You'll never guess...

At preschool, each kid has a day when they're the "superstar". On their superstar day, they get to take home the mystery bag, which we then fill with an item that starts with the letter of the week. Then the kid comes up with three clues about the item, and the class has to guess what it is the next day. It's a pretty fun thing they do!

So, yesterday N-man was the superstar. Tonight we went around the house looking for something that starts with the letter J, and he finally chose a jingle stick, one of those musical instruments with jingle bells attached to it. These are the clues he wanted me to write down:

• It's a rocket
• It has socks on it

I explained to him that we couldn't use those as clues since they weren't true. He answered, "Well, I don't want anyone to guess what's in the mystery bag." Hmm, I guess that's one way to keep people from guessing!

_______________

B-man was the superstar on Monday, so he looked for a J item earlier this week. He comes back with a...DREIDEL. I tell him that it starts with a D, not a J. "No, you're *really* WRONG, Mommy! It's not DAY-del, it's JAH-raydel!" I feel bad, but I couldn't stop laughing. If you say it out loud, dreidel does kind of sound like JAHraydel. He wouldn't believe me, though. I finally looked it up on wikipedia for him, which luckily has a picture of the exact same dreidel he found. "Oh," was all he said, when he discovered dreidel doesn't start with a J.

For the record, he finally settled on a stuffed jaguar for mystery bag item.

I had a lot of fun with the mystery bag this week!
________________

Green tip for the day: whenever I throw something in the garbage or recycling bin, I take a second to think about if I really needed that item. I ask myself things like:

• Could I have done without it? (Like the classic bottled water example when you can drink from the tap)
  
• Is there an alternative that can be reused? (This is why I switched to cloth napkins and cloth towels, so we weren't throwing away so many paper napkins/towels)
  
• Is there an alternative that uses less packaging (i.e., less to be thrown away or recycled)? (Such as buying larger bulk containers instead of individual packages)
  
• Is there a way I can repurpose the item I'm throwing away? (I've been saving large yogurt containers and other similar sized plastic containers to start seedlings this spring. We also use them in the bath to rinse hair)
• Is it possible that even if my town doesn't recycle the item, I can look around online to find a different way to recycle? (Such as dropping off used CFL bulbs at the hardware store, or finding a drop-off place for a used laptop battery)
• Can the item possibly be donated/freecycled/or otherwise continue to be used? (I freecycled 11 mismatched coffee mugs, and got a TON of responses for them. I try to keep in mind that just because I don't want something doesn't mean it's trash!)
  

Some things I decide really are trash, and I really did need them and will continue using them. For example, I haven't found a convenient, affordable source of milk in glass bottles. So we have a lot of milk containers in our recycling bins. We still have at least 2 bags of trash each week, and 2 or 3 bins of recycling every two weeks. I'm trying to cut back on that, but the reality is that it will never be zero. I just like to make sure I'm being cognizant of our household trash/recycling!