Getting the Plastic Out, Kitchen Edition, Week 1 (and a half)

So the first couple of weeks of trying to reduce (with the goal of eventual elimination) new plastic introduced into the kitchen has not gone as well as I had hoped. I had wanted to do a full inventory of the kitchen, like I did with the bathrooms, but both of the last two weekends have been fully packed. So instead I decided to take it one meal at a time, starting with breakfast.

On weekends, C and I split breakfast duty, with him making pancakes one day and me making muffins or scones the other. Our weekday breakfasts are eclectic affairs. C makes himself Ployes every single day. I have one egg and two slices of toast. The boys usually eat cereal. I bought C a 25 pound bag of Ployes mix through our co-op last month, that came in a big paper bag (rather than the five plastic bags an equal amount purchased at the grocery store would have filled) and he made his own syrup last year, so that's all in glass (he's not sugaring this year, so I'll have to buy out all of the stock of our local farmers who also package in glass). We get our eggs from friends--sometimes they come in plastic cartons, but they're re-used, and I give them back--and I bake all of our bread, so that's a pretty plastic-free process (except the yeast, which does come in individual plastic bags from the health food store, or one huge vacuum-packed plasticy thing from the co-op, the flours I buy in gigantic paper bags, the honey in a glass jar; our molasses currently is in the worst--PVC--plastic, but someone gave that to us--remind me to go on a tangent some time about how weird it is that my in-laws are always giving us random food items--I'll replace that with some blackstrap in a glass jar when it's all used up).

But now onto the cereal. I only buy those huge bags of Nature's Path flakes, that are supposed to be 60% less packaging than the boxes, but yet they are plastic bags. When C goes to the store, he stocks up on yummy cereals like Shredded Spoonfuls and Puffins (our poor kids will curse us some day when they discover Cap'n Crunch!). I determined to try and go plastic-bag-cereal-free this month, though, so I made granola. I tried feeding them only granola two summers ago, when we did the 100-Mile Diet, and it did not go over well. I was hoping E and Z's jaw muscles would have toughened up by now so chewing would not be as much of a chore. They seem to like it OK, except the walnuts I put in it (how can you not like walnuts???), but M didn't care for it at all (I think he finds it too sweet--ironically I went from feeding them cereal with no sugar to a full cup of maple syrup per six cups of oats).

So this weekend, I tried making some flakes (I know--crazy) using this recipe, only substituting corn for bran and honey for sugar.

It wasn't as hard as I expected, but definitely more time-consuming than granola, and did not yield a whole heckuva lot.

And M look one look at it and declared it to be "soggy" and refused to touch it. Plus, making one tiny batch required four sheets of parchment paper (which, I suppose is better than plastic, maybe--what is silicon anyway?--and which I will try to re-use, but still...not ideal).

Before starting this process, I thought there was no way I would get up earlier to make oatmeal or toast or eggs for the kids' breakfasts, but after spending a couple of hours in the kitchen (there were other things going on in there too--bread and crackers and nachos), I began to rethink this declaration. In any case, we're going to try to get through this month convenience-cereal free, then decide if it's worth it or not. I'll letcha know.

Now, onto the crackers. Since I was in the kitchen up to my elbows in flour, I figured why not give these crackers a try as well.

They turned out not-too-bad. No one would mistake them for Ritz, but they do have a nutty, wholesome goodness. I figured out after the first batch that I need to salt them, and the ones I rolled out more thinly came out crisper and more cracker-like. The thicker ones are kind of pie crust-ish, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. They definitely did not get any crisper with storage (and we're not even having humid weather!) but the kids seem to like them and they make a tasty, easy snack (once they're made, that is).

I do think I'll make them again, with some modifications, perhaps, like more butter. Also, I was making rye bread at the same time, and rolling everything out in the same place, so that some caraway seeds found their way into the crackers, which turned out mighty tasty, so I think that'll be the direction I head with the next batch.

Food-related purchases with plastic packaging in the last two weeks:

--At the Farmer's Market I bought one plastic shrink-wrapped goat meat salami for my dad's (shockingly belated) birthday present. And I bought a bag of local, organic, greenhouse-grown spinach. I suppose I could have emptied the bag into one of my own and handed it back, but that would have seemed rude. Plus, after a winter of no greens, man, I couldn't help but buy them.

