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This post is sponsored by Full Circle Home. Thank you for supporting sponsors here at This Little Miggy.
One thing I’ve been noticing in our home lately is that we have too much trash. I’m embarrassed to admit that we fill up our kitchen trash on a near daily basis–or at least every other day. I hate it. And while I’ve been slacking a little on composting lately, I’m still a little dumbfounded about how we go through so much garbage. The biggest culprit seems to be food packaging. Honestly, there is only so much you can do if you don’t live in a town or city with grocery stores that feature package-free bulk items like grains, flour, snacks, etc. We had a store like that in San Antonio and I miss it so much! We actually have a little grocery store near us now where we can buy great produce with less packaging (mostly because I don’t use the plastic produce bags), so that helps. Additionally, there are always farmer’s markets to frequent in the summer, but still for things like chicken, almond milk, regular milk, cereal, crackers, cheese, eggs, snacks (and the list goes on and on) it seems that we’re at the mercy of what’s available to us locally. I think there might be some options in the greater Cincinnati area but then it becomes a driving and time management issue.
As a society we sure haven’t made it easy on ourselves when it comes to minimizing our waste. Our dependency on grocery stores alone means that we’re going to consume a lot of products in wasteful packaging. But I’m going to keep working at it and do what I can to find some more sustainable options when it comes to food packaging. For example, shopping for meat at the local butcher shop where the meat is wrapped in a couple sheets of freezer paper, as opposed to Styrofoam packaging and plastic wrap (also I love supporting local businesses when possible.) And again getting to the farmer’s market more frequently for plastic free produce. In the meantime, there are certainly other things I can do to minimize my family’s waste apart from food packaging. One of those is to reduce our one-use items around the house. Full Circle home has made this a lot easier for me. Here are some of my favorite products that have helped me reduce waste in our household..png)
Zip Tuck bags: I don’t remember the last time I used a traditional one-use plastic baggie because I now use Full Circle Home’s reusable ZipTuck bags. We LOVE these! We use them every day for the girls’ lunches, for afterschool activity snacks, for storing things in the fridge or freeze… we use them everywhere and for everything. I cannot recommend these enough.
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2 in 1 Mighty Mop: Another fantastic Full Circle Home item is their 2 in 1 Mighty Mop. For a long time I used a swiffer… which wasn’t the best for a lot of reasons, but the primary one being that after each use you had to throw the mopping pad thingy away. The idea of disposable cleaning items is enticing in once sense. When it gets super gross, you just throw it away! But as I’ve been reminded lately, there is no “away.” Instead the Mighty mop comes with washable cotton pads that you reuse again and again. I like that it’s light enough my girls can use it, and they call it the 2-in-1 because it doubles as a floor duster and a mop. I keep ours hanging behind the door in the pantry, so it’s always handy for a quick spill. Also, remember that time we had a 5 foot snake in our house and it left a funky musty smell in our living room as a defense mechanism because we were freaking out and trying to gently coax it into a pillow case and by we I mean my husband of course because I did literally nothing except make high pitched squealing noises? Well guess what we used to clean up that insanely random snake mess? The Mighty Mop.
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Tote Ally set: I absolutely LOVE this reusable bag set. Not only does it come with a large reusable grocery bag, but also 3 mesh produce bags. Also, the bags are made from recycled plastic themselves. The collapse into one pouch and it comes with a handy carabiner as well so you can hook it onto anything anytime. When it comes to reusable bags, this is a one and done set.
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Anyone else on a quest to lighten their waste/trash footprint? If so, what tips can you share and what has made the biggest difference?
Great steps! I definitely need to get on the reusable ziploc bandwagon!
A phrase i see a lot in zero waste accounts “it’s only single use if you use it once”. I love to try and reuse a lot of containers… Like an old popcorn container holds all our rice, an old butter tub is our countertop compost, and old dishwasher pod containers are used to store all of our crafts, play-doh, kinetic sand, etc.
Another great thing to cut down on waste is our community freebox group. People post pictures of items they want to get rid of and people in the community claim them and come pick them up. It is so much easier to get rid of stuff and it connects items with people that actually want them rather than going off goodwill where they might always be of use.
I love that–I too use old sour cream containers for food storage (they are great when I make homemade broth and freeze it, as the frozen broth slides right out.) And I will definitely need to check out the community freebox group.