Tackling Food Waste

To continue my efforts to live more sustainably, I've focused my attention on tackling our family's food waste.  While I don't feel like my family has been super wasteful when it comes to food, we've definitely tossed leftovers and expired food in the past.  My goal has been to eliminate as much food waste as possible.

Here are a few tips and tricks that have helped my family out:

Buy Only What You Can Eat

This sounds so simple, but can be really difficult!  Grocery stores can be so tempting.  That's why I always meal plan and make a list of exactly what I need before I head to the grocery store.  Poor Archer and Lyla have to hear me say, "Not today," several times each trip when they try to get me to buy random stuff.  But I'm a stickler for only buying what's on my list.  I also try to find ingredients that will carry over to other meals if there are leftovers.  For example, if I am making chicken noodle soup, I can use some leftover chicken to make chicken nachos.  

I also tend to just cook and bake the foods I already know how to make.  That way I don't have to buy a bunch of ingredients that I will only use a little bit of and then leave to spoil in the back of my pantry.  Speaking of my pantry, it's pretty small.  It's just one cabinet with four roll-out drawers.  This also helps me not buy too much since I don't have a lot of space to house it.

Figure Out How To Properly Store Your Food

There are lots of little tricks you can do to make your food, especially your produce, last longer.  You can store cut up celery and carrots in jars of water to extend their life.  I keep lettuce in a sealed container with a damp cloth on top to keep it fresher and crisper longer.  It's better to stick berries in the fridge without washing them until you are ready to eat them.  Apples and citrus will keep longer if you refrigerate them.  Tomatoes do best if left out of the refrigerator.  Once avocados ripen, you can put them in the refrigerator and they'll keep for days!  Dry goods should be kept in airtight containers.   

Make Use Of Your Freezer

One thing that has helped me prolong our food and keep things from going to waste is to use my freezer more.  You can freeze a surprising amount of items.  I like to make homemade buttermilk biscuits, but don't want the hassle of making them all the time, so I quadruple my recipe and freeze a bunch.  All you have to do is flash freeze them before storing them.  Just set them out on a plate so they aren't touching and stick them in the freezer.  After about an hour, you can put them all together in one container and store them in your freezer.  I also do this with cookie dough balls.  You can even bake these items while they are frozen just by adding a couple of minutes to the bake time.    

I don't know about you, but sometimes I don't really enjoy eating the same thing for days on end.  So if I'm going to be making a pot roast or something that will yield a lot of food, I'll use half and then freeze half to use at a later date.  I love using jars to freeze meat.  Just make sure to let things cool to room temperature before putting the lid on it and don't overfill it before putting it in the freezer so you don't end up with a cracked jar.  I've been using jars for years and have yet to have anything crack.  I also really enjoy using Stasher bags (reusable silicone bags) to store things in the freezer.  

   

*I should point out that I know eating meat is not a very sustainable practice.  Maybe one day our family will cut out more meat from our diet, but we're not there yet.  I do get our meat from local farms, so that does help a bit.  I'm reminded of the quote by zero waste chef Anne Marie Bonneau whenever I feel guilty about eating meat: "We don't need a handful of people doing zero waste perfectly.  We need millions of people doing it imperfectly."  

Buy In Bulk

One way to eliminate some of the packaging involved with food is to buy in bulk.  At one of my local grocery stores (Sprouts-I believe they have locations in several different states), they have bulk bins full of dry goods, baking goods, dried fruits, nuts and candy.  I bring in my own little canvas bags, fill them up and then store them in old salsa jars at home.  This way, I don't have boxes and bags to dispose of after we've eaten everything up.  

When I do buy items that come with packaging, I opt for the largest-sized amount that will actually get eaten.  For example, Archer adores Cheeze-Its.  Instead of buying the pre-portioned individually wrapped kind, I opt for the large family size box and divvy it up myself at home.     

Consider Your Portions

I've tried to do a better job of cooking the correct portion of food for each meal.  I always used to make way too much pasta when I was making a pasta dish.  And I would save the extra cooked noodles and then end up throwing it away after it sat in my fridge for a week.  So now I cook only what I need and resist the temptation to add "just a few more noodles, just in case."  

I also try to portion out food on my family members' plates according to what I know they'll likely eat.  I err on the side of too little since they can always ask for more.  I know Archer will likely only eat the one required bite of pasta I put on his plate and not much more, whereas Lyla will eat a big heaping pile and then some.      

Compost

One of the best ways to prevent food waste, reduce the production of methane and end up with an end product that will make your garden happy is to compost.  I've been composting my food scraps for a few years now and am happy to report it's simple and easy to keep up with!  I plan to write a a post about my composting experience soon since I used my compost to plant my garden this spring.   

