you have enough rags?  T-shirts can be neatly torn into strips, and then crocheted or knitted into chair pads or little rugs for in front of the kitchen sink or bathtub.  Look up on the Internet t-shirt quilts for more uses for t-shirts.
        Jeans can be selectively cut so that the worn parts are excluded.  Good, heavy duty pot holders can be machine sewed from them.  Also heavy duty bed covers can be machine sewn from the squares that would fit nicely in a boy's room or the room of any teen for that matter.  Book covers and tote bags can be machine sewn from salvaged denim.  Even a durable picnic blanket could be pieced together.  These projects all take time, but they are not challenging and you've already paid for the denim material when you bought the jeans, so the project is free.

         Sweaters and afghans that are worn can be unraveled to use the yarn again.  Sweater arms from children's sweaters can be used over the handles of pots and pans along with pot holders for extra protection.  Of course, never leave anything on a pot, pan or kettle unattended in case of them catching fire.
        Take a good look at the items to be thrown away or recycled in your house.  Can any of them be re purposed?  Take a good look.

Some ideas:

• egg cartons - the cardboard ones can be 3/4 filled with sawdust and a 1/4 filled with wax to use as fire starters in a fireplace or outside grill.  Tear off one or two as needed.  Please remember to use proper precautions. 
• egg cartons - foam - give them a good wash in soapy hot water and use them in your drawer to coralle small items like paper clips, screws, clips, spare change etc
• egg cartons - clean well in soapy water, and bring with you to a picnic for your kids to use as a Kala game board.  The pieces can be pretty shells or pebbles that they find.
• egg cartons - especially foam - bring to your organic grocer or to backyard farmers for them to use again for selling eggs.
• egg cartons - cardboard - use to start seedlings
• mint tins - decorate if you wish - use to keep small items in your purse in one place (tweezers, nail clips, spare change etc)
• mint tins - decorate if you wish - use to store needles, lengths of thread, pins etc for a portable sewing kit. Leave in your purse, desk at work or in your car.
• Crystal Lite concentrate containers (and containers like it) use it to cold crayons and a few papers for an on the go coloring tote for your children or to coral things like hair accessories, or in the bathroom to hold all the little toiletry samples we're always being given.
• plastic cocoa container - use it to store all the envelopes of ingredients like gravy, chili mix etc and keep it neatly on the cupboard shelf. If shelf space is limited, I have removed the back pockets of worn out jeans, added a clip magnet to hold it to my refrigerator, and stored all those envelopes in the pocket.

Do you have any tips to share?








         

Why There's a Bag in Our Front Yard

"Why do we have an empty bag in the front yard?" my husband asked resignedly. You know that he is pretty used to my recyclable ways when he doesn't ask if I realize that there is garbage on our front yard.
"Because I'm waiting for it to rot away." I answer him with the bare facts.
"Will it?"

Now that is the big question, will it? I don't know. It's supposed to, after being exposed to the elements for a while. So far, it's been a week. I have it weighed down with potting soil on the inside, and the bag itself is located in the sunniest part of our yard. I know that, because that is where all of our grass has died.

So we'll see how the compostable bag does. If it does perform as promised, we might never eat any chips except SUN CHIPS in the compostable bag ever again.

On the subject of my blog not accepting comments, I've tried to follow the advice that a reader, Sherri, e-mailed me. So if you still have trouble with leaving comments, will you please e-mail me at momsince1980@yahoo.com and put BLOG in the subject line? Much thanks to Sherri for her advice.

More Mary Bennett blog Here http://www.connect.faithandfamilylive.com/profiles/blogs/in-search-of-peace

Updates

So my blog friends, I thought you might like an update? When last we met over my recyclables, I was almost literally covered by them. The recyclables truck was supposed to come and pick them up that Thursday, but never did.

Problem solved! I finally got the right phone number, to call the right office, and as long as I call by the day before our pick up day, our recyclables will be picked up every week. Yes! Triumph!

Also, I had told everyone that if they wanted to ease up on using plastic shopping bags, cloth shopping bags are available at different super markets at very low price, usually between 50 cents to two dollars.

Problem: Make sure you check where the handles attach to the bag. Believe it or not, the non-insulated, WalMart bags handles are not sewn onto the bag, but glued!
Yes, glued! How did we find out? When dh picked up the bag of groceries and the handle pulled off. Thankfully nothing got broken. So, if you buy shopping bags, make sure the handles are attached securely, either by rivet or by being sewn. If you are the handy type, you could probably sew the handles onto the bag yourself. And remember, do NOT overload the bags. Just because they can pack a lot, doesn't mean they should.

Recycling

I can't tell you how ridiculously thrilled I was when I found out that our new home was in a community that had mandatory recycling! Recycling has been my goal ever since I was about 11 or 12 years old, but in most of the communities that I lived in, I was a child before my time. In fact, I lived in the age when there wasn't even a deposit charged on a soda (pop) bottle. Now this is truly unique if you consider that when both my father and my children were kids, there was a deposit required on a bottle of soda(pop). I was the generation of children that grew up without this fundraising option!

In fact, when my family moved to a much more rural and farm-like area, I was looked at with scorn, and as if I was crazy when I asked them about recycling. "There's plenty of room at the dump." Bobby replied to my question with a look that said "what can you expect except dumb from a city slicker," and I hadn't lived any where near the city!

So, here I am, living in recycle USA and I'm still not happy! As Ricky Ricardo from "I Love Lucy" would say, "Wot hoppened?" When we first moved in, we always had more recycling than what the town gave us a container for. Before the town got their fancy shmanzy armed trucks for collecting the recycling, this wasn't a problem. Have more than what the container has room for? Not a problem, put the extra into cardboard boxes or into a plastic garbage can and put it at the curb with everything else. The men manually loaded it onto the collection truck. Home relatively clear to start the cycle all over again.

And then it happened, the Town decided to do single stream recycling, and humans would no longer load or recyclables onto the truck; a truck would do it.

They even gave each resident a nice, big, tan colored can that worked with the trucks lifting arm.

And what should be even more good news to me, the Town would be collecting even more recyclable categories, so there would be even less garbage! Though now, with the bigger recyclables can, the recyclables will only be picked up twice a month, instead of every week. Not good news for us.

Because now we are immersed in recyclables! We can no longer use cardboard boxes or trash cans for the overflow, because the truck arm can not pick those up.

So I called Town Hall, and they gave me a number to call, and eventually I will be able to get a recyclables pick up truck to come every time our recyclables can is filled.

It just hasn't happened yet. What has happened though, is the constantly staring at all this mess in my kitchen, in my hallway and on my back porch is making me change my mind on recycling.

But, that's another blog.




To be continued..........