The typical green scouring pads are what we used to use for cleaning the dishes. In the new attempt to remove disposable items from our house, specifically plastic ones, these green pads are gone. In their place are the new green scrubbers in our life.

These little knitted numbers are 100% cotton making them incredibly durable and incredibly absorbent. They work just as well as the old ones and don't scratch up all the pans. The best part is that at a price of $1.79 for 120 yards you can knit up three compared to spending over a dollar a piece on Scotch Brite. I've also found that they last longer than the plastic ones because they don't wear down to a smooth green blob like the others tend to.

The pattern is incredibly simple and even a beginning knitter can handle creating these scouring pads. As long as you can knit and purl, you're set! I use Lily's Sugar 'n' Cream yarn, but any 100 percent cotton will due. Ours are Lily 'n' Cream Lime (now known as Hot Green).

The pattern for our scouring pads was derived from one posted at Little House in the Suburbs. However, there's is a bit more on the pretty side, whereas I wanted ours to be significantly more durable. So there has been a bit of tweeking, a few more added scrubbers, some size altering, etc.

You will need 1 skein of 100% cotton yarn. 2 size 5 knitting needles and 1 double pointed size 6 needle.

At first, I was a bit nervous about the mention of a cabling needle. Cabling is significantly above my skill level and quite a bit intimidating. Not only that, I didn't even own a cabling needle. So, some testing out of options and a bit of trial and error led me to using one double pointed size 6 needle instead. However, you can use any object that is long and skinny like a knitting needle - pencil, pen, marker, hair pin, piece of doweling - but seems to work best if the object is about six inches long. All you basically need is something to hold the stitches for a bit.


The instructions on making a scrubber are below the pattern.

Cast on 29 stitches.
Knit a complete row
Purl a complete row
Knit 5 stitches, create a scrubber, knit 5 more stitches, create scrubber...continue till the end of the row.
Purl a row.
Knit 1 stitch, create a scrubber, knit 5 more stitches, create scrubber, knit 5 more, scrubber....till the end (you should be left with a one stitch remaining after the last scrubber.)
Purl a row.
Knit 5 stitches, create scrubber, knit 5 more stitches, create scrubber....continue till the end.
Purl a Row.
Knit 1 stitch, create scrubber, knit 5 more stitches, create scrubber, knit 5 more, scrubber...till the end.
Purl a row.

The pattern basically entails knitting one row, purling one row, knitting, purling, etc. On the knitted rows you alternate between knitting in five stitches before starting to make scrubbers and knitting in 1 stitch. There are always five knitted stitches between each scrubber. You should never be making scrubbers on a purled row.

Making a scrubber:

The scrubbers are places where yarn has been wrapped around three stitches and then the stitches are knitted, leaving sort of a bubble of yarn over the top.

This effect is created by transferring three stitches onto the double pointed needle. You don't need to knit them, just slide them over onto the double pointed needle.

Next wrap the yarn around the double pointed needle (and the three stitches) counter clockwise somewhere around five to seven times. Wrap the yarn so that it fits nice and snuggly, but don't try to strangle the stitches.

Now, knit the three stitches off of the double pointed needle one by one. Continue knitting five more stitches and repeat the process.



What you should have when you are done are nice rows of scrubbers alternating across your scouring pad.

Being cotton you can re-wash them over and over in the laundry whenever they begin to get ooky or smelly, and they store well in the drawer along with all the other dishcloths. Voila! Homemade scouring pads, without the plastic or the landfill!

...Yes, I realize my excitement makes me a nerd...

Garage saling this summer led Jules and I to quite the irresistible box of Pyrex dishes. They were avocado green and white to match the refrigerator in the kitchen beautifully. There were nice little flowers printed on them and a very vintage feel. The absolute greatest part is that there were only two pieces missing from having 3 complete sets of dishware (with lids!) and the entire price was a whopping 10 dollars. Now, at the time, both Jules and I realized this was something to purchase. What we didn't realize was how extreme the complete amazement of what we had stumbled upon. After much internet research, it is now apparent that the dishes are the Spring Blossom Green (Crazy Daisy) vintage Pyrex. They are the original 1972 printings, not the later reruns, and their condition is amazing! Said bowls now sport themselves proudly in the open air cabinets of our kitchen and have become normal dinner attire for the table.

The greatness of Pyrex was slightly known to me before these bowls but has now become incredibly clear. After almost 40 years of use, these bowls still look fabulous. Their durability is second to none. They can live well in the refrigerator or the oven, and have marvelous clean up quality. By this I mean that they can go from creating lasagna on the counter to in the refrigerator for later cooking, into the oven to bake, onto the table to eat, and then back into the refrigerator as leftovers and the only dishes that have been dirtied are two! This eliminates the need for refrigerator Tupperware as we now just store the items in the original baking dishes, and the lids remove the need for Saran wrap or aluminum foil.

The removal of a couple more items from our monthly grocery list is nicely helpful for our budget, but it also got me interested in a the life of many of these plastic wonders that once were lived without. Sixty years ago glass refrigerator dishes, or multi-use dishware were a normal phenomenon not stirring up any wonder. There was no Saran Wrap until the 1950's.

Even more, where does it all go when we are done with it? Being a single use disposable product, a small ball of Saran Wrap or aluminum foil doesn't look like much, but everyone uses it so regularly there must be quite a bit wandering around landfills. This now ubiquitous product is renowned for its ability to be impervious to both air and water, so how could it break down?

Such pondering questions drove me further into the Internet only to discover that the final resting place of much of the world's plastic is closer than I realized. Below is a picture of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.


This jar contains ocean water floating in a soup of plastic bits and non-biodegradable debris. In the jar the plastics can settle to the bottom, however, in the oceans the turbidity is too high. The plastic particulates float about causing a consistency of soupy Alfredo sauce. The Pacific Ocean has become one of the largest garbage heaps in the world due to the way ocean currents flow and the amount of plastic usage now prevalent in the world. This mixture of the world's plastics, which have been degraded into soupy consistency, is at its smallest twice the size of Texas and at its largest twice the size of the continental U.S., and resides between California, Hawaii and Japan. It may not look like as much as it sounds, but unfortunately, the trash is no longer a floating eyesore of plastic bottles, bags, and miscellaneous large debris. The plastics have been broken into small enough bits to create particulate matter in the waters which look like food for animals and fish, culminating in a consistency which is much more dangerous. Marine trash (90 percent of it plastic) is killing a million seabirds and 100,000 sea mammals and sea turtles ever year. Dutch scientists have found on average 30 pieces of plastic in the stomach of seagulls. This is problematic as plastic is a magnet for PCB's and DDT in the oceans and is working its way up the food chain.

Information acquired from: http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2004/06/63699

Plastic has taken on a new persona in our house. It may be cheap, but the cost has many externalities which are unforeseen. Jules still uses plastic GladWare to take lunches to and from work, because we cannot seem to find anything else which transports as well. He does however have an entire file cabinet filled with glass jars of soup, fruit, and other lunchtime favorites as a back-up if leftovers are forgotten.

What has begun with some garage sale (and now a bit of eBay) Pyrex, has moved into quite another realm in our house. Slowly but surely, I hope to become as disposable (and plastic) free as possible.