Monday, April 20, 2009

Packing A Better Lunch Box

One night as I was packing Ashleigh's lunch box for school, I realized we were completely out of paper towels. What to do, what to do? Ah-ha! Back in the depths of the kitchen drawer, was a stack of cloth napkins long forgot about. They had been banished to the back of the drawer after my Mother accused me of being pretentious for using them one night many years ago for supper.

What began as a temporary solution has now become a permanent part of Ash's lunch box! Not only does using the cloth napkins cut down on waste, but it helps reduce our consumption of paper towels. And as a family of six, disposable paper products is an area of the grocery budget I'd like to rein in a bit more.

Even though I'm not much of a seamstress (read - I can't sew AT ALL!), I'm thinking it wouldn't be too difficult to find some squares of fabric and make cloth napkins on my own. I could probably even hand stitch the edges. I sense a new project in the works!

3 comments:

Still Learning said...

That is so funny because since Januray I have realized how much we spend on disposable paper products and have cut way back. I used to buy paper plates every week (we are a family of six too) becuse the dish load at the end of the night OY!! I used to buy plastic utensils too. Nope, no more. I just suck it up and wash the extra dishes. I have hand towels hanging now just for the purpose of drying hands now too. We are big on hand washing around here. So now we dry our hands on the handtowel and I make sure to replace them every other day. I buy way less papertowels now. We clean with rags (some made from old towels) and don't use paper towels for that either. It's amazing how much we can cut back if we really look at where we spend our $$ isn't it? Cloth is great 'cause you can wash it!! I like to give the 2 year old a rag when he is eating to wipe himself with becaue he eats the paper towels ha ha.

Wendy P said...

I need to get my sewing machine out. I cut up Derek's old t-shirts for rags for cleaning, yucky messes, etc. I need to make a rag bag specifically for those.

I bet you'll make lovely napkins! You'll have to post pics.

And, unrelated, thank you so much for linking to the down-to-earth blog. I just love it so much! A good friend has recently started reading it regularly, too. We wouldn't have found it without you.

Mary Ellen said...

You're welcome Wendy! I'm thoroughly enjoying Down to Earth too. Every post is filled with such wisdom!