Sorry about the fasting blood draw on your to do list, Jean! Today: Read Clean kitchen breakfast (eggs of some sort) Latin with teens take 15 yo to math tutor Read and prep for Latin co-op class - maybe walk a bit too lunch at home - ??? housework/reading/prep take 15 yo to voice lesson - read/walk dinner tonight will be chicken (last night - 18 yo was craving mac and cheese)

HI all, We've never done a WTM Academy class before. Next year though I really want my dd to study Ancient Lit. She's be in 11th grade. We'll be doing our own history, religion and science, but she wants some classes to be more structured. She's doing math with a tutor, so she thought she'd like to do Ancient Lit on line. The WTM class looks good. Any feedback on this?

Yesterday was not good. I was so tired from waking up so early. I couldn't shake it. I spent the morning lying in bed wondering if I was coming down with something. Finally in the afternoon I had to get up because I promised this lady whose husband is so ill I'd make her dinner. So I did get that done and delivered. But that was pretty much it for the whole entire day! Argh! So today, I had better get cracking! Read Shower Get teens up Take 15 yo to biology I am going to do some anti-plastic sleuthing at an organic store that I seldom go to. Take 18 to gov't class Buy milk and bread; walk home again for lunch study Latin with kids housework Dinner is chicken breasts cooked somehow (haven't decided yet) Reading

I blogged about trying to avoid plastic when buying dairy products. It's tough! And expensive!

I love all the brainstorming going on. Who would've thought grocery bags could get so complicated! I have some bags I wash and some I don't. It really depends on the material. But the bags I don't wash I usually put stuff in that doesn't get it dirty, jars, packages of pasta, canned foods, stuff that is in its own bag already, etc. The bags that touch the food like produce or bread, those I wash.

I am so sorry. I think too it is ok to be "needy" and ask people to help you during the dark days. People do forget or get preoccupied and sometimes they just need to know what you need. I just sent up a prayer for you.

Well, if the store wigs out, hopefully that will help you to remember to bring your bags in!!! Nothing like creating a scene to help change our bad habits!!!

I just read a good tip on how to remember to bring those bags in with you to the store. This is a really common problem. One person though just had the groceries put back into the cart after she had bought them, rolled the cart out to her car and bagged them right at her car! And this had the benefit of breaking the cycle of forgetting the next time. She remembered having to do this and it spurred her to remember to bring the bags in with her.

I just started reading Beth Terry's book Plastic Free and she mentions that hemp bags are better because they take a lot less resources to make. She also talks about several different entrepreneurial bag companies: EcoBags and another called Chico Bags She also talked about the need to wash the bags. Someone mentioned somewhere in this thread that they were on immune suppressing meds and that is why they used plastic bags, but apparently if you wash your bags you can keep them bacteria free. A lot of people apparently don't think about washing them.

For some reason my dog, who hardly ever does this, needed to go out at 3:45 a.m. I couldn't get back to sleep so I read a lot and then finally got up. Hoping I get a nap today! To do: Recycling out to curb Shower Reading Breakfast school and Latin with teens Teens have gov't, English and Bio to do Must make dinner for family we know in crisis and deliver before dinner time Visit my sister in hospital??? Geez I've been bad about this! Dinner is leftovers plus egg or tuna salad subs.

Wah! Is it Week10 already? I've only just completed Book 6 for me. I've gotten off to a slow start for a couple of reasons. But anyway, I did finish Mr. Midshipman Easy and really enjoyed it. I blogged about it. I plan to come back and read this thread. I am out of internet play time for me. It's been a busy Sunday!

Kalmia, Thanks so much!

