Opry Waste Land

I’ve stowed away on a business trip with my hubby to Nashville. Having a blast – cowboys who play guitars are my thing. When not frequenting the Honky Tonks on Broadway, I’ve been using the time to write. I’m finding a quiet hotel room divinely inspirational, especially when I didn’t pay for it. Getting some good stuff written and catching up on all the blogs I profess to follow.

It’s all good, but I must say that I’m horrified at the collective waste of the average American traveler. That would be me this morning. The picture posted shows our breakfast table. By-passing the fancy dining room (the bill might give away my stowaway status on the T&E report), we opted for breakfast at the hotel coffee bar. I did carry in my own tea made in the room (with no option other than a paper cup because my travel mug is too big for the one cup machine), but there was no way around the rest of the plastic and paper waste if we wanted to eat.

We each ordered a little egg mcmuffin-like sandwich. Both came thoroughly over-microwaved in their own plastic encasement that could have held six mcmuffins rather than just the weenie one. We also ordered some fresh fruit to share. It came with a huge plastic coffin too. Add to that the plastic water bottle for the water my hubby ordered, the paper napkins, and then the biggest waste of all – a thick cardboard tray to carry our delicacies the twenty feet or so to our table.

All that crazy waste and I’m just one unofficial resident at the hotel. The other seven thousand or so (we’re staying at Gaylord Opryland – it is HUGE), certainly created plenty of waste themselves. And beyond that number are all the other hotels in Nashville and beyond. Why are we allowed to do this? When the majority of the earth’s population struggle to put food on the table, we throw away what must be hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of containers, plastic utensils, paper cups, and napkins just for breakfast! The magnitude of this waste overwhelms me this morning. 

How Many Catalogs Does One Person Need?

How many catalogs do you recycle each day? My mailbox is laden with unwanted catalogs. It’s rare that I ever buy anything from any of them, but they do waste plenty of my time. I hate to count the hours I’ve spent leafing through their glossy pages fantasizing about buying lots of things I will never buy. Sometimes I even circle things and choose colors and sizes. As if. The catalogs float around on the counter for a few days and eventually end up in the recycling. I’ve tried several websites that are supposed to do away with junk mail, but still the catalogs come. Not anymore!

I’ve discovered a website called http://www.catalogchoice.org/ that allows me to opt out of catalogs I don’t want to receive. And Catalogchoice has extracted commitments from these companies to honor my choices. Not every catalog I would like to do away with is listed on Catalogchoice, but most are. In fact, there are catalogs I’ve never even dreamed of listed. And therein lies the danger. As I’m combing the list for catalogs to cancel, I can’t help but notice all the catalogs with intriguing titles. Of course not only does Catalogchoice assist you in canceling catalogs, they will also be happy to hook you up with some new ones. So there is this incredible temptation to find out just what they sell in the Bliss catalog. And what constitutes a Boundless Journey? Just what does a person buy from Handsome Rewards? If you’re not careful canceling catalogs with catalogchoice could be counter productive. Who can resist requesting a catalog called Long Elephant Legs? What do they sell? I have to know.

Some of the companies don’t make it easy for you to cancel. They force you to go to their website or send an e-mail from your own mailbox instead of catalogchoice’s. But the nice part is the website tells you exactly how to get off just about any company’s list. When you choose to stop the catalog, they ask you to click on a reason. Your options include: prefer not to answer (this way you won’t hurt their feelings), prefer shopping online (I worried that this would be a greenlight for said company to swamp my e-mail), no interest in these products (slam!), I want to help the environment (I hide behind this one mostly), and other (but no space to write - ‘because I think your products are overpriced and unnecessary’).

Another great feature that some companies offer is to choose how often you’d like to receive their catalog. Some offer the option of receiving the catalog just once per season or year, etc. Not all of them offer this, apparently. My husband likes getting his Crutchfield catalog so he can dream about all the electronics he could have if he didn’t have children, but the Crutchfield catalog comes just about every month and it would have been nice to change that to once or twice a year. Not an option, so I just nixed it all together (sorry honey!).

