Spending a mini fortune on a Prius isn’t the only way to be more eco-friendly. Although many assume the only real way to go green is by making extreme and inconvenient lifestyle alterations, there are in fact plenty of simple adjustments and inexpensive things you can do in your home to help reduce your carbon footprint. Including, organize your home in an eco-friendly way.
By changing your habits and organizational systems, you can easily make your home into a clean energy house. In this article, you will read about some cheap, easy, and effective eco-friendly ways to help you. Not only will it make your home a more eco-friendly environment, but it will also help you to control clutter, save cash and reduce waste in your home.
1. Don’t Throw Away Old Shoe Boxes
Instead of putting your old shoe boxes in the trash, repurpose them as storage containers. Most shoe boxes tend to be made of hard cardboard, so they are perfect for storing all kinds of things including jewelry, tools, pens and paper. Some people like to use them for beauty products like makeup and lipstick. If you have enough storage in your home, ask a friend or family member if they have any use for it before putting it in the recycle bin.
You’ll only need winter clothing items like hats, scarves, and gloves at certain times of the year, so perhaps think about storing them in a shoebox with a label on it. By storing them in an old shoebox you won’t have to worry about finding the items when winter comes around.
Oh, if you haven’t noticed already, these boxes are a great place to store shoes!
2. Store it Until You Need it
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Decluttering your home generally means either getting rid of things (donating, selling, throwing out or recycling) or storing your stuff elsewhere. While getting rid of things can be an effective way to declutter, there’s usually an environmental cost to it. Recycling requires energy and not everything can be recycled (and even the stuff that can be recycled often does not get recycled at the facility and instead gets trashed). If you toss it in the bin, it adds to landfill. If you donate it, a lot of that stuff ends up getting thrown out too. Even if you sell it, you don’t know whether the next owner will toss it out after a month.
The only sure way of knowing you’re not contributing to landfill is if you keep your stuff to use another time. It’s true that most of the time when you have stuff lying around that you don’t use, you never will. But sometimes you will get to reuse or repurpose it into something else like artwork. For the things you think you could reuse or repurpose, you could either rent or find a storage facility for sale to store your belongings in. If you move your stored items using an EV, even better.
3. Reuse Old Jars
Don’t throw your old jars away either. It doesn’t matter if they are tall, small, large, clear or colored jars, they can all be reused as you organize your home. Here are only 5 of the many things you can use old jars for.
- Spice Jars: Instead of going out and spending your hard-earned cash on a spice jar at your local store, get an old jar instead. Because jars are made of glass they are easily cleaned. Just fill up your old spice jar with spices you have bought.
- Batch Cooking: If you make extra food, why not put it into a glass jar and eat at a later date instead of using plastic storage containers. You can easily pour things like soup and broth into these jars.
- Candles: Old jars are perfect for a candle. You can either put a candle you already have or you can just add hand-dipped wax into the jar yourself. Having your candle inside a jar is safer and it looks great.
- Cocktails: Instead of going out and spending money on fancy cocktail glasses, why not use some of your old jars. Mojitos and pina coladas look great inside a jar and many restaurants and bars also use them.
- Match Storage: Storing matches in your home inside a jar is a good idea, but you can also bring the jar outdoors if you need to start a fire. Keeping them in a jar helps reduce the chances of the matches getting wet. So, the next time you’re thinking about heading on a camping trip don’t forget to store your matches in a jar.
Glass is much better than plastic containers because it helps reduce landfill waste, keeps food safe and tends to look nicer than plastic. When the lid is firmly closed on the top, it won’t transfer any food smells, either.
4. Create a Small Recycling Station in Each Room
Most homes nowadays have at least one recycling station. But why not make one in each room in the house to help easily sort items? If you only have garbage bins throughout your home, the chances are that they will get filled up with recyclable and non-recyclable items, which can be inconvenient.
You can either purchase a new bin for each room so you have two, one for recyclable materials and the other for non-recyclable materials. However, you can also easily split your existing bins into two. Put a divider through the middle of the trash can to help separate one from the other. These dual bins make it easy to organize your home’s waste.
5. Use an Instant Pot
Instant pots have become increasingly popular in recent years. These programmable pressure cookers are one of the greenest kitchen appliances available on the market. Here are a few reasons why instant pots sales are growing and why you should consider one for your home:
- Energy-efficient: In comparison to a traditional pressure cooker, you can cook food much faster in an instant pot. For example, a stew often takes 7 hours to cook the ingredients fully, however it can be fully prepared and ready to eat in much less time with an instant pot.
- Reduce Food Waste: Many people like to cook extra food with an instant pot so that they can use the leftovers for another day. Often when we feel like a snack we tend to eat something that is quick to make, which often is an unhealthy choice. However, an instant pot helps you easily make tasty, healthy foods in a short space of time. So, you can just reheat yesterday’s tasty veggies that you cooked in your instant pot.
Instant pots are multifunctional cooking appliances that can be used for many different things. These devices can be used as a pressure cooker, a slow cooker, a rice cooker and even a yogurt maker. Some even allow you to use it as a sanitizer for baby bottles. So, instead of spending large sums of money on all these devices, an instant pot will do all the work for you.
6. Repurpose Old Wooden Crates
Old fruit or wine crates are a great storage solution. They are made of hardwood that allows you to safely and easily store items. Why not store bedding items like blankets or spare pillows? These are also great storage solutions to put in a kid’s room so they can store toys. If you want to go the extra mile, you can use sustainable hang tags so you can label all your clothing items and other storage areas with tags that are eco-friendly.
To make wooden crates look more appealing in your home, you can varnish the wood or paint it a nice color. If it’s for storage in a child’s room, get the kids to give a helping hand to help them understand the importance of repurposing things.
Wooden crates also make for excellent bookshelves.
Summary
There are plenty of fun ways to organize your home and make it an eco-friendly haven.
Reducing waste in the household is not only important for adults, but it sets a great example for children. Whether we like it or not, our children will copy what the adults in the house do. So by making sure you recycle day in day out you will inspire kids to do the same.
Making recycling fun and a part of their life will be more enjoyable for them, too. Before you throw anything into the trash, consider whether or not you can reuse the item. You might be pleasantly surprised with the ideas you come up with.
Feature image: monicore; Image 1: Tima Miroshnichenko
