Sunday, January 31, 2010

Sunday - One Small Change Challenge Review

This challenge has been a good experience. My family has learned to live without paper towels! I never thought it would be possible. We did slip up a couple of times, but for the most part we stuck to using cloth. I feel good about our part in helping reduce the use of paper products. I have also enjoyed shopping Etsy.com and eBay for paper alternatives. Who doesn't love a little shopping?
Here is a very small sample of my purchases. Most are in the wash right now :)



For February's challenge I plan to cut out plastic water bottles. I pack a cooler everyday to take to work so I can have easy access to cold drinking water. We had to give up our mini fridges earlier in the school year due to electrical problems in our building. I used to buy a jug of water every few days to keep in the fridge and pour from. So, now, I pack 4 water bottles to drink during the day. I do recycle the bottles, but I feel guilty even using them. We bought a Brita filter pitcher for our house last year for the sole purpose of not buying bottled water anymore. My husband reminds me of this when he has to buy my bottled "school" water. So yesterday I decided my challenge for February would be to use these beauties that I bought at TJ Maxx this weekend.



They will fit in my cooler, and help reduce my use of plastic bottled water. Hooray!

So I hope to go from this:



To this:



Thanks to my dear hubby for modeling this change for me :)

Let the challenge begin!!

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Ha! My hubby is my model a lot too. Most recently modeling as my fool-proof onion chopper (him and a knife...that's me being cute. Sad, huh?)

Hip Mountain Mama said...

I am so glad to hear that your Jan change of not using paper towels went so well! Your cloths are much prettier than any paper towel anyway!
Yay, for you for giving up plastic water bottles. Your reusable ones are very cute and it is so much better for our environment!!
Suzy

Wendy said...

I'm considering going "paper-toweless" for one of my future month's challenges--glad to hear someone else found success with it!

Unknown said...

Thanks for posting your link on our new blog!
Just a quick reminder that (when you get a chance) to update your link to our new blog http://1smallchangeblog.blogspot.com/
Thanks...hope things are going well!
Suzy

Umatji said...

Two good changes - we did commit to water bottles last year but got so caught out last week - drank all our water, no access to taps, hot day and ended up buying four bottles of water as that was all we could find - felt criminal!