Living in Washington has provided several learning opportunities. I’ve learned parking spaces labeled “compact” are the SAME SIZE as regular spots. Businesses are required to label a certain amount for compact cars. My SUV is long enough to cover the “compact” writing so no one notices. Problem solved. I’ve also learned oh-so-much about garbage, recycling, and toddler’s gross habits.
Sorting garbage is a way of life here. We have three garbage bins in our garage. One for trash, recycling, and food/yard waste. Which leaves approximately three inches left to park your car in the remainder of the garage.
Little Finn’s love of trash reminded me of this guy. I think they smell alike some days, too.
We recycled in Ohio, but that was amateur compared to Seattle. Detergent bottle empty? Finished with that yogurt container? Changed your door knobs? They can all be recycled! Our bin is overflowing every week. Of course, with a toddler who adores playing in the trash, I usually end up with plastic containers, beer bottles and paper bags scattered about the house. It’s like the kid is practicing to be a homeless bum. If he starts putting brown paper bags around the empty beer bottles I’m taking him to therapy.
The food waste bin has been the most useful, yet difficult to use. We keep a small trash can under the sink and dump it into the larger bin in the garage. The trash can fills up quickly with food scraps and funky smells. Finn Girl is ALWAYS the first to notice. “Mom, it smells like dirty diapers. Mom, it stinks like dead ponies. (What? I have no idea what that means or where it came from.) Mom, why am I smelling something bad? It hurts my nose.” Finn Girl’s teenage years will require me to be heavily medicated. The overdramatic holding of the nose as she flees from the kitchen or the cries that come from her throwing her scraps in the yard waste trash are comical, but only if you’ve had a cocktail. Otherwise it’s irritating.
I am proud to say we have only one or two bags of trash weekly. In Ohio it was easily 5-7 bags. That kinda change would make uber earth conscious Alicia Silverstone happy. Now if only I could get on board with her whole vegan diet we’d be BFFs. Sharing the best use for hemp hearts. Talking about our organic, freshly composted gardens and how to make our own kumbucha. But I can’t. I love the animal flesh. And cheese. Life would be sad without cheese.
The Finn is loving all the recycling and yard waste bins because he grew up dividing his trash like he had a severe case of OCD. I, on the other hand, am accustom to throwing everything in the garbage. The only thing we recycled in the Midwest were glass jars that my mom would fill with bacon grease that would be used for cooking later.
Cubes of trash sold for $50-$100/each. There’s hope for Little Finn’s trash habit.
We’re all adapting and enjoying the changes. I’m hopeful that Little Finn’s obsession with garbage will morph into some sort of weird, new-age art and we can count on him to fund our retirement. If not, guess The Finn will keep his day job.
The Finn and I 
I love your recycling post. If it makes you feel better, I’m a rabid green girl. No grocery bags, take my own bags to every store imaginable, recycle some garbage. I recycle every kind of plastic know to man, including styrofoam, all cans, glass, paper, food wrappers, gift wrap and cardboard. In Bloomington you have to buy a $2 tag for every bag of garbage or garbage can. Although Finn girl would object to the odious can, I only have one bag of trash every 2 months. If you want to know where to take stuff for recycling let me know. I’ve got someplace from windows, to clothes to electronics and just about every city has them.
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Hi Kit! One bag every two months is amazing. I hope we can work our way up to that. I love that Bloomington is becoming more green. This year in Seattle they started fining people if they found certain amount of food scraps mixed with their trash. I’ll keep you in mind if we have big ticket items to recycle. Hugs!!
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Funny and so true! I had a similar experience 🙂 In the countries where I spent most of my life, there is no recycling per se. You throw everything into one bin, period. Later, I moved to the US, and learned to sort garbage. It took me some time to get used to it, but it wasn’t that difficult. Then we moved to Finland 🙂 Here, we sort newspapers, cardboard, metal, glass that can’t be returned to the store, biowaste, and various waste that doesn’t fit other categories. We hand over batteries for recycling to cashiers at any supermarket. Glass and plastic bottles need to be recycled at the special machines in supermarkets too. Next year Finland will start recycling all other plastic. If we get one more trash bin, we will run out of a living space 🙂 It felt overwhelming and confusing at first, but over time it became a habit. Being nature-friendly is a huge deal for Finns, and I think their attitude towards environment affected me too 🙂
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