Wednesday, March 3, 2010

One Small Change - Month 2


So Last month I joined the One Small Change challenge to make a small change every month leading up to Earth Day.

Last month we switched to reusable grocery bags which I LOVED! It prevented me from having an enormous amount of plastic bags from overtaking the cupboard under the kitchen sink and it helped the environment. I initially thought this would be a good opportunity to make some cute reusable shopping bags, but I didn't rally get around to it and just used those basic reusable shopping totes. Another great perk to not using plastic bags? They never break on you while you are transporting your groceries from the car to the kitchen!





This month, we are going to cut down on paper use and focus on ways to REUSE...one of the 3 R's!
I'm not at the point where I'm going to switch the "family cloth" instead of toilet paper, but we are going to stop using paper towel (which we seem to have a love affair with). We also set the printer to automatically print double-sided.
We use the junk mail that comes to the house for my daughter's art projects. She practices her cutting skills and makes collages. Whatever we don't use or are done using for projects, goes in the recycle.


As for for ways to REUSE things that might end up in the trash, the first thing we did was make a Milk jug Bath Toy Scoop! Next on the list, we used 2 toilet paper rolls, decorated them, then stapled them together so my daughter now has a cool custom pair of binoculars for exploring with. The next project on the to do list is making puzzles. My almost 3 year old daughter has fallen in love with puzzles and so I started saving old cereal boxes. I'll be cutting them for a big flat rectangle, then using modge podge to cover with an image and then cut into puzzle pieces.
It's great! My daughter gets new toys to play with, made from recyclable materials that are FREE! WIN WIN WIN!






Thanks for the One Small Change Challenge...it's really helped remind me to be more careful and conscious of the little things!

4 comments:

The Redhead Riter said...

LOL I used to do that with the TP rolls too....very cute

Crystal Escobar said...

Oh such great ideas! I LOVE them. Thank you so much for sharing. I've been trying harder too these days to be more green. The other day we made a doll house out of a diaper box from costco. I'm going to post the picture of it sometime soon. Anyway, I love the puzzle idea, and also using the junk male. My daughter loves cutting and glueing things.
Okay, I'm absolutely in love with your blog, so for sure I'm a follower now :)

Unknown said...

I am so glad you liked your last month's change. I love bringing my own sturdy bags...and they are much cuter!
I love your March change and know it is going to go great!
So glad to have you on board! Feel free to stop by any time this month and let us know how it is going! http://1smallchangeblog.blogspot.com/
Suzy

Unknown said...

Hey mama!
I hope you are having an awesome March so far!

Make sure to stop by the One Small Change blog to enter into our latest giveaway and see what the community is up to!
http://1smallchangeblog.blogspot.com/2010/03/giveaway-reusable-produce-bags.html

We also started a face book fan page which can be accessed from the blog! :)

Thanks!
Suzy