On most days, I don't like feeling old, but I feel like in terms of living without plastic, it has its advantages because I can remember when we didn't use plastic. I grew up with Depression/WWII parents who had to be frugal because we were a large family. And there were no plastic bags in the grocery stores. How did we deal with icky trashcans? We washed them! We saved every brown bag or piece of tin foil. Messy stuff got put in a brown bag (maybe 2 if it threatened to leak through) and all wrapped, thrown in the trash. We covered things with tin foil and that we used over and over. If it got dirty, we rinsed it off! We used them until they were falling apart. I remember my mother making us sandwiches and neatly folding wax paper into a little envelope to keep it fresh for school lunch. Before tupperware, people saved old jars and kept leftovers in them. Living plastic free is also more frugal! It was one of our chores as kids to wash the trashcans. This was a summer job. We took them outside and hosed them down. We had fun squirting each other with the hose as well. I have fond memories of washing trashcans. I am editing this because I just remembered another use tool for dealing with icky stuff back in the day: newspaper! We lined things with newspaper. We used newspaper all the time for everything! Growing up we got a morning and an evening newspaper. Now my family gets all our news on line! So we don't have newspaper to use anymore, which is a shame. it was a really useful thing! In the name of frugality my mother used dish towels instead of paper towels and cloth napkins instead of paper. She just couldn't justify the expense when she knew she'd being doing lots of laundry anyway. She might as well throw in some some dish towels and napkins too. My mother raised 10 children and she never once used a disposable diaper or baby wipe! People did it. Maybe people were just more clever and hardier back then. Plastic and convenience has made us wimpy and squeamish - I include myself in this for though I did use cloth diapers, I also switched to pull ups when they got older and I loved my baby wipes! I do agree that everyone can only do as much as they can. Everyone is at a different place in life, both in terms of children and claims on time as well geographically where you might be limited in what you can practically do. My concern is that it is very easy to be defensive about one's use of plastic (for ex. well, I have to use it because of such and such!) instead of maybe being more openminded about hunting for solutions. I mean if one is really stuck with it, that can't be helped and as said above there is no use beating yourself up over it. But it is so very easy to slip into complacency about this issue because, in the USA we have been raised to think our own little convenience is of upmost important lest we become too stressed, etc. And it is sold to us day and night and pretty much an assumption built into our whole worldview. I read about plastic several years ago in a really informative book called Plastic; A Toxic Love Story. I tried to change my ways as much as I could but I soon backslid. I am not strong about such things. Convenience really is important to me! So I have to keep it in mind deliberately and think long term and about my own children and what kind of earth they will inherit. I recently got galvanized again because my parish is starting up an environmental ministry. I do think to try to reduce waste and avoid plastic as much as possible (and you really can't avoid it that much, just some of easier things like grocery bags and disposable cups - but truly it is everywhere!) is being countercultural and that is always hard. It takes perseverance. Like homeschooling! I am the kind of person that fluctuates all day long. One minute I am despairing over some dumb thing I did and the next I am rallying and determined. I am a roller coaster in my interior life! So I have to fight that too. I just keep telling myself this is a process, it is a gradual change of habits, taking baby steps. I do feel that I currently am in a position to go more whole hog than others might be, just because my kids are older and I live in an area where there are lots of options if I seek them out. Anyway, ladies, I thank you for this great conversation!

If you like Jane Austen period movies, we just watched Love and Friendship last night. Charming movie about an evil, beautiful, money seeking widow. Very tongue in cheek.

I don't know about the food poisoning thing in the past. People really knew how to preserve food. I've read some histories of food and I don't remember it being an especially dire problem. Except there were problems with industrialization before they figured out how to do thing in a clean safer way. But that happened before plastic! Sometimes though the limited diet did lead to some dramatic malnutrition though. I like have varied diets too. Though I do like to shop locally and try to be more seasonal about food, I'm also ok with, say, buying bananas. Did you ever read Barbara Kingsolver's book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle? She makes a big thing about giving up bananas to be more local and then she keeps using olive oil. I live in Virginia. There's no olives here! I think trade is innate to human society and it has benefited us a lot. I admit that it is complicated. And the regulations that are supposed to keep us healthy can get too paternalistic and burdensome (though initially a good thing. You know, the whole meat yard packing stuff in that book The Jungle.) Here in VA I buy eggs from my CSA and we recycle egg cartons. There doesn't seem to be a prohibition on reusing egg cartons. MD is a more regulatory kind of state. That is good and bad. In VA we can't get the legislature to tax or ban plastic bags. Sigh. Marbel I have to laugh at your post. I am Catholic. I receive the Eucharist from the priest's fingers right on my tongue! We also all sip from the same chalice! Honestly, I don't think I have ever traced back getting sick from these things. Of course people don't partake of the chalice if they are sick, or they shouldn't. I don't. Maybe they need to do a study, do Catholics get sick more often than Protestants? I do think Americans have gotten too germaphobic. It is funny how as healthcare and cleanliness has improved, we are more and more fearful of germs.

