we love saving money but we also love being good to the environment so in this
video we're going to be talking about 15 ways that you can reduce your waste and
save money
hey guys it's Joseph and Tasha with one big happy life we make
videos about how to find balance build well and live your happy so if you are
all about creating a life that you love on your own terms then we make videos
just for you recently we sent an email out to our
email list when Tasha was announcing her new show over on the financial diet and
we asked what kind of videos they would like to see on either this channel or
her new show over there and this is one of the most requested videos
How to do zero waste.
also a video about what's about my hair so I'm gonna do one of those later as
soon soon but for now this is all about zero waste so definitely if you're not
already on our email list go ahead and go over to onebighappylife.com and
sign up because our weekly newsletter letter goes out and not everything that
we say in it will make it on to the channel so you don't want to miss out on
so one of the big things about so first thing when it comes to zero waste and
reducing waste right the idea is progress not perfection so these are
little ways that you can start reducing your waste and reducing your impact on
the environment and we also selected things that had a money conceiving
component too because as the person who some of the people request who requested
this video said sometimes going zero waste means that you end up having to
spend a whole bunch of money so that's why we're sticking with money saving on
this you're a waste video okay number one and this is my personal favorite
composting so if you have a yard or you do some indoor gardening you need to be
composting your plant waste from the kitchen this goes outside this one's
gigantic it's not this is I got an Amazon and it holds like a cubic yard I
have two of them one well this is now the third yeah
I have the fourth in the garage. just the one brand we had in Texas - yes so this
is like our fifth one and they're really inexpensive for their size how much was
it I think it's $23 yeah so $23 and they
hold a massive amount and how this is money-saving is well so several ways so
if you live in a place where you actually pay for your trash by volume so
like in Texas the bigger the trashcan you got the more you paid for your trash
removal so composting and reducing waste by composting and recycling saved us
money on our trash bill but also yeah so you weren't supposed to throw away your
your grass clippings and that varies from jurisdiction to jurisdiction and so
you can take them to the dump but realistically what else are you gonna do
with them you might as well be composting it and that plus coffee
grounds and you know plant parts that you're not gonna eat yeah
and so the other way it saves you money if you have a yard and a garden well
that's free a rich fertile topsoil that you can add to your bed especially also
if you're growing food and stuff like that you don't have to go out and buy
fertilizer and stuff because you've got this rich organic stuff to put in the
yard the second key thing that you need is this is our indoor compost bin and so
during the day when we're doing our cooking and stuff like that we'll put
our compost in here and then dump it out in the main compost bin at night
number two reusable bags we've got lots of reusable bags ready to go okay
lots of different kinds okay so instead of getting those little tiny thin
plastic bags and the grocery market crazy market or grocery store you can
get more substantial reusable bags and put all your produce and exactly that
produce in there so ziplock bag so that one doesn't really save you money
because they don't charge for those bags but the ones that will save you money
all right so this is a reusable ziplock bag so instead of buying 50 thousand
Ziploc bags you just read you that silicone comes with this little
thing that seals it up so that's pretty cool and then this one we use and you'll
see this again when we do our preschool back-to-school essentials video but this
is a wet/dry bag again used instead of Ziploc bags or it's for kids clothing
and like if you're breastfeeding pumping that sort of stuff so these things stop
you from buying Ziploc bags which and they last a long time so they will save
you money in the long run and so these things we did have to buy but you can
make your own reusable bags and I saw some awesome tutorials about how to turn
old jeans into tote bags like to take to the grocery store and the way that
reusable bags can save you money is that some places charge you per bag like at
the grocery store could charge you five or ten cents per bag and I think over
time more and more places will start doing this so it's a great way to save
yourself money on just buying grocery bags if you live in one of those places
next reusable containers and silverware now that they come in all shapes and
sizes all different kinds of materials you want to go with glass you can go
with the glass one so you get a plastic lid but they work really well so for
lunches or saving dinners leftovers instead of the Ziploc bags and this is
Rives reusable lunchbox so again skipping the the Ziploc bags
that can really add up over time I guess it's not just a ziploc that we're
targeting here but any plastic you know disposable plastic bag you want to try
to avoid those and also with the silverware oh my gosh we don't even have
it but we have little neoprene packs of metal silverware that we take with it so
this one's cool knife fork spoon chopsticks cause you never know and it
saves me from using plastic ware so and I take one of these with me to
work every single day and it has saved me countless plastic things so
that was actually a Christmas present Joseph put that on his Christmas gift
