Phoenix Burning

Monday, October 04, 2004

Waste

How often do you consider how much of your life you spend working just to buy things that are hardly used and then thrown away? Here is a telling exercise: go through any room in your house and find 5 things to throw away. Unless you are a very unusual and neat person, this should be no problem. Americans seldom use things until they are worn out. I can only think of a couple things that I've worn out in the last couple of years--a pair of jeans and a pair of shoes. And I'm probably an anomaly as an American women--most of my friends wouldn't think of wearing "worn-out" looking shoes.

We spent the last week on a rampage of cleaning and sorting, trying to prepare for showing our house. Greg went on a trip to the dump yesterday and it almost made me ill looking at all the crap that we had to just throw away. A major portion of the load yesterday was particle board bookcase and tables--remnants of our college days when a need for book storage drove us to Walmart/Kmart for cheap storage. But what a waste! A solid wood case would easily sell at a garage sale, or be given to a neighbor, but those cheapo things hardly stand the use of one or two people before they become trash. How much better if we had been thrift store/garage sale shoppers then.


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