Another Great Idea

Here is another Recession Friendly great idea from my creative mother at RFD to NYC!  Just a quick note of appreciation while I'm at it - I was fortunate enough to be raised, nurtured, grown by an amazing woman who, among many other things is an artist.  Before she took on the full time work of being a mother to two girls, she was an art teacher at a private elementary school.  Unlike a lot of my peers, art was a regular part of our home "curriculum."  As a mother of two young children, I am realizing that what seemed like a very natural and seamless integration of fine art education and applied art projects throughout our childhood was actually a very deliberate, well organized and thoughtful introduction of materials and methods, concepts and cultural references.  The amazing thing is that it never seemed like class - never forced or too organized, just fun and inspired.  Thanks, Mom - I only wish I could do the same for my children!  Maybe I can talk you into a guest post once in a while, with great ideas for children's art projects?  

Recession Wednesday!!!

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.  Or at least that's what they say.  But how many of us are doing it, and in that order?  I know that in my house, I feel like I'm doing a real public service when I get my recycling out on time and didn't sneak in a few contraband items like the plastic bags that frozen vegetables come in.  Why can't you recycle those?  But then I got to thinking.  How much energy does it take to recycle this stuff?  What is the recycling process and where does the resulting glass-plastic-metal-paper go?  I'm not really sure.  

So I decided to challenge myself to:

A) Be more aware of what I buy and use.  (Reduce!)

B) See if I can give new life to the stuff I normally put in the recycling bin (Reuse!)

C) Then, if there are no other options, I separate my plastic-glass-metal-paper (Recycle!)

Here is my Recession Wednesday cool, money saving, earth lovin' hot tip: 

Make a Notepad or Drawing Book

My children go through SO MUCH drawing paper!  And it is so expensive!!  I've resorted to making drawing books for them as shown above.  They can be cut as above for travel size or usually I just staple a stack of my 8 1/2 x 11 pages that have blank sides and make a bunch of "books" for them.  They are used for doodling, cutting out, drawing and for illustrating their own books.  I wish I had a photo of an example, other than the one I just made for this post.  In any case, they're saving me a bunch of money, I'm keeping paper out of the waste stream and giving my children something to have fun with and use with wild abandon.  It's totally simple to do, here's how it works:

Take paper that has a blank back side from your paper recycling (mine is featured above),  or set it aside prior to tossing into the recycling basket as you read letters, pay invoices or print out pages from a website and get that annoying last page with nothing on it but a url.  Lay it written face down (picture #2) and just keep piling it up, thickness to be determined by what your stapler can handle.  If you're cutting a smaller size, such as a notepad or to-do list for yourself, do this before stapling.  Then staple on the top  or the sides and Voila!  Usable paper!  If you don't have children, give these to nieces, nephews or neighbors - I don't know any children who don't need paper!  (Just make sure there isn't any sensitive information on the written side that you need to keep private!)

Happy Recession Wednesday!