Forward Planning... Should I Just Plan to Fail?

So yesterday was your average Saturday if you have kids... hockey final, school fair, ballet x2. Three children at four events at different times, and some of them at the same event, but at different times, and also some of their friends are commuting with me, and at one time, one of mine commuting with someone else. The Man is away, the minivan gets a workout, and so does my poor brain.

We did pretty well, considering. We only forgot the ballet bag, which I had to go back for, but luckily when I was swinging past the house anyway. Rosy was only five minutes late for ballet, which was, I think, a win in the circumstances.

However, in concentrating on one thing, our schedule, which is all my brain can cope with, the environment lucked out a little, which brings me to the point of this post.

It takes Planning with a capital P to drive less, make less rubbish, use less plastic. And that is not my forte. To wit: I had left the eight year old with The Girl at the fair while I watched Rosy's hockey game. Posy appeared, beaming, laden with three giant plastic bags loaded with plastic tat that she had bought with her pocket money. Glow sticks, plastic slurpee cups, tiny plastic toys. Aargh! At least the show bag from the fire service was all paper, with paper colouring books, and a cardboard fire engine money box to make. Well done CFS. And I bought some backyard chicken eggs from the CFS people as well, as a fundraiser. That's a plus.

There was lots of food in plastic and paper containers, and no recycling bins in sight. I bought a cup of tea from my lovely daughter at the cake stall in a paper cup. Then I bought a side of locally farmed lamb. 7kg of lamb in a cardboard box, wrapped in one big plastic bag. OK, it was a plastic bag, but really, very little wrapping for that much meat.

Until I got home, and realised I had nothing to store 7kgs of lamb in the freezer, except in plastic bags. Oh no. So now I have a freezer full of meat in plastic. Sigh.

But failing is good in that we learn from our mistakes, right? So, here is my plan. I need to keep a reusable cup or two in car. I've asked the next door neighbour to save ice cream containers for me so I have a stack to store unexpected largesse in the fridge or freezer. I'd like to find some sort of container that I can get take away food in, that maybe sort of looks nice too. Maybe something in stainless steel?

I need to talk more to the children about what they are buying, whether they do need 'stuff' and about what their 'stuff' is made of. The lucky dip, at least, was packaged in plain paper bags. And face painting didn't produce any rubbish. It would have been so much better to steer Posy towards spending money on the bouncy castle or pony rides..

If I was the sort of person who didn't prefer to gnaw her arms off rather than sit in a meeting, I could get on the school fair committee and have the conversation about reusing and recycling...