Wednesday, November 18, 2009

The Post in Which I Talk About Garbage

I posted awhile back about cloth diapers. I bought about 8 of them, and for about a month was really dedicated to using them exclusively whenever we were home. Then summer came. We got busier, we were gone about every weekend, and when I DID use the cloth diapers.... it took about a week to get around to washing them (you don't want to smell dirty cloth diapers in the first place, let alone ones that have been sitting, dirty, in a bucket for a week. ick)

Despite my failure in using them very often all summer, the cloth diaper thing did get me really thinking about recycling and how we need to be MUCH better at recycling our garbage rather than just throwing it away. So I started sorting some garbage and I took one trip to the dump the recycling at a drop-off before we received a letter in the mail saying that our trash collector was starting recycling pick-up. hip hip hooray!

Yes, i really was pretty excited about it.

Now, get this. We used to FILL our big outdoor garbage-company issued garbage can each and every week. Sometimes, when we were home for the weekend, it was overflowing.

NOW? Last week there was ONE kitchen, 13-gallon, garbage bag in the trash for the garbage men to pick up. This week (we were home over the weekend) there are THREE. Three bags fill about a third of the can.

THAT is how much of our 'trash' was recycle-able. I'm not a big, greenie, hippie, but it DOES bother me to know that I'm just throwing stuff into a landfill somewhere. So when I can do a little part to make it not as full, i'm pretty happy.

And I've gotten better at using cloth diapers again, now that it's not summer anymore. And I've figured out a good system that works for us. And I'm not as scared of the dirty ones. And I wash them about every other day. I like it. Plus, I've heard potty-training is easier when you use cloth. That's almost incentive by itself.

Now, for what you really want......

As a friend of ours put it - this is where he stands to survey his domain. From 13 Months

Go Huskers! From 13 Months

See the line above and below his right eye? That's where he ran into the corner of the door. And yes, I tried to spike his hair. From 14 Months

by yellowgirl at 8:34 PM |