In Alberta our bottles and cans can be returned for a refund, so every once in a while we take them to the nearest bottle depot. There are four people in our household contributing to a collection of empties. We put them in blue bags and line them up at one end of the garage. […]
Oh, the joy of the dump. No, not that kind of dump. The municipal dump. The waste disposal site. Today I took some trash to the dump. This trash has a history that raises issues of honesty and integrity and ethics, but mostly it’s just trash. Recently, we had some work done at the house. […]
$260. That’s it. That’s what your excess miscellany is worth. In order to earn that, you must spend weeks sorting things out, carrying the sale items to your garage, and pricing them. You will have to get the help of friends to move the big stuff and you will have to borrow folding tables. You […]
I got rid of it. That stuff that hung around in the garage making me feel guilty? It’s gone. Today I took my golf clubs and my cross-country skis and sold them at the recycled sports gear store. Well, to be honest, I only sold the clubs. They didn’t want the skis. The fellow was […]
Some people steal the knobs off appliances. They could be knobs from stoves, washers, or dryers; the knob-stealers don’t care. Discovering this odd human trait has been a revelation to me, not unlike finding out that some people are seven feet tall, or albino. It’s really odd and inexplicable. This strange proclivity for knob-stealing revealed […]
Imagine, hypothetically, that you are charged with receiving and processing donations to a charitable recycling store. Imagine also that you are short-staffed and overburdened. Donations are piled higher than you can reach, and you can no longer see the floor in the receiving bay. You make an executive decision. There will be no more donations […]
