Yesterday, I talked about dumping the food storage containers and how I replaced them. Some of this post won’t make much sense unless you’ve read it, so click here and I’ll wait for you to read it.
Done? OK
While I was in the mood to dump things, I also got rid of the plastic cereal bowls and some of the plastic liquid measuring cups. I will be moving to glass for all of my liquid measuring cups and stainless steel for my dry measuring cups as I can afford the swap. I will purchase more corelle cereal bowls to have for meals. While I never put hot items into these, I’d rather just have them gone instead of having to muss with it.
I also hauled out the plastic cups and replaced them with pint mason jars. Now, originally we did have glass cups and I gave them to Goodwill. Stupid move, right? Well, it was because when my kids moved from glass sippy cups to open-topped cups, we went through a streak where we were having one glass cup broken each day or more. We have tile floors in the kitchen, hardwood in the rest of the house and it seemed we couldn’t go a day without a wet mess of broken glass on our hands. So I switched. Now that the kids are older, we don’t have as many dropped cups, I’m willing to risk glass again.
That load of plastic, between the food storage, the cups and bowls, amounted to four garbage bags full.
Speaking of…
Yes, I said glass sippy cups.
When my kids started drinking liquids that weren’t from the tap, around the age of 12-14 months, I purchased the Evenflo 4-ounce glass bottles and bought the Gerber juice spout lids. It doesn’t look they sell those anymore, but I’m sure if you look around, you can find other options. I made an effort to keep the bottles upright as much as I could to minimize the contact with the plastic.
Yes. I purchased glass baby bottles for my breastfeeding toddlers who never drank from a bottle. I know there’s a joke in there somewhere.
If I had young’uns now, I would instead buy the silicone sleeves they have for the glass bottles and give those to them, open topped, or another glass or stainless container wrapped in silicone to prevent problems, instead of going with the plastic. I wish the silicone sleeves had been an option when my kids were little.
Staying… For Now
I did not yet replace the cat’s plastic plates. We have fed him on plastic for a while, so we knew which plates were his- we humans haven’t used plastic plates in years. I think I should look into getting him some Corelle plates in a pattern that we know belongs to him. Some stores sell Corelle by the dish, so I wouldn’t have to buy a whole set. But in the meantime, since none of his meals are heated and he wolfs his raw meals down within minutes of them hitting the plate (no joke), I believe the plastic poses a minimal threat to him. I swear I have never seen that cat eat so fast since switching to raw, he’s crazy about his meals! He’s gone from Mr. Picky, only eating half of his meals over hours with a mouthful here and there, to practically turning back-flips at mealtimes and inhaling his food- he doesn’t walk away until he’s eaten it all.
I am keeping my mini 1/4-cup liquid measuring cups until I can afford to get the mini glass measuring cups to replace them. I will only use cold liquids in them until I can save up and replace them.
My big mixing bowls also stay until I can afford more stainless bowls that stack. Because I do so much bulk cooking and filming, a lot of bowls are a must.
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I think pint-sized mason jars are much less likely to break than regular glasses as the glass is just much thicker.
For short-term food storage in the fridge or on the counter, my compromise is square Pyrex containers with plastic lids. At least the lids don’t touch the food.
I’ve never found anything good for freezer storage though. Glass randomly breaks in the freezer, even when you leave space at the top of each jar. Plus, I really hate mason jars in the freezer, I like square containers to make the most of storage space.
I have a huge pile of square pint and quart sized plastic containers with the same size lids, and it’s not even a compromise, but the only thing that seems reasonable given that I might have 50-100 containers in the freezer at once depending on how much broth I’ve made, sales on bulk ground meat, and large amounts of fresh produce to put up.
I’d like an alternative for that, but given that I need so many and the glass randomly breaks, I’m not sure what works.
We have used pint sized mason jars and a few 4 oz ones for drinking for years. Once I switched back to “real” glasses but they broke easily and I regretted doing that and we are back to the jars. I love these jars because not only are they good for drinking but you can also use them for storage in the fridge if the quart sized is too big! I also have a couple of the squatty 4 oz masons too. Sometimes having this shape lends itself well to some things.
For freezer, I have used pyrex storage bowls. The lid is plastic though. Don’t know how to get around this. I still am using ziplocks though. I freeze so much and i cannot imagine possibly having enough of those storage bowls. And also, you can’t squeeze the air out. I honestly don’t know what to replace these with. They really are the only plastic left we have in the kitchen.
My absolute favorite FAVORITE possession I own, (pretty much) is my glass drinking straws. The kids LOVE drinking out of straws and I was always buying large packages of plastic straws. And then finding them all over the house, yard etc. So I bought a set of just 4 glass drinking straws and amazingly enough this solved the whole problem. AND the kids like them better! And four is all we need! We have had them for a few years and only had one break. They come with a lifetime guarantee. http://www.glassdharma.com. We bought the iced tea size 8″. We have found that these work well for all of our uses!!
Thank you, Megan! I’ve been looking into the straws, because I have two strawaholics. I’ll take a look at those.