If you were going to toss it anyway...

Some cool re-purposing ideas from people much craftier than I on Re-Nest:

A cool, practical way to Re-use your plastic bottle tops
(Or, you can reclycle them if there is an Aveda near you)

Bird Feeder Made Out of Bottles

DIY Hanging Herb Garden

Use VHS Tapes as Shiny Ribbon

These are great ideas to help get my creative juices flowing.  The May goal to reduce the amount of plastic coming into the house has been semi-successful, but must obviously continue as an active goal for the forseeable future.  REDUCE REDUCE REDUCE. My new mantra. Reduce, and Refuse (as in, I refuse to buy new lip gloss because I have 15 tubes already, not Refuse = Slightly Affected Way to Refer to Trash).

Les and I have begun a massive apartment cleaning project for our decidedly un-massive apartment. It's incredible how just moderate amounts of clutter feels oppressive in a small space. But we're still struggling to figure out what to do about all of our stuff. Wishing I had Refused some of this crap before I had to figure out how to Reduce the piles.

Our Recycle bin is constantly overflowing, the trash can has been emptied more often in the last 3 weeks than I would like to admit. And even as I try to assuage my guilt with the growing "donate" pile on the floor, I have to wonder why anyone ELSE would want/need to bring my 37 slightly used candle votives or the 2 of my original 6 puffy vests that I know I can live without, or the "too lazy to figure out how to fix it" DVD player into their own fortress of stuff. Ugh.

I have way too much stuff already. And yet I always find myself wanting MORE. New. Better. Prettier. Or, even Greener. Living Simply is not that simple. For me, anyway.

The June project of the month is going to be to cook from scratch more often, thereby reducing the consumption of packaged and pre-made food Les and I have grown accustomed to eating. And I don't mean "putting our own toppings on a frozen pizza crust." I mean cooking for real. Taking the time to put food in our food. There's a twinge of dread mixed in with my excitement about this project, but I think it dovetails nicely into May's plastic-reduction project. Less packaging = less plastic, right?

Plus, it is way less scary than the project I have cooking for July...