Uses for Wipes Containers

Lastnight Mr almost 4 and I were going through old receipts.  Hubby and I kept previous years receipts in old Huggies wipes containers. We had 4 containers, with receipts in there from 2009....

Seriously?? 2009?? I knew there were a lot of receipts but I thought it was 2010 onwards...

Anyways, we had a good sort through and ended up with 2 empty containers. One has 2011/2012 Financial year receipts, and the other has preschool receipts yet to be filed.

I also stored my breast pads in a wipes container, but as I've weaned my son, I no longer need the pads. I'd only just opened a box of breast pads when I started weaning him, so I'm going to give them to my cousin, as she's due to have her second baby in a week :)

So that leaves me with 3 empty wipes containers... I didn't want to throw them away as they are very useful, so I thought about using a box to store my freezer bags in, as they're all over the place in the drawer...unfortunately the drawer isn't deep enough...

Another area which was in need of some organisation is the craft cupboard. I had a lot of bags with mixed up crayons/pencils/textas etc, so I decided to put all the crayons in one container, finger paints in another and the last one housed the small chalk, glitter, glue and other little bits. I also sorted the pencils and textas and put them back where they belong.

Once I file the contents of the other 2 boxes, I can put them to good use. I'm thinking of using one to store plastic bags instead of having them shoved under the sink and the other I'm not to sure yet, but I've got some things in mind.

Here's a few ideas of what they can be used for/store:

• Crafty bits - Pencils/paints/crayons etc
• Grocery shopping bags
• Money box
• Make up
• Lego
• Receipts
• Phone chargers
• Hair accessories
• Ribbons for craft/presents
• Pet food
• Baby keepsake
• First aid kit
• Contain objects in bag/nappy bag
• DIY Wipes for bub or cleaning
• Screws, nails etc
• Batteries
• Breast pads
• Other pads
• Cookie cutters
• Tiny toys
• Doll clothes/bits
• Washing powder
• Spices

There are many more ways in which they can be reused. Mr almost 4 spent most of his time pushing them around as cars and trains :)

Our Green Living.

Photo credit: http://www.wellbeing.com.au

There's a lot of talk these day's about greener living and reducing our carbon footprint. Not only is living a greener lifestyle great for the environment, but it's also better for our health and our wallets.

We eventually would love to live a pretty self sufficient and greener lifestyle, but we're working very slowly and getting greener by the day :)

The things we've done so far to help out are as follows:

• Solar hot water (was already here when we bought the house)
• Installed Solar Power
• Started a vege patch
• Compost heap
• Kids bath together
• Reuse bath water to mop the floor
• Slowly reducing our showers (on Sunday I had a 2 minute shower woohoooo, trying to get hubby to beat it but he won't even dare hehehe)
• Use a combination of Cloth Nappies and disposables - I would love to use MCN full time but I find it hard to do with 2 soon to be 3 in nappies.
• Turn things off at the wall when not in use.
• Slowly replacing appliances with Eco-friendly ones.
• Turn the power to the garage completely off.
• Cooking from scratch, reducing the amount of packaging that enters landfill.
• Walking the kids to school as much as possible rather than driving.
• Finding ways to reuse things.
• Switching most cleaning products for water, vinegar and bi-carb and buying Eco-friendly cleaners.
• Line or rack drying clothes.
• Encourage outside play rather then watching TV.

It'll take a while to change to a completely green and self sufficient lifestyle, but I look forward to learning more about it and put all we've learnt into action.