list so that's a great way to get some of these things without even having to
spend the money for them at all me I don't I don't have one of those so I
just like take a fork and a spoon out from the drawer and just stick them in
my bag with my lunch box so you don't have to be that fancy number for water
bottles and thermoses this is another one of those things
where we should have had one more prop which is like our coffee thermos is we
take our coffee to work every day we generally try to avoid disposable cups
as much as possible and a lot of places will even if you're buying coffee from
out and about they will go ahead and fill up your thermos for you you just
hand them the thermos and depending on the volume of the thermos most places
can calculate what the cost should be if you have an above average sized thermos
for the coffee just you just they will ask you to hold onto your lid because
that's where your mouth goes and all that so for sanitary reasons but yes so
that's an easy way to save money and some places will give you a discount
because you didn't use a cup speaking of cups Tasha is going to tell you about
the next one Oh menstrual cups so I have not tried this like full disclosure I
have not tried one but a menstrual cup is you know basically a reusable you
Wait! You totally have oh I have but I didn't use it for menstruation that's not true
either did I I know apparently I should have
talked about the menstrual cup okay no okay okay a little bit I don't want to okay
so the quick story is that when we were trying to conceive I read about using
these disposable menstrual cups to increase the likelihood of conceiving so
you put it in after insemination to try to hold things in there you know what I
mean so I tried it also for menstruation one time and I didn't like it but it's
completely different from the silicone menstrual cups in that the shape is
different the way it's used is different so I've never tried the reusable ones I
want it's on my to-do list but lots of people
lots of my female friends well not the male friends my friends swear by it so I
definitely want to give it a try but that is a great way and a great
alternative to paying every month for tampons and pads alright next reusable
kitchen towels where are they oh we mean like rags and things well also kitchen
towels - both oh yeah to avoid paper towels right ok yeah so this one happens
to be microfiber which I know actually isn't getting great press right now
because it's technically a plastic so Cotton's and natural fibers are best and
we also have those around the house as well but we use those in lieu of using a
whole bunch of paper towels so that will save money in the long run because
you're reducing the amount of paper towels that you use and these towels
you know last years and years and years and years yeah so we bought by ours in
bulk we bought them from Amazon but personally we like the ones at Costco
better in that they're like a thicker higher quality and they've held up
better through multiple washes yeah so since we've lived here we bought two
packages of those clothes and we have tons of them now from from Costco but we
haven't bought paper towels. Not nearly as much. well so it's in months there are a couple things that
you still have to have paper towels for because you can't reuse some things but
but we've done awesome in paper towels okay so next up when we're talking along
the lines of paper towels toilet papers so there are things that you can do one
thing in particular that we're going to talk about to reduce the amount of
toilet paper that you use and that is to attach a bidet either replace your
toilet with a bidet or do a bidet attachment on to your standard toilet so
that you can rinse off and just use a little bit of toilet paper instead of
using a whole bunch of toilet paper there's actually a range of luxury when
it comes to like the bidet is that you can either attach or completely replace
your toilet with like it gets very simple
cold water spray which is what we have so I don't know about that in winter I'm
just saying yeah she doesn't she doesn't really like it but then they can get to
the ones that use electricity and can heat the seat heat the water and all
that kind of stuff and then so it's pretty fancy pants which then more
energy and stuff but but it's still less paper so and kind of have to decide
on your own there so when we went to Japan and Singapore last year basically all of
the toilets where the in the places where we went had bidets and Joseph and
Alexis were just like enamored and they were the super fancy bidets with the
warm streams and the air to dry you off and all that stuff so but yeah it's
really cool that it's easy to attach a bidet to your standard toilet if that's
something you're interested in to it next let's talk about diapers of course
you can use disposable diapers sometimes you can find the greener versions like
ones made out of bamboo and stuff like that which is what we did in the
beginning but Reeves kept leaking through it so and then we changed yeah and so
then then you can just do cloth reusable diapers altogether and so that's another
option when we use these for swim diapers as well because it's a whole lot
better than buying those disposable swim diapers and super reusable especially if
you go to the pool a bunch which Reeves was going with Alexis costantly. Like every day yeah these
came in handy we would have bought just mounds of those other diapers and so way
to go us. all right next up DIY cleaners and so I brought down our
cleaning caddy from our upstairs bathroom which you've seen before if you
see watched any of our cleaning videos but each one of these are like so this
is a bleach and water cleaner this is an all-purpose which is like a vinegar with