--Shopping over the weekend with my friend, I bought a bag of these lovely pale green and lavender and white French mints for the kids' Easter baskets. When I went to hide them the cellophane bag broke and I had to try them...and ended up gobbling them down over the next few nights (they are so terrifically, awesomely, amazingly good!). At another store they had bulk Jelly Belly's. I got so excited about the wax paper bags (please don't tell me wax paper is actually plastic--or, worse, perfluorinated chemicals!!), that I bought a shockingly expensive lot of them (and my kids, who have only ever gotten organic fruit-juice sweetened jelly beans, dried papaya and yogurt-covered raisins from the Easter Bunny are going to be in shock--sugar shock!). I did resist buying this really wonderful cut paper mobile that I very much wanted for my cubicle, because it was in a plastic package.

--At the health food store, I bought many pounds of oranges and apples and lemons, all bagless and plastic-free (except those stupid annoying stickers!!). But I did buy a broccoli that was bagged and a small bag of Earth ball chocolates to keep at work. I tell you I am out of control.

--On a return trip to the health food store, I bought two bottles of spectrum safflower oil (glass, with plastic lids) and a bag of potato chips. I have no idea where this craving came from, but I just felt driven to get some salt & vinegar potato chips, and I was totally lulled into complacency by the fact that the bag looked kind of papery on the outside (while of course I knew very well it was not). And then I ate almost all five servings in one go. I'm quite disgusted with me.

Next week, onto lunch and, hopefully, the beginnings of the full kitchen inventory. Whew!

Getting Out of My Own Way

The last few weeks I've felt stuck--like someone's jammed a stick in my spokes and stopped all forward momentum. I can pedal as hard as I want, but all the wheels do is spin in place (hmm...I think that's a mixed metaphor, isn't it...maybe it's more like I have training wheels and I got stuck straddling a dip in the driveway and my back tire isn't touching the ground). Anyhoo, whatever the analogy, I weren't gettin' nowhere.

This, perhaps, was part of the problem:

The previous weekend, I had been invited to a clothing swap and had only a few minutes to tear through my closet to find my contributions, and no time at all to attempt to put things back together. So I lived with this pile in the middle of my bedroom for a week. Every time I walked past it, I noticed something else I should have gotten rid of. I decided to do a real, serious go-though of every stitch of clothing in my closet and dressers, a la Shannon at Free Spirit Knits (minus the arty signs to signify what goes where).

Saturday, I started pulling things out of drawers and off of shelves and hangers. I made three piles: "keep," "keep in case I lose 10 pounds in the next year," and "put in bags for next year's clothing swap." Here's the work in process.

It was a long, dusty process, taking a few hours Saturday morning and most of Sunday (with breaks for cooking and walking, and including vacuuming and dusting the whole room).

I ended up filling three of those huge new reusable grocery bags (which really annoy me because a. they're made out of plastic, so the plastic industry is still running the show, only now they make like $3 a pop; b. they take up a ton of space empty; c. your groceries just rattle around in the bottom, rather than being cradled like in a canvas bag; and d. people who would never in their lives consider reusing a grocery bag feel compelled to give the ones they get for free to C and me so now we have a ton of them)--two of get rid of now and one of get rid of if I don't lose weight. (There's another reason I don't feel too bad about my recent spendiness in the apparel dept.) I finally got rid of several items I was hanging onto for purely sentimental reasons (like the first outfit I sewed--a green corduroy jumper with a blouse made from red fabric covered in vintage ski posters, oh my), and I even discovered that a pair of "work" pants I thought were too small actually fit, so I've expanded my working wardrobe by 20%. Awesome.

Now I am a little suspicious of the "organization" industry...and I do feel that some temperaments/ personality types are just naturally more organized than others and that they are trying to force their worldview on the rest of us. But I do also know lots of people who are just so overwhelmed by the stuff in their lives, that they can't get from point A to point B because there is a mountain of crap in their way. I know this because I can tend to be one of those people (right at this very moment I have two cardboard boxes of things I need to "go through" and "deal with", i.e. read, recycle, respond, resend, etc.) It can be almost paralyzing, when you can't call friend X because you still haven't returned calls to friends A through W.

