Our spring cleaning has turned into a complete household overhaul. We’re trying to cut our clutter and find greener solutions to some of our activities. So here’s three things we’re doing to Reduce-Recycle-Reuse.

Thing 1- Dry Erase Boards
One of the #1 things you can do to help a young child and autistic kids is help them know what to expect. I keep a planner, but when you throw in my to do list and notes and other things my planner is just too “busy” for the kids We started with a cheap calendar that we’d write school holidays and days off work and big events on, things that directly affected the kids. Last summer we purchased a dry erase monthly schedule board. This works very well. It helps keep Jason informed of events (It’s right by the bedroom light switch so it’s in easy sight whenever someone is going in or out of the room.) and my son can read it. (This morning he told me that Field Day was Friday, because he read it off the calendar.) Note for parents with kids who can’t read yet: You can draw pictures on it too. A cake for a birthday, a tree for Christmas, a car for a trip. Explain what the picture means and they’ll remember.

We also made schedule sheets out of colored card stock decorated with stickers and laminated. (Scrapbooking supplies are really good for kid crafts. They feel real special when they get to use Mommy’s special supplies, which in my case are often dollar store stickers or stamps. often also bought at the dollar store.) We’re a little less used to using the daily schedules, but they are useful for special events. they’re portable and easily changeable so we could take them on trips, to parties, etc. Plus because they’re laminated they’ll last much longer than a plain old sheet of paper. (FYI I paid $3 for the package of multicolored card stock meant for scrapbooking, about 100 sheets. The laminator was $30, the sheets were $7 for 25 of them and the stickers I bought 4 packages of 100 stickers for $1 each at the dollar store.)

We keep smaller dry erase boards for notes that I bought at a discount store for $3. I also just bought two of these for our summer “school stuff”. It’s a two sided dry erase board. One side is blank white, the other is printed with lines like on kindergarten paper. They are thick and strong (they aren’t going to bend or break under normal, even rough use) and the size of a large hardback picture book. They were $4 each.

Thing 2- Milk Crate Bookshelves
This week is junk week and I have to admit I’m one of those people that eyes the junk piles for salvageables. Last night Jason and I found (among other things) three cube cubby organizers a little dirty, but with the labels (and price tags) still on. see, around here people move (or get kicked out) and leave things behind. Landlords toss everything out meaning on junk day you can find some good stuff that was left behind. (It amazes me how many people throw books away!)

Milk crates might not be quite as nice as the Walmart organizer crates but they are easy to find, easy to clean, and last darn near forever. I’m not sure if they get recycled or anything normally. I see a whole lot of them on junk day and dumped in alleys. We grabbed some and are building bookcases/ shelves in closets. In my bedroom there’s a built in drawer/shelf/closet space. Here’s how it looks now (I’m not finished sorting and organizing yet). Sure it’s not gorgeous, but I’m going to cover it with a curtain anyway so it just needs to be functional. It already looks a lot neater than it did when all those binders and notebooks were crunched onto the small bookshelf. Anything that lets you put books, notebooks and binders spine out instead on laying on their backs helps.

Thing 3- Shredded Paper
My sarlacc is probably the best purchase we’ve made this year. We bought it for important document disposal. Then I decided to cut paper clutter and shredded many old copies of stories and novels. Now, about a month later anything paper gets fed to the sarlacc. Flyers, ads, junk mail, paper from packaging, news paper, catalogs, note paper, magazines (not fiction magazines, ones like TIME and Scientific American, ones that we pick up for one article. We keep the article and shred the rest.)

The shreds have so far gone here.

I am rather pleased with how well it’s working, and how much money it’s saved in mulch. I’ve saved about six grocery bags of it so far and soon it will be going over my veggies too (with a layer of straw on top).

If I have extra then we’re going to try making our own paper or paper mache.