I'm not sure which was the biggest, but there have been quite a few over the years.
- Using cloth diapers for my children. Most of the diapers I got used and when my children outgrew them, they were passed on to others.
- We also stopped using paper towels or paper napkins a couple of decades ago.
- As much as we can, we get food from the bulk section of the grocery store, bringing our own bags. And, of course, bringing our own cloth bags for most any shopping.
- We have two composting bins -one with red wigglers and one without. A lot goes in those, including papers and cardboard.
- We use only our own stainless steel water bottles when we go on hikes, etc.
- When taking our dogs for a walk and picking up after them, I use bags that I fished out of the supermarket's "recycling" container where people bring their used plastic supermarket bags (which I am pretty sure cannot be recycled - so I like to give them one more use before they go in the landfill).
- And the latest change we made was stopping the use of toilet paper. We use toilet wipes now which I made by cutting up two towels into 5" squares as well as cutting some of those into 2.5" squares, and sewing the edges to stop fraying. The small squares are for females using the toilet. No need to use the big pieces when only needing to wipe some pee drips. The larger wipes are really only for drying since with our new system we also got a hand held sprayer that gets hung on the toilet tank. Awesome system! Next to the toilet we have a small swing-top garbage container where all the used wipes go into. Even the family that stayed for a week over Christmas used the new system (although they didn't have to - I put the toilet paper back out for them so they'd have a choice), and were very impressed. The wipes get kept on top of the toilet tank in a basket the size of which is almost perfect for it all. Here is a picture of our newest change showing everything, including the sprayer hanging on the tank on the left side of the toilet tank.
- And, oh yes, another very small change we made is to no longer use ear swabs. We use some sort of thin cotton something we have around, instead, to simply dry the ears after showering.