Wanna know how Philip and I have saved roughly $1500 on average every year and instead put it towards TRAVEL?

Everyone always wants to know how we can afford to travel. Well, we are smart and don’t spend where it’s not needed.

In our household and business, we had already made the switch to no chemicals in our home. We are now working on becoming a package free home and business (this can be hard friends). Here’s how I’ve changed my mindset… we are ALREADY purchasing “things” so why not purchase the same “things” but that make a positive difference in our environment. Or purchase “things” that we don’t ever have to purchase again because they are safe to reuse, better for our wallet, better for the planet.

It was as simple no brainer! It’s a simple lifestyle switch and reprogramming our brains to make smarter purchases for our household needs.

Here are some of our favorite things we’ve switched to to save both the Earth, and our pocket books.

Glass straws vs plastic straws. According to NPS, the USA uses 500 MILLION plastic straws a day!

Dog poop bags made from corn and plant starches vs plastic dog poop bags. “It’s pretty well established that plastic bags are a major source of waste that inflames the Earth’s tremendous plastic trash problem. In the U.S. alone, 14 billion plastic bags are consumed annually. When these bags escape into the environment, they can have devastating effects on wildlife, especially marine animals like whales and sea turtles.” – HuffPost.com

Dropps Laundry & Dish Soap. There is a Global Plastic Pollution Crisis as we know. “Traditional liquid laundry detergents are usually packaged in high density polyethylene. 68% of these bottles are not recycled and contribute to the approximately 275 metric tons of plastic waste that goes into our oceans and waterways annually. Our innovative recyclable, compostable, and repulpable product packaging doubles as the shipping container. Way less space and waste. There is also no unnecessary chemicals: Free of dyes, chlorine, phosphates, enzymes, optical brighteners.” – Dropps.com

Reusable Cloth Diapers (our favs from Bum Genius and Flip Diapers) & 100% Biodegradable & Compostable Disposable Diapers vs throw away away diapers. Bamboo baby diapers are the most eco-friendly solution to disposable baby diapers because bamboo is a material that’s naturally biodegradable, antibacterial, antifungal, and breathable. Philip and I have done the math. I hope it’s correct after checking a ton of times.

• • For an average Pampers box of diapers from Walmart: $40 = 150 pack (for sizes newborn to 20 lbs)
  • That’s $.27 per diaper
  • We did the math from our guy at 24 months
  • 24 months = roughly 730 days
  • 730 days x our babes average 8 diapers a day = roughy 5,840 diapers in 2 years
  • 5,840 diapers x $.27 per diaper = $1,576,80 (But for 3 years – 1095 days = 8,760 diapers. 8640 x $.27 = $2365.20 WE SAVED FROM USING CLOTH DIAPERS. < That is a pretty killer trip to go on instead!)

• • We spent an average of $300 on cloth diapers. I included the cost of the ones that were donated to us too so it was more realistic + $25 for 10 liners on FB Marketplace. You can find about 30 for $100 an average on FB Marketplace used. Just wash thoroughly before use. (Total spent $325)
  • We have about 45-50 liners and 45-50 outsides. These diapers are one size fits all with lots of snaps all over the front so you can make them bigger as your little one grows up until they’re potty trained. We also purchased a couple of waterproof diapers bags on Amazon for pretty cheap but we also use them for swim suits and wet items when traveling.

Reusable Cloth bags & Produce bags vs single use plastic bags at the store. Plastic bag statistics as noted in #2.

Local Soap Refill Stations refilling in reusable glass jars vs buying from big stores with single use plastic containers. “Since the 1950s, 8.3 billion metric tons of plastics have been produced, and half of that in the past 15 years alone. We produce 300 million tons of plastic each year worldwide, half of which is for single-use items. That’s nearly equivalent to the weight of the entire human population. But a whopping 91 percent of all plastic isn’t recycled at all.” –NRDC.org

Reusable Water Bottles vs plastic bottles.  SUPER simple ways to save you money and saving the environment!

According to Earthday.com: “The average American buys an ave. of 167 disposable plastic water bottles, costing you $266 a year. Want to cut the costs? With our ave. life span soaring to 80 years old, you could theoretically save $17,290 in your lifetime with a reusable water bottle. Also, when you save a dollar, you save around a quarter of that water bottle’s volume worth of petroleum. That’s how much it takes to produce each disposable plastic bottle. It’s estimated that 17 million barrels of oil, which could fuel up to 100,000 cars, are needed to supply the demand of water bottles worldwide. But with all the bottles we buy, a low average of 23% of plastics are recycled each year. The rest ends up in our oceans, landfills, and communities-polluting the environment and killing thousands of fish, dolphins, whales,  turtles and birds every year. It is estimated that 10-20 million tons of plastic ends up in our oceans every year, costing up to $13 billion a year in losses from damage to the marine ecosystems, clean-up costs, financial losses to fisheries and ocean-based tourism.

Reusable Sandwich, Containers & Storage Bags vs ZipLock Bags. Do I even need to give more plastic statistics?

Menstrual Cups by Lunette. Who would’ve thought. Seriously! I didn’t. And then I saw this statistic somewhere and about flipped. According to Google: “Thus, during your fertile years, period-related detritus should make up about 0.5 percent of your personal landfill load. The average woman uses about 240 tampons each year, or 9,600 over her lifetime.” Another super simple way we can SAVE MONEY! These fully reusable and sustainable period cups by Lunette are amazing. These are comfortable, safe, odorless, and eco-friendly period for up to 12 hours a day. Easy to clean and lasting for several years, instead of throwing thousands and thousands of pad AND tampons in the landfills over just ONE woman’s life time. BPA and chemical free with the highest standards, testing and love.

Hippo Sak Trash Bags instead of plastic bags.  The ONLY trash bag made from plants. They use sugar cane instead of fossil fuel to produce these bags, which reduces their carbon footprint. “Take out the trash, without trashing the planet!” YES PLEASE! They also made compostable bags, bags from 100% recycled plastic from the ocean, super tall bags and loads more. They currently hold over 100 patents on their products and are all made in the USA.

Many of these items can be found on one of our favorite websites called Package Free or for Kansas City families, check out the Soap Refill Station who carries a lot of these items.

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