Motivated by Hip Mountain Mama, I have been participating in her urging of families to make small changes that will accumulate to make huge changes in our impact on the earth and her/our environment. This event is called One Small Change. There are prizes involved for those who want to participate in that way, but the rewards of participating go far beyond a physical prize. I encourage everyone to visit and think about the changes they can make.
Earlier this month, I made two goals for the month. The first goal was to reduce our waste by using less throw away napkins and paper towels. I’m happy to say that this has went really well, and wasn’t as hard to keep up with as I was expecting. I had some cloth diapers that I no longer use that are very absorbent. We have started using them as napkins and for cleaning up spills. Unless there is something major to be cleaned, we can get several uses out of one diaper/towel before it is dirty enough to wash. I then just throw it in with the weekly washing of bath towels and washcloths. This is going to save us quite a bit of money too.
The second goal I had was to stop buying bottled water while out and about. Our well water has too much iron/sulfur in it to be drinkable, so we take jugs to the watering hole to fill them for drinking and cooking. When we are out of the house, it has been the easy thing to buy bottled water for drinking. I had hoped to get a stainless steel container and stop purchasing the bottles. I found a container I like, but I haven’t bought it. This winter has been hard for us, and for several weeks the icy weather kept us from being able to leave the holler and go up the hill to fill the jugs. Convenience won out in this one, and we ended up buying bottled water for home too. 😦 I’m hoping winter will allow us a little more leeway in the rest of the season.
Instead of continuing with this unattainable goal, I decided to get rid of a lot of our kitchen plastics and replace them with glassware. There are many dangers to using plastics in the kitchen to our health, not to mention that most plastics don’t break down well or at all. Storing food in plastic or using plastic in the dishwasher or microwave is the worst. I started by replacing our eating utensils with glass, specifically our bowls. I am hoping to find more ways to not buy plastic in the first place through store packaging. Over time, I hope to replace our food storage containers with more glass. I have been working on that for awhile, and have some mason jars and large lidded glass jars that I use for food storage. Reader’s Digest has a good article this month on kitchen plastics and which ones are the most dangerous. Check it out if you’d like more information.
For February, my goals are to change the bottled water situation, and looking into light bulbs. We haven’t switched to the energy efficient fluorescent bulbs yet because the disposal of them and the mercury they contain concerns me. I need to do some more reading on this topic and see what other alternatives there are.
It’s good to love our Mother. 🙂
A Mountain Mama - East Kentucky Gal 
9 comments
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January 26, 2010 at 7:17 pm
meorthethoughtofme
ooo thank you for sharing these goals. we’ve done really well with cutting back on paper towels and using more cloth. and though i want to swithc over to more glassware for storage, i haven’t done it yet. but i do have lots of jars stored!
January 26, 2010 at 9:35 pm
Fun Mama - Deanna
I have been concerned about storing our food in plastic, but then I worry about getting rid of it too. Another of my concerns is about taking snacks when we go out. Especially when my daughter was younger, I needed to have plastic cups and containers so when they were thrown there was no breakage. I don’t know what the better option is. And I worry about investing in some new system and then finding out that it’s no better for us or the environment. Right now, at least I’m not heating our food in plastic in the microwave and I’m not throwing the plastic into the landfill. Good luck with your goals!
January 27, 2010 at 4:02 pm
Cre
You’re doing great with the towels! As for the water, sometimes its a necessary evil. We have a lot of sediment in our water and sometimes, we have to buy water. Not often but sometimes. Are there any purification systems out there to address the sulpher issue? We have a filter on our well now for the sediment but we have to clean the darn thing WEEKLY, especially if I wash a lot of clothes!
