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JunkJanuary 20, 2007 This past month I've been congratulating myself for managing to sell a saddle I hadn't used in years and to give away all the components of my recently retired computer. I generate maybe one 32-gallon barrel of trash every five or six weeks, which the town takes away for a $4 fee, along with a similar volume of recyclable plastics, glass, metal, cardboard, and paper, which the town takes away for free. My last move was almost 100% accomplished by six runs with a short-bed pickup (the late great Tesah Toyota), and the impending one will probably involve about the same amount of stuff (long live Uhura Mazda). Allie's stuff would probably account for most of another load, but at the moment she has no plans to move. By worldwide standards this is a lot; by U.S. standards not so much. Sometimes I pat myself on the back for my "waste not, want not" habit; most of the time it seems too much a function of low disposable income, the uncertainties of Vineyard living (I moved eight times my first three years here, and though the pace has slowed considerably it still works out to every other year), and the fact that most of the things I want most can't be bought and don't take up space. The horse is a conspicuous exception to this, but it's also thanks to her that I have so little money to spend on gewgaws and froufrou that would eventually end up in a 32-gallon trash barrel. Not all trash goes out in 32-gallon barrels, however. There's a dumpster currently sitting in the front yard. It's been filled up and dumped at least five times in the last two days; the current load is topped by an upside-down sleep sofa. My landlady and landlord, assisted by a crew whose numbers have fluctuated from two to six, have been cleaning out the downstairs apartment occupied till earlier this month by their daughter, and along with it the basement, which was filled with her castoffs and even more stuff brought in by her alcoholic ex-boyfriend, who hung around on and off most of the time she was living here. Plenty of it was junk, but enough was useful, or potentially useful, furniture. That spent about 24 hours on the lawn with a FREE sign on it, then whatever was left was broken up and loaded in the dumpster. Until yesterday the upside-down sleep sofa was in my apartment, right side up. It wasn't mine and I didn't want to keep (which is to say "move") it, so several of us managed to get it around the corner, down the stairs, and into the dumpster. I am keeping, however, a couple of end tables and a bureau that didn't use to be mine but are now. My conscientious and frugal self protests -- but that stuff could be useful to somebody! -- while my equally conscientious and practical self remembers how much time and energy it took to dispose of one saddle and two boxes of computer components that wouldn't have occupied more than a small corner of the dumpster. Getting rid of the stuff has taken barely three days; sorting through it all and recycling the useful stuff could easily have taken several weeks. There's a moral in there somewhere, or at least a point: recycling advocates say that we, meaning those who think of ourselves as responsible consumers and disposers, are pretty good at two of the three R's: reuse and recycle. What we're not so good at is the first and most important R: reduce. Don't buy the stuff in the first place and you won't need to worry about reusing, recycling, or dumping it. Meanwhile -- about an hour ago I started a load of laundry in the nearly empty basement. Nearly all of what's left down there is mine, and most of it's empty boxes. I did spot a set of left-behind flatware in a zip-lock bag -- it's considerably sturdier than what I've got, so maybe I can keep it. Being your basic conscientious energy-conserving sort, I always hang my wash out on the line. Looking out my bathroom window after first light I noticed that the line was still there. What I didn't notice till I'd started the washer was that the blue and white striped bag of clothespins that used to hang in the middle of it was gone. At the bottom of the dumpster, probably, if not gone in an earlier load. Fortunately the hardware store will be open shortly, and maybe the grocery store -- which opened at 8 a.m. -- carries clothespins?
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