Simplifying

So I read this great article about this family in California, that has taken simplifying their home and life to the extreme, but in a great way! They are all about refuse, reduce, reuse, then recycle. I love her thinking and everything she is doing in her home and family to live more simply and stop all the garbage from ending up in the landfill.  Anyways you will have to check out her blog to see what I am talking about. She has a video or two, that basically explain it all, or most of it.
zerowastehome.blogspot.com
Well, this got me and my husband started on our own home, and how we were living. So we have started to take some small steps towards simplifying our home and lives. Knowing that this could be a huge undertaking, we are taking it one day at a time, but truly are already starting to feel lighter;) Let me be the first to say that we know that at this time in our lives we are pretty sure that it would be more stressful for us to try to be a zero waste home, but we are striving to be a reduced waste home.
Here are just a few things we have done or are in the process of doing.
   *I made my own produce and bulk shopping bags, out of fabric I already had laying around.
   *We are now shopping in the bulk section of the grocery store, and basically trying to not buy anything in packaging.
   *We are going to a local farm and buying organic raw milk and eggs.
   *We are trying not to purchase anything plastic, or packaged in plastic. (this, turns out can be very
     difficult).
   *We are trying to store our bulk items in glass jars.
   *We have little by little gone through our house and gotten rid of a lot of unneeded stuff.
   *We went through our closets and dressers and only kept a named amount of each item.
   *I am going to try making all of my own household cleaners.
   * I made my own laundry soap
   *We are ripping all of our CD's to our computer and selling our CD's. (sorry Will:)
   * I am making several of our kitchen staples...such as bread, and yogurt.
That is all I can think of currently, I am sure I am missing something. This is an ongoing, growing list. But honestly it has been fun trying to figure out better ways to purchase items, or ways to eliminate them completely.
I would like to challenge you to give even just one thing a try. Every little bit helps. And we all know that in this crazy complicated world we are living in we all could use a little simple in our day to day lives.