I stopped browsing the catalog choices at about the L’s (what’s a Lobstergram? I think I'd like one.) because it was getting too hard to resist wasting even more of my time investigating what they sell in Make Life Easier or Wild Horsefeathers catalogs. Now I’m simply making a pile of catalogs as they arrive in my mailbox and then going to Catalogchoice and searching for each specific catalog and canceling it. Catalogchoice even has a system for complaining if a catalog continues to be delivered to you. Brilliant website and I’m sure someone is making a buck or two from it even if it is a dot-org. I don’t know enough about how they track our activities online, but I bet there’s a kickback or two when someone discovers Bounty Hunter catalog while trying to cancel their Brookstone catalog.

Just today I got confirmation from several companies that they had canceled my catalog subscription so I know that Catalogchoice is not just a schuckster trying to lure me in to even more catalog options, which I suppose is still possible. Hopefully in the end I’ll cancel more than I’ll request. Check out http://www.catalogchoice.org/ and lighten your own load – less paper to be recycled and less stuff to fill your life and longings.

I Knew I Was Saving Those Bricks For Something...

I knew I was saving those bricks for something. Seven years ago, when we tore out an old brick patio, I painstakingly hauled each brick up the hill to the barn and stacked them carefully and artfully behind the barn. My husband shook his head. His plan had been to toss them in the back of the truck, haul them to the woods, and dump them there where they could rot for all eternity, if bricks rot. But I insisted they were useful and that maybe I would use them someday to lay a brick aisle way in the barn. He humored me but didn’t help haul the bricks to the barn. I did that myself, using a wheelbarrow.

Since then the bricks have found a few uses. They’ve held down plastic tarps covering machinery or hay. They’ve been experimented upon by two small boys wondering just how hard you have to throw the bricks at the barn wall to actually break one. And the chickens have made good use of them as a place to roost in the sun or get out of the wet or snow covered grass. I mostly forgot about them along with my fantasy of laying a brick aisle way in my constantly flooding barn.

But this weekend I found a purpose for them. I’m always on the lookout for new places to tuck in another garden. Last spring my daughter planted Jolly Jester marigolds all around one sunny corner of the barn. Those marigolds thrived. So much so that they spread themselves a good six feet out away from the barn in a perfect semi-circle. Last weekend when I finally cut down their dying stalks, the ground that was uncovered was barren – no grass left. What else can you do with such ground but plant a new garden?? No, I’m not a fan of grass seed.

The only complication was that the nice neat semi-circle is on a hill, like pretty much every piece of ground on our property. When I informed my husband of my plan he told me I’d need a wall to contain the garden or it would just wash away down the hill. I didn’t point out to him that the marigolds never washed away. In fact, they were pretty difficult to remove from their spot.

Saturday morning, I lugged several bags of newspapers up to the barn to lay the basis of my new garden. My plan was to lasagna garden the whole spot so that the soil would be rich and ready for my new salsa garden come spring time. I had visions of tomatillos, cilantro, and a gazillion new types peppers. But as I stared at the space, I had to concede that my husband might be right (don’t tell!). It is a pretty hilly spot. So I fed the horses and pondered what to do. I still didn’t know what to do, so I began the nasty chore of cleaning out the chicken pen. It’s really the only downside of chickens. Of course the manure collected from this nasty chore makes wonderful fertilizer. As I laid my broom against the huge stack of bricks next to the chicken coop, I had my eureka moment! The bricks! They’ve needed a purpose beyond stoking my guilt and supporting soggy chickens for 7 years! So I began hauling them once again.

I laid out a beautifully shaped garden using the bricks. I was not deterred by the absence of mortar or a mason. I once dry-stacked a beautiful stone wall that still contains our strawberries, lilacs, and mint, so I’m pretty confident in my ability to build a sturdy wall in to the hillside. My neighbor’s 150 year old farm house is built completely on a dry stack stone foundation.

For now my husband is going along with this, but he’s not yet convinced of my plan. For sure one of us will be thinking “I told you so,” by spring. My new brick wall is only two layers high so far, but as I fill in with dirt, manure, wood ash, leaves and whatever else I can find, I’ll build the wall up with more bricks.

There’s nothing wrong with holding on to useful things. Some people call it hoarding, but those people are simply not very creative. Sure, it’s a pain to store all this useful stuff, but in the end it’s worth the pain. And it saves you money. And it doesn’t load up the landfill. And it saves you time because you don’t have to go to the store. And it makes your neighbors and friends wonder if you’re nuts, which makes them keep their distance (and think of you when their daughter’s brownie troop needs 15 cream cheese containers!).

