Earth Day is on April the 22nd. I wasn’t sure what to post for this occasion, but while hunting through my desk drawer for a bit of paper, I came across these note pads, and thought they would fit the bill perfectly!
My grandma was married and raising a young family near the end of the ‘Dirty Thirties’ on a farm in Saskatchewan, Canada. So she learned how to make ends meet and use everything to its full potential and not waste. I think have picked up many of these traits from her as a child when we lived only two doors away in the city. One of these little ways of saving money and using what you have, is to make your own note pads.
In today’s society, even though the use of computers and electronics is supposed to cut down on paper, it seems there is more paper around than ever before. At one time The Island of Ireland was almost all forested. Now, most of it is used for farming and there are only small pockets of ‘woods’. We tried to do our part last spring and plant some trees for the Queen’s Jubilee, but we’ve read in the news this week that 24,000 of them will be destroyed due to ash dieback disease. Even while there are efforts to replant some woodland, it will take decades for them to grow. This will be a good lesson for our children to watch these little saplings grow and see how long it takes to grow one tree, and how little is made from that one tree.
Rather than spending hard-earned cash on a notepad, my grandma would make her own little note pads. She would use the back sides of unprinted newspapers, advertisements, or anything else that could be used for the purpose. One day while seeing what was going into our recycle bin, I noticed that there were a lot of papers that only had writing on one side of them, be they notes from notebook, or business letters through the post, or children’s scribblings where they don’t like to use the back side of the paper. I still like to write lists; I’m always writing lists-groceries, what needs to be done, who I need to write to, ideas about blogs, things the kids say, etc, etc, etc! Notebooks are getting pricey, so I thought I would make some good old-fashioned scratch pads like Grandma used to do.
Of course, I also inherited some of her craftiness, so I have made a few variations and prettified them up (but of course using items sitting around our home that were looking for a purpose).
I started by gathering all the paper that could be used for some note pads.
I used the side of a ruler to tear it into pieces the same size.
For the basic book I simply took a stack of these papers and stapled them together.
For my craftier scratch pads I did the following:
I made a nice cover page using a mis-print from the pc.
I made a pad with some thicker paper and punched a hole in the corner and held the pages together with an o-ring. These will be good to use for learning activities. I will write blog post about one of these at a later date.
I used the hole-punch to make two holes through the tops of the papers and used fancy brad-clips to hold them together (Save the brads after the paper is gone and you can re-use them again).
I again used the hole-punch on the tops of these pages and then used a little raffia to tie them together.
Now we have a fresh supply of note pads to use. We have them scattered throughout our home; by the telephone, on the desk, near the bed for those late-night ideas, and the children have fun using them, too!
If you like recycling, we have also made Bunny Baskets, Wall Hanging games, a flannel board, and a bird feeder.
If you enjoyed listening to Daria after my last review, you can hear her free earthday song here.
Or have a browse through our Frugal Living page for more ideas being added.
What will you be doing to help save the earth’s resources (and your pocketbook) this year?