Just last week, I was trying to find the printout from day 18 of my Inside Out class (which yes, ended a month ago, and I still seem to be bogged down in week 3), and a search of the various flat surfaces of my bedroom yielded: a recipe for fortune cookies, a recipe for homemade crackers, six issues of The Sun (unread), a printout of an article on knitting and Waldorf, my Inside Out Journal (frozen on Day 17), a printout of my literary reflections essay for The Motherhood Muse (still in draft form at that time), the book I was writing about, two library books, The Complete Grimm's Fairy Tales, a book about making prairie dolls, two insert cards from Yoga Journal, a friend's zine, one COA alumni magazine (unread), three issues of Orion (unread), two teacups, one inhaler, one issue of Raising Maine (unread), three sweater patterns, a notepad, one issue of GEMINI, a 2009 calendar, a pile of magazines for cutting up and making collage in my Inside Out Journal, colored pencils, yarn, thread, one issue Yoga Journal (open to the page of the yoga series I'm supposed to be doing every day--but only did once), a flier on how to tie a sari, more books, dust cloth (unused), an old cough drop, another zine, a picture by one of my kids (who knows which?), more books, two lollipops, Qi Gong For Beginners, crumpled paper, a catalog, another book...

A lot of detritus of a person who starts things but can't finish them--classes, magazines, books, writing assignments, exercise programs, craft projects--more spinning wheels. It seemed that getting everything cleaned up, straightened out and put back in place, might help clear my head, and clear a path toward progress. So, have I gotten back on a daily yoga routine? No. Re-started a writing practice? No. Finished my class? No (I did print out a new copy of Day 18--it involves a lot of messy paining and I feel reluctant to do it!). But my room is a much nicer place to be now (once the dust settled and I resumed normal lung function). Here are some photos in case it doesn't last.

The newly organized closet:

There's one shelf in there that's full of my writing stuff which still needs some attention, but otherwise, not too shabby.

This is my "creativity corner." The baskets are projects I want to make this spring...better get boogieing.

That's the Big Ugly Chair, which I would love to replace with a beautiful antique fold-down writing desk (and a snazzy new laptop). Don't you think that's just what I need to jumpstart my writing career?

(That box underneath my "desk"? That's my to-deal-with pile).

I'm Bad

I think I'm in rebellion against myself--against my goody-goody environmentalist, anti-consumer, health-conscious, plastic-hating, literary, too-good-for-pop-culture, self-improvement self. In the last week I have:

-Spent more money on new shoes and clothing than I have in the last five years put together.

-Bought Easter candy for my children's Easter baskets, and eaten it at night after they go to bed.

-Had a Michael Jackson (re-)conversion after listening to an original, mint-condition record album of Thriller. (I now waggle my hips in time with "Billy Jean" humming inside my head while I walk across the parking lot at work).

-Started re-reading Bridget Jones's Diary (for the third time) while taking my weekly Spa Night bubble bath.

-Bought a (plastic) bag of salt & vinegar potato chips and ate nearly all five servings in one afternoon (I don't even like salt & vinegar potato chips!) I can feel new layers of muffin top splooching out over my new low-rises.

More, perhaps, on some of these topics later, but for now, how 'bout a fashion show?


I realized that, after my existential crisis Friday, that maybe a new wardrobe might just be the cure to all (or at least some of) my ills (I do agree with commenters that I need to get some new artwork and my very own computer, and I would also like to add that a new couch--a midnight blue velvet camel back with curved arms and affixed cushions that have no fort-building potential--would also help, but those will have to wait).

So I made my way coastward with a friend on Saturday, and came home with some springy fabrics (organic canvas and mushrooms) and a pattern for a jacket--crazy talk? Perhaps.











But first, for a little instant grad (or would that be instant grat?), I made this jaunty little scarf from a half yard of voile.











I thought I might make a pile of these for gifts, but that thin fabric was not easy to work with (my sewing machine just wanted to eat it!). Perhaps a smaller (or sharper) needle? Perhaps ironing under the hem rather than trying to use the hemmer foot? We'll see. (Tempting to add "new sewing machine" to my list of life-altering necessities!)

I also ordered two pairs of pants from Sweetgrass, feeling all excited about getting clothes that won't be tainted by toxic materials or sweatshop labor. I thought their website said something about plastic-free packaging, but they came in a Tyvek Priority Mail envelope. I can add it to my Tyvek recycling pile, but still. And, to top it all off, one pair arrived medium, rather than large (ahem) so I'll be getting a second envelope (but I'll reuse one of them to send back the mediums).