This past Sunday the pastor at our church was pondering Thanksgiving and he made note of the size of that day’s newspaper laden with store circulars. He pointed out that during this time of year we are naturally inclined to hunt and gather and fill our storehouses. It’s a natural instinct and a good marketing department preys on this fact. Instead of gathering lots more stuff, the pastor encouraged us to look around us at that moment and gather memories – a beautiful sunset, the sound of a baby, the smile of a loved one. Good thought, but most of us still want to shop right about now.

Shopping is a guilty pleasure. No, we don’t necessarily need what we are buying, but it feels good to have that power, to rub shoulders with all the other people picking out new stuff. Carrying our bags of stuff in to our houses and cutting off the tags feels very satisfying. I’ve been trying to let go of those feelings. Now, when the urge to shop hits me, I head to the Goodwill where my weakness won’t deplete my wallet.

When the urge to store all my nuts for winter hits, sometimes I spend time sorting out, rearranging, and repurposing – handling all my stuff. I have to say that repurposing is incredibly satisfying, much more so than buying which always leaves me feeling kind of sleazy. This weekend, I wasn’t the only one getting in on the repurposing. My whole family found something to repurpose. My husband repurposed the gravel left from where our old deck once stood. He removed that gravel to use under and around the flagstones at the base of the steps to our new deck (flagstones held on to after the same construction project that yielded the bricks!). It looks great, cost us nothing, and the spot the gravel used to occupy is perfect for –you guessed it – another garden!

My older son spied the shoe sorter my daughter was removing from her closet (the shoes were never actually sorted, most days they were piled on top of the little shelf with all the neat shoe cubbies). He laid claim to it. He’s repurposed it as a cabinet to hold all his game pieces for the complicated games he and his best friend invent.

My youngest son cleaned out his room and re-discovered his marshmallow shooter which isn’t really repurposing, unless you consider that its old purpose was to lie under his bed and collect dust.

My daughter, lacking a decent jewelry box (cheap parents!) decided to turn her lamp shade in to a jewelry box. She poked holes through the shade to hang earrings and secured a thumbtack (with an eraser on the other side) to hang her necklaces. Makes the lampshade very useful and actually, better looking.

None of these actions were necessarily intentional. They arose because of a need and our new found ability to look around us rather than run to the store. We ran to the store for plenty of years and now we are drowning in the stuff we’ve acquired. Before you go running off to the store for your solution – look around you. What have you got that would do the job?

Saving stuff is akin to a holy act in my book. You should always hesitate before you throw things out – are you absolutely certain there is no use left for this object? I used to play a little head game with myself as I walked toward the trash can. I would imagine I was a homeless person or a member of a tribe on a remote island – is there something I could do with this object? Crazy, maybe, but our society throws things out too easily. We do this because we don’t have to deal with our own trash. We pay our trash bill each month and the friendly guys in the bright yellow vests cart it away. But it goes somewhere, because just like the information on your computer – nothing disappears. Repurposing, re-using, and saving useful things are not only money-saving acts, but an exercise in creativity, ingenuity, and resourcefulness – great traits for any of us. And perhaps one key to preserving our planet for those who come after us.

So before you head to the store, or the trashcan, take a moment to consider your options. You have more than you realize.

Look how we repurposed this weekend!

Even More Trash Talk (just can't get enough!)

In my house we eat with cloth napkins every night. In fact, we eat with cloth napkins for breakfast and lunch too. It’s not that we have a formal dining habit (far from it), it’s just that I can’t stand the waste of paper napkins. Huge pet peeve of mine. I can’t bear to use a small piece of a tree to wipe my mouth one time and then throw it in the trash. Such waste. No, it’s too painful for me. So long ago, I gave up the paper napkin habit.

