Making Cents Of It All

Oldest daughter is doing a No Waste October challenge and asked me if I wanted to join her. I am all about supporting my kids so I said I would. Hubby and the son are not participating so I will only be showing you what I do.  When she mentioned it last week, I had a few question? Can I still use toilet paper. I can get rid of lots of things but I have no interest in getting rid of toilet paper. She said I can make my own rules. So TP is in. So are female products. I know lots of you love Diva cups but I am sticking to what I use. Other then those 2 things I am pretty much in. I know I will have some garbage but I will be more aware of what I am doing.  I am already pretty good about limiting our garbage. Here are some of the ways I do it: I avoid food waste. This is one of my biggest annoyances. It is disgusting how much food ends up in landfills every day. Just so you know, I washed the baggies and metal tins so that I can reuse them. The water bottles wil...

I hate food waste! I really do. It is one of my biggest issues. Farmers spend so much time and money to grow the food and then we just let it go in the garbage. I cannot control all of the wasted food that never even makes it to the store. That is a conversation for another day. I am talking about all of the food that gets wasted at my home, work and other places I eat. I was reading a study done by the USDA that the average American family wastes 1 pound of food a day or 290 pounds a year. The average American family was 3.14 persons in 2017. So my family of 4 (OD does not live here) is above average.  I try very hard to not let food go into the garbage. But I am not perfect so it does happen. I get upset every time it does. I feel like I am throwing money away, which is what I am doing. Here are some of the ways I try to prevent food waste: * We eat leftovers . There is rarely a day that goes by that we do not eat some type of leftovers. I deliberately make them to cut down o...

I find there are 2 groups of people when it comes to leftovers. You either love them or you hate them. I love leftovers. I am known for making way too much so that I don't have to cook another meal. Anything that can save me some time is great. But other people I know hate leftovers. They throw everything leftover out. This makes me crazy. Don't they know that there are so many different things you can do with leftovers? So here are some of the ways I use leftovers.  1. We do a leftover night. I pull everything out and tell everyone to grab a plate. First come, first served in this house. You should see how fast the kids come down when it is leftovers. I am happy to eat a little of this and a little of that to make sure nothing goes in the garbage. 2. We eat it for lunch the next day. Hubby, my son and I bring lunch to work all the time. Leftovers are a quick and easy lunch. When we are cleaning up dinner, we portion out the leftovers into lunch containers so that in the mo...