The Travel Jar

 Welcome to week 8 of the 24/24 Challenge ! Acquisitions I acquired some cloth drawstring bags from my local Buy Nothing Group in Kansas City South that I will use for bulk shopping, as we slowly become more and more Zero-Waste with our groceries (or, more realistically, Less Waste, for now... It is nigh impossible to find totally plastic-free food. Even the glass jar of peanut butter with the metal lid that I purchased has a plastic ring around the jar opening... Ug.) I popped into Soap Refill Station to refill an empty honey bottle with conditioner, plus grab a new kitchen scrub brush, a sisal soap saver (say that 5 times fast) and a Japanese konjac face sponge (the black item). I learned that sisal is derived from the agave plant, and the konjac sponge is from a porous root vegetable native to Asia. The sisal and konjac items are 100% compostable! So is the scrub brush, minus the metal. I simply added our last wooden scrub brush to our fire pit earlier this week since it's clean...

 Hello from week 7 of the 24/24 Challenge ! I only had a handful acquisitions this week... Items Acquired One of our organizing clients is moving to Florida, so we did a massive purge in her garage earlier this week. She gifted me with some of her cast-offs, including a hummingbird feeder, a peanut feeder (holds peanuts-in-the-shell) for squirrels, 2 bottles of partially used eco-friendly dishwasher gel and some lavender essential oil. All secondhand, weee! I love my clients. Yesterday at Scraps KC , our local creative re-use center, while dropping off client donations, I bought my first (secondhand) china pen for $1- I'm going to see if it's a good item to write on the bottom of jars while I do my Zero-Waste/bulk grocery shopping! I was gifted flowers, cards and Journal 29: Oblivion (third book in a series of EXCELLENT puzzles... Here's the first one . You're welcome.) for Valentines Day from my loves! (Flowers will be composted, card can be recycled but I keep cards, ...

 This was a fun week for the 24/24 Challenge ! I created an instagram account for this- @2424challenge. Follow along! Acquisitions Deck screws! This spring we are rebuilding our back deck, and while I let myself off the hook when I created this challenge when it comes to the deck project, I still wanted to make an effort to get a few supplies secondhand. Success! I found 25 lbs of donated (but never opened!) deck screws at our local ReStore (where Habitat for Humanity sells donated home improvement items). Total cost with tax = $75. New at Home Depot, these would have cost $170. Achievement unlocked, lesson learned the happy way : When planning a house project, shop weeks/months beforehand at ReStore to get better deals on as much of the hardware as possible. Derrick was skeptical but now he's appreciative, and I think he will be glad to have me scour ReStore again for other items we need for the deck, or other future home improvements. 2 days ago I was reviewing our utility bills...

 I made it to February! All of January, I only bought 1.5 new items that count toward my 24/24 Eco-Challenge, which is detailed here . Items I acquired this week: Secondhand lightbulbs from my local BNG (the Buy Nothing Group). One of the bulbs in our living room track lighting fixture went out, so I snapped a photo of it and asked my group- turns out somebody who lives 13 minutes from us had 5 of the exact type we needed! He was thrilled to be rid of them, and gave us all five: 4 of them used (but still working), 1 still in the package. Derrick installed one of the used ones and we put the rest into our Lightbulb bin in the basement. These should last us many years! Best of all, I recycled the old/dead bulb in our  TerraCycle box . Weird little lightbulb A chapstick from the dentist when I went to get my Invisalign. Normally this would count toward the 24, however I needed it for medical reasons- my lips were about to tear and bleed from the expanders. They gave me a compleme...

 Week 4 of the 24/24 Challenge , where I try to limit myself to only purchasing 24 *new* items for the entire year! Secondhand (thrift/antique/consignment/hand-me-down) does not count, nor does a new product that is Zero Waste (including packaging- which must be 100% compostable). I had another successful week of buying no new items. Here are the items I did get: From my local Buy Nothing Group, I asked for and scored some *secondhand* items from folks in my neighborhood: Kitchen compost bin liners, coffee filters and 2 empty MYRO deodorant sticks (a client gave me 11 refill pods but no sticks, so I got 2 from the group- one for me, one for Derrick). My client offered me a small rectangular container that she was decluttering, which I used to corral all our random Roomba accessories in a deep drawer in our kitchen. Tidbits & Wins Our garbage pickup was delayed a day due to the ice storm... Yet even after 8 days, this is all the trash we accumulated during that period! About hal...

Welcome back to week 3 of my 24/24 Challenge ! Purchases this week I purchased no new items this last week, though I did make plenty of purchases that were secondhand and Zero-Waste... On Wednesday I visited Soap Refill Station  in Waldo for the first time this year. First I presented a bag of empty containers that I had been saving for their in-store "Donation Station" of secondhand vessels. Then I chose 2 containers to refill for the 2 liquids I needed. The staff member weighed my containers before I filled them (they are thoughtful like that), then I filled an old dish soap container with the dishwasher detergent, and a plastic jar that once held sea salt to hold toilet bowl spray. Repurposed vessel = no new plastic created! Toilet Bowl cleaning concentrate     While in the shop, I found a new product to try: Tooth Tabs by un*Paste ! I've tried a different brand & flavor before and didn't care for them but these new ones are *cinnamon* and actually contain fluo...