Update on Green Living

I am proud to say that I have avoided bringing at least 150 plastic bags into my home in the last 2 months! And I feel good about it. If you look at my previous post https://wordpress.com/block-editor/post/happytimebreak.wordpress.com/1170 I talked about the steps I’d been taking to try to live a greener lifestyle despite the pandemic. I just want to share some updates on this topic.

So first of all I was very pleased with the set of 4 cotton bags (Red Earth brand) I’d ordered from Amazon. These are sturdy bags with at least six side pockets on the inside which is very handy while loading bottles or jars. They did shrink a little after machine wash (I do wash them in quick wash setting after every grocery trip in cold water and then air dry them).

But soon I realized they were not enough so I ordered a set of 5 cotton canvas bags as well as a set of 10 cotton mesh bags. The latter came in large, medium and small sizes and I use them for buying produce. I wash the canvas bags in machine but hand wash the mesh ones. And yes ALL of them did shrink as they are made of 100% cotton but they are still roomy enough for the average grocery shopping trip.

Loading grocery in the cotton bags followed by unloading, washing, drying, and folding them may seem like a tedious process but in the end it’s all worth it especially when I look back on the number of plastic bags that I avoided bringing into my home and sending them to the recycling center!

Yes often we kid ourselves into thinking that we’ve done a great job at recycling but not every piece of plastic gets recycled and if they do, some of them are turned into products that may not be able to be recycled further! So it just makes sense to “avoid” getting plastic and non recyclable things into our homes in the first place!

Hope this post inspires anyone out there who is trying to get started on living sustainably. More in a future post!