My daughter was born with some health problems, then her 3-year-old brother had some and before you knew it her first year of life was slowly going by as a busy time for our family. I mean busier than regular harried new baby stuff like never sleeping or showering, feeding, and doing (completely stupid!) separate laundry batches with special detergent.
Somewhere during that first month of her life we learned that we could save time by using paper plates. My mother brought over 150 small paper plates from a warehouse store thinking it might be a good idea for us to have around, never realizing that we would embrace our new life with paper plates with an unmatched zeal.
Clean up was a cinch and there was no loading and unloading the dishwasher every single day.
A typical day of dishes for us includes 10-12 plates in various sizes, 28 cups and glasses, every single spoon in the house plus other silverware, a couple of pans, a jar that we are cleaning out to recycle (yes, I see the insanity in this; using resources to recycle something) and a few bowls.
Before anyone gets all in my face about us contributing to the landfill situation, we still recycled what we could and we figured the plates were biodegradable – eventually – and saved on water anyway so we’d be even at the end of the year.
I don’t know. Is it more efficient and cost-cutting to use paper plates and lower use of detergent and water? Or is it better to wash it all and use energy, water and cleaners that go into our sewer systems? I’m sure there is a report somewhere that states these facts but you won’t find a link here today. Plus, we just can’t think about the environment every second.
We decided after about a year the kids had the right to eat off real plates like real little children. We were also worried about their reaction to breakable plates in public so we started weaving them into our meals. Slowly we introduced them to plastic, then ceramic and recently they ate off the good china! These children! So trainable!
While we were avid paper plate consumers we drew the line at silverware and cups though. I mean really, we have standards!
About Julia Roberts
Brilliant! I think as long as you use true PAPER plates…something like Chinet…instead of the plastic kind, it’s not so bad.
Yes! True paper plates! We were at least thinking about the environment a little bit. :)
Twitter Name: juliaroberts1
I love paper plates! Especially since my dishwasher needs replacing and I don’t have the bucks to get a new one right now. I do use real plates sometimes. Since I’m here by myself most of the week, I go with paper when I can.
Twitter Name: Joanie Mack
Well see… you have a good (financial) reason to use paper plates! I was just extremely lazy.
Twitter Name: juliaroberts1
We also began using paper plates when my daughter was born, she’s now 3.5 . Doing the dishes is my least favorite chore, so we avoid it at all costs. We use paper plates and plastic cups. Between the pots and pans, silverware and endless amounts of my son’s bottles and daughter’s sippy cups the sink is still astonishingly full all the dang time.
Using the plastic cups also helps with the fact that apparently no one who ever eats at my house can properly use a glass cup with out breaking it.
Twitter Name: unknwndreamer
Well, I’m with you on the glasses! My kids are 9 and 11 and I JUST got a complete set of glasses in May…three are already broken.
Twitter Name: juliaroberts1
There’s no shame in that! Besides the cost of sanity alone with worth it!
doh! *is* worth it! lol… Clearly – I am not sane today!
Isn’t it though? Next stop at a big warehouse store…I’m buying 150 of them!
Twitter Name: juliaroberts1
I also used paper plates right after my second was born for about 3-4 months. I care a lot about the environment, but I’m not sure if we’ll be sane if we do everything the “right” way ALL the time, if that makes sense. So, yes. Paper plates? Awesome.
Twitter Name: Faiqa
I do feel like I make up for in in what I do make my family recycle.
Twitter Name: juliaroberts1
We use paper plates a lot. And disposable cups, too. When we used washable cups all the time, the top shelf of my dishwasher always filled up way before the bottom did, meaning I had to either handwash a ton of cups or run a washer that wasn’t full (neither being an appealing water-saving concept). I also buy plastic cutlery, although I usually wash it. It takes up less space in the drawer and using plastic spoons in lunch boxes (we eat a lot of yogurt) means I am less upset if one gets tossed.
Twitter Name: MamaKaren
Ah! The top shelf problem! I’m thinking about giving everyone ONE cup for the day with their name on it to solve that problem…
Twitter Name: juliaroberts1
I would probably have considered paper plates if I were in your situation. The water use vs. landfill question is a tough one. We use cloth diapers with our twins, and I wonder if we’re offsetting our lightened landfill impact by doing 4-5 extra loads of wash each week. We have friends who are hard-to-the-core environmentalists who went with disposables because they thought water was a more pressing concern here in SoCal. Really, it doesn’t seem like there’s much way to raise kids without fucking up the environment. Good times!
Yes! One way or another we’re going to leave a footprint. Or in our case, several footprints. When you figure out the landfill vs. water issue, let me know!
And um, bless you on the cloth diapers…we did that too.
Twitter Name: juliaroberts1
whatever involves the least effort imaginable is what works for me