Tuesday 27 March 2018

9 Low waste Easter ideas



In a just under a week, the Easter bunny will be hopping his way around households dropping off chocolate eggs & an abundance of goodies. If your looking to downsize your waste, here are a few easy tips I shall be implementing.

1. Reuse the same bunny ears, masks, plush toys & baskets every year. I have a box marked "Easter" that I store in my laundry cupboard to bring out every Easter to reuse the same props year after year. We also opt out of easter gift bags & any trimmings.


2. Bake your own hot cross buns or bring a cloth bag to the bakery. That one plastic bag out of landfill makes a massive difference.

3. Bulkfood shops (like Wasteless Pantry in Mundaring or Source bulk foods in Victoria Park) have an abundance of loose chocolate & even Easter eggs for sale if you want to forgo the wrapper. Coles also have a section where you can buy some snack foods & nuts package free. You just need to ask a staff member to tare your container so your not paying for the weight of it. Or bring a paper bag.


4. Op shops are a good source to find bunny ears, costumes, soft easter plush at a fraction of the cost. All it takes is some washing first. I have some Golden egg books that are bunny themed I bought Kobe 5 years ago still going strong & now loved by Dylan.

5. Keep all your foil wrapper, then bunch them up & once they are tennisball size you can recycle as normal in your recycle bin.

6. For family gatherings. Each family brings a dish or 2 to share, split leftovers & compost scraps.

7. For toddlers, you could take them to an animal farm instead, make some homemade play dough or download the "egg surprise app" on your iPad.

8. For 4-10 year olds, you could gift money, books, a movie ticket, bake bunny shaped cookies or do some dyeing of eggs.


9. Spread out the easter joy. I really don't want my boys overindulging this easter so they were brought gelato by my sister last week as an early easter gift, my dad is gifting them money, my mum has taken them to a garden maze with mini golf & Lukes parents will do the Easter egg hunt whilst Luke & I have bought Kobe a search it bunny book & Dylan a Easter sticker book (pictured above).

I hope you all got a tip or 2 out of this post & feel feel to share any more tips in the comment below.

Happy Tuesday friends!
Grace


Friday 23 March 2018

What I bought in February


After attending ”The minimalists” show a few weeks back, I thought I would document what I bought every month & hopefully only keep things that had a purpose & add value to my life.


After auditing what I bought in February, I definitely bought too many preloved activity books for the kids. This is definitely a weakness of mine. It keeps them from asking for tv when we are home. A therapeutic colouring book for Kobe. A preloved wetsuit for Dylan. A preloved striped shirt ($3) for me (I really want to downsize my wardrobe & have a capsule wardrobe of timeless pieces I like as opposed to hanging on to outdated clothes until they are threadbare out of guilt. Saying that I'm only letting myself buy 10 fashion items this year). Fabric to sew curtains for my bedroom, this has been a long time project of mine after waiting almost 5 years to find the perfect colour fabric secondhand to complete this project. I also invested in an Onya bread bag which you can also freeze bread in (I still use my cloth bag too to buy bread).


Kobe helped to choose a birthday gift for a friend so naturally he chose a skylander & books.


And from his pocket money he brought a preloved book from an op shop for 50 cents. Kobe earns $1 a week for doing chores around the house like loading the washing machine, tidying toys up & sweeping the front of leaves.


Going forward I definitely need to limit preloved activity books. But I did well not buying toys for the boys. And I'm happy Kobe chose to buy a book with his pocket money.

Happy Saturday friends!
Grace