Mum. In moderation: Stop. Start. Continue; Beginning the simple life journey

My boss is a huge fan on the "Stop. Start. Continue." method of evaluation. After 10 years working with him it sticks in my head, even though I'm on maternity leave.

I thought it would be helpful to start the blog off by evaluating where we are now, the changes we have recently made, and those things we will continue doing that fit with the simple life philosophy. Hopefully I'll be able to look back in a few years and see how far we've come (fingers crossed!).

I've been documenting the changes we've been making towards the simple life on Facebook and Instagram for a few months, so here's a summary:

Stop

These are things we have made a conscious effort to stop doing. We don't get it right 100% of the time, but by paying attention to them, we are definitely doing better:

Relying so heavily on plastic;

We've invested in some glass and stainless steel food containers, but we still need to build up our stash.
Everyone now has a stainless steel water bottle except the baby. We take them everywhere instead of buying water or using plastic bottles. I even bought my mum one for Mothers' Day. I need to look into what options are available for non-plastic sippy cups.
We use containers for leftovers and frozen food about 90% of the time instead of single use glad wrap.
I've made small tulle bags for fruit & veg shopping instead of using the single use plastic ones from the supermarket

Wasting food;

Leftover are portioned up for lunch the next day, incorporated into another meal or frozen;
Vege peelings are saved to make stock and then fed to the worms.
Fruit peelings, egg shells and tea bags are fed to the worms

Start

These are new things we've started doing fairly recently since making a conscious effort to live more simply:

Started a worm farm
Using glass and stainless steel storage containers
Switched to reusable knitted cotton dishcloths instead of disposable, plastic derived cloths
Switched to 100% renewable energy for electricity
Learned to make stock (learned probably isn't the right word since it's really not hard!)
Meal planning
Recycling soft plastic packaging; I'm embarrassed to admit that until fairly recently I didn't realise things like pasta, frozen veg and biscuit packets could be recycled via "REDcycling" at many supermarkets. Find out what can be recycled via this program and drop off locations here: http://redcycle.net.au/redcycle/redcycle-news
Switched to online billing for our gas, electricity and phones to save paper waste
Meat-free Monday dinners; learning new vegetarian recipes!
Switched to more natural beauty products (loving Sukin products)
Switched to "Who Gives a Crap" toilet paper; made from recycled paper and 50% of profits go towards building sanitation where it's needed. Check it out here: http://au.whogivesacrap.org/
Storing water for emergencies