At the homestead, we have suffered our third plumbing disaster. This among several plumbing encounters. This time we were sharp and ready and damage to our household goods was held to a minimum. Since the incident occurred in the ceiling of our garage, we were required to clear out half of the garage for the repair. This involves going through dozens of boxes of stuff.
This being our fourth year at the homestead, I would have expected this to already have been done. Alas, it’s not just my stuff and the Spousal Unit and I have differing definitions of stuff, junk, order and the appropriate use of space. To be blunt about it, I’m highly organized and she’s a hoarder. To be more fair about it, we are at detente. She organizes all of the food and I can’t find anything in our three refrigerators or pantry without her assistance. I know exactly where I can find Cat6 cable. Do you want yellow or blue, long or short? In common we shred. In fact we have three shredders at home, the newest can handle 24 sheets at once. We got a deal at Amazon for their branded monster.
Since I had three full trashbags worth of shreddings, the blue recycle bin was full while the black regular trash bin still had space. I didn’t bother to check the green clippings bin, but I am told that wet cardboard is appropriate for that one. I am aware that there exists a technology called a Wheelabrator that Waste Management purchased from the company of the same name several years back when I had a contract with them in Houston. The purpose of this technology is to separate various grades of trash. I don’t know what those are, but the following are the words I use for the types of waste.
Trash: Ordinary paper, plastic, cloth
Garbage: includes food scraps
Rubbish: includes metal, wood
Junk: Is mostly wood, metal, large and intact furniture, toys, appliances, parts
Refuse: Includes nasties, toxics
Secrets: Anything that requires destruction
Then of course there’s sewage and brown water, but I’m rather sensitive to that right now. But we’re mostly talking about stuff right now.
In any and all of these discards, I am recalling that somebody else can make good use of it. But in the moment I wondered which was the greater sin. Was it putting the recyclable trash ordinarily destined for the blue bin into the black bin, or putting some garbage supposedly segregated to the black into the blue? I want to believe that the people and organizations on the far side of my driveway who haul away all my dross are smart enough to figure it out. I don’t know how to think about it. Maybe they’re just happy to have the business and have successfully brainwashed me into doing their sorting job for them. Maybe they have clever ways of separating the trash from the garbage that is more than efficacious to meet high standards. Maybe I just really messed up some poor soul’s day, because I put shreddings into the regular trash. Here are recyclables that may never be recycled unless somebody picks them out of the garbage.
Then again, I can tell you this, there was nothing quite so exhilarating as the first time I got to throw old furniture and appliances out the back of a UHaul truck at the local, smelly dump. Getting your truck weighed in at the scale and queuing up behind big rigs and swinging stuff off the tail end into a pile that gets bulldozed? Liberating.
At my very first corporate job, we had a clean desk policy, and certain documents were destined for the ‘burn bag’. I’ve always been pretty conscientious about that. In my personality assessment, I am highly conscientious. In fact, people who are diagnosed as OCD, well, I feel a bit ashamed around them. I hate slobs. I hate when I am a slob, and I don’t mind telling you that I have 1,489 passwords in my manager. I love organization. Ask anyone who knows me. A perfect Christmas gift for me is an ornate container. I will find something appropriate to put in it, and a suitable place to place it. I’m a digital hoarder, because you never know. See?
I’m a little bit annoyed that I forgot how I originally made that limbo.json file list all of those files. It’s March. It requires refreshing. But it’s OK. I have plenty of disk space and compute power to manage my dragon-like treasure cave. Conservationist. Not so liberating.
Each of the sorts of discards I aim to separate from my person and care has a destination, with the exception of the secrets. As you might have guessed, I also have a large 10 x 20 foot storage facility as well. We call it The Barn. It has the larger part of my library of books, camping equipment, catering equipment, off-season clothing, Halloween and Christmas decorations and memorabilia from ages ago. But I reckon that we make four trips to Goodwill every year and have sent off at least 200 pounds of stuff to the local veteran’s charity.
Recently I came across an article that gave me one more reason to be angry at government regulators and/or environmentalists. I am no longer angry enough to care which, but the thrust of the story was that the markets for trash get hamstrung. Plenty of things that have little or no value in our WEIRD societies are quite valuable elsewhere. Anyone who has been to Southeast Asia knows that hundreds of millions of motorists manage their lives quite well without airbags or even shoes. But there are export restrictions on a number of items that many scrappy African and Asian countries can use profitably.
The beaches of Alang in India serve as the macro example.
Most importantly, Alang supplies the shipbreaking industry with an abundant source of laborers who are willing to work for low wages in risky, and sometimes life-threatening, business. What's more, India's environmental and safety standards are much more lenient than those of its customers, like Japan, Korea, Russia, Germany and the United States.
I learned that there is a clever device called a shoddy loom. The way we in the States use the term ‘shoddy’ would indicate that it’s ready for the bin. Nevertheless, shoddy is a kind of recycled wool that makes all kinds of wonderful items, if you have the craft. Few of us do. I think of a hand me down world in which the necessity for brand new items is no longer at a premium. I want this world. I want the repairable world in which we peasants can expect something to last. Not too much of what we consume these days fits into that category. We dispose of it, or we insure it to guarantee a new replacement.
Will we be genius enough to recognize more of the value chain of our discarded wares? Will the failure of our own genius stifle the inventive genius of others whom our regulations keep from trying this at home? Unfortunately, it is an axiom of certain political faiths that the minimum wage must inflate to the yuppie standard. Consequently the common definition of a reasonable man is one who buys all things new and certified. All of our cars must have airbags and electric windows. Warning labels on heaters tell us that they get hot. We are well into the establishment of the idiot-proof society of plenty in which all necessities are to be provided for. Therefore no mothering of invention.
But we sure do get weaponry out to our instant allies don’t we? Never bet against armories.
You're talking to a man who held on to his vinyl. Atlantic, Blue Note, Chess originals. I buy up sixty year old professional clarinets on Goodwill for next to nothing and bring them back to new. Then I give them away to kids who can play at least eight major scales for me. When they get to all twelve they get to keep the horn. Just finished a Dynamic H Leblanc from the early sixties that is a corker. Like a Strad, these things are good for a long time, if properly serviced.
I see you. I hear what you're saying. It's easy to feel that nobody else sees what you do, but it's better than we think it is right now.