Isn’t it funny how when you start weeding something out of your life you begin to realize what a far reaching grip that thing had/has? Let’s talk about plastic bags. First we decided to switch to reusable grocery bags…..no big whoop. No big plan involved…just noticed they were piling up and it seemed wasteful. Got rid of the plastic bags, right?

Uhhhh…not so much. We then began to notice all the produce bags that were going in the trash. Well that’s silly we said. Fixed that problem with my Organic Cotton Produce Bags. And yet…there still seemed to be tons of bags floating about that we never even noticed. 3 bread bags a week. Fixed that by making my own bread. Now that I made my own bread and other baked goods the tortilla bags had a purpose and were saved from the landfill. The cereal liners made great sandwich bags. The pretzel bags made great bags for sliding over the occasional raw chicken. (I buy Bell & Evans which comes wrapped in plastic but sometimes they “pee” chicken juice out so it needs a plastic bag.) For individual bags of dry snacks for the roving gang of toddlers that live with me my 4 year old suggested/demanded putting the snacks in his party bags from school. (My kids get on average about 6 party bags a month. That is 72 bags a year. Insanity that they all just get tossed in the trash.) Potential bags seemed to be coming from all directions. It just took that small initial shift in perspective to notice them.

So…my point? I joyfully realized the other day as I was scanning my son’s school list which includes a box of Ziplocks, that I haven’t bought the sacred ungiveupable bags in about 6 months. I no longer require a daily zip up! I used to believe that life couldn’t be kept fresh and organized without the little wonders. Their clearly visible contents. Their firm dependable grip. Ziplocks were my I-Could-Never-Give-That-Up. And yet…by slowly, step by step, reevaluating the plastic coming into the house and into the garbage I have gone from about a box of littles and a box of bigs a month to maybe a box of freezer biggies a year, if even that, without any real stress or trauma involved.

It may seem small to the serious greenies, but it has been a tiny milestone for us in our quest to decrease unnecessary household consumption. It gives me real hope for all those other areas that still seem just a little too hard to tackle in one giant leap. The little steps really count too.

Besides, isn’t life just a little better when you can eat bunny crackers out of Darth Vader’s Head?

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 19th, 2008 at 5:47 am and is filed under plastic. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.