Friday, December 12, 2014

What to keep, what to throw away......




This little sugar and creamer set is one of my all time favorite Christmas gifts. Gerry's aunt Debbie, the aunt we buried at Thanksgiving, gave it to me years ago. The year she gave it to me, we were all together for Thanksgiving and complaining about the upcoming Christmas shopping we all had to do. Debbie proudly announced that she got all her shopping done back in January at the Walmart clearance sale. Oh my, I thought...... And so Christmas came and we all opened our gifts from Debbie, courtesy of Walmart clearance. This set was in a box with the orange clearance sticker still on it, $3.35. 
At first I was appalled, I had spent quite a bit on their gifts, can't tell you now what we gave them, but I had a job then, and spent without too much concern. I'm sure it was nice, but apparently not very memorable. Not as memorable as this gift. 

I almost gave the set away, it sure didn't go with my Villory and Bach china,  nor my transfer ware, not even my McCoy pottery. But I kept it, because Debbie gave it to me. And she gave it with joy. I unpack this set every year and I smile. It is so quirky that I love it. It gets a prominent display among all the Christmas decorations. I have come to treasure this gift even more this year. I sent this photo to her daughter and told her how I love using the set.


We continue to purge. I have Gerry in on the action now. This box of electronic waste came from the attic. This electronic disposable world has got to find some sort of sanity. This is not the way for our future to survive. There are three broken DVD players in there, remotes that don't work, old car phone chargers, old wires that go with nothing, a broken modem....  I am on a mad dash to get smarter with recycling, refusing to buy and reusing. Watch the film Samsara for an eye opening journey, it's on Netflix, well worth a watch. 


Several boxes of bank statements also came down from the attic. We went and bought a paper shredder. It will take days and days to shred all of this. We are now paperless with our banking. Tiny steps, but it's start. We are trying out the shredded paper in the chicken coop and then we will compost it. I'm not shredding the plastic windows on the envelopes or the slick papers, just paper with soy inks.


Also tryng harder to sort all of the other papers that come into the house, looking for alternate things at the stores that are packaged smarter, but it's a cardboard world out there..... My New Years efforts will be towards getting a handle on the trash we produce in this house.


Today I packed up the remaining bars of soap I have for an order. I was hoping to have an Etsy soap shop this year, but we either used it, gave it as gifts or sold it before I could get a shop set up. I haven't had time to make more, so if you were waiting to order, I'm sorry. Maybe I can get to this in the spring. I used the coffee peppermint soap this morning and it was so great! 

I was going to tell you about my day out shopping but I'll save that for later, gotta get my hair dry and get to work. By the way, look at that sweet angel wing begonia blooming in the background. Talk about recycling. It was headed for the compost pile at work and I brought it home, repotted it, gave it some organic food and it is blooming so beautifully for me now. 
Peace y'all
Xo

10 comments:

Dennis Allen said...

Every pot has a story. Often the story is the most important part.

Michèle Hastings said...

I have little tacky Christmas candy dish that a co-worker gave me 25+ years ago that I have hung on to forever. She was always one of the nicest, kindest person, I have ever worked with or met. I think of her every year when I take it out.
I just started following a blog called "zero waste home" check it out: http://www.zerowastehome.com/
I think you will find it interesting.

Tracey Broome said...

Even a Walmart pot Dennis!
Michele, I actually saw that this morning on your blog, it was very timely with all of our purging and trying to figure out this waste thing. It's a great site! Did you see that jar her years waste was in?!

Anonymous said...

Love your gift's story! I've got a few strange things like that, too, they're the best. Just sorted through a stack of paper for recycling- going to turn those with a blank side into notepads.

Tracey Broome said...

I have so many notepads from trying to reuse old paper,
I have even started making them at work!

Michèle Hastings said...

I did see her jars worth of waste! It made me feel terrible that we put a GIANT barrel out to the curb each week... and we are only two people. So sad.

Tracey Broome said...

Michele, I have been making a real effort to cut back what goes into our trash, and it doesn't take much. We now only take a half full trash can to the street every two weeks, just recycling cardboard and composting everything I can has made a big difference.

Lori Buff said...

I recently heard an old Native American saying that you might appreciate:

Before you do anything consider how your actions will reflect on the people of the past seven generations and the next seven generations.

Michèle Hastings said...

Our trash pick up doesn't even recycle :-(
Very difficult to adjust too after moving from a state that you could throw very little away.

Tracey Broome said...

Lori, that should be a mantra for everyone!
Michele, I know, when we first moved here, our county didn't even have a recycling center. Same with us,it was hard, coming from Charlotte where they went out of their way to make recycling easy. We really have to work at it, crates everywhere and trips to the recycling center, while across the street from my house is Orange County, our street is the divider, and they just set their cute little boxes on the street each week, grrrrr?