essential oils and water and this I don't remember everything that's in here
I have to look at the rest of the baking soda and other things and this is our
glass cleaner and so all of these are DIY cleaners from you know things that
we buy in in bulk so they end up costing like pennies to make and then of course
here are some microfiber cloth that we can use to clean and wash and
reuse so DIY your cleaners can save you a ton of money also another DIY thing is
beauty products I make these constantly I never make these Alexis and Tasha do
yes we do and so the example that I brought here includes another reusable
cloth so these are white washcloths that I use to remove my makeup I typically
use the oil cleanse method so here is just straight olive oil and a washcloth
and so instead of using a whole bunch of disposable makeup removing wipes which
end up costing a whole bunch of money if you're using them all the time every day
and I end up having to use two or three all I do is use oil and two of these at
night to remove my makeup so I love love love this and that's just regular
regular olive oil the exact same Kirkland brand olive oil the same olive oil that
we cook with is what I put in here I also use this exact same olive oil to
moisturize my skin to make body scrubs and so I'm gonna be doing a video about
some of the DIY Beauty things that I use so stay tuned for that but this is super
super cheap now if you consider yourself a green thumb kind of person you can
grow your own food which is a great way to save a lot of money plus you know
everything that's going into the growing process and it reduces lots of waste
because it's I mean I use a lot of energy and to take everything from farms
all around the world to get us our food well grow your own so we have not
started growing our own food yet our backyard is extremely shady so we're not
sure that we're gonna be able to grow food where we live here growing up my
mom planted all sorts of vegetables in the backyard and fruits too so I'm used
to eating food from a garden but another alternative if you happen if you can't
grow food see if there's a pick-your-own farm near you so just this past weekend
we went to a farm and picked our own apples not only were they cheaper
but oh my gosh they they're super delicious and you know also added
benefit they didn't come in any plastic packaging so also another thing to
reduce waste is freezing or canning your food now you can do this in like big
batches but it could just be well making sure that oh if you have some leftovers
make that again there for another night and it can be as simple as here is one
of our meals from our freezer downstairs if you guys have watched any of our meal
prep videos you know that we meal prep into individual serving containers and
in case anyone's wondering we use plastic containers because we commute
and the glass containers are really heavy yes so that's why we like these
plastic ones instead of the glass ones but by freezing our food if we end up
not eating our food including I will put this right in the freezer when I get to
work the food is more likely to stay longer and we're more likely to eat it
and it's less likely to end up in the trash staying on the food trend buy your
food in bulk so that's not necessarily just the size but also the the thing
that doesn't come with packaging a lot of grocery stores now have bulk food
sections where you can fill up what they typically provide plastic bags but a lot
of them will let you bring your own you can bring glass jars and as long as they
they weigh the jar first and then you weigh the product and and then they'll
let you do that ok and it can also be something as simple as well instead of
buying a whole bunch of say individual serving sizes of something that would
have a whole bunch of packaging buy a big thing of it and not only is your
cost per serving lower that way but you also end up saving on the you know trash
that what happened there another great thing is to say no to straws there have
been several campaigns recently that have been pushing anti straws and for a
good reason because they really mess Wildlife and of course they're plastic
so we have bought silicone straws and we say no to whenever we're at a place that
has too much fun right now and we also have not purchased any other straws we
used to have a package of straws always on hand and now we don't did like we
would repeatedly by straws and so now we use these and that now you don't have to
buy these but just saying no to straws is an easy zero cost way to reduce your
waste and then of course not buying straws will save you money and these
straws are gigantic so like if you really need to drink fast
alright so Reeves may be making noise in the background because he just got back
from somewhere so the last thing is to try to fix things instead of just
replacing them and you know if you have kids you end up with a lot of broken
things but it's pretty easy to find out how to fix things there are a lot of
resources online even to learn how to fix intricate electronics and so try
your hand at fixing it with just simple tool kit you'll be surprised exactly
what you can accomplish and not just things that are mechanical but like your
clothing and things like that so just grab yourself a sewing kit and mend the
hole in something instead of just completely replacing it or like we
mentioned earlier try to see if you can turn it into something else or if your
sheets have a hole in them see if you can make pillows from them or see if you
can turn them into a reusable bag for your produce thanks so much for watching
this video and hopefully it inspired to you to reduce whatever waste you're
creating and if you have good suggestions we'd love to see those in
the comments so give us a thumbs up subscribe see you next time bye