A look in...

One of my kitchen cabinets.

I've haven't been using much plastic in recent years and more so to what some may call and an "extreme" degree within the last year. Mostly thanks to Beth at Fake Plastic Fish. If you want to know why I am doing this go there, she's extremely passionate and explains it many times in many ways and is very detailed, informative, and knowledgeable. I have almost exclusively switched to glass and ceramic for food storage.

Here is a look in my storage container cabinet. There isn't much in there at the moment because a lot of it is being used. I bought two sets of Pyrex glass bowls/dishes with plastic lids and most of the other stuff has been gifted or given to us. My husbands grandma gave us a bunch of ceramic casserole dishes a few years back when she had to clean out her house due to a little oven fire. She also gave us a set of mixing bowls, those lovely blue glass ones in the picture. A few sets of soup and salad bowls and a set of small appetizer plates that now function as our cat food dishes. I don't know where I would be without those. I have a set of thinner glass bowls with lids that I was given and a few things are actually from our wedding registry. Maybe we should get married again so we can get some more things.

But my problem is I still have all the plastic Tupperware, Ziploc and Gladware stuff. I did separate out all items that aren't a 1, 2, or 5 plastic but that didn't amount to much. The few things I did find were mostly 6's and have been re-purposed to hold non food items. Throwing away all those things isn't really something I wanted to do. A few things have found uses elsewhere holding things that are waiting to be used or turned into something. But there is still a lot of random containers that occupy a second shelf in my cabinet.

Then there is a whole other shelf of things that rarely get used or just don't have a use, mostly plastic but also some other stuff. There is a wok in there that is just not compatible with our electric stove, a strainer bowl set that is just too big to use, it doesn't fit in our sink so I can't clean it. There is a cupcake and a cake holder that I do use occasionally but not often. There are some lids that don't have containers to fit on and some containers without lids. There is a cup in there that I can re-use for discount refills at the Wild Animal Park or The San Diego Zoo but I go there so infrequently I'm not sure it's worth actually buying them in the first place. There are a few containers I have used to hold my kitchen compost material so I don't have to take it out right away and well I then forget to take it out and now the stuff just smells of compost. This is also the home to a few things that I can't find a use for and don't have numbers on them.

At some point I am just going to have to throw this stuff out or perhaps I can find someone to take the majority of plastic stuff but that all takes effort and planning and if I just leave it in the cabinets I can "forget" about it and I don't have to deal with it.