Reduce, Reuse, Recycle... COVID-19 Edition (Week 6)

Tis the season for embracing things you already own so you have to make fewer trips to the grocery store.  I have always been a pretty big saver.  Sometimes at potlucks my friends laugh at my stinginess when it comes to paper towels.  My reasons for conserving have always been two fold, I like to save money and protect the environment in any small ways I can.  We have always reused ziplock bags (not ones with raw meat) and grocery bags.  We save things to repurpose them.  We clean with vinegar water and buy condensed cleaners that we can dilute in bottles. We store things in shoe boxes, that kind of thing.

This season has brought about new levels of conservations and reuse which I find I am loving.  I smile when I do them, because I feel saving a trip to the store, saving products, saving money, and learning better ways of doing things.  I also remind myself of my mom or my grandma.

My best example of this is the carrot story. When I went on my big grocery haul I bought many carrots.  I was storing them in the basement on the floor.  It seemed cool enough to me.  Last week I went down to the back room and saw they were getting hair and a few carrots had black spots.  I brought all four bags upstairs and had T peel the ones that looked the worst for the stew I was making that night.  Then, I washed all the carrots and set them on towels to dry.  At first without thinking I unrolled some paper towel and set them on towels.  Then I immediately realized what a waste this would be.  I got out towels and dried the freshly washed carrots on those.  I then found those green veggie bags and put the dried carrots with the air dried paper towels in the crisper and they are doing great!

My happy carrots. 

Drying my paper towels in 2020!

I feel like our paper towel dependence has gone down so much.  We are using little wash clothes and wash towels for everything now.  I used to use paper towels to clean up spills and spots on the floor.  We have a drawer full of wash clothes and we are now finally using them.  I think we have gone through less than half a roll of paper towels in the last almost 7 weeks. 

A huge way we are conserving paper towels is with reheating food.  We now cover everything with a plate which is saving a ton of paper towels and wasting less food.  We also keep the napkin holder on the table and use as needed rather than each taking one every meal and maybe not using it but still throwing it away.  

Another area of conservation discover is tea!!  I enjoy drinking tea in the winter and the summer.  I often use my tea bag several times.  The first time the tea is very strong.  The more I use it, the weaker it gets.  Last week I decided to boil a pot of water (not a tea kettle, an actual large pot) and then drop one tea bag into the pot.  It steeped for a couple of hours to get all the flavor.  We store the tea in the fridge and then drink it warm or cold as we want to.  I love cold tea with stevia and ice, like an herbal kool-aid.  This method is ensuring that our tea supply will last a LONG time!

Passionfruit herbal tea! 

My final reusing hack started for the first time last week.  T actually thought of it about one minute after it did, so we sort of shared the idea.  M has been eating pineapple every single school day for lunch for years!  He eats about 2 cans a week.  He loves it and never gets sick of it.  Sadly, up until last week, most of the time we just throw away the juice from the can. Sometimes I could convince someone to drink it, but often we tossed it.  Last week T and I decided it would make great popsicles and indeed it did!  We were able to add a bit of water and have enough juice for four popsicles.  We are thrilled that we will now always have tasty treats around.

M:  Pineapple popsicles are great!

I am sure there are many more things we are doing to conserve, but these are just a few new ones. I am thrilled to think of ways to reuse and conserve.  Early on in our time of quarantine I was thinking that once things get back to "normal" everyone will go back to their previous ways of doing things.  Now, as the weeks go on and people are making new patterns I am hopeful that some of these practices will stick.  When I see the pictures from around the world of the views without pollution I am in awe.  We can all do small things to make a big difference.