You think YOUR family is green?

I grew up in a family that didn't waste anything.

We reused plastic and ziploc bags until they literally fell apart. We washed "disposable" plates and utensils over and over again. We never ever used paper napkins, even when eating something extraordinarly messy, like spaghetti or sloppy joes. I'm not exaggerating. I have stories, many of them.

Here's one of the weirder ones. True story. When my little sister was in high school, some of her friends TP'd our house. And they got us good, too. They must have used, like, 34 rolls of toilet paper.

So first, my dad decided to be funny. We live on the block next to an elementary school so a lot of people walk by our house every day. He hung a big sign on one of the trees along the sidewalk that said "First of the year toilet paper. You pick."

Very funny, dad.

So after a few days, he took down all the toilet paper. He gathered it up in some plastic bags. But then guess what he did with the bags of toilet paper. Did he dispose of it, like a normal person? No. He placed a plastic bag full of toilet paper next to the toilet in the downstairs bathroom. Uh huh. My parents actually wanted us to USE the toilet paper that had previously decorated our trees. And they did.

All of us kids used the upstairs bathroom for the next few months.

(Love you, mom and dad.)