Green Your Kitchen

Written by Colleen Donnelly for Your Daily Thread

When it comes to green savvy, your kitchen space is totally dialed in. You are, after all, a die-hard Your Daily Thread reader. From upgrading to energy efficient appliances to ditching plastic for glass and abandoning toxic chemicals for natural cleaners, you have the basics down pat. But what about those not-so-obvious tricks?  Here’s our list of five creative ways to green your kitchen.

• Wrap it Up. Forget your reusable bags again? It’s OK—we all do one time or another. When you do, opt for the grocer’s paper bags and reuse them to wrap hostess gifts in replace of wrapping paper, instantly update potted plants with an organic touch or as an inexpensive replacement to parchment paper for baking purposes. Just stick to temps below 450 degrees.  Otherwise, your oven will be up in flames.
• Get Uncorked. What better excuse to drink organic wine than an art project? Save the landfills and create a DIY cork board made of old wine corks for an artsy way to post recipes, goals, save-the-dates and pics of the fam and friends.
• Liquor’s Second Life. Well done! You’ve polished off that wine for the cork board project. Reuse your empty wine and liquor bottles as vases to deck out your dining room table. Originality is key here so who cares if they don’t match? Mix and mingle the sizes and shapes and you’ll make Nate Berkus so proud!
• Coffee Grounds to the Rescue! Garlic and onion stinkin’ up your cutting board and hands? Step away from the soap, which has been known to clog our sewers. Instead, give everything a good rub with your morning coffee grounds. Not only do the grounds cut the stubborn scent, they’re biodegradable, too! Add the rest of your used grounds to your indoor/outdoor plants or compost (sparingly—no more than twice per month) to give them the beneficial nitrogen they need to grow strong and hearty. Beats fertilizer any day.
• Farewell Fruit Flies. You love summer. But what you don’t love are the pesky fruit flies who invade your kitchen space when the weather warms up. Get rid of them naturally by mixing a little apple cider vinegar with organic hand soap. The flies are attracted to the sweetness of the vinegar but get trapped in the soap bubbles. We know—it might sound a tad merciless—but it’s better than finding a fly in your salad.

Now go—get crafty and have some good old-fashioned, clean green fun!