Three Pounds

That is how much our trash weighed this week. One pound was the packaging from take out pizza from our celebration :( Here is what we learned.
1. We were very conscious of what we threw away this week.
2. Our heaviest trash is food waste. We don't have a disposal so we know when and how much food goes in the trash vs compost.
3. We asked the boys and their friends to be more conscious of taking only what they would eat. The kids really took this to heart.
4. Both Nate and Ben forgot to take silverware for their school lunch. Neither wanted to use plastic silverware from school ..so both were creative about how they ate their lunch ( no photos of this.)

One question that came up...if we find trash outside and bring it home..does it get added to our weight. Decision: No. We don't want any incentive for not picking up trash we see outside.

Can We Fix It?

In case you have been wondering why we were taking appliances shopping....we weren't...we were taking them here- to Keifer's on Monona Drive, the only small appliance repair shop we could find in Madison. We brought our
1. Coffee grinder: still hums but no action
2. Hair trimmers: same story, hums no action
3. Food processor: missing a plastic piece so we can't grate cheese.

The sturdy looking woman behind the counter fixed the hair trimmers while we watched ( no charge). The coffee grinder she was confident about fixing ( est. cost $25..$15 for labor/ $10 for parts). The food processor she couldn't get the part for but suggested E-Bay. So looking good for at least 2 out of three!!

Getting Ready to Shop

Here is what the dining room table looked like Saturday morning. I set aside time to get ready and think through what we would need.
1. Containers for soap ( dish and cleaning)
2. Cloth bags: purchased and three I made)
3. Empty spice containers
4. Red mesh bags for veggies
5. Extra bags: plastic and wax paper in case we ran out of cloth.
6. Masking tape and marker in case we needed to label.
7. Small appliances to be repaired.
It took about 30 minutes to get this all together. The trick is to store it so it is easier and faster next time. I will make a list to help me remember what to bring ( and so others can help get ready.)

Two Cool Kids

When we had our family meeting to talk about our February action, we asked the boys what they could do to reduce trash. Nate offered to go with out hot lunch for the whole month. And Ben said he would too.

This is big deal because: hot lunch offers options we don't eat at home ( like chicken nuggets) and both boys make their own cold lunches ( so more work for them.)

I was really proud of both of them!!

February Action: Reduce Trash

Our focus this month is to reduce the amount we throw away.
We started out by weighing our trash so we would have a baseline.
Amount of trash we threw away this week: 7lbs.

January Celebration

Here we are celebrating our first month of taking action!! We ordered 2 large pizzas from Glass Nickle. Each boy got to pick a pizza!

Actions we will continue:
-bring cloth bags shopping and keep some in the car
-avoid plastic packaging when we shop
-shop bulk
-use re-usable water bottles
-pack lunches without plastic bags

Still to do:
Try compostable garbage bags
Use cloth bags when bulk shopping
Write Mayor Dave to suggest Madison go bag free

What do you....?

Here are some questions we have gotten this month.

What do you do about garbage? We have purchased compostable trash bags. We will try them out this month and see how they work.

What do you use when you shop in bulk?
We bought two cloth bags (organic cotton) and will try sewing a few of our own.

What do you do about the plastic bag your newspaper comes in? We are going to try giving up the newspaper for the month of February.