recycling | Monkeys in My Bag

We still have 8 month left of this term. Itineration is still too far away to begin disengaging from responsibilities and friendships. But I can tell that I’ve already begun to lean into the change. How can I tell, you may ask? I have noticed a purging impulse has been activated in me. I call it “The Anti Nesting Instinct”.

When a mother is waiting for a baby to be born, she starts frantically putting the house in order in preparation for her new arrival. The Honey-Do list starts to fill up with all those little household repairs that have been ignored for so many months or years. Mom-to-be starts filling up the house with new purchases and organizing drawers full of teeny tiny clothing. That’s The Nesting Instinct.

Photo credit: jamelah / Foter / CC BY-NC-ND

So, logically, The Anti Nesting Instinct involves purging, cleaning out, throwing out, and giving away things. It is recognized in the peacefulness of gazing contently into a nearly empty closet. Its joy is magnified with each new pile of possessions successfully delivered to its new owners. My recycling bin runneth over.

Last Saturday I tackled my daughters’ bed room. It was a hoarder’s paradise. The amount of cardboard and paper that I hauled out of their room was horrifying. The scraps of old craft projects, plastic bottles rescued from the recycling bin, and half colored pieces of paper were pretty much the only things holding up my middle child’s bed. I removed 4 full garbage bags of pure trash from their room, a mountain of toys and books that they had grown out of, and another bag full of clothes to give away. This morning my daughter told me that she’s been opening and closing her closet door just for fun. I understand this since more than once this week I’ve stood gazing with satisfaction into their super clean and nearly empty closet. I love an organized closet.

Yes, the urge to purge has even manifested itself in my work at school. I am tackling disorganization, clutter, and an absurd amount of pure junk that has been stored here since Jesus was a small child. I am busting through cobwebs and pawing through moldy boxes in search of anything useful for my teachers before I dump the contents of a whole cabinet in the recycling bin. Clean is a beautiful moment.

So even though it’s really too early to start thinking about leaving on itineration, my emotions are releasing their connection to the things I live with. I have a mental To-Do list with dates attached to each task. I will tackle these projects one by one and whittle away the last few months before we must face the overwhelming task of packing up the house for storage. The Anti Nesting Instinct has kicked in.

I really don’t know what the rules are about posting something that you read on Facebook or some other social media. But this is a cute story that’s been floating around for some time. (I would gladly give credit where it’s due, so if it’s yours… don’t sue me, just tell me it’s yours.)

But the reason why I’m posting this story is because it’s about another one of those Bandwagons that we’re being pressured to climb on. I have nothing against taking care of the environment, I just don’t believe that we should take people’s individual initiative and personal sense of responsibility away by micro-managing them through legislation. I WANT to reduce, reuse, and recycle, but I don’t need some tree-hugger in my face for using disposable diapers. So let’s just all put down the rhetoric… and gang up on some unsuspecting old people. We can all be united through a common foe. (I’m just kidding, again, don’t sue me Old People!)

Being Green

Checking out at the store, the young cashier suggested to the older woman, that she should bring her own grocery bags because plastic bags weren’t good for the environment.

The woman apologized and explained, “We didn’t have this green thing back in my earlier days.”

The young clerk responded, “That’s our problem today. Your generation did not care enough to save our environment for future generations.” She was right — our generation didn’t have the green thing in its day. Back then, we returned milk bottles, soda bottles and beer bottles to the store. The store sent them back to the plant to be washed and sterilized and refilled, so it could use the same bottles over and over. So they really were truly recycled.

But we didn’t have the green thing back in our day. Grocery stores bagged our groceries in brown paper bags, that we reused for numerous things, most memorable besides household garbage bags, was the use of brown paper bags as book covers for our schoolbooks. This was to ensure that public property, (the books provided for our use by the school) was not defaced by our scribblings. Then we were able to personalize our books on the brown paper bags. But too bad we didn’t do the green thing back then.

We walked up stairs, because we didn’t have an escalator in every store and office building. We walked to the grocery store and didn’t climb into a 300-horsepower machine every time we had to go two blocks. But she was right. We didn’t have the green thing in our day.

Back then, we washed the baby’s diapers because we didn’t have the throwaway kind. We dried clothes on a line, not in an energy-gobbling machine burning up 220 volts — wind and solar power really did dry our clothes back in our early days. Kids got hand-me-down clothes from their brothers or sisters, not always brand-new clothing.

But that young lady is right; we didn’t have the green thing back in our day.

Back then, we had one TV, or radio, in the house — not a TV in every room. And the TV had a small screen the size of a handkerchief (remember them?), not a screen the size of the state of Montana. In the kitchen, we blended and stirred by hand because we didn’t have electric machines to do everything for us. When we packaged a fragile item to send in the mail, we used wadded up old newspapers to cushion it, not Styrofoam or plastic bubble wrap. Back then, we didn’t fire up an engine and burn gasoline just to cut the lawn. We used a push mower that ran on human power. We exercised by working so we didn’t need to go to a health club to run on treadmills that operate on electricity.

But she’s right; we didn’t have the green thing back then.

We drank from a fountain when we were thirsty instead of using a cup or a plastic bottle every time we had a drink of water. We refilled writing pens with ink instead of buying a new pen, and we replaced the razor blades in a razor instead of throwing away the whole razor just because the blade got dull.But we didn’t have the green thing back then.

Back then, people took the streetcar or a bus and kids rode their bikes to school or walked instead of turning their moms into a 24-hour taxi service. We had one electrical outlet in a room, not an entire bank of sockets to power a dozen appliances. And we didn’t need a computerized gadget to receive a signal beamed from satellites 23,000 miles out in space in order to find the nearest burger joint.

But isn’t it sad the current generation laments how wasteful we old folks were just because we didn’t have the green thing back then?

Please forward this on to another selfish old person who needs a lesson in conservation from a smart-alec young person. We don’t like being old in the first place, so it doesn’t take much to piss us off.

What a gem! Don’t you love social media… when it’s not being used to promote a bandwagon.