Onto the shoes. I first fell in love with these when I was shoe shopping for C's birthday, back in September, and haven't stopped thinking about them since. I tried stopping at the little independent shoe and leather shop in Damariscotta, but they were on vacation for the month! The nerve. So I settled on a Maine-owned chain, which never seems to have anything in stock (in their Augusta store), but they were more than happy to find my a pair in one of their other stores. I do feel bad that I didn't look for the woman who ordered them for me when I went back to pick them up--I'm sure they work on commission. Here they are with my new sailor jenny pants. I do heart them.








So I guess I should start feeling buyer's remorse about now, but I have to say, I think them marketers are onto something--the clothes really do make the woman! And I have several good excuses for not feeling too guilty:





1. I bought sustainable materials.

2. I purchased locally where possible, from a small online company where not (thereby keeping the US Postal Service solvent).

3. I have not bought a pair of shoes in nearly three years.

4. The only items of clothing I bought last year were 2 pairs of socks, 3 pairs of underwear, 3 badly-needed bras and a hooded sweatshirt to replace the one I bought in New York City when I was eight months pregnant with M nine years ago.

5. When I started working full time my take-home pay doubled but my childcare costs only went up by a third, so I have to do something with all this cash.

6. Just ask anyone who knows me and they will tell you, I never buy new clothes and I'm a total cheapskate, so this is totally out of character, yet totally deserved.

Control and Stuff

Looking around my home, sometimes, I feel more like a guest than the actual owner. I can count on the fingers of one hand the articles of furniture that we actually purchased and brought into our home with intention. Everything else was someone else's cast-offs. Some of it is very nice, some useful but not particularly attractive, and some downright hideous (C's huge red recliner).

The artwork, too, is mostly all hand-me-downs or gifts (other than the excessive numbers of Sears photos of my kids that I have everywhere). We have Modigliani print-on-canvas that we inherited when C's grandparents moved to Florida over our "mantle." I like Modigliani just fine, but is it what I would have chosen myself? Probably not. In the same manner, we acquired an enormous original watercolor painting of a puffin and chick, which holds a central position on our largest livingroom wall, and which I've never really cared for.

My wardrobe as well consists largely of cast-offs (my sister cleaned out her closet a couple of years ago, and most of my "new" clothing acquisitions come from the annual clothing swap a friend of mine hosts). Even most of the clothes I have bought myself were purchased more because they were on sale than any sense of fit or style. I don't even know what my style would be, if I had one.

Part of our livingroom is C's home office, our computer he uses for work, day and evening, leaving me the wee morning hours for any writing or blogging I want to do. The desk it sits on, the printer table, another desk nearby, the CPU and all of the surrounding floor space are always piled with papers and energy auditing accouterments. The computer is set to automatically save to C's files and it can never remember my log-ins for email or blogger.

C and I got a digital camera for Christmas several years ago, but it quickly became part of his work gear. The camera I use to take pictures (for this blog and of life) is M's, and he takes pains to remind me of this on a regular basis.

The one area of the house that does reflect me is the kitchen. When I do spend money on something, it's usually going to be for dishes, linens, cookbooks, food (god, I don't even want to think about the feminist implications of this).

I'm trying to figure out what all this means. Am I placing too much significance on the material stuff around me and how that relates not only to my identity but how much control I feel in my life (whenever I start thinking along these lines I get a panicky sensation that "this is not my life!!"). Then there is the question of intention. I know I have for the most part let things happen to me, rather than going into them with full intention--I happened to end up in Maine, I happened to get this job, I happened to get pregnant (deciding to build a house while six months pregnant does not count as intention--the pregnancy hormones override any sort of logical thinking process). Even when I've gone into something with intention (deciding to get pregnant again) other forces have intervened (having two instead).

I'm not complaining. My life is fine. I have relatively few complaints. Yet I don't like the feeling that I'm just drifting with the tide, rather than steering my own boat. And I'm trying to figure out a way to exert some control without buying a lot of stuff (a new wardrobe! my own computer!). Ideas?

Revision

I often wonder if blogging is actually good for my writing skills, or if it is just training me to spew any old verbal vomit on the page with no thought to craft. There are some bloggers, and I admire them greatly, whose every post is like a well-polished essay, an actual finished product worthy of publication and public consumption. I have at times (not in recent memory, though) written blog posts that were more in this essay-type style, but to do so regularly would reduce my posting to about a quarterly basis.

