Going Zero in Connecticut

Hi Friends! I hope you all had a fantastic holiday this year! I wanted to write about what I have been trying to do/discover this Christmas season to make my life a little more zero-waste. I'm grateful for the friends who have chatted with me and helped me on my journey. Together we can all be a little less wasteful, and a little more loving to our earth.  LET'S TALK ABOUT WRAPPING GIFTS! This year I had decided to try to use my Christmas gift wrap so that I can transition next year into more zero-waste options. One of my friends had been reading my blog, and contacted me about what she decided to do for gift wrapping. I'm so grateful she paved the way for me (and all of us!) to part from paper gift-wrapping traditions. She decided to go to her local fabric store right after Christmas, and pick out all the Christmas fabric deals. She brought them home, and made her own Christmas gift wrap bags, and then wrote about it! The gift receiver can use them for their own g...

My freezer was slowly accumulating bits of compostable material that I could not give to pigs or to my chickens. But it was still organic material that did not need to go into the garbage. The end result for the compost scraps in the garbage would be the landfill, and my ultimate goal in zero waste is to prevent things from the house going to landfill. The freezer was getting full of my scraps, and I needed to get serious about composting if I am going to be a true zero waster. Just a quick heads up, I am NOT an expert when it comes to composting. In fact, it is the one thing that I am still trying to research and figure out. But I knew it was better to start composting and figure it out along the way than to read forever until I know an exact scientific balance. At this point all I know is that if the composter gets too smelly or wet, add more browns (leaves, wood shavings, paper scraps, etc). If it is not composting at all or is dry, add more greens (food scraps, grass clippings, e...