Save, Donate or Toss?
"But Wait! Maybe we can use that!"
Yesterday I did something I have never done before - I called a local sanitation business to order a dumpster. Yep, I did that. It was one of the hardest calls I have made in my life. Seriously. The Harris O’Brien household has never had our garbage picked up; we've always been proud of our occasional trip to the landfill and our commitment to recycle, reuse and repurpose.
Sanitation is a cleaner, more sterile word than garbage, but the reality is we, as all other humans, have generated garbage over our lifetime. Oh, you can call some of it collectables, but really a lot of it is just plain trash. The fact is, our lifetime of material goods needs attending to as we prepare to move into a smaller home. We have been adverse to the throw away society we live in but we must come to grips with our leftovers.
Our abhorrence of landfills and the mountains of garbage that inhabit our planet has driven us to seek alternative ways to avoid the dreadful trip to the landfill. Bottles and cans go to the recycler where we collect our five cents per item; the iron around the farm goes to the iron recycler where we collect a check for the tonnage we deliver; soft plastic goes in a special bin to be made into fence posts and park benches. Composting has been a part of our entire farm and married life.
“But wait! We can probably use that for something.” says Larry as I try to get rid of an old toothless rake.
"We can't keep this and it is too worn out to donate to a thrift store or put on Craigslist, what are we gonna do?" "Call the garbage man and order a dumpster." "Oh no, we can't do that!"
Years ago when the iron price was around $200/ton, I loaded up a few trailer and pick up loads to haul into the iron salvage man. The extra cash came in handy when I was unemployed. Larry swears I loaded a good hydraulic pump that winter; one that had been replaced on our 560 International years before. To this day he is still obsessed with that loss.
“I was planning on using it for something.” he said as I rolled my eyes.
The move is from 2500 sq ft to 1100 sq ft - we have occupied the larger house as a family for forty three years. Our life has been committed to reuse, repurpose and recycle but even that is a fallacy. Headlines are filled with stories about nano plastics that have permanently entered every corner of the earth and every cell in our bodies.
Purging our life’s possessions will be helpful to our children; they won’t have the task of sorting once we have passed on to the other side. It will also save them from the embarrassment of finding things that they would rather not see.
Rarely do we buy brand new items, thrift stores are our go to source for clothing and household items. The Habitat for Humanity Re-store is our favorite shopping place for re-purposed home improvement items; windows, doors, sinks and such. Craig's list is handy as well.
The reality is not everything we use or purchase can be used again. We cannot avoid a trip to the relay station to dump our trash and then have it transported to a site outside of our county. You see, our landfill has leaks and the residents of the county cannot keep dumping there. So what happens? It gets carted off to another place for them to deal with. No see, no hear, no smell.
We have a barn full of stuff that needs to be removed from our homestead. We can't keep storing things to avoid a landfill trip. The reality is that we cannot continue to keep on keeping things.
We are not hoarders although there are a couple of narrow pathways through the 60’ x 60’ barn where we have to maneuver through the bicycles, political signs and stored farm implements. Some are items that are hard to part with but we must get rid of them!
Bill Steele wrote the lyrics for the song Garbage in 1969, a great year btw. The song was released about the time of the first Earth Day in April 1970. It became an environmental anthem. Our family sang it once in a while especially when we saw lots of garbage along the road. It is appropriate today and even more so.
Pete Seeger singing Garbage, garbage, garbage
Here is a refrain that resonates today:
“In Mister Thompson's factory, they're making plastic Christmas trees
Complete with silver tinsel and a geodesic stand
The plastic's mixed in giant vats from some conglomeration
That's been piped from deep within the earth or strip-mined from the land
And if you question anything, they say, "Why, don't you see?
It's absolutely needed for the economy," oh
Oh, Garbage! Garbage! Garbage! Garbage!
There stocks and their bonds - all garbage!
Garbage! Garbage! Garbage! Garbage!
What will they do when their system goes to smash
There's no value to their cash”
“I was planning on using it for something.” he said as I rolled my eyes.
Oh can I relate to this! We are not moving, at least not yet, but we both 'accumulate' things and some of it has got to go! We've spent the last couple years working through the things my mom no longer needs now that she is in memory care, and I'm slowly uncovering all of the stuff of ours that was here all along. I've become an expert on where to repurpose things like clothes, useable household items, knick-knacks, furniture--there are good consignment stores and many charitable places here. I'm working on finding archives for some of my paper--so much paper!!! And family things are being redistributed to cousins and nieces and nephews, although are only willing to take a few bits. SO then, what about the clothes I've always thought I might mend (we can only use so many rags....), the torn jeans, the hundred empty jars, the wood and fabric that would make such good art material.......I know you know!!! I am trying out someplace called Trashie that will sell you bags to fill with things they say they will recycle--I'll let you know how that turns out. Bless us all for trying to do our best for the planet.