Good ol' R&R

Ever since I can remember, I've been taught to recycle. If we just recycle all of the applicable items then there will be much less garbage in our landfills and the earth will be saved right? Um.. I'm not so sure about that. In fact, there have been plenty of studies that show the amount of pollution caused by burning, and breaking plastics and glass in the process of recycling is more harmful to the planet. Crazy huh? The best solution? REUSE! We often forget about that step, and throw so many containers away every day that can be reused for something around your house! And it saves you money too! I decided to take a walk around my place and find how I'm doing with reusing items. Hopefully this will give you some ideas how to reuse some items in your household and save yourself some money!



I love, LOVE finding cheap deals on anything. That's why I love the bulk bins at Winco so much! I don't get to go too often, so when I do, I stock up. the only draw back is having a cupboard full of those annoying little bags for all of the spices. So I found some cheap tupperware at Ikea, and for the rest, I used old jam jars, a honey jar, and a pickle jar. They work GREAT!




I found this big container of salad on sale last week for $2(SCORE). So it is now my designated salad container! I can make my own salads, and keep them fresh in a big enough container, I love it!




Plastic ziplock bags are always good to reuse(plastic grocery bags too, we use them for bathroom garbage), they can be reused for almost anything! I reuse these for all of my dried beans, peas, etc. they are so handy! The green containers we got with holiday cookies in them, but long after the cookies were enjoyed they are now the home to my garbanzo and black beans!



My tupperware cupboard. Cool whip container, cottage cheese containers, Peanut butter jars, and a honey jar. The big peanut butter jars are the best, they are so big. I use them to store extra pasta or pizza sauces, or soups.



This truvia container works PERFECTLY for our laundry quarters.



Bread bags! Nate got these bread bags from work(but any bread bag will do), and they have been just what I needed since I stopped buying store bread and making my own.



Old vinegar and salad dressing bottles are exactly what you need to make your own dressings! (This is a mango and basil dressing and a strawberry blackberry vinegrette I made.)

So try to reduce your carbon footprint by not only throwing things in the recycling container, but REUSE as much as possible. Your wallet will thank you.