Oh, how I remember this particular post — we were having such a terrible winter that year and I had to work from home a few times because I couldn’t make it into town. The day to day of a Simple Year project can be pretty dull sometimes, and my zero waste project was no exception. But all daily decisions add up to a bigger, more exciting picture, right? That’s what I keep telling myself, anyway. Original post HERE. –Trisha
Since I was whining about how boring zero waste can be, I decided to just show you what it looks like for me on a typical day. Except this wasn’t really all that typical — I worked from home instead of braving the roads.
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Make coffee. Repeat like 8 more times. 😉 Coffee cone, reusable filter, my beloved travel mug, and a jar of bulk beans. The red bowl is filled with used grounds I’ll compost later.
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Breakfast = my beloved no bake energy bar. Tastes better than a store bought bar (even Abby agrees and she’s my granola bar fiend) and is made totally with bulk bin ingredients + my homemade zero waste apple butter.
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Time to take the crock of compostables to the bucket by the front door. (See? I told you we had tamales for dinner on Wednesday.)
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Not gonna lie, worked in my yoga pants the first half of the day and took a shower on my lunch break. Safety razor, paper-wrapped soap (the plastic keeper thing I bought when we were newlyweds) and bulk shampoo. I’ve been buying unpackaged soap, but Eric wanted to try something different.
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Lunch is a clean out the fridge kind of ordeal. The tortilla was wrapped, and so is the cheese. Homemade refried beans, lots of fresh veggies from the produce section and a side of homemade ranch dressing. Salsa in a jar. I’d rather buy our locally-made salsa, but it comes in plastic. The jar is a good reusable size, though.
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Quittin’ time! Start making dinner. I keep forgetting to mention how bummed I am my Amish butter people added this sticker to what used to be just paper packaging.
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Fridge clean out continues with panini (um, really just a fancy name for “toasted cheese sandwiches”) and sweet potato fries (my one new recipe for the week. They were awesome). Totally zero waste.
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Decided to attempt cinnamon rolls with the new Artisan Bread recipe I’ve been keeping in the fridge recently. Spoiler alert: It makes really ugly rolls, but they’ll get eaten anyway. Used my homemade powdered sugar and bulk spices.
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Fill the sink to do the remaining dishes by hand. Bulk dish soap and a scrubby do the trick. And no, Bear should NOT be up there, but he climbs up my clothing, I’m not even kidding, so he can reach the counter. Brat.
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Finish cleaning the kitchen by spraying down the counters. Run out of cleaner. Make a new batch in the sink. Add Citrus Bliss essential oil. I think it smells like pine and orange. It’s not the worst.
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Reading my book for the second time because that’s the Trisha way. It’s weird to think this book doesn’t really exist.
The end. I was trying to figure out how to capture working from home, but decided you don’t need to see my messy desk. Let’s just say that email is a godsend — I can get into all my files that way — and that I managed to crank out one full story, a draft of another, and start on a third. Weird to write with no distractions.