Stuff

It's no secret that most of us have too much stuff.  Americans spend, roughly, a quarter of their incomes on consumer goods - clothing; shoes; jewelry; dining room tables, appliances, mattresses, new counter tops, couches; sheets, towels, and table cloths; ice skates, skis, sneakers; lawn mowers, hedge clippers, patio furniture; toys; books; musical instruments; the headphones my daughter is wearing and the cellphone she is holding while I type this. 

We spend a lot of time and energy and money accumulating stuff, much of which ends up donated to some organization, like Goodwill, or thrown into a landfill when we can't figure out what to do with it, but just know it can't stay in our homes any longer.  The clutter problem is real for most of us.  Studies have proven that clutter is actually bad for us . 

Decluttering has become the new catch-phrase and gurus, like Marie Kondo, have gained an almost cult following with their advice on how to cut the crap.  Marie's specific advice is to get rid of anything that doesn't "spark joy."

While I agree, mostly, with what she says, what concerns me is that there really is no "away", is there?  We throw it in the garbage, and most of us don't have to worry about it anymore, but someone does, right? 

I live a couple of miles from a former trash incinerator.  The idea is perfect, in my opinion.  The company gets paid to remove folks' trash.  Then, they bring the trash back to their facility, sort out anything that can not be safely burned, and then, burn the rest to create electricity.  Awesome, right?!  Unfortunately, the smell was too much, and the sorting wasn't careful enough to ensure that things like, batteries, weren't being put into the incinerators and causing air pollution.

Landfills are also a poor answer to the problem of trash.  Basically a landfill is a big hole.  The garbage - now, just take a second to think of what YOU put in the garbage - is dumped into the hole.  When the hole gets too full, it's topped with soil and grass ... and maybe trees or something, but underneath that lovely "nature" facade is your trash. 

We see lots and lots of stuff about garbage that will take centuries to decompose.  Landfills make the decomposition phase even slower, because the holes are lined with clay to keep contaminates out of groundwater (yay!), but what that means is that some of that stuff could be dug up by your grandchildren's grandchildren, and still be intact. 

That's a nice image, right?

I once had this (somewhat emphatic) discussion with a woman I knew.  I was very proud of myself at the time, because I was very much into recycling.  I didn't buy products with packaging that couldn't be recycled.  Or at least I tried very hard.  If it could be recycled, it went in the recycling.

Unfortunately, I was wrong.  Very wrong.  We are all wrong to think that we can just throw our stuff in those blue bins and something wonderful happens.

I don't recall exactly what she said, and it took me a few years to understand what she was trying to tell me. 

The answer is not recycling, as we are shown in this article

Recycling is okay - as a last resort.  Better is to reuse or repurpose.  So, instead of buying olives in a recyclable plastic container, I should buy olives in a container that I can reuse.  Over the years I've thought about what she said.  Now, when I purchase pre-packaged spaghetti sauce, for instance, I buy the brand that is in jars that can be reused as canning jars (with new lids, but the spaghetti sauce jar lids can be reused for bulk, dry good storage.  So, win-win). 

Better, of course, is to not use a container at all, but we'll spend some time chatting about that later.

My goal has been to reduce my trash AND my recycling.

But also to reduce the amount of stuff I just bring into my home in general.  So, instead of automatically running to the store anytime I need something new, I take some time to look around my house to see if I might have something I could make different to satisfy whatever need I have. 

Which brings us to now.  For the next year, my goal will be to share, at least once a week, something we have repurposed with a how-to of what we did, and what need it filled. 

Welcome to our journey!  Please feel free to comment and share your stories.   




The Story of Stuff shows us that when we're done with that "stuff", too often it has no where to go.  It's a great little film, definitely worth the twenty minutes to watch it.