the Waste-Not Blog

What makes you want to reduce waste? There are loads of valid reasons to choose a lifestyle that utilizes all resources well. Maybe your rationale is an awareness of earth's limited resources or of endangered species threatened by human refuse or habitat loss. Maybe you have financial goals that just aren't being reached, and you want to plug the holes in your revenue stream, spending less and saving more. Maybe you want to be more self reliant and resilient, able to handle the disappearance of a few paychecks into the auto mechanic's pocket or a disruption of SNAP funds due to government shut down. Maybe your friends like to brag about how they saved money and you find the concept inspiring. Whatever your reason for reducing waste in your household, I am on board with it 100%! There's absolutely no possible bad reason for a Waste-Not Life! But, just as an investment advisor will tell you not to put all your financial eggs in one basket, I'm here to say that in ...

For us, the Waste-Not Plan is a blueprint to arrive at our ultimate goal of total independence in terms of food (for us and our animals), energy (at least in terms of heat and cooking, and using the grid only for luxuries that can easily be dispensed with) and money (we want to be able to have both me and Ben at home or at least working very minimally, so what land we have needs to at least pay for its own taxes and hopefully a bit extra). For others it might just be a matter of becoming progressively more self reliant: having enough food to know that a couple weeks without buying groceries won't reduce you to eating expired spaghetti-Os from the back of the cupboard, being able to pay down debt and add to a nest egg, reducing your carbon footprint and plugging your particular holes in the waste stream. That's why I call these "levels" instead of "steps," because even if you never get past "level one" or "level two," you're here. You...

We don't buy a lot of food in jars these days. I can enough tomatoes that I can cook down a marinara sauce as often as I need it, and with butter, cream and cheese aplenty from our cow alfredo sauce doesn't need to come out of a jar either. If I buy jelly or jam it's in a large jar, so I don't have to do it often, and before long I hope to be weaned of that habit too. Applesauce is home made. One food I do buy in jars is pickles. I buy Mt. Olive dill pickles by the gallon; at $5 per gallon I get a gallon jar for $5 and a whole bunch of dill pickles for free! If I want relish I chop them up, add pickle juice and stir in some mustard. If I want dill chips for hamburgers I slice them thin, and if I want dill spears to go alongside sandwiches I cut them lengthwise into quarters. The empty jars are perfect for storing milk, incubating yogurt, or for lactofermenting more pickles. One such jar is currently the home of my kombucha scoby. The problem with buying so little of...