I’ve decided to take the month of March to sort through one drawer, shelf or cabinet per day. At one point last year, Andrew and I went through the clutter in our home and even had a garage sale. You would never know it walking around our home these days. I don’t know if we just did a bad job of it or if we weren’t as diligent with what we allowed into our home afterward or if we just tackled the most visible items but whatever the case may be, it feels as though our material possessions are suffocating us. With all that I have going on around here on a daily basis, tackling the house as a whole is much too overwhelming right now so as my mom used to ask during those stressful days of high school AP classes, “How do you eat an elephant?” (the answer is “one bite at a time” for those unfamiliar with that phrase.) So here we go.

If you’re serious about less waste living, you don’t keep/allow plastic ziplocks in your home. Now, I get the handy/useful nature of these guys. They can keep things organized, hold snacks and sandwiches, contain freezer friendly meals, etc. but the bottom line is that they are unrecyleable plastic and plastic is killing this planet. If you just can’t stop yourself from buying them, please do like my Depression era grandma does and wash them out to reuse again. I know they are a pain to wash but if you could just get at least one more use out of each bag, think of how many you are not having to buy. But back to my drawer tackling… As I was trying to organize the disaster that is lurking inside of them, I felt my eyes darting around for something to contain the random little objects that I didn’t want to throw away but were also making my blood pressure rise every time I opened a drawer. Enter the spaghetti sauce jar. I. Love. Jars. Fat jars, skinny jars, tall jars, squat jars, quilted jars, canning jars… I don’t discriminate when it comes to jars. They are amazing, incredibly versatile, useful, often overlooked little lovelies. I use them for so many things. Freezing soup, containing my vegetable pieces and parmesan rinds in the freezer to be used in future broth, drinking glasses, to-go containers for snacks, a vase for a bouquet of flowers for the dining room table, bedside table of a guest room, delivered on the doorstep of a neighbor, or to be placed on a coworkers desk. Their uses are endless. And I was happy to be able to use them in my drawers to keep them organized. So next time you use the last bit of your dijon mustard, jelly, pasta sauce, apple sauce, pickles, etc., don’t toss that jar into the recycle. Tuck it away because I guarantee you that you will be able to use it for something else down the road.

What are some ways that you reuse your glass jars?