After last week's post, I looked around my kitchen and figured it was time to make some more changes. I've made a sort of pre-New Year's resolution: every couple of weeks, see if there is something else I can change (or just do without).
This week it was kids food that came under fire again. Specifically Ella's pouches and Petit Filous. It's not that I particuarly want to target my children, but their food seems particularly prone to packaging. Now, whilst Ella kitchen does organise recycling through TerraCycle, it is a thing that has to be organised, they can't just be put in the recycing bin and forgotten about. And thus, in my house they go in the bin. (It's one of the reasons I'm a bit stingy with how often the kids are allowed them.) My local coucil also doesn't recycle little yoghurt pots.
I saw a facebook advert for Doddlebags a while back, almost bought some and then stopped myself - too many things, not enough time, too much faff - I think was my reasoning. This week I decided to buy some and see what happened. Yes, I am replacing plastic with more plastic, but it's reusable plastic so that's fine right?!
I order two boxes of the doddlebags and a little packet of nozzles for icing - I like that there are cool acessories you can get with them. This is what arrived in the post this morning...
It arrived about half an hour before lunch. In the next 30 minutes Sally took charge of putting lids and stickers on and I made two different types of smoothies which are now in the freezer waiting to be stuck in lunch boxes and taken on all our many adventures.
The PJ Masks seem to be all about teamwork, so Owlette's superhero task was matching all the lids and stickers... meanwhile Mummy put some frozen fruits, some left over mango pieces from her lunch this week and a generous blob of yoghurt in the blender.
The frozen fruits we used were from Tesco - they do come in plastic bags, but they are the decent resealable ones, and I am determined that when they're empty I'll take them up to the local farm shop where they have freezers full of self-serve frozen stuff and refil them there. It's just a mini detour on the way back from Sally's school so it shouldn't be too much of a faff. I probably ought to do this with the frozen peas and sweetcorn. humn.
There was one thing I did manage to get a bit wrong... labelling. By the time they were filled with icy fruit smoothie I couldn't get a pen to stick to the labels. Next time I think I better label them BEFORE I fill them.
We kept a couple out for lunch and they were happily consumed by the two monsters at my dinner table. Husband was a little put out I hadn't saved him one, but he has since discovered that I put a chelsea bun mix in the breadmaker so he went off in search of plywood for Pip's new storage boxes somewhat molified.
The pouches can be filled with pretty much anything you want. So - if I want to send Sally to school with a yoghurt, it'll go in a pouch too, and from now on they're just going to get a little bowl of yoghurt at dinner time, no special little pots - just one regular big one which I am led to believe I can put in the recycling. I do have a yogurt maker that my mother in law gave me - she bought it some decades ago and whilst I'm sure it works, it has no instruction or directions and I've never been brave enough to experiment. Maybe it'll go on the list for next year. But these are my little battles with plastic, not my outright war, not at this point anyway.
I didn't get a picture of the two of them slurping down their smoothies. But they were two very happy children. The pouches were perfectly simple to rinse out. I think they probably branded it all quite well. It was a doddle.
We all know I'm crap at numbers and working out how much things really cost. But I bought the doddle letterbox set x 2 so I had 20 pouches. They are currently £10.99 - I now remember why I bought them last week, they had a sale so I only paid £5.50 per set and £3 for the icing nozzles. It's going to take me a few boxes of Ella's pouches to save me that back, but I don't reckon it will take all that long, and I get to feel all smug and happy in the mean time. As a bonus, Sally liked choosing what to go in them, as well as telling her Daddy how these were special pouches because they don't go in the bin and you can reuse them. That girl needs a hug.
https://doddlebags.com