Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. It’s been the mantra of those who care for the planet and want to minimize the waste they produce for decades. It’s also three helpful hints for keeping house. Nothing gets stuff organized (or gone completely) faster than one of these actions.
Reuse is my favorite of the three. While my main goal for extraneous stuff is to get rid of it, of course, I also really despise having to buy something again to replace that thing I JUST threw away. I am the poster child for “But I might need it someday.” I really do often find uses for the random things I keep. So before getting rid of it, I look for ways to reuse it (stay tuned for Friday for some of my favorite things to repurpose).
Reduce is my second choice, even though I think it is the best of the three. I wish it were my favorite. After all, the most efficient way not to waste the things that come into your home is to not bring extraneous nonsense into it in the first place.
I’m just not very good at it. I mean, I have no problem with the things I’m super picky about. For example, I’m not going to impulse buy hand soap. I have the two kinds I like (one for my bathroom, one for the guest bathroom), and while I may stock an extra of each, that’s about it. Yarn, on the other hand…I may have an issue there.
Reduction also looks different for different households. Take food prep, for instance. Ideally, all my vegetables would be fresh from the farmer’s market where the only packaging I use is the cloth bag I bring from home, and I would prep them for use the minute I brought them inside. But I got exhausted just writing those sentences. If that was the standard I tried to hold myself to, I would be constantly overwhelmed and end up in the drive-through more often than not, which creates the most waste with the single-use cups and utensils and wrappers (oh my). Getting most of my vegetables frozen is a compromise, but it’s better than the next likely alternative.
Recycling is the bane of my existence. I am committed to doing it. I know individuals can’t solve the major environmental crises caused by corporate greed and its inevitable consequences of environmental waste and bad practices and shortcuts (although we can vote with our dollar by not shopping with them whenever possible). And I know that a lot of what goes in the recycling bins (particularly the catch-all ones) ends up as trash anyway. But I adhere to the principle that if everyone did their part by throwing fewer things away, we could maybe at least keep the landfills under better control. I know we definitely can’t keep them under control if we don’t even try. So I’m going to continue doing my part, small as it may be, even though it’s among my least favorite chores.
[Public service announcement – There are many things that need to be recycled or disposed of responsibly (i.e., not in the dumpster/trash bin), even if doing so is a pain, so please make sure you know the right place to take these items where you live.]
My beef with recycling most things is that it can’t just be done in-house. It involves a task and then also an errand. I hate errands so much. If I ever become inexplicably wealthy, errands are the first thing I’m going to outsource. I would actually hire a person full-time to run my errands for me if I could afford to do so.
If you live in a place where people will come and pick up your donations at your house for you? That’s nice. You should take full advantage of that. If I could just leave a box on the porch and have it magically disappear to a place I trust to use the items responsibly, recycling might become my favorite chore. So step one of recycling is to research the places near you that will do this for you. You may be surprised at how easy they make it.
But most of the local places near me that recycle used items don’t pick up from apartments. Alas. So I gather. And gather. And accumulate. And then…eventually…sometimes with weeping and gnashing of teeth…deliver to the appropriate location.
Maybe if I think of recycling as a quest it will be easier to keep up with. *ponders and plots*
I’m writing about keeping house for 31 days. Click here to see the topic list!
