We joined the library!

This may sound completely obvious, but I highly recommend joining your local library!

When I was a kid we all belonged to the local library and borrowed books regularly.  When my now 6.5 year old was a baby, we used to go to Newtown library for Reading Time, but since we moved 5 years ago, we haven't actually visited the library at all.  Considering we're trying to reduce the purchases we make, it's crazy that we haven't been borrowing books from the library!

Day three of Winter school holidays, and one of my daughter's school friends had just been to the library and was showing her the books he borrowed this morning.  We had no firm plans today, so headed up to the library and joined.  We found five books she was excited to read, joined up and headed home.

Turns out there's also a whole online Library that comes with the membership too, where you can read online, or order books to be collected from your local library.  If you're in the 'Inner West Council', which used to be Marrickville Council, here's the link.

Now we have all the books we can possibly want to read, and don't have to waste money buying them all, or waste space storing them all in our house.

Phasing out plastics...

As we gradually work towards a more sustainable living for our family, I'm also attempting to phase out plastic where possible, especially when it comes to food.

Today I started tackling the pantry cupboard.  I went to IKEA and bought some lovely (and affordable) glass jars to replace the plastic containers I'm currently storing dry ingredients in.

The first pile I need to sort.

I won't be throwing away the old plastic containers though, as that won't help our carbon footprint either!  I'll find another purpose for these away from food.  And I will choose to use glass instead of plastic going forward.

While Mr 8 Months sat in his highchair next to me chewing a rusk, surprisingly I managed to achieve a bit.  I wrangled this pile of chaos out of the pantry to sort through, washed the new jars ready to be filled and started reorganising the section of the pantry this all came from.

I quickly realised I don't have enough jars and that I will need more of certain sizes to transfer everything across.  But hey, this is a work in progress, and the jars always look like a different size in the store than what they do when we get them home.

Most of you know what it's like when you attempt to tackle a job like this when you have kids.  You have the idea, but it's days before you get the chance to do anything about it.

Then the opportunity popped up when my oldest was at daycare and my baby was happily occupied and NOT IN MY ARMS!  That's the moment I got motivated and started.  I got into the swing of it, and had a massive pile out on the table which was partly sorted.  Then Mr 8 Months started to get bored, threw his rusk down on the floor started 'hinting' he wanted Mummy cuddles.

So the pile was left on the kitchen table until the kids were in bed and dinner had been made.  By then, I was over it so packed it all back into the pantry in whatever stage it was in, and retreated to the lounge room for the evening.  I WILL get back to it again soon though, maybe on the weekend...

An update on the potatoes

Happy potato plants transferred into the larger tub.

So, we've had success with our potatoes!  They have actually grown into plants, much to my delight.

After just a couple of weeks, little green plants sprouted up out of the potatoes in the soil.

Since then I've had to transfer them to a larger pot with much much more soil as they filled the tiny pots.  As I was transferring them I discovered they had already produced some tiny brand new potatoes.

I have no idea how to tell if the potatoes are ready to eat or not, and I'm sure we learnt this all at school, but can't remember any of it now - I blame 'baby brain'.

Now I had better do some research about when to harvest them etc... If anyone knows, let me know :)

The random tomato plant that has popped up under the fence is thriving.