My Home is not the Tip: A Book Reflection

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 (This is Part 2 of a group of book reflections about the same book. Part 1 is here, part 3 is here.)

As you may recall from the previous post, I've recently listened to the audiobook version of Decluttering at the Speed of Life, by Dana K. White (read by the author).

Like Part 1, this is more about a revelation inspired while/by listening to White's book, rather than necessarily something she said in the book itself - although she did touch on it closely enough that I feel it's legitimately something from the book.

At one point, White was discussing the fact that we (well, some of us) feel guilty about throwing things in the bin if there's any chance it could be put to use somehow. Perhaps we can turn that frayed T-Shirt into a craft project and give it a second life. Perhaps someone who is desperately poor will be desperate enough to want because it's better than the crap they currently have.

She didn't go all out and say this, but it was strongly implied: poor people don't deserve your trash just because they're poor. What she did say is something well worth saying: don't give something to charity that you wouldn't be willing to give to a friend.

If you ever do feel the compulsion to try to give something you regard as unworthy of your own friends and family to a poor person because "surely some one truly poor will be truly grateful", image that instead of saying "poor person" or "someone in need" you said "peasant." Because that's sort of where that mentality evolved from: the peasants should take whatever we give them and be grateful. Let's not be that person.

But the main reason most of us feel a need to hold onto something that's not completely in rags is the fact that we don't want to be wasteful. We want to try to find a way to keep it out of the rubbish tip by finding a way to reuse or recycle it. Surely?

That's a real problem I struggle with. I want to reduce the amount I throw in the bin by being less wasteful, so I hold onto something that could potentially turn into something else. But...

Many years ago I read an article (I wish I could remember the author - or even the source) written by a young mother, who had started using a mantra: "I am not the kitchen bin". She didn't want to waste the food her kids weren't finishing, or the scraps she had cut off the food she was preparing for a meal, so she'd eat them. She was gaining weight and her health was suffering, and one day she realised that if she was putting something into her own body to keep it out of the bin, then she was the bin. She had to get over her guilt about waste and respect her own body and boundaries instead.

"I am not the kitchen bin."

I've often thought of that over the years, as I've found myself eating food after I was full just because there wasn't enough to put aside as left overs and it seemed a waste to throw it out. Or as I ate something I had actually ruined and wasn't enjoying at all, simply because I'd made a batch of it and didn't want to be wasteful.

But I'm not the kitchen bin, and I'm not doing myself any favours by putting something in my face that I should be putting in the bin.

As I was listening to White talk about rubbish and the guilt we sometimes feel about throwing out something that could, potentially, maybe, some how, by some stretch of the imagination, be "still good", I suddenly realised:

"My house is not the rubbish tip."

If I'm not doing something with this rubbish, but just holding onto it in the hope that I find something to do with it later, I'm using my own house to store landfill. This is not, in any tangible way, less wasteful that sending it to the actual landfill (where at least they might do something to reduce its size, as the professional rubbish people are always looking for ways to handle rubbish volumes better). It's just sharing the rubbish between the tip and my house.

You "reduce" rubbish before it comes into your house. You look at anything you're thinking of buying for its potential rubbishness and you either come up with a better idea then and there, or you accept that you're going to be throwing something away.

This is something I really have to focus on: not keeping things I should throw away (because I don't like throwing things away), but rather making better choices at the start of the process so I don't get stuck with choices I don't like when that item has reached the end of its life.

I am not the kitchen bin, and my house is not the tip.