Donate Or Offer Up Food You Won't Eat

If you end up with food that you know you won't eat and it's unopened and not expired, consider donating it to your local food bank.  Or you could ask other family members or neighbors if they would like it.  I love to bake, but don't need to eat entire loaves of bread or batches of cupcakes, so I often share with our neighbors.  I've spoken before about Buy Nothing Groups (you can find your group by searching "Buy Nothing Group + your city" on Facebook or there is a new app you can download from the App Store or Google Play) and this is also a good way to offer up food you won't eat.  In my group, people will give away food that's been opened and people are generally okay with that as long as you disclose that information up front.

So these are my best ideas for preventing food waste.  I'm so proud of my family for taking these steps with me to prevent food waste.  We're not perfect, but being more mindful has certainly improved our behaviors around wasting food.  Let me hear your tips and tricks!  What other habits can I adopt to help eliminate food waste?    

Out With The Old (Carpet), In With The New!

Our home has been undergoing some major interior changes lately!  (As I'm typing this, I'm sitting in my living room in a camp chair while wearing headphones.)  We had to have some noisy, boring foundation work done in our family room.  The family room is on a concrete slab, which was starting to settle.  That meant we needed to rip up the carpet in the family room so the foundation crew could do their thing.  Ripping up the carpet led us to a much more exciting change: getting new carpet!  When we moved into our home 10 years ago (how in the world has it been 10 years?!) we didn't have the funds to replace the carpet throughout our whole house.  So we prioritized replacing only the carpet in the family room that was heavily stained.  The rest of the carpet in the house was in decent condition and a neutral color.  We've done a lot of living on those carpets throughout the past ten years!  

Even though Jazzy was the best dog ever, she did occasionally trot through the house with muddy paws.  Adam and I used to eat dinner on the couch in front of the TV before we had kids and have spilled random food and drinks on the carpet.  Lyla and Archer have done their fair share of making messes.  I can still recall halfheartedly wiping up their spit up from the carpet when they were little babies.  Needless to say, it was time to replace the carpet!  

Now I know some of you may be wondering why we didn't opt to replace the carpet with wood floors.  While I very much like the look of wood floors, I just prefer the coziness of carpet in our living room, family room and bedrooms.  I also prefer vacuuming carpet to vacuuming and mopping hard wood floors.  Plus, the cost fit within our budget better.  

We visited a local flooring store nearby to check out our options.  It turns out there are way too many options out there!  We eventually brought home several samples to test out in our home.  It's always a good idea to get samples of flooring (or paint colors or fabric) and see what it looks like in your own home.  Everyone's home has slightly different lighting and finishes and seeing the sample in the space really does help.  

We settled on a nylon plush Shaw carpet (the color is called Dockside View) for the living room, family room, bedrooms and upstairs hallway.  Nylon is supposed to be more durable, not show traffic as much, and have a longer lifespan than polyester.  (Of course that also means it is more expensive.)  We decided to go with nylon, as opposed to a natural fiber like wool, for it's stain-resistant properties.  It's a beige color with some gray undertones.  It's slightly darker than our old carpet, but it somehow manages to compliment our many different paint colors and wood trims throughout our house.  For the stairs, we opted for a nylon Berber patterned carpet.  We wanted something with a lower pile for the stairs and since it was a smaller space, we decided to have some fun with pattern.  

Once we decided on the carpet, getting it installed was quite the challenge!  Adam and I opted to rip out the old carpet to save some money.  Adam also wanted to add more screws to the plywood to help alleviate all the many squeaks our floors made.  That meant we had to tear out the old carpet and pad and remove all the staples that were holding the pad in place.  Adam also wanted to paint some of the ceilings since we would have to move all the furniture and it wouldn't matter if we got paint on the subfloor.  He also wanted to replace the light fixture above the stairs and add some decorative molding.  The light bulb burned out in the original light fixture years ago, but it was way too high to get to in order to replace it.

With all those tasks on our to do list, we decided it would be far simpler to complete if Archer and Lyla were out of the way.  So I brought the kids to my parents' house for an extended visit.  While we were visiting, Adam stayed back to change the light fixture and add the decorative molding.  This was no easy task for him!  In fact, he had to build his own scaffolding in order to get to the light fixture!  Much to the kids' delight, he got the scaffolding up before we left for my parents so they got to play on it.  

After giving Adam a week to complete his stairway masterpiece, I returned without the kids to help rip out all the old carpet.  (Thanks for babysitting, Grandma & Grandpa!)  Due to rain delays, it worked out that the foundation crew and the carpet crew would be starting on the same day.  That meant that we couldn't have any furniture in the family room or the garage or parts of the basement.  (They were also doing foundation work in the garage and basement.)  So Adam and I had to get very creative about where to put all of the furniture from our living room, family room, Archer's room, Lyla's room and guest room/office, while also allowing pathways for the crews.  We had couches and tables piled up all over the place!  It was like a real-life game of Tetris.   

