5 Ways To Celebrate Earth Day At Home

There are a bunch of chains that want to help you celebrate too. Our list of Earth Day Freebies And Deals has all the best ones.

Save your toilet paper rolls for crafts

We’ve been saving our toilet paper rolls for years so that I can use them for crafts. Then, when we have little kids over and they get bored, I pull out some paints and toilet paper rolls and do crafts with them.

That’s a great way to keep kids entertained and a way to keep toilet paper rolls out of the garbage.

You can save paper towel rolls and wrapping paper rolls for this same reason too.

If you want to be inspired, you can check out our list of 10+ Crafts Using Toilet Paper Rolls and see some of the crafts that we’ve done in the past.

You can also save cans from soups to make crafts as well. We’ve used those to make crafts like our upcycled tin can pumpkins and our football-shaped utensil holders.

And, I actually save the plastic containers button mushrooms come in to turn into Easter baskets for my parents every year.

I’m a huge fan of upcycle crafts, so honestly, anything that I can upcycle instead of throwing away is going to get saved.

Use reusable bottles instead of disposable cups

I hate disposable cups. If we’re having a party, we’ll break out a pack of disposable cups because it just makes for an easier cleanup. But, for every day home use, I refuse to buy disposable cups.

Instead, I carry a reusable water bottle around with me and refill that whenever I’m thirsty.

So, if you and your family are in the habit of using disposable cups and tossing them after every drink, pick up a reusable bottle for every member. They come in a variety of colors, so everyone can have their own color. That way, no one will be mixing and matching drinks.

Even better, some coffee shops will give you a discount if you use your own reusable mug, so that’s definitely a great way to save the Earth and save your hard earned money.

Plant some seeds

Earth Day isn’t completely about recycling. It’s also a good time to sit down with your family and talk about the Earth, how things grow, sustainability, and how what we do today can affect things that happen tomorrow.

And that’s not always a doom and gloom conversation.

Start with seeds.

Plantable seed paper is a really fun way to teach kids about how they can have a positive impact on the future.

Grab a pot and some soil and plant a seed card. Use that as a great way to explain how the seeds, and the seed card look like nothing now, but when you keep watering it and caring for it, it’ll bloom.

Tie that to the Earth and how if we keep nurturing it and doing our part now, that will affect the Earth in the future.

It’s a good lesson, plus this is a good way to grow some flowers for your home.

Start a garden

If you’ve been meaning to start a garden, but haven’t had the time to sit down and do it, Earth Day is a fantastic day to start.

The third week in April may be a little late to start planting outdoors depending on what growing zone you live in, but It’s always a good time to start a windowsill garden.

I actually bought Pete a trio of hydroponic herbs to start when we first moved into our house. They started as mason jars on our kitchen windowsill and we eventually planted them in our backyard garden.

Right now, we have a windowsill tomato garden going. The brand that makes our windowsill tomato garden actually makes a ton of kits, mostly geared towards kids (in my opinion). In the kit, you have everything you need, except water. The kits come with seeds, soil, fertilizer, plus the container to grow in.

The windowsill tomato garden is great because it will grow for a full season and if you take care of it, you can actually keep it going for quite a while. The other kits are basically “one and done.” Once you’ve grown the mushrooms or microgreens, they won’t regrow.

Regrow your food scraps

I have a habit of “experimenting” in the kitchen. I just want to put every food scrap in water and see if it will grow. Sometimes that flops (like when I tried to regrow asparagus) and sometimes that works (like when I tried to regrow green onions and haven’t had to buy those for years).

So while you’re making dinner on Earth Day, be conscious of what you’re making and find a way to turn kitchen scraps into a windowsill garden.

The easiest food to regrow from scraps is green onions. Cut them for dinner and have your kids set them into water. By the time bedtime rolls around, these will have already started growing. It’s crazy and happens every time, but I’m always shocked when it happens.

If you buy romaine lettuce, you can cut the bottom and regrow lettuce from scraps although that does take a while and won’t be any instant gratification. And you can sprout an avocado tree from the pit too, but that takes a while and isn’t always successful.

So if you want a lesson from tonight’s dinner, go with the green onions.