Boldest Action Winner: Katie H takes us to school on reusing (pretty much anything)!

Category: Environment
Challenge: Use a reusable mug, bag, or container
Sponsor: ChicoBag
Action: We flipped an old cereal box inside out and now refill it from bulk cereal bins. Everyone loves a little mystery cereal for breakfast!

Katie's Thoughts:
"Wait!! Don't throw that out!"

Admittedly our kitchen can be a little confusing. Aside from attempting to figure out how to classify your food scraps in our compost system or trying your hand at popping sorghum, you might also find yourself a little befuddled when you can't locate our trashcan. Look in the lower cabinet, behind the dust pan, and you'll find a tiny pail that we empty about once every two weeks. You could say it's a bit of a challenge that we tried our hand at before embracing it with gusto and maybe a tad of compulsive obsession. We just don't throw much away.

Instead, we'll take something whose natural life is "all dried up" and scratch our noggins about how to rebirth it in our home. It began with saving bread bags to reuse for leftovers or for taking to Rainbow Grocery for buying bulk goods. Simple enough, yea? We've since gotten a little more creative, including:

- turning cereal boxes inside out, giving them a fresh crayon job, and refilling them with bulk cereal
- harvesting palm fronds from a local park, shredding them down a bit, and using them in place of string to create a little safety railing on our homemade spice rack
- washing out spaghetti sauce jars and filling them with our bulk grains
- cutting out the torso of two old shirts and sewing two sets of two together to make curtains
- taking an old bike saddle and using it as a bookend
- hanging an old bike wheel on the wall and using it to decorate by sticking post cards in the spokes
- using a wooden box from a wheel of goat cheese as an earring box.

Without fail, the challenge also presents a little bit of a dilemma for us. We've begun accumulating random objects en masse that we can't fathom throwing away, but that we're not quite sure how to reuse them. Regardless, we're living with a palpable confidence that someone's eyes will light up while they're flipping their eggs and we'll finally be off and running with an idea of how to use our 350 bottle caps or John's old underwear. If you beat us to it, we'd love to hear what you come up with.