It's A Start

I went around our home yesterday to access where we needed to improve on our no plastic life. What I found were lots of areas that needed work. I started in the kitchen and have already boxed up my Kuereg coffee maker and added it to the donation pile. Then again, I may list it for sale so I can head on over to Life Without Plastic and get some things to use when we go out.

I was doing a lot of canning recently and used the plastic reusable lids after I opened a jar to store the unused portion in the fridge. That stops now. It's just not necessary. I recently put up a lot of Jalapeno jelly, tomato sauce, juice, BBQ sauce, salsa and sweet pepper jelly. Using the canning jars means not using plastic bags to store that produce in the freezer.

Some of our home grown produce, Large heirloom tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, green sweet peppers and a cucumber. 

Here is how I store the produce while waiting to use it. There are a lot of ways but this works for us and it recycles the bags I get at the store. I wont be using those anymore either but rather making my own bags from organic cotton.

I found a great recipe for BBQ sauce so after making fresh ketchup I decided to try my hand at it. It uses quite a bit of our home grown tomatoes and turned out yummy. 

Another way to keep produce for the winter is to dehydrate and yes the trays are plastic on mine and until I can find an alternative, its going to have to do but I will go on an active search for one without those. If you have any ideas please leave a comment with the details.

After the kitchen I got to looking at my aquarium. No probably not a typical homestead thing but I love watching the fish. Well there are a couple of things I can do like taking out the one plastic plant and decoration that is in it. I recently added live plants. I'm not sure what I can do about the filter or heater but will keep looking. Now on to the bathroom.