I love trying to be as “green” as possible. There are a lot of alternatives to single use plastic storage bags out there and baby food pouches. I decided to try them because I wanted to decrease our waste and also to save money. Turns out they were a great investment and I wanted to share my findings with you!

Single use plastic sandwich bags for snacks, to store cheese or left over limes are used once and then tossed. Not great for the environment and not cost effective. I saw reusable bags online years ago and wanted to try them, mainly because of the super cute prints (I’m a sucker for cute packaging). These Bumkin ones are great! I finally bought them for the girls lunches and was hooked. They are so easy to wash. Turn them inside out and wash them by hand and let them dry or put them in the dishwasher on the top rack.

Another great storage reusable item are Bees Wrap. I first saw them while I was in Napa and thought I would try it out on something like a brick of cheese. They are naturally antibacterial and awesome. They wrap tightly around the product. You just warm it up in your hand to make it pliable and then put the item inside and wrap! They have all different sizes so you can put the large one around the edge of a bowl to seal the contents inside or you can cut a melon in half and wrap it around the cut part to keep it fresh. They also have smaller sizes for things like citrus fruits or avocados. When you are done using it, wash it with cool water and soap, then air dry. You can use it a bunch of times before replacing which is nice! I also learned that when it has been worn out, you can cut it up and put it in your compost or as a natural fire starter while out camping. Pretty cool!

The last thing that I’m going to mention here are Squooshi baby food pouches. I obviously don’t have any babies anymore but my girls use them for apple sauce. I just fill them and put them in the fridge. When the girls eat them, they toss them in the sink. I rinse them out and then place them upright on the top rack of my dishwasher. They are wonderful! When I used to make their baby food, I never had one of those “baby food systems”.  I would steam their veggies on the stove in a large steaming pot,  put it into my blender and then pour them in ice cube trays (each one equaling an ounce so it was super easy to measure out their portions). I also put some of them into pouches and put them in my fridge, such as the fruit flavored ones so I could just toss it into my bag and take with me. I never had to use toss away jars, disposable pouches or anything that was wasteful. This has saved me so much money through all 3 girls as we all know that baby food can be so expensive. The cost from convenience packaging can be so crazy. I love to buy apple sauce in big containers and just fill these for their lunches myself. In the fall we get a bunch of apples and I make my own apple sauce which is easy, tasty and cost effective!

These are all great ways to decrease our environmental footprint not to mention it all looks super cute while doing it!!