I took the last of the deep red Florida strawberries we picked over our New Year’s trip, cut the greens off, and baked a loaf of strawberry bread. Dilly and I are watch-the-pot kinda girls… she also doubles as a quick picker-upper.
I realized as I was cutting them I probably could have made a loaf a bit earlier in the week. I channeled my mom’s energy and just cut the really bad part off and threw the not-as-bad part in the bowl.
I hate the idea of wasting something. Parallel to that, I hate replacing something I already had. Again, seems wasteful on many facets.
Maybe it’s my dad in me who would fume and turn a concerning shade of purple at his eartips if we opened something without looking for an already opened good. We did that a lot as kids. I understand the frustration now.
Maybe it’s my grandpa in me, we call him Big Daddy, who will fix every single thing he can rack his brain on before he even considers buying new. He once spent days fixing the Rubbermaid water troughs for us with a fiberglass patch kit. They held water for a while but we did end up replacing them.
Could be my mom, she redecorates her house with the same decor every other week. If you didn’t have plans on the weekend, you moved furniture back to the original location because she didn’t like it and just wanted to keep half the stuff in the new spot and move the other half of the stuff back to its old spot.
#secondcupthoughts – As much as “sustainable” is a buzzword these days, it does have countless positive impacts on our world in multiple respects. I’m not encouraging or discouraging you from shopping goods labeled sustainable, use your best judgment on such. I know there are so many labels to sort through these days, usually resulting in a higher price too. I’m saying I hope you find the same joy in creating a new life for your things as I do, making your life and your goods more sustainable for you.
A few things I’ve found new life for lately:
- Strawberry bread is an obvious one.
- I turned a few plastic food containers into pots for seedlings. I have plastic containers from food I bought years ago and I use them to start seeds. I reuse them til I can’t.
- Sheets. I recently went through all our sheets. Instead of throwing them out, I set them aside for cold winter days for our permanent outdoor plants and for the dogs should we need them.
- old boxes in the bottom of my raised beds. This helps so you don’t have to buy loads of dirt and your trash can isn’t full of boxes after an Amazon delivery.
- During the holiday season, I LOVE having a simmer pot but it feels wasteful to use so much produce just for good smells. If I’m using apples or oranges I like to peel them, throw the peel in the pot and eat the rest. During Thanksgiving, I made homemade cranberry jam. What we didn’t eat, I spooned into the simmer pot until we were out. It smells the same regardless of the shape.
- I really enjoy looking through my pantry to see what I can pull together for dinner as we near grocery shopping day. Sometimes in the dig, I find things I forgot we had and things nearing their expiration date. Plus it encourages some creativity at the prep counter.
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