So I'm in this habit, of writing something, hitting "publish" to launch it into the world and move on to the next thing. No revision. No looking back. Good in that it is a writing practice and a possible way of turning off the internal critic. Not so good in that it doesn't encourage any type of editing or real consideration of "what exactly am I trying to say here?" Once in a while, though, I need to create a piece of writing that meets higher standards, and, I must say, I could use a little more practice.

A couple of weeks ago, I submitted my feature for the Spring issue of The Motherhood Muse. I had been feeling totally blocked, and had come up with nothing on the author I had planned to feature and was running out of time, so I resurrected a piece I'd included in Issue 10 of GEMINI, changed things around a bit and sent it off. Kim, the energetic, talented and immensely patient creator of The Motherhood Muse, sent back encouragement and a list of questions/areas she wanted me to explore in more depth.

At first I chafed a bit. I got pouty. "Isn't it obvious why I chose those quotes from the book?" I thought. I'm not one who readily explains my motivations, so to dig deeper and explore the reasons why I connected with this particular book and author was, at first, annoying (ironic, considering, a) it's a literary reflections feature and b) I was profiling a deeply introspective writer).

But I'm a grownup. I don't need to pout forever, and I do a TON of "writing by committee" at work, so I'm very used to not taking editing personally (even when it's more personal writing). I sat down with my printout of the essay and Kim's thoughts and questions. I scratched out some sentences. I scribbled some notes. I had a few moments of insight. I set it aside, watched some Olympics. Read A Bird in Hand. Went on an overnight ski trip. Knitted. Read Shadow Tag. Watched more Olympics. Had two playdates at our house Saturday. Tore everything out of my closet and took a bag of old clothes to a clothing swap. Watched The Third Man. Went to writing group. Watched The 39 Steps. Woke up Monday morning to a slightly panicked email from Kim...where the hell is that essay??? (couched, of course, in much nicer terms).

Monday night, exhausted from too many late nights and a general inability to focus, I put the kids to bed (told the "The Three Spinners") kicked C off the computer, settled on the couch with my print-out, the book, my notebook and I revised. I scribbled out, made notes, circled, underlined, wrote whole new sentences and paragraphs. I finally found clarity--I figured out why I connected so fully with this book, and why another mother in another time and place should want to read it too. The final piece had maybe one-and-a-half paragraphs in common with the original. I didn't just re-write sentences to sound better (my usual method of "revision"), but I rethought what the piece was about and how I wanted to convey that.

It was exhilarating. Though I went to bed at 11:30 (after also writing a blog post and surfing a few blogs), I was awake and at 'em at 6:00. Tired, but energized. I got the kids ready and all of us out the door in record time (so fast, in fact, that when I got to the end of the driveway, M was still waiting for the bus and we had to hang out for a few more minutes before we could proceed). I think, perhaps, I should revise more often.

Page-Turner

Yesterday I picked up What I Thought I Knew by Alice Eve Cohen at the library and, as cliche as it sounds, I have barely been able to put it down.

One of my writing group members heard an interview with the author on NPR and recommended the book to me because I've been working on a short story about a DES daughter. All I knew when I ordered it through ILL was that it's the story of a DES daughter who thought she was infertile but gets pregnant unexpectedly, late in life.

Another pregnancy/new mommy memoir about shock, acceptance and true love, right? Oh, no-ho-ho. It's more of a thriller where with each turn of the page you know something more shocking and horrifying is going to happen. And the blundering incompetence of almost all of the doctors and other professionals Cohen encounters would make it a comedy of errors, if it weren't so, so wrong (her ob/gyn gives her an internal exam at five months pregnant and diagnoses the mysterious hardness of her belly as a symptom of menopause; an emergency CT scan at six months--when the lump in her belly continues to grow in tumor-like fashion--finally reveals the truth). When the baby is born, it is obvious to Cohen and her fiance (but not the doctors) that something is wrong, and when point it out, the specialists run around declaring this diagnosis and cause after that, finally setting on "idiopathic"...of unknown origin.

I already have a suspicion of doctors and the god-like status in which we hold them, and this book further reinforces my skepticism of their knowledge and powers.

Cohen is a writer and performer of one-woman plays, and her succinct and to-the-point writing style adds to the pit-of-stomach dread--what can possibly go wrong next?--that keeps the pages turning as fast as I can read.

