nothing but footprints

Last night I finished sewing together the second of the string bags I am making to use when buying fruit and veges in the supermarket, to replace the annoying, flimsy plastic bags that are hard to find a second use for. Due to the slightly heavier string bag over the plastic I'll probably end up paying a touch more each time I use them - but I think the few cents are worth the fewer plastic bags in the world.

Since one of my resolutions is to switch all of my battery-operated appliances over to rechargeables as their alkaline batteries wear out, I bought my first batch of eneloop batteries today. Aside from the positive reviews these batteries are getting, my main reason for starting a collection was because I would love to take advantage of the solar charger that has been released in Japan. Solar powering instead of mains power, and much less battery waste, makes for much more environmentally-friendly small appliance usage.

Apparently, Christmas is a time of year when we throw away more more than usual. I've been present-wrapping for the past few hours, and not liking the look of all the wrapping paper and stickytape I'm using - even if most of the paper is re-used from previous years and some of it I may be able to save and use again. So I'm going to start looking around after Christmas for Christmas-themed fabric (hopefully on special!), and use it to make some sort of present-bags that can be used to house presents of varying sizes, and can re-used hundreds of times. Even if I only do this for presents between family members, that would hugely reduce my paper and stickytape usage, and theirs too. Not to mention saving the hours stuck on the floor trying to cut paper to size!