Seeds and Junk Mail - Some Things Were Meant to Be Saved

I've reached that magical age at which I am the recipient of a lot of unwanted mail from organizations that cater to people of a certain age.

At the moment, AARP is very interested in my being a member.  I am not as interested in joining as they seem to be to have me.  Every few weeks, I receive another solicitation from them. 

It's a lot of wasted paper, and we all know how I feel about waste.

So, I thought, there must be something I can do to make less waste - other than throwing it in my wood stove.

On a related note (it's related ... I swear!) ...

We don't buy a lot of fresh vegetables during the winter.  My goal is to grow my own and/or purchase local, in season produce, and preserve it.  There are a lot of vegetables that are eaten from a can (well, a jar) in my house during the winter.  Tomato sauce, pickles, and corn are jarred up and on my pantry shelves.  I also make sauerkraut, and some things are put into the freezer, like broccoli and peppers.

Occasionally, however, we purchase some fresh produce, for a specific meal - like steak sandwiches with peppers and onions.

And for this treat, I will purchase an organic green pepper from the grocery store.

Thing is, those peppers are just full of seeds, and as organic produce, those seeds are likely to be viable. 

So, I like to save them.  Even if I don't end up using them this spring, knowing that I have them means I won't purchase a packet of seeds.  I've saved $2 from keeping something that might have ended up in the compost pile - not that compost is a bad thing.

Back to all that AARP mail ... and you can probably guess where this is going.

Good ole AARP includes a return envelope with their mailing.  They want to make as easy as possible for me to join their club.

And those lovely little envelopes are just perfect for storing those organic pepper seeds.

I particularly like the request in the bottom corner to "please recycle."  

Of course, we all know that reusing is much better than "recycling", especially these days, when we don't know if our recycling is actually being "recycled."  

Do what you can with what you have where you are.  

Pepper seeds from organic peppers saved in envelopes from junk mail.  That seems like a good use of time and resources.

What did you save today?