A new royal start

Grogged

In the recycling vien, we get so many "charity" bags through the door, that we have about a years worth of bin liners.
As most of the "charities" seem of a dubious nature, I don't feel guilty about reusing them for other things.

QueenJess

rugbymadfamily said:

Great work on the rubbish reduction, we are trying to do the same. I'm focusing on reducing single use plastic at the moment, got some reusable veg bags which are really handy at supermarket (still cannot figure out why they wrap veg in so much plastic!). 

I know.. it's annoying isn't it?  I try to get most my veg delivered through a veg box scheme (no plastic wrapping involved, UK grown veg, nothing flown over and everything is able to be used/returned/composted/recycled) and just top up at the supermarket if I need the odd thing as well as having a store of frozen veg.

I'm mainly concentrating on reducing the actual landfill first, but I have recycling reduction in my sights as well.. It helps that I generally don't buy lots of stuff (or at least in comparison to the average person around here!).  I tried to swap to a glass milk bottle delivery scheme (no point in even trying to get DH to swap from using cow's milk, that will be a non-starter!) years ago to avoid all the plastic milk bottles (which we do recycle).  But DH claims the branded milk tastes nicer and says he hates the bottles because you have to spend 1 second washing them out.  Apparently when he was a child this was his job and he didn't do it, so one day his dad put all the dirty milk bottles in his room to make a point 🤣.  This is the reason given for not wanting glass milk bottles. Stupid reason considering he doesn't rinse the plastic ones either and I end up doing it.

When we moved house the milkmen refused to admit we even existed (new house), despite delivering to the houses next door 🤷‍♀️.  We are on the system now, but that is a battle for another day.  I will be prioritising the rubbish stuff first.  Next up will be reusable baby wipes and I already can tell DH is going to hate that idea... Got a stash to use up first, so he has time to get over the shock of the kitchen towels and the sponge 🤣.  I haven't even told him about the non-plastic wraps I got for the cheese.... luckily we don't use much cheese and he never uses it himself, so I should be able to sneak that one in.

I'm not going to attempt to change DH's horrible use of bathroom plastic based products.  Hoping he'll eventually catch on from me.  Just changing the stuff I can control (mine and shared things).

Already sold one item of clothing on eBay (posted it this morning) and I have a ton of watchers on some bidding items I put up.   I got a bit excited and added another 5 items on there.  It's mainly stuff that doesn't fit or I have had for 10 years and know I will never actually wear.  Also gives me a chance to use up all the packaging from deliveries that I refuse to bin/recycle and keep for this exact thing.  Going to keep the funds in a separate pot and use it to buy any clothes I actually need (not want!), so hopefully a net nil impact on the finances

QueenJess

Grogged said:

In the recycling vien, we get so many "charity" bags through the door, that we have about a years worth of bin liners.
As most of the "charities" seem of a dubious nature, I don't feel guilty about reusing them for other things.

Luckily we don't get many of these (maybe 2 a year).  We also save them and try to use them for something... unfortunately we can only use the official bin liners we get from the council for our rubbish collection.

I hate the charity bags as the people picking them up/admin takes a big cut out of the profits that are being made.  I would rather either sell myself and donate the money to charity or drop the things off in person to avoid that.

Grogged

QueenJess said:

I hate the charity bags as the people picking them up/admin takes a big cut out of the profits that are being made.  I would rather either sell myself and donate the money to charity or drop the things off in person to avoid that.

That's what most of ours are, "we donate to our chosen charity" stuff, and you know the charity will get virtually nothing if they exist at all.
We have a few bags of stuff in the garage ready to donate, but I don't know when our local shops will open, and if it's like last time, they restricted donations as they were getting so many...

QueenJess

Grogged said:

QueenJess said:

I hate the charity bags as the people picking them up/admin takes a big cut out of the profits that are being made.  I would rather either sell myself and donate the money to charity or drop the things off in person to avoid that.

That's what most of ours are, "we donate to our chosen charity" stuff, and you know the charity will get virtually nothing if they exist at all.
We have a few bags of stuff in the garage ready to donate, but I don't know when our local shops will open, and if it's like last time, they restricted donations as they were getting so many...

Yeah - that's the risk... I'm trying to sell what I can (I'm not in a particular hurry luckily as I don't have loads of it) to avoid dumping it on charities.  I do have some random kitchenware/photo frames etc to go and no idea what to do with those as I suspect it isn't worth even trying to sell them.  Maybe I should investigate freecycle.  I am also hoping the effort makes me think even more carefully about what I buy.

I usually donate a bit to charities a few times a year, so might do it through eBay or just up my donations to offset.  I'm sure they will all be wading in stuff, but will have lost a lot of income over the past year.

feeldaburn

Lurker here - I think I'm the same council as you! But we still haven't received our new recycling bags. We're a one (not full) blue bag a week household, but back when we had rabbits & lots of litter boxes we were about 1.5 a week - no idea how people run out! 
Good luck with baby!

MagicCat

Good work on the beating! I really want to get Into this for unwanted clothes and try to only buy clothes if I really need them and have earned enough selling old stuff.

Re usable able wipes - I got a set from cheeky wipes for DC1, still going strong nearly 6 years later.  I topped up with some little lamb ones which were a bit bigger for DC2, and also have some Bambino Mio coloured wipes which are thinner which I use for hands and faces. I agree with previous poster, if you're handy with a sewing machine you could definitely make them from larger towels or flannels but it's a bit beyond me, and I think I've more than saved the original cost of mine anyway.

savingholmes

Well done. I use a full general waste bin and 2 recycling ones per fortnight... runs, hides

QueenJess

savingholmes said:

Well done. I use a full general waste bin and 2 recycling ones per fortnight... runs, hides

Lol.  I'm not a crazy person judging everyone else.  I am just doing what I can..  Everything helps right?

I love that last night DS had a snack and told DH no, he wasn't going to put it in the bin and sought me out to give it to me as he knows it can be recycled. 

DH also knows that he is bound to get presents when my parents come to stay and he knows if he wants "new" things (generally they are second hand) he has to get rid of some old ones to make space.  He happily went into his room and picked out some things he didn't want anymore.  Training him young!

savingholmes

Well done you