The Box

Fear not gentle readers!

A couple of posts ago, my taskmistress threatened to give you a closer picture of the contents of "The Box" if by Sunday said contents had still been in "The Box."

You have had a fortunate escape, for "The Box" is empty! Yes, this morning I sorted garbage. My goal was to have ten bags ready to be taken to the curb Sunday night (or Monday night if it proves our garbage pick up has been bumped to Tuesday morning). I'm at nine, with a bunch of cardboard as well. I also managed to change the cat litter and sweep the stairs while I was at it. I done good, I think!

So today I'm going to explain why I needed to sort through that garbage piece by piece, rather than just bag it and put it on the curb.

You see, our municipality has recycling and a triple bag system. No blue box, with all the rest conveniently being stashed in a black bag, where the collectors can't see what you've put in there. We have clear blue bags for recycling, clear green bags for composting, and clear clear bags for the remaining waste, which is mostly plastic film. If you don't sort your garbage right, it doesn't get picked up. Even then, the clear bag only gets picked up once every other week.

To top that off, I've also been sorting stuff for the church. We're collecting pop cans for something-or-other, an item which makes up far too much of my garbage. We're collecting milk bags (look it up on Youtube if you don't know what the heck I"m talking about) for the local Seniors' Centre, where they're cut into strips and crocheted into sleeping mats for people in underdeveloped countries. We collect eyeglasses and old cell phones and used inkjet cartridges and grocery store tapes, too. And out back is a shiny new bin where we collect paper. So all that stuff has to be sorted out, too. I need a room just for sorting garbage! Unfortunately, I don't have a garage or room for a shed (we'll post a picture of Ally's garden soon so you can see why), so I have to find room in the house for all that sorting.

My solution up until now has been to have smaller garbage cans in the bedroom and bathroom, and sort them as they get full. Except I was sick a couple of weeks back, and went through three or four boxes of tissue in short order. In addition, it was that time of month. Sorting was out of the question, so when the little cans got full, I just emptied them into this big box I had. It worked like a charm, except then a bunch of little disasters had turned into one big one...

So now you know aobut "The Box," and if you are clever (as I'm sure you are) you know what was in "The Box." It won't happen again, unless it does, but in the meantime, once the kitchen/dining area is clean there will be a "sorting station" there for clear/green/blue plus milk bags and paper, and once the office is clean I'll have a clear/green/blue plus paper/grocery tapes/miscellaneous in there, too.