There is a recycle point in the grocery store parking lot our family uses so we take the recyclables with us once a week or so and drop them off go in and do our shopping. It saves time and stress and takes the excuse of, “I don’t have time to drop off the recyclables” away.

Kids actually love the task of separating the recyclables into the bins at the drop point. My daughter always wants to toss in the glass jars! Speaking of glass jars, you always need more places to keep things you do not want to lose, why not reuse those old spaghetti jars instead of throwing them out?

They can also be decorated and dressed up to look neat and this is a great project for the kids when they say they are bored. This goes for those empty metal coffee cans too. In fact these work well for all sorts of things, from storage to starter pots for garden plants. And you wouldn’t believe what the mind of a child can do with a few of those during play time.

Give a child something like an old coffee can or empty oatmeal box and tell them to use them to play with and you might get a shock at what they come up with. My daughter took some yarn, an herb tea box, granola bar box, organic frosted flakes box, an oatmeal box and a vanilla wafers box and made a train!

Another idea for saving energy is set the shower times for most of the people in the home to early in the morning or late in the evening. This is the time when there is less of a strain on the power and water plants in the area. The afternoon will definitely be the time where most of the energy is being consumed due to everyone having on their air conditioners on high.

You can also make sure your refrigerator is not wasting energy by monitoring the temperature inside. If the refrigerator is not so full then you can turn down the thermostat, if it has a lot in it then you can just turn the thermostat back up. Truth is if it is to low it will work harder using more energy and if it is too high it will just be wasting energy.

Don’t miss the next part, subscribe above so that you will get notified by email when the next part is published!