The Year of Waste Free Living is Over

I made it! One year of not sending anything to the landfill. It was a lot of fun, rewarding, and in the end, surprisingly easy. Boring, even.

Behind me there, you see it – 1 year’s worth of accumulated trash, a whole 5239 grams of it. Well, not quite all of it. I have a bin at the cottage too, but haven’t gone through it yet. Oh, and also the stuff that didn’t fit into the bin: a broken toboggan, a bike tire, and a cracked wheel. Continue reading “The Year of Waste Free Living is Over”

Making Tortilla Chips

With my waste-free challenge, one thing I’ve been really missing are nachos. But all of the tortilla chips come in disposable bags. So I decide to make my own. I did a little research… They are made by frying tortillas, simple enough. But all of the tortillas come in bags as well. So I have to make my own tortillas. Luckily, it’s easy to do. Continue reading “Making Tortilla Chips”

Getting rid of my books

Tidying up on the weekend and trying to organize a bit, my gaze fell upon my books. Are they really worth keeping? They take up a lot of space, space that we don’t really have, and I never use them. Their utility is very low.
 
But I love them. Some of them have changed the way that I see the world. Some of them have lots of great memories attached to them.
 
In the end I decided that the best way to appreciate their true worth is to get them into the hands of others to enjoy. I’m giving them away¹ so that hopefully they can mean something to others. That was the best way to value them.
 
My memories aren’t attached to the physical objects themselves, but their contents. Now that the