• Challenge Update,  family,  food,  Food Stamps,  frugal,  green,  My World and Welcome to It,  plastic

    Sunday musing

    One of the pleasures of a Sunday morning (besides a tasty bowl of cereal) is the newspaper, that fat bundle lying like a gift on the front step. I (heart) the Sunday paper. The nice delivery person, a mystery visitor to our home once a week, leaves the paper on the front step, so close to the door that I could fetch it bare nekkid and still be OK. So why does s/he feel the need to wrap it in plastic? Not just on rainy days, but every week? Note to self: contact San Francisco Chronicle and have the plastic bags stopped. The worst thing that could happen without the bag is…

  • family,  green,  My World and Welcome to It,  no waste,  plastic,  sustainable living

    my family doesn’t hate me yet

    Perhaps they fear me. I don’t know, but this is what happened yesterday. Adult daughter and her boyfriend come into the house bearing a pizza in a box and stop when they see me. “Can we have this?” she asks. She opens the box, shows me the pizza and the accompanying foil packets of Parmesan cheese and red pepper flakes. Green waste and recycling, no plastic at all. “Yes,” I said. “Enjoy.” And they did.  Julia 3, Plastic 2 Mr. Husband had a no-plastic adventure yesterday as well. He had purchased some foot spray from Target, but all four cans were defective (that happens a lot with Target products, I find,…

  • Challenge Update,  frugal,  green,  My World and Welcome to It,  no waste,  plastic,  recycling,  sustainable living

    Punked by Plastic

    I was punked by plastic. In my grocery shopping adventures Thursday, I cheerfully bought two (minuscule and pricey) glass jars of mustard, and when putting them away, discovered Ambient Plastic (unnecessary extra plastic) bands around the lids. Why? Why is this necessary? (insert existential yawp here.) I opened the waxed paper bag of salami I bought at the deli counter yesterday, after expressly forbidding the use of plastic in my order, and found the thin blue plastic sheet she used to load up the bag and not get her hand greasy. I guess they always throw that into the customer’s package? I wonder if they couldn’t use some tongs or a fork,…

  • Uncategorized

    Day 2: grocery shopping without plastic

    Thursday was a long day. I know that grocery shopping is not all that grueling (unless you have three small children attached to you), but this was more than the usual outing to procure nourishment. I was on a mission to feed the fam without bringing home any plastic. I would call today’s foray a success, but also a shock. Although I’ve been looking at what to buy or not to buy as I mentally prepped for the Plastic Purge, I was unprepared for the lack of available foodstuffs sans plastic…or the cost of those rare items, either. I looked through my coupons before shopping today — yes, I am a coupon lady…

  • family,  green,  My World and Welcome to It,  plastic,  sustainable living

    My family is going to hate me

    More so than usual, I mean. And why? Because the Plastic Purge has begun. Today, June 1, 2011, I am going to do what I can for 30 days (and then into infinity) to eradicate the use of plastic in our lives. (cue Mission Impossible theme song…) I just posted this groovy sign in the kitchen. I have removed the trash can from the house. No garbage in the kitchen. See, as a green zealot, I’m always going through the trash because someone inevitably puts something compostable in the garbage (this afternoon — paper napkins, a pair of wooden chopsticks). And this after browbeating my family for at least four years. I frequently…