When I said humanly possible about reducing plastic, I was thinking of individuals doing whatever they could. I wasn't thinking about the manufacturers, etc. I think they will change when 1) the demand for no plastic gets higher, 2) something cheaper becomes available, but that won't happen unless people change their attitudes and ways of doing things. There is so much waste in plastic right now. It is criminal. I agree that some plastic is good. For instance, I am very glad there are disposable insulin needles. I think plastic for medical purposes has really helped with keeping things safe and sterile. My thought is, yes, let's use plastic there where it is really important. We have to balance the limited fossil fuels and the insoluble pollution problem against necessity. For the vast, vast number of things in the grocery store, it seems to me, it is not necessary. The junky plastic for Christmas, the plastic Easter eggs, the junky plastic toys, etc, etc, etc. My son got a new library card yesterday made of plastic. I remember the days when they were made of hard cardboard with a little metal insert with a code on it. There was absolutely no need to change! Plastic is everywhere!! And with food, we still have food borne illnesses even in our plastic era. Something or another is always being recalled! In fact plastic itself has chemicals in it that some say are dangerous!!! I do hope that chemistry solves this problem. There are people working right now to create biodegradable plastic or find a way to make our current plastic garbage into something that biodegrades. I just went to a cheese specialty shop to see if I could find cheese just in wax, the old fashion way. He said you'd probably have to go to Europe to find plastic wrap free cheese. We humans have been eating cheese for thousands of years and we've only had plastic around for what, 60 years? How did everybody cope in yesteryear??? I don't think they all died of food poisoning!

We've been beguiled into thinking that plastic is all recyclable. Much of it is not. Only a very small percentage gets recycled. And the plastic that is recyclable, as posted above, can only be downcycled. And it never, ever goes away. It never biodegrades. It always stays plastic, unlike other renewable resources that break down. Also, plastic comes from fossil fuels which are limited resources that once they are gone, they are gone! It took billions of years to make those fossil fuels! So it is just better to avoid it as much as humanly possible. It is truly reckless that we have become so indifferent to this. We've been seduced, brainwashed, etc. We've got to wake up!!!! We've got to problem solve and get noisy (but polite! Because 98% of us are just trying to get along and this issue has been forced on us by manufacturers). There are solutions to this, but we've got to get cracking on it! Ok, down from my (wooden) soap box!

I blogged today about humble peanut butter and jelly!

Good morning! I did not get to housework or Latin yesterday. Today: bagels clean kitchen take 18 yo to flute lessons Check out fancy cheese shop nearby to see if I can get plastic free cheese! this p.m. teens and I are going to do a long study session with Latin for the NLE housework Dinner? Oops. Gotta think on this one!

For the dish soap the Dr. Bronner's works really well. I also read somewhere about soap nuts? Maybe I'll try them out too. Shampoo is a toughie. There are shampoo bars. We have a hoity-toity store here called Lush. I've never been but my 15 yo loves it. She goes with her girlfriends to window shop. Apparently, they have shampoo bars. These bars are supposed to last a long time! I also googled around and found a homeschooling family in my state who makes soaps as a business. They have some too. I found out they are coming to a craft fair next month, so I am going to attend and see about their shampoos. And also check out other craft stuff that is non-plastic. Another thing is toothpaste which is now all in plastic, even Tom's. I bought some tooth powder from Country Gent and I've been using it for the last couple of days. It done come with a think plastic seal. But my teeth are nice and shiny! However, I don't really want to have order all this stuff because of shipping, etc. I'm looking for local vendors. I know people make their own tooth powder, but I don't think I'm there yet! Deodorant is another place where we unconsciously buy plastic. You can tell my children are all older. I have nothing to do any more, they school themselves. So this is the thing I am going to pour energy into. I think it is worthwhile. I'll do the sleuthing so you all don't have to! Of course, some of you are way ahead of me in this regard. I welcome any advice.