An almost-sub-plot of the book is what it means to be "under-insured" (Cohen's insurance company does not consider her pregnancy "high-risk" despite the fact that she is 44 years old, a DES daughter with a bicornuate uterus, and received no prenatal care for the first six months). I would recommend it to that other group of bumbling incompetents known as Congress if I thought it would make any difference in this train wreck known as "Reform" that they're determined to ride.

Cohen does not go into a lot of detail about the devastating legacy of DES on a large scale (to read more about this tragedy of our arrogant medical and chemical industry run amok, see Having Faith by Sandra Steingraber and DES Stories by Margaret Lee Braun), but the shocking parallels between Cohen's mother having been given the "pregnancy vitamin"--an enormous dose of estrogen that was purported to prevent miscarriage--and Cohen's own practitioners missing the obvious signs of pregnancy, while subjecting her to HRT (also estrogen), X-rays and CAT scans is frightening. Have we learned nothing?

The honesty with which Cohen describes her reactions to this earth-shifting event in her life is breathtaking--she takes us with her on a wild ride of emotional upheaval, as she gets amniocentesis (and discovers the baby has two X chromosomes, despite the penis that appears on the ultrasound screen), schedules an appointment with the clinic in Wichita that performs late-term abortions, cancels the appointment, contemplates suicide, makes another appointment with an adoption agency, all the while lying on her left side on a hard futon drinking Gatorade. After the baby is born, her ambivalence grows and it is heartbreaking that no medical professional offers her any kind of counseling or support for this woman who is in a situation that should be an obvious recipe for postpartum depression.

I'm only about halfway through right now (thank goodness for you, because I'm sure I'd have a hard time not giving away the ending) and I can't wait to get the kids in bed tonight so I can find out what happens!

One Small Change, Month Three

March! It's March! And it felt mighty Marchy out today--blustery wind and icy raindrops. But the ground is mostly bare. I think this is the first time in four years that I have seen bare ground in March and I'm pretty excited about it (much to the annoyance of all those winterophiles around here). Even though it's all brown and dead and mucky and gross, I can kind of imagine I see blades of green grass if I squint my eyes and tilt my head, just so. Try it. I haven't been able to muster crocuses and pasque flowers in the same way, but maybe with a little practice...

Anyhoo, to wrap up February's One Small Change, which, as you may recall, was to reduce/eliminate plastic use in the personal care/household cleaning department (i.e. the loo), here are the changes I have made:

1. Subscription to Seventh Generation toilet paper (individually wrapped in tissue, no plastic except the tape on the box, which, by the way, makes and excellent Trash Monster costume/prop).

2. Shampoo bar. Thanks to comments left in regard to my dissatisfaction with baking soda, I found and purchased a bar of J.R. Liggett's at the health food store Friday. I've only used it once, so the jury's still out. I'll keep you posted.

3. Spa night. Really...I've instituted a weekly Spa Night, where I revel in a bath full of hot water and bubbles, slather myself with lotions, creams and pumice scrubs in an effort to use up a back log of "product." As I finish it off, I'll replace it with homemade plastic-free substitutes (avocadoes, honey, cucumbers, tea, etc). And no, I do not want to discuss the environmental implications of all that hot water.

Still to do:

1. Find a plastic-free deodorant replacement that works for the Man About the Place.

2. Write a letter to the cotton ball/swab company encouraging them to switch to non-plastic packaging.

Once that's done, and all the old stuff is used up, I think we'll have mostly eliminated disposable plastic from the bathrooms (there will still be reusable plastic containers, and, like I said, I'm going to keep buying vinegar in plastic bottles, and then there are the bandaids, and I completely skipped over the tubbie toys when I did the inventory).

Marching onward into the Kitchen! This month I'm going to inventory and assess what we've got going on in the kitchen, in terms of use, storage and new, disposable packaging, and see what we can do about it. I've been very slowly working on this for a while, and it's been rather frustrating, but I hope to make some progress this month and maybe put into place some systems so we always have homemade bread and yogurt on hand, etc. And it might involve a few shopping trips to local antique stores for more storage containers. Yea.

Speaking of shopping I fell off the Buy Nothing wagon pretty big last month (I was going to try and continue January's Buy Nothing change, with a few exceptions). I'll tell you more about that during the kitchen inventory.

As always, it's never too late to make One Small Change.