Give It Away, Dont Throw It Away

There are things that I come across in my homestead weekly that have not been touched, moved, used for quite some time. Every time I look at them a debate ensues, can I use it or should I chuck it. Well, I found another option, give it away.

Lightly used or even heavily used items that I have no use for anymore now gets listed on my local Freecycle board in NJ and invariably everything posted seems to find a home. It works like this, follow the link www.freecycle.org and find a local posting site for your area, follow the directions and post your cast offs, request or search or hunt for items for yourself. You will also see Curb Alerts in your area, posts of large piles of stuff placed at the curb for Garbage Pickup that can still be useful and can find a home.

Recently my wife and I cleared out the basement and attic and gave away a large number of items. The benefits to doing this are many fold, the first and foremost is we are not creating more garbage, we are allowing others to re-use our things. Second, you can help those who might be less fortunate and can really use the goods. Third, you meet some interesting folks, some kind of cool, some kind of scary. Last, you might find some cool things you really need from your area neighbors.

Just the kind of thing we need more of these days, communities coming to the aid of others and helping the environment.

Try it out and tell me what you think.

Looking for Good in Garbage

As I drive around, running errands, dropping the kids places, whatever, my eyes scan the sides of the road on Garbage Day to see what my neighbors are throwing out that I can somehow reuse.

It doesn't happen every week, but once in a while, jackpot. A discarded item sits beside the road, my eyes catch a glimpse, my mind races on what re-use can be made of it. Quickly my foot is instructed to move from accelerator to brake, then by backing up the car or pulling a quick u turn. I pull beside the discard pile and yes, I can use that thing, so pop the trunk, load it up and away I go.

The re-use of the item is some time very obvious, like the perfectly good hammock that now swings between two trees in my backyard and provides peaceful moments of swing. Other times, a long length of black perforated flexible drainage pipe or some pressure treated lumber from an old swing set wind up back home.

They may sit for many months until some re-usable reason presents itself and the items are put to re-use once again to serve humanity or atleast me for awhile longer. In this case the drainage pipe went to diffuse water from my gutters to prevent erosion and the lumber went to building a trellis for my garden.

The circle remains unbroken.

Gotta Love My Towns Recycling Program

Man, I have to hand it to my hometown, Wyckoff, NJ. The recycling program keeps getting better and better.

Plastics 1 through 5 added recently, it feels so good now as most of what I find can now be recycled. Now if only the producers of these items will get rid of #6, I would be all set.

Finally, my town just instituted Co-Mingling paper and containers including glass, plastic and metal cans.

My weekly garbage cans keep getting lighter and lighter, they will be floating away soon.

Has it rained in Atlanta lately

Early morning in Atlanta after a late flight arrival and hardly any sleep. Through my brain haze, remembered from last year there was a bad drought here, so I felt guilty about running the water while shaving.

Filled up the sink and swished away with the razor.