ingrid

I’ve had a whole lot of projects going lately, and I’ve felt a bit fractured running from one thing to the next.  On the whole, however, I feel like I’ve gotten a lot done.

Here is the update:

Remember the plastic reduction action plan?  I targeted three sources of continuing plastic production in our house, shampoo bottles, plastic bags around bread, and the plastic bags inside the cereal boxes.  I wanted to reduce the plastic that comes into our house in order to create less garbage and have the garbage that we do create serve multiple purposes.  We already RECYCLE, but I wanted to work on the REDUCE and REUSE part.

• Shampoo bottles-  I made shampoo bars a couple weeks ago.  The key ingredients are castor oil, jojoba, coconut oil, olive oil, hemp oil, lemon juice, lemon tea, and apple cider vinegar.  It was sort of an interesting recipe, much like normal soap, but softer and with nicer oils in it.  It also took forever to harden up (which the recipe said would happen).  I wasn’t quite prepared for just how long it would take, but it is now nice and firm with a pungent smell.  I’ve used it a bit and I like this stuff a lot!  I have super tangley hair, so with liquid shampoo, I have always needed conditioner, and yet I have pretty oily hair too, so if I use conditioner, I need to wash my hair more often.  With three kids running wild around the house, I really don’t have time to wash my hair more than a couple times a week, (I actually bathe more than twice a week, but I have Inez with me, so I have to hold on to her rather than wash the hair.  Just so you know….).  This shampoo is working great though.  My hair feels super good, but isn’t too tangley or oily after a couple days.  I made the bars small so that if a kid left it in the bottom of the bath to dissolve completely, I wouldn’t feel that it was too much of a waste.  And is it my imagination, or does this shampoo bar bring out the reddish tones in my hair?
• Bread-  I bought bread at Grand Central Bakery this week.  The guy behind the counter was really nice.  He put all my loaves in the same large paper bag, then I took them home and froze them in the plastic bags that I already have.  One bummer was that he said that I should freeze bread uncut, so I guess I will become good friends with a big knife when it is time to thaw out those suckers.  He did cut one loaf for me and then we needed to put it in a plastic bag, but I felt okay about that as that one bag can be reused better as it is unprinted and doesn’t have barcodes on it.  That, by the way, was one issue I had with reusing bread bags from Franz, for example.  If you take it to the store and put a bunch of broccoli in it, when the cashier rings it up, the computer automatically scans the bread barcode, which is a pain in the butt for everyone.  The other issue is that store bought bread is DOUBLE wrapped.  The inner wrapper can’t be reused even for carrying dirty diapers home when we are out and about.  How is the bread?  Amazing.  It is a million times better than what I bought in the store, and it didn’t cost more at all.
• Cereal in a box-  I took care of this problem as quickly as I could, buying these great, reuseable containers.  They fit well in the cupboard, hold a lot of bulk cereal, and are nice to pull down.  One side is sort of indented to fit your hand, so the kids can hold on to the bins really well.  Drawback here is that bulk cereals are largely granola.  The cereal-eating in this house has reduced dramatically since I got these, probably because the kids don’t love granola and “cheerios” type cereals as much as the stuff that came in colorful boxes.  I think that is okay though as most cereal is sugary crap anyway, even if it is labeled to look healthy and “natural”.

I feel good about this little experiment and can see that I can keep it going.  As long as I use a little forethought, I can keep this family in bread, shampoo, and cereal as much as we might like.

I’ve got other stuff I made this week, but I might need to keep that to another post.  It is too long!  Tally ho!

In: food, Projects That I Do With My Clever Little Fingers | | #