Plastics—that’s hard. It’s everywhere. I try to use my little containers to keep drawers and such organized. Wipes containers (when I don’t just buy the refills–ie I have coupons too good not to use) are used for craft supplies and small toys or bath “buckets” to play with. I saw a boxed set of glass Pyrex bowls (with lids) at Walmart for $25 I think right around Christmas. I’d love to get some of those. Right now though, I just store leftovers in the frig in plastic and then microwave in glass. Hunter doesn’t think about it though so I have to watch the man. 🙂
Before I canned my own applesauce, I bought the large jars of the all natural kind. I saved those jars and they’re great for noodles and dried beans! I use mason jars as well. I am going to start looking more at Goodwill and yard sales for storage containers like that.
Oh! And I bought 1 of those large storage jars with the liftable top at Walmart for $7 in the fall for cookies. In an effort to eat less junk food, I don’t bake as many cookies as I was so I’m using it to store opened crackers. LOVE it. I would love to use something like that for detergent one day. Pretty…maybe I’d like washing clothes more! lol.
January 27, 2010 at 7:20 pm
Catherine
Our well has iron biofouling, too (I hate the orange it stains everything). We run it through a Big Berkey water filter and then through a Brita, and that takes care of it. We scrub the Berkey’s filters once every week or so (they’re reusable). It removes sulfur, too. I suppose one of these days we’ll get our act together and have the well pumped out to end the problem once and for all, but for now, the two filters work for us.
I didn’t use paper towels for years, and then slowly, I started buying them. Now we’re going through an 8 pack of select-a-size Bounty every month. Oooo, that’s BAD! I think I’ll join you in ending our over-use of paper towels.
We don’t use plastic, since I was scarred for life by cheap Tupperware when I was a child (you know, the type that got the sticky, greasy, tacky coating on it, with a tomato-sauce-stain high-water mark, that you couldn’t sand-blast clean!). I use empty canning jars to store left-overs. They’re just laying around the basement, anyway. One work of warning, though; don’t pour hot bacon grease into an unheated canning jar. Not pretty.
January 31, 2010 at 1:28 am
eastkentuckygal
Our iron is in the water supply itself. I have never heard of a filter for it that would make it drinkable. My mother uses a rock salt filter for hers. She’ll cook with it, but it tastes nasty to drink, and it smells awful. (They just recently got city water.) We don’t have much room here, so I don’t know about another appliance in the kitchen or bathroom. We’re just leaving it untreated for now since it won’t be drinkable anyway.
January 28, 2010 at 12:05 am
kay
i have quit buying bottled water for my kids. scaling back on driving so much. not drastic changes but with enough small ones i will make a tiny dent in this problem! thanks for the good ideas!
January 31, 2010 at 1:26 am
eastkentuckygal
Oh, wow! There’s so much here to reply to. Plastics, yeah there’s a catch there. Right now, they are impossible to avoid. My main goal is to not store food in it or cook food with that or teflon. I can only try to be conscious of it when I shop, but I won’t be able to avoid it that way. The glass stuff lasts so much longer. Right now I store food in washed out containers of things like sour cream and cottage cheese from the store. Not good. Good thoughts though.
January 31, 2010 at 2:39 am
sunnymama
I haven’t looked back since switching to cloths for napkins, cleaning etc. I use ‘family cloths’ too and am very happy with those. 🙂
February 3, 2010 at 4:59 pm
Sarah
Hi! I just found your site from the WordPress front page, and it’s awesome!
I couldn’t agree more about glassware. I love the stuff. I try not to have any plastic containers for things that need to be heated up and I NEVER put plastic in the microwave. Still trying to break my boyfriend of that habit.
We do use paper towels around the house, but I use IKEA cotton dish towels in the kitchen. I’m also slowly switching all my dry goods storage over to glass. I love the wire clamp lidded jars I got from IKEA – they keep the brown sugar so soft! Even though I usually hate Walmart, I saw they had some nice screw-top glass storage jars there that were made in the US, not China that I might have to add to my collection.
It’s a goal of mine to switch over from teflon-coated to cast iron. Alas, I am somewhat poor and new cast iron is expensive and old stuff is hard to find in decent condition. Enamel-coated steel or cast iron are also awesome.
Anywho, good tips and I look forward to reading more of your blog!