From cleaning up messes to wrapping up leftovers and going grocery shopping, having kids can lead to a lot of garbage. If you’re looking for ways to help your family produce less waste, I’ve found some great eco-friendly solutions that don’t sacrifice style or quality.

Think of all of the stuff you throw away in a typical day.

There’s the plastic straw you stick into your smoothie on the way out the door. Or the disposable cup you grab at the local coffee shop. There are the flimsy plastic bags you shoved some fruit into at the grocery store to corral them in your cart and the giant wad of paper towels you used to mop up that juice spill. There are also all of those layers of packaging for individually wrapped items and the cotton balls you used to scrub the mascara from under your bleary eyes at the end of the day. And that’s just you!

A whole family can create a ton of garbage in a single day. It’s crazy if you start to really think about how many things we throw away. And while I’m not suggesting we all run out and plan to become zero waste familyies, I do think there are some simple changes we all could make to produce less waste.

I took to Etsy to find some creative—and really freaking pretty—products that can help us all be just a little bit more eco-friendly.

Shelf styling tips from an actual expert (as opposed to someone who just spent too much time browsing Pinterest. 😉 )

“Wait, what if I move this right here?” I tap my chin, unsatisfied with the newly decorated shelf that stares back at me. The house is empty, but I’m counting on the universe to answer my shelving questions. No matter what I do, it doesn’t look right.

Whenever I try my hand at shelf styling, it looks like I’m trying too hard. I become obsessive about spacing and symmetry and making everything just so, completely forgetting that I like things that are imperfect. They’re so much more interesting and a million times more real.

In the end, I usually throw my hands in the air and spend the next six hours browsing Pinterest for help (which sometimes results in shelf decorating ideas posts).

All of this is ridiculous considering the fact that my sister is an interior designer. She’s really, really good at this stuff. Yet here I am, talking to my shelf.

I decided to pick my sister’s brain a little to get some of her top shelf decorating tips and tricks so that next time maybe I won’t struggle so much. Be sure to read all the way to the bottom for a free printable shelf styling checklist.

I received a Savor Keepsake Box for review, but all opinions are my own.

My husband loves it when I leave piles of paper on the dining room table.

OK. That’s a lie. I can actually see every muscle in his body tense up when he notices my (super organized) piles. In my defense, kids produce a lot of paperwork. There are all of the forms and important reminders that come from school (that’s one pile). There are the worksheets (another pile) and then all of the artwork and the little notes and all of the cards and mementos from special occasions (like that time they made those really cute tickets for the dance performance they never got around to staging).

I don’t save all of them. There are some things that I quietly slide into the recycling bin (only to act completely bewildered when they’re fished out and presented to me by an insulted-looking child). Can you imagine if you saved every single piece of paper your kid doodled on? You would be buried in that shit. Still, I’m a totally sentimental mush and I save a lot.

The problem? I don’t exactly have a system for saving my kids’ keepsakes—unless waiting until my piles are so big that even I’m sick of them and/or my husband loses his shit over them so I dump them into a big Rubbermaid bin in the basement is a system. I mean, at least I have a large bin labeled for each kid, right?

But when we went to the New York Baby Show a few months ago, I met one of the owners of Savor, a keepsake storage system that makes it a million times easier (and prettier!) to organize childhood memories.

The plight of the second child, man. My little one has spent most her life living around her big sister’s whims. From being dragged to each and every occasion her sister has participated in since her birth (and being expected to nap nicely and cooperate while doing so) to the layout and decor of their shared bedroom, Ellie has always been expected to sort of go with the flow. And, don’t get me wrong—she’s good at it. But once in awhile, you have to throw a girl a bone.

As she gets closer to the end of her kindergarten year, Ellie has started standing her ground a little more. She’ll still tear up and play the baby card any chance she gets, but she’s starting to show signs of liking things a certain way (like the three separate piles of Fancy Nancy books lying in the middle of the floor in their room)—and she’ll fight to keep them that way.

To give her a little space of her own in the midst of their big-sister-dominated shared stuff, I teamed up with The Baby Cubby to create a small, simple kids reading nook where she can practice her brand-new reading skills.

On a typical day, my microwave is disgusting. We’re talking completely splattered with caked on gunk that I try really hard not to think about because how do you even begin to clean that crap up? Except I don’t feel that way anymore. At least, not since I stumbled upon my new absolute favorite cleaning trick of all time.

Let me get really real for a second by showing you the actual level of grossness I’m talking about, so you don’t think I’m being dramatic or pretending a little soup spill is my definition of gross.