It’s been a week, and I haven’t made much physical progress in the Zero Waste challenge thanks to the craziness of the last 2 weeks of school. After clearing my table off, it’s now covered in piles of school papers and projects. However, I don’t plan to keep all the papers and projects. Once school is done this week, I’ll take an hour to go through the piles and the file folders with each of my boys and decided what they want to put into their memory box. I’ll photograph all the art projects, even the ones we keep, and put those photos on the computer. Whatever gets recycled will go back to the school’s paper recycling bin to help out with the school’s fund raiser. My plan is to make space in my office for a bin to collect paper for recycling at school rather than the township.
I went through my stack of planning notebooks and thought about how to consolidate them into 2 notebooks that cover 6 months of the year. I’ll be left with several notebooks which I’ll store in the top of my office closet. My oldest son may need binders next year for high school.
In the meantime, I’m trying an electronic planner for the kitchen for the next month which will save printing a month’s worth of daily pages. After reading about the partnership between Cozi and the FlyLady, I decided to use Cozi for a month with my laptop on my kitchen counter. Last year I tried Cozi, a free online planner, before I bought my smartphone and laptop. I wasn’t happy with the Cozi interface on my , nor did I always have internet access to use Cozi. I’ll be reviewing Cozi in 2 weeks, including my use of Cozi on the smartphone which isn’t free. There’s a onetime fee of $5.99 to download and install the software.
I am making small changes in other parts of our home. Yesterday, when I joined my husband for the weekly produce run, I remembered to grab the cloth bags out of the car to avoid bringing more plastic bags into our home. I’ve been collecting laundry rinse water in a trash can for watering our potted plants, and on Friday, I bought another trash can and set it up as a rain barrel next to our back porch.
Next week, I’ll start tackling items on the Office list such as switching the rest of our bills to electronic versions and opting out of paper statements. I’ll have the kids pull together their school supplies early to assess what we’re going to need for next year. As we go through the school papers, I’ll keep an eye out for pictures and quotes that can be used for my second son’s First Communion Album next year.
I’ll share my goals for next week at the beginning of the week, and my progress at the end of the week. Have you made any changes to reduce the waste in your home?
Because I love meeting new people and sharing, this post is linked to:
Works for Me Wednesday, Tackle It Tuesday
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