#2 LOOK IN THE BASKET
Look in your trash can and choose one frequent trash item to remove from your life.
Since there are two of us + one little helper at home, we decided to go straight for the two most common things you'd find in our basket. The first is paper towels, which in my opinion are one of the most useless pieces of trash and I admit that using them was (at least in our case) about laziness - tear, wipe and throw away. We started eliminating them from our lives over a month ago and I think we're succeeding. We haven't had any in our home since then (which is definitely the key to success and minimizes any temptation :-)) and I've set aside old cloth wipes for wiping up spills, the painted kids' table and adjacent furniture, and all the other such things that I'm sure families with kids are familiar with, and they serve very well for something like this. It works, we don't have a problem with it, and I'm not even considering going back to paper towels. One piece of trash that's completely unnecessary in the trash, and removing it doesn't have to be such a pain :-)
The other garbage that was in our house was my husband's choice, and that was baked goods. Sometimes there were just too many pastries bought and not eaten while they were still soft. And maybe some of you know this - you go to the store, pick up some rolls, some bread, and maybe a good-looking piece of pastry, and then the next day, or the third day, or the next day at home, you find that the pastry is getting hard and you didn't get a chance to eat it all. Plus you're really craving some fresh and crispy ones :-) Not so long ago I used to bake bread at home and it always got eaten whole.
Unfortunately, I've been struggling a bit with time lately, so the only solution for us is that we have to be more thoughtful in our purchases. We shop more at the bakery, where you think about what you ask for rather than mindlessly scooping all sorts of things into your cart. And we've also managed to cut down on our baked goods purchases overall, which is definitely a plus. Right now, I can't think of the last time any ended up in the basket. It just happens sometimes that you buy bread in the morning, then in the afternoon after work you go to the store and don't buy bread because you remember the fresh bread from the morning and then at home you find out that what was in the morning may not be in the evening and someone took care of the bread during the day :-D On the other hand, a gluten-free dinner is never a bad thing :-D
What I find interesting is the project of an American photographer who asked his friends and neighbours to keep their rubbish for a week and then photograph it. You can see the photos here.
When people see it like that in front of them, it must make them think and realise how much waste they actually produce and that they could do something about it. Even though this was not the primary aim of the project.
And how are you doing with the garbage? What is your most frequent garbage?