Once all the furniture was moved, Adam focused on ripping up the old carpet and pad.  I helped haul it outside and remove the staples leftover from the old pad, while Adam added close to 2,000 screws!  It's no wonder we had so many squeaky floors.  A lot of the nails were coming up and Adam realized some of the original nails didn't even hit the floor joists.  It's safe to say our subfloors are now securely in place and our floors are far less squeaky.  

Finally, the crews arrived and took care of the foundation work and carpet installation.  It was a hectic couple of days around our house, but well worth the outcome.  The mudjacking we had to have completed in our family room did result in some cracked bathroom tile in our half bathroom, so stayed tuned for our next project.  But the carpet went in without a hitch and it looks so incredibly nice!  I really didn't realize just how stained and worn out our old carpet was getting.  Our new carpet looks and feels so luxurious!  It's a bit hard to see just how much better things look with new carpet, but I'll share some pictures.  

Let's start with our stairway.  Look at our sad, worn out stair carpet and that piddly little light that we had going on.  

Now look at our stairway!  It looks so much grander with the new carpet and decorative molding!  And it's certainly far more illuminated with our new chandelier!

It's amazing how much nicer the carpet feels when you are walking around on it.  I find Archer and Lyla just laying on the floor quite often now.  After we bought the carpet I got a little anxious that the new carpet would be too dark and make our rooms feel gloomy, but I'm happy to report it's the perfect shade!  Our hope is that any messes or spills that will inevitably occur won't stand out quite as much as they did on our old, lighter carpet.  

I took advantage of the kids being away to rearrange and declutter their rooms a bit.  The new furniture layout in both of their rooms gives them a bit more space to play.  They were both so excited about the new carpet and new layout that they haven't even noticed the stuff I decluttered.  (Shhhh....please don't tell them!)

I'm glad I have this photo of Lyla's cutely curated bookshelf because it will never look like this again.  

Now Archer, on the other hand, truly enjoys a nice tidy space.  He is very good about cleaning up and knows exactly where things belong.  I'm glad I passed down my organizing genes to at least one of my children.   

Ahh, another lovely organized bookshelf!  

It's safe to say our whole family is enjoying our new carpet.  

Now onto our next project...replacing bathroom tile! 

Goodbye, Sweet Jazzy

I said goodbye to my sweet Jazzy on October 2nd and there's been a gaping hole in my heart ever since then.  There will always be a spot for Jazzy reserved in my heart.  

She was a rescue dog.  Yes, Adam and I adopted her from a little shelter in the middle of Kansas, but Jazzy is the one who truly rescued me.  I was still drowning in the sorrow of losing my first baby and the infertility that came afterwards when Jazzy entered our lives.  Adam and I both desperately wanted a baby, but a human baby wasn't yet in the cards for us.  So Jazzy became our baby.  

While I don't quite understand why things work out the way they do, I do believe there's something bigger than us.  The universe somehow brought Jazzy into our lives.  I knew she was meant to be ours when I saw her picture online.  Adam wasn't convinced until we visited her in person.  As soon as we arrived at the shelter "just to look" at her, she trotted right up to Adam and gave him a big ol' kiss.  Needless to say, we brought her home with us.  

And she was perfect for us.  She was just what I needed.  Looking back, I was severely depressed and really should have gotten some professional therapy.  But my therapy came in the form of Jazzy.  I started taking her for daily walks, which meant exercise for me.  She kept me company during a very lonely time.  She helped me to focus on the joys in my life instead of just the pain.  She helped me to welcome hope back into my life.  I just cannot fully express what she did for me.  She somehow knew when I needed extra snuggles or when I needed some comic relief.  Staring into her soulful little eyes helped me heal.  

Jazzy was such a good girl.  She was eager to learn new tricks and to please us.  She took it upon herself to be our guard dog and protector.  She rarely barked, but did alert us if someone she wasn't familiar with came to our door or if another dog dared to come too close to us.  She adored walks and her excitement for them was contagious.  She was happy to walk around our neighborhood and loved the new smells trails offered her.  

While Jazzy wasn't particularly close with Archer and Lyla, she knew her job was to protect them and she took it very seriously.  She always greeted us when we came home from somewhere and wouldn't head back to her perch on the back of the couch until both kids were in the house.  She put up with their incessant noise and activity in exchange for treats and bits of dropped food.  She never showed any jealousy towards the kids, despite them taking over most of our attention.  She was just as content to get a quick head scratch in passing.    