Not only is using cloth napkins more responsible ecologically, they look better and make every meal feel more important. I’ve been using some of the same napkins for well over 10 years. Some were made by my mother for me when I got my first apartment. Some I collected from sale bins at linen stores and gift shops. Some were Christmas presents. I keep them folded in a big basket sitting on the piano in the corner of my kitchen. My kids don’t know any other kind of napkin. I could go on, but that’s more than enough about cloth napkins! I know there are some of you out there who are mumbling about the water and energy wasted when I wash my beloved napkins. Here’s the thing – with the exception of my six year old, most of my family can use the same napkin for multiple meals. Truly. They don’t get that dirty. We just shake out the crumbs and hang them on the back of the chair at the end of our meal. Then they’re ready for the next one.

My mother-in-law called to tell me she had given up her paper towel habit. She knows about my fetish with the napkins, so she was sure I’d be impressed with her new paper towel replacements – and I was! She decided that she had way too many old cotton t-shirts, but instead of tossing them, she cut them in to small paper towel size pieces. She rolled them up neatly and arranged them in a basket on her counter. Now, when she has a job that calls for a paper towel, she grabs a t-shirt piece and it does the trick. Then she can wash them or toss them if the job is too gross.

Here’s another idea for old t-shirts. I’m a runner, so I have a huge collection of t-shirts (they give them out at every race). Compost them! Yes, I mean it. If they’re 100% cotton, they’re 100% compostable (is that a word?). When my kids’ shirts get too stained to pass down or pass on, or my collection gets too unwieldy for the closet shelf, I cut them up, keep a few pieces for cleaning rags and then toss the rest in my long-term compost pile. They do take some time to break down, so they probably won’t be feeding our tomatoes anytime soon. If you’ve got a leaf/yard leftovers pile going somewhere, that’s the perfect place for your t-shirts.

I’m still considering the t-shirts-as-paper towels alternative, but meanwhile I have some real paper towels on my counter. I buy the kind with no dyes or perfumes and I compost them. They break down quickly and along with egg cartons, add some “brown” to the “green” in my compost. (Note: that’s a little teaser for Friday’s post. I know, you can’t wait!)

Ten more ways to reduce your trash:
1. Buy biodegradable cat litter. I toss mine in a particularly prickly area of the edge of our woods. Cat litter is not compostable (cats eat meat), but it will break down and return to the earth on it’s own rather than take up space inside a plastic bag that will not break down in the landfill.
2. Save your not-meat scraps. We feed ours to the chickens, but neighborhood ducks and birds would love your leftover bread crusts and cereal too. I know it’s a small thing, but imagine if everyone did it? (We’d have some fat ducks)
3. Donate your old running shoes. There are lots of organizations that collect these shoes and either turn them in to rubber mulch or donate them to people who can still use them.
For a list of places that will take your running shoes, check our www.runtheplanet.com and search for recycling. They’ve got a list of programs all over the world. And speaking of shoes, Crocs also has a recycling program.
4. Break up your cardboard boxes and recycle them. I know it’s a pain to break them down. I toss them in our yard shed until the pile accumulates so high the kids can’t retrieve their bikes and then we break them all down at once and take them to the recycling dumpster at the township.
5. Cut down on paper mail – go paperless with any company that you receive bills from. Almost all companies do this now (it saves them money, there’s the motive).
6. You can cut out your junk mail for just a buck by registering your mail preference service at www.dmaconsumers.org.
7. Sick of getting all those catalogs? I know I am. You can request that companies stop sending you catalogs at www.catalogchoice.org.
8. Do you have stuff to unload but it’s too big/bulky/unwanted to take to Goodwill? Check out www.freecycle.org. You’d be amazed what kinds of things people will take off your hands. Just be careful you don’t sign up and start collecting more stuff for yourself.
9. There are several swap services out there for exchanging your unwanted books, DVDs, and CDs for someone else’s. Just do a search and you’ll find them. I haven’t used one, so I can’t recommend one yet. I just signed up for swaptree. Future post, I’m sure.
10. My friend Susan responded to Monday’s post and mentioned she has been “repurposing” some of her things instead of tossing them or allowing them to collect dust. She repurposed some souvenirs from England in to a toothbrush holder and soap dish. What a great idea! I pulled out some old china tea cups that I’ve kept forever just because I can’t bear to get rid of them. They’re really just collecting dust, so I’m going to fill them with some of the thyme plants I’m growing for my kids teachers and give them as gifts at the end of the school year. Now I’m eyeing all my underutilized belongings and wondering what else they could do for me.