Can a girl get a bin???

So, as I work on my domestic skills...

I'm trying to step our recycling game up at the crib. We moved in a few months ago and have cans, bottles and newspapers piled up with no where to put them!

Trashing them would break my heart because growing up in Portland, Oregon recycling was a BIG deal. Maybe not for everyone, but my neighborhood took it pretty seriously.

My theory is that life is really lived on the weekends. It's time to rest, chill with your family, catch up with friends, and in my moms house growing up, it was the day we got things done. Before we got too seriously into our Saturday cartoons, we had to clean, I mean CLEAN CLEAN the entire house, do yard work, probably do some shopping, and most definitely make a trip to the local recycling drop off.

Thriftway (ya'll don't know about that out here...) was the local grocery store in Sellwood (where I grew up) and if not every Saturday, at least once a month we brought all of our recyclables to be sorted.

You see, every plastic or metal anything should have a little triangle on it that has a number. The Gatorade bottle I’m looking at now has a 1 in its triangle. That number indicates how it could be recycled, thus the reason for the sort. Folks would show up with bags upon bags full of stuff, spend time sorting it out and handing it over. As a young kid trying to spend my Saturdays in front the TV, it was a little annoying, but it was also pretty normal! You just did it. At that time, it wasn't considered living Green. It was just living! And trying to do good by the earth. Maybe it’s an Oregonian thing…

So, I'd like to get a little mini program going at the crib. I don't think you have to sort things as much as you used to, so I'm investigating the DC program. After three or four attempts to get a bin today, I finally called Mayor Fenty's 311 hot line and they put in an order for our bin. Let the domestic recycling begin!

Peace & Green ~ Irene