She was such a good girl.  The best girl.  

Less than a year ago, Jazzy was diagnosed with congestive heart failure.  She had always had a pretty prominent heart murmur, so we knew that congestive heart failure might be in her future.  We started her on medications and she responded really well to them for quite awhile.  Eventually, she maxed out on her medications and we knew it was time to start making plans so that her final days could be as comfortable as possible.  I read a lot about how to determine when the time was right to help your pet end their life.  Of course it's a gray area and ultimately you know your own pet best, but I read many accounts of people wishing they had made the decision earlier to eliminate suffering.  Armed with that knowledge, we were able to make the difficult decision before Jazzy had to suffer for very long.

Adam came across an organization called Lap of Love.  Lap of Love is a network of veterinarians all across the United States who offer in-home end-of-life care for pets.  Once we knew it was time to end Jazzy's suffering, we contacted our local Lap of Love branch.  Every person we spoke with was so thoughtful and helped us feel like we were making the right decision.  The veterinarian who came to our home was so incredibly kind.  I hope no one needs this service any time soon, but keep this organization in the back of your mind.  Allowing Jazzy to pass peacefully in her own home where she felt most comfortable felt like such a gift for her and for us. 

We made sure to give her the best day before her appointment.  We took her to a trail, brought her dog bed outside in the driveway so she could enjoy the fresh air and got her a puppy scoop from our local ice cream shop.  After a bittersweet final walk around our neighborhood, it was time for the veterinarian to arrive.  Dr. Emily was so sweet to Jazzy and brought her lots of treats to enjoy.  I wasn't really sure what to expect, but the whole experience was very calm and peaceful.  Adam wrote and read Jazzy a letter which had all of us (Dr. Emily included) in tears.  As sad as it was, there sure was a lot of love in the room. 

Here's Adam's sweet letter: 

Dear Jazzy,  

When Sara and I left our house on December 13, 2014, with the intention of “just looking” I had no  idea I’d be finding my very best friend. The moment we saw one another, you trotted across that dog  haired matted couch we sat on at the shelter and gave me a nice kiss right on the face. I knew Sara was  hooked from that moment (I was too), my only reservations were how much hair you left all over me  after sitting in my lap for such a short time (you were just nervous).  

We’re so glad you took a chance on us; we are so lucky to have spent the last nearly 7 years of our lives  with you. You helped us both out of the darkness of unexpectedly losing our first unborn daughter. And  later the unexpected death of our friend Tim. You were there to graciously greet your newborn brother and sister four years ago, even if it meant stepping out of the primary spotlight. Please know that you’ll  always be our first baby.  

We will miss your unconditional love and affection. Your excitement of when one of us has come home  from the office or even a short errand. We will miss your excitement every time we pull your leash  down for your next adventure. I will miss our late-night outings and runs. I will miss walking and  running you while pushing your siblings in every kind of buggy imaginable the last 4 years, no matter  how tricky that might be. I will miss your unwavering interest in the outdoor hikes we’ve taken around  here. Thank you for exploring with us. I will miss you snuggling with Sara and I and despite your size  somehow taking over the queen size bed.  

There’s so much more we wish we had time to do and so much I regret not finding time to do so. But I  realize that no one can divide their time enough, you just do the best you can. The regret / guilt we might feel just means we care for you so much.  

You’ve done so much to help heal, serve and protect this family. You’ve given so much to everyone  you’ve known (even cleaning up a dead mouse in my Dad’s basement yesterday). As gut-wrenching as it  may be, it’s time for us to return the favor and help you along as peacefully as we can.  

We love you so much and if there is a heaven, I know you’ll be there waiting for us. So, till we meet again my friend.  

Love you always and forever,  

Adam and Sara

I miss Jazzy so much.  Our house feels so empty without her presence.  She wove herself so tightly into our lives and there are so many times I find myself still thinking about her.  I miss her little snores that would wake me up in the middle of the night and the way she would scoot her little body right next to mine in bed.  (The bed Adam and I said she would never sleep in.)  I miss the way she always seemed to know when I took out a pair of socks from my drawer and thought it was time for a walk.  I miss her laying in the sunshine in our yard.  I miss her toenails prancing along our floors.  I miss her crunching her dog food.  I miss her excitement when I opened up the bag of her favorite treat.  I miss her warm greetings whenever I came home.  I miss her rolling around on her back when she thought she needed some attention.  I miss her help in cleaning up all the crumbs under our kitchen table.  

I know eventually thinking about Jazzy will bring smiles instead of tears.  I am so lucky to have had her in my life.  Goodbye, Sweet Jazzy.