The converters cost about $5, you only need to buy one. It lets you refill your Lamy Safari from a bottle of ink, rather than wasting all those cartridges.

I just sat down to refill my Safari, and realized I'd forgot to mention the converter in my earlier comment!

(These days I'm smitten with Pelikan Brilliant Black.)

Congratulations on ending your second year, especially with only a third of the first years tally. My second year is also well below the first so far. The beauty is that waste only goes one way as we find better alternatives for more and more items of waste.

Over here with the current PFI funded EfW push, an answer to it is – if you do not have waste, they cannot burn it!

I know a lot of people get worried about buying a $100 pen, because they’re afraid they will lose it. At $25.00, it’s not the end of the world if it goes missing.

We are doing pretty good at our house. We use Charlie's laundry soap that comes in a cloth bag and I asked them to leave out the plastic scoop. It did have a little plastic tie at the top of the bag though. I wonder if I can get Taylor to change that out. I tried the soap nuts but doesn't work well on really dirty clothes.

I have had success asking vendors to use no plastic packing materials. I've also made suggestions to companies about using paper packing tape.

Like you, I am still going through products purchased a while back. I want to do another tally in a couple of months.

The best stain removers that I've found (as the mother of two preschoolers) are hydrogen perioxide and Dr. Bronner's 18-in-1 liguid soap. Haven't tried the bar soap yet. I keep the liquid soap diluted to right strength for hand washing so the little ones just need to rinse when finished washing their hands. The peppermint is great for cleaning up stinky messes — somehow the peppermint smell drowns out the nasty smells.

As you can tell we are not as far along the less plastic life as you are.

We use Frontline as well because otherwise our poor dog would be covered with ticks. Forty plus years of being a lawn and we have as many ticks as the average untended woodland. We must check ourselves and the human children every time we are outside.

–Ave