Trashy mama

My anticipation is building. I'm starting to see signs that it's coming up soon. As I drive down the road, scanning the surroundings, I start to fantasize about what I'll find. No, it's not the red apple sale at Foley's - not even a sale at BabiesRUs. It's almost bulk trash pick up time and I'm ready to scavenge, to dumpster dive, to retrieve completely functional objects left outside by people who just can't deal with one more thing.

Trash. What is trash anyway? You put it outside and a weight is lifted. Less junk. When I find something like a perfectly good table I wonder why the table had pushed the balance in their previous owner's head and inspired them to wish it away. Was it an ex-boyfriend's? Did a cat pee pee on it? Did it just not go with that fabulous new carpet they just installed? Resisting the urge to go knock on their door and ask what the hell were they thinking I instead will stop my car and load it into the back. I feel a thrill not unlike finding the best sale in town - and only I know about it - at least in this alley at this very moment.

So what do I do with the things that I find? I use them. I decorate them, fix them, whatever they might need. I keep them, sell them, freecycle them but mostly I keep them out of the landfill - the illusive landfill that few of us ever see. If you haven't gone and seen a landfill, you might find it amazing how much trash we are capable of producing. Humans are capable of creating beautiful and inspiring things on grand scales but we're also capable of producing a ridiculous amount of trash - a large volume of which is completely fine and usable.

I'm very tempted to jump on a soap box here about the price our environment pays for the production of a ridiculous amount of products and their subsequent disposal but I'll resist it (with the exception of this sentence). I won't even pretend that I haven't been guilty of throwing things away just because I didn't have the time or energy to deal with it. I understand the feeling but it's worth resisting because the "trash" doesn't just go away. Not only that but it took resources (oil, metal, wood, human labor, etc.) to create whatever it was and, by throwing away something useful, one trivializes and ignores the energy used to create it in the first place. So, although it's a little embarrassing to say that I dumpster dive, I will say that there is nothing to be ashamed of by digging through other's trash considering that in a sad number of instances what's being thrown out shouldn't be trash in the first place.