Growing Mr. Scrubby

Kitchen Scrubbies are useful but they wear out. Plastic mesh bags are annoying because they're too small to reuse as a shopping bag, and they're probably non-biodegradable, but they are common packaging for some food items, such as elephant garlic and apples from our favorite farmer's market. What do these items have in common?

This week's Change The World Wednesday challenge is

"...collect your garbage rather than toss it out. Continue to compost and recycle, but rather than take your bag of "real" garbage to the dumpster or put it out for collection ... keep it. At the end of the week, take a look at how much you've collected and consider ways to reduce it...."

This is a really good idea, but I needed to adapt it to our little apartment. In the spirit of "consider[ing] ways to reduce" my garbage, I analyzed each item we trashed. The very first thing I saw was a mesh bag that seemed obviously useful for something, but what?  It wasn't bulkly enough to be a scrubby, so (thinking of the world's largest rubber-band ball)
I tried accumulating these mesh bags around a scrubby. Maybe I'll grow the World's Largest Scrubby!

As you can see, Mr. Scrubby (to be formal) is coming along nicely. Doesn't he look natty with the kitchen sink plug topper? All he needs is spats and a stickpin!

Savings Analysis: Growing Mr. Scrubby is not going to make you rich (...unless you really do grow The World's Largest Scrubby, but remember: There Can Be Only One!) but it is a small improvement in garbage output and a tiny savings of money, in exchange for almost no labor at all.

Besides, it's good cheap fun ... and good clean fun!