Good point! However, if lots of people started doing this and the store noticed, that might spark interest in changing how grapes get packaged. I think any little bit of consciousness raising we can do is helpful. Btw, I am not a gardener at all. I've tried over the years and I just am too ADD about it. So composting to me was entirely daunting. Also I am afraid of rats. We had a big rat problem in our old neighborhood due to bird seed. I was afraid having a compost bin would create the same problem. However, there are solutions. People can look for community composting. I have a friend that does that. I have a different solution. I use a composting service. I think these are springing up in answer to a need. Here's what I use (of course it is local to me!http://www.veterancompost.com/

At least you are reusing them for very good reasons. However, they will never biodegrade. They are on this earth for a long, long time. They photodegrade which means they'll break down into tiny particles of plastic. I think as a society we need to use problem solving skills. I do think people are trying to come up with plastic that does actually biodegrade. So hopefully that will come to something and then we won't be in binds like this where we feel forced to pollute and be damned future generations! We've got to poop scoop! LOL. I have no idea if these figures are exaggerated, but I've seen things like around the globe we use 1 trillion plastic bags a year. Even if that is an exaggeration, our plastic bag usage is out of control. They've only become popular in my life time!!! I"m 56 and I remember when these weird plastic bags started showing up at grocery stores! How did we deal with stuff without them? We must have been able to cope somehow! Anyway, even if people don't feel they can give up plastic bags now completely, we can try to reduce our consumption of them and we can vow to not use plastic water bottles and coffee cups. Water bottles are another thing, a major pollutant that has sprung up in my life time. How did we cope before? Was everyone walking around dehydrated? I don't remember that! I just think everyone just has to have a positive can-do attitude and do what they can in their own current situation. For some, like me, who is older and has more time to concentrate on this, I can probably give up a lot. I wouldn't have been able to when I had lots of littles at home, I don't think. I was too overwhelmed and frankly it wasn't even on my radar! And some people are just going to be able to take baby steps. But it is all good!!! As long as we are all moving in the right direction! We can help each other along. Sorry if I sound preachy! Born again environmentalists are so annoying. LOL. Today I blogged about coffee and tea! Things we use to drink that never involved plastic until a few years ago.

Good morning! Yesterday I woke at 5; this a.m. 6:45. It was good to sleep in. I actually feel rested. To do: Clean kitchen laundry Vacuum something! Anything. And dust too! Watch video with teens on G. K. Chesterton 15 yo does math homework I need to run out to get food for lunch. Life is too complicated food wise right now. Mass at noon lunch 15 yo to math tutor Even though I have listed studying Latin with the teens each day, we've not done it! So study Latin! Adoration from 6 to 7 Dinner I really want to show my family the movie Bag It so they understand why I've suddenly gotten fanatical about avoiding plastic.

I don't think it is possible to give up every single thing, at least not right now. But I think if people started to speak out it could help. The amount of unnecessary plastic is mind boggling! I think we all just do what we can in the period of life where we are. But it would be good to talk to store managers, write letters, attend community meetings, whatever one can do, to make the problem more well known.

I've found those types of bulk food dispensers in both Whole Foods and Harris Teeter. WF has a much bigger selection of items though. The Fresh Market, which is a newer store near me, has bulk coffee in big barrels. They actually give you plain paper bags to use for the coffee which is very nice! Harris Teeter has bread rolls you can buy in bulk and they also supply paper sacks. I have to check out Bea Johnson's method!!! Thanks!