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TGIF. Or, rather… TGITD. “Thank God it’s Trash Day.”
It’s time to analyze my work. I went around the house to find all the places where we throw trash away. (Wow, I never paid attention to how many there were.)
I have three bathrooms. And what a bad job I have done there. My small bathroom cans are full of recyclables — toothpaste boxes, new razor packaging, empty toilet paper rolls, an empty shampoo bottle, an empty disinfectant wipes canister, etc. (Eww, what’s that? Okay some stuff should be there.)
In my office, my waste can is overflowing, but it’s all paper that I can dump in my recycle box. And I knew that as I continued to put paper in it all week. (I admit it. I’m a tree killer. As an editor, I need to read the printed page. It really does helps to catch mistakes. I don’t know if I’ll ever resolve that one, but at least I can recycle pages that I don’t have to file. I can also pull out the sheets that are blank or nearly blank for my grandchildren to color on when they visit.) My shredder is also full, but that, too, can be recycled. (I shred the parts of junk mail that contain offers of credit, and those stupid blank checks that credit card companies keep sending. I get so much junk mail and so many blank checks; I do wish they’d stop sending them. I don’t even read junk mail; it goes right into the shredder!)
My husband’s office contains our only printer, so he has a lot of paper in his trash can too — mostly blank and crinkled paper-jam pages. (I work from home, so he gets the printer in HIS office?? How did we work that one out?)
Hubby has a bar room where we watch the Phillies kick @$$ every night and entertain on Friday’s. Hubby also reads the paper down there. He has a very large trash barrel in the room, but I’ve been paying attention. I placed one of the recycle bins and a “paper” box over in the laundry room. The newspapers go right into the paper box. We drink a lot of canned and bottled drinks; I drink diet gingerale and Tropicana Light Lemonade, and he drinks Pepsi and some kinid of flavored water. Then there’s beer and empty liquor bottles from Friday nights. We often order out on Fridays and use paper plates, which can go in the paper box. I’ve been setting all the bottles and cans aside for rinsing to go right into the recycle bin in the laundry room. (Everything gets rinsed before it goes in the can. I HATE anything that has more legs than my cat and have no wish to attract them.)
I’m reminded of my laundry room (nearly forgot that one.) I pull out the empty laundry soap bottles and all that’s left are dryer lint and fabric softener sheets. I don’t think either of those are recyclable. (Note to self: Start using liquid fabric softener and find out if dryer lint is biodegradable.)
Oh yes, I also have a cat. And a litter box. Cat litter is not recyclable, but my Mom said if you spread used cat litter around your garden, it’ll keep out the rabbits and other critters. That’s fine in the summer (and I’m sure it’s not a thing you do every week) but I live in the Northeast. What about the rest of the year?
Now the kitchen. Here, I think, is where I had the greatest success. After five days, my kitchen can is only half full. This is huge in that I would have taken the trash out at least twice before recycling. What DID make it to the can? Well, a lot of nasty stuff and garbage. I don’t have a garbage disposal, and have been after Hubby to install one. But then I hear about all the garbage you CAN’T put into a garbage disposal and it seems disappointing. No banana peels? No orange peels? No onion peels? No egg shells? The peels make up most of my garbage! (Well… up until I clean out my fridge from old leftovers. That’s when I really feel the pain of having no garbage disposal.)
My recycle bins are encouragingly full and ready to go tomorrow morning. (I’ve chosen Saturday to be my “recycle run” day. The nearby landfill has public recycle drop-off bins and they open the gates at 6 a.m., so I can go as early as I want.)
I still question some of the items in my recycle bins. I made sure nothing plastic entered the can — not even plastic wrap whether from packaging or my own roll. But are they really recyclable? Tomorrow, I’ll pay attention to what other people bring to the recycle center and report back if I’m doing anything wrong.
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