No waste Easter egg hunt

For those of you with kids, are you tired of stepping on the plastic eggs your kids have strewn around your house? Thanks to my mother in law for this awesome idea: Save your plastic eggs to reuse year after year. Collect them all up today before they get stepped on and broken. Put them in a small box in your attic to use again next year.

These are the eggs that she has now used for about 30 years! How special to fill the same eggs for her grandkids that she filled for her own kids!

Now, they are still made out of plastic, so if you don’t have any, I do not recommend going out and buying any new. No need to drill for new oil just to make your eggs (plus the plastic ones will become brittle eventually and will then break!). Thrift stores often have plastic ones for sale before Easter and you could pick up some used ones there. Or you could buy wooden ones to reuse year after year such as these painted ones or these unpainted ones.

Also, no need to buy new Easter baskets every year. After letting your kids play with them for a week or two, put the baskets away with the eggs to come out again next year. This will make them a special tradition for your kids to look forward to each Easter!

For the plastic green grass…do I really need to say anything about it? It gets everywhere and is terrible. I even had a kid in my office this week with it stuck deep in his ear. Not fun at all! Just skip it. Use strips of recycled green paper if you feel that your kid will have a bad childhood without fake grass in their Easter basket.

As for what to put in the eggs, skip the cheap plastic toys. They just break easily and make your kid(s) cry! From a health perspective, I was so thankful to my mother in law for filling them with healthy snacks like raisins, blueberries, and crackers (and a $1 bill each!). It was great fun letting them eat everything in their eggs right then instead of having to worry about limiting how much they ate and saving some for later.

From a zero-waste perspective, it’s easy to go to the bulk bins with a few smaller containers and get treats your kids will love. EarthFare has lots of candy in the bulk bins.

To put both the healthy and zero-waste worlds together, go to Whole Foods and fill some containers with raisins, nuts, granola, banana chips and maybe a few chocolate chips (or go to EarthFare, but they don’t have raisins in the bulk bins). Your kids will love it, I promise!

Here are our girls enjoying their Easter baskets after the hunt. 🙂