Wednesday, February 11, 2009

Mid-week -- Progress being made little by little

In the last couple weeks I've been making a HUGE effort to reduce our waste (garbage). My recycling boxes have become fuller (plastics, glass, aluminum cans, newspaper) and our weekly garbage pick up has been reduced to 1 large paper bag of garbage. Hardly worth what I'm paying to have the garbage picked up but I'm sure the neighbors would frown on having my measily bag of garbage in their dumpsters! I have a few paper shopping bags to use for garbage...although I hate to kill trees just for the sake of not using those ^*#@ plastic bags! Since I've been using my recycled/fabric shopping bags I have very few plastic bags left... I've returned A LOT of them to the recycling box at WalMart, a local grocery store & a thrift store (they asked for them!). I'll save a few for the garage sale the end of March.

I'm currently looking for an inexpensive container to keep under the sink to put table scraps in before taking them to our compost pile. A large coffee can would work... but I don't buy coffee in cans - I buy organic/free trade coffee that comes in bags. Anyone have any ideas? Taking scraps to the compost pile isn't such a huge deal... but it's at the back of our yard & if there's snow I don't want to wade thru it to get to the pile... nor do I want to dodge the dog poop landmines. Yeah... I need to scoop poop, too! Should've done that yesterday! Maybe today.

I read recently that fluoride is NOT GOOD... and was needing toothpaste... so I bought some fluoride-free toothpaste & mouthwash. (I should get a water filter to put on the sink and also one for the shower to get rid of chlorine & fluoride. Apparently you can also absorb both chlorine & fluoride thru the skin!) I started buying sugar in the raw a while back... but have yet to get completely away from refined sugar altogether. I also must confess that I have almost an entire bag of white flour in the pantry, along with a large box of Jiffy mix. When they're gone - they're gone!

We typically have a rather late breakfast so early/mid-afternoon we've been having a fruit smoothie for lunch ... yogurt, strawberries, blueberries, banana, a squirt of Agave nector & some flax seed... a little ice & blend! So yummy, good for us & it holds us over until 6:00 when we have dinner!! We have a few pork items in the freezer... and just like the white sugar & flour - when they're gone - they're gone! No more pork. That does cause some problems with breakfast as we've been used to having bacon, sausage, or ham to make breakfast skillet meals (we have this a few times a week). We also prefer pork roast over beef roast... but there are other meat alternatives... turkey, venison, elk, lamb or buffalo are great!!! We do eat salmon & chicken quite often... should get in the habit of buying more fish and more vegetables. Another thing we're getting away from is "processed" foods - sandwich meat, certain cheeses, boxed "anything"... and really watching the labels of canned goods! SPLENDA is splashed all over the labels of canned fruit these days! Speaking of preservatives... I was looking thru my spices the other day & found a container of ACCENT! Remember this stuff? 100% MSG... SO BAD for you! I remember my mom always had this stuff in the spice cabinet! I hate to waste stuff... but I thru it in the garbage! Jerry thinks life will come to a halt without Lowry's Season Salt (no MSG) but I did buy a container of Sea Salt & have been using it... he's not complained or said he notices a difference... so that's a good thing?

Other than these few small changes... things are basically the same around here. Jerry's been listing & selling quite a few things on eBay. My downsizing continues... boxes are being filled with "garage sale" items to be sold at The Mother of all Garage Sales in March... and other boxes are being filled with things I can't seem to part with that will be taken with us to the cabin.

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