Exceedingly Mundane

It’s a little thing, but I’ve decided to go with more glass and less plastic in my kitchen. For quite a while now, I’ve been thinking about trying to get rid of most of my Rubbermaid / Tupperware / Misc Plastic containers. I have read (or as Tim thinks, bought into the hype) that there’s stuff in the plastic that can leach into your food. Plus, plastic gets stained with tomato products like spaghetti, chili, etc. Now, I like plastic for the no-breakage option, but I’m trying really hard to be careful and not chip or break my glass containers.

I bought a couple of 3 pack Pyrex glass storage containers at Walmart to give them a try. A few days later, Tim and I were at Sam’s, and he found this. He came and got me and said, “Let’s get this for you, I think you’ll love it!”. Such a sweetie 🙂

I told him, I really don’t need that many containers, nor do I have room for them. But, I started going through my cabinets and decided I could purge some other things that I had. I had a set of stainless /coated storage containers, some ramekins, as well as all of my Rubbermaid containers. Once I cleaned all of them out, I had enough room for all of my red Pyrex glass containers.

I’ve had them a few weeks now, and I really like them. I can mix up something like chicken salad in one of the containers, then just store it in the fridge. I can scoop up leftovers from supper, then when we want to warm them up for lunch the next day, I don’t have to worry about taking them out of the plastic and putting them on something else to warm up (that’s mostly what I had read about plastic, don’t microwave in it and heat them and the contents up). I can pop them in the freezer, I can put them in the dishwasher and they come out looking brand new. I really like this set from Sam’s Club, because I have some rectangular / oblong ones in addition to different sizes of round ones. Lots of variety and lots of storage sizes. All good things 🙂

So, here’s a quick question – do you do leftovers at your house? Do you store them in plastic or glass? Do you freeze leftovers?

Have a great, happy, joyous day 🙂

I blogged a couple of weeks ago, here, about having to drive my cardboard and magazines to a recycling bin a mile or two from my house. Well! I’m happy to report that I won’t have to do that any longer!

My city/county apparently changed contractors for their recycling pickup. Which, I failed to note in my previous post, we pay for, whether we use it or not. Of course, I’ve always been a recycle/reuse/save the planet kind of girl, so I’ve recycled stuff as long as I can remember. Anyway… last week, we all got dropped off on our driveway a brand new recycling bin! In a pretty green color 🙂 Inside was a list of what all they will and will not accept.

The main thing we lost is glass recycling. I’ve been recycling glass bottles for over 16 years, and now they will no longer accept them. Which is not bad, it’s probably one of the least recycled things in my bin. I used to have more kitchen things that were glass, but a lot of those have been converted to either plastic or paper containers. But, here’s the good news… they added paper of all kinds! The handout says you can recycle flattened cardboard, magazines, phone books, junk mail, office paper, etc. So, that’s going to be a huge boost for me! Not only do I no longer have to drive this stuff to the drop-off center, maybe I will get better about not throwing junk mail and stuff in the trash! Also, this is even more motivation for me to go through the piles of magazines I have around here. Shhh, don’t tell Tim where all I have them hiding!

All in all, I think it’s a good trade-off, giving up glass but gaining paper, cardboard and magazine recycling. I seem to have paper coming out of my ears 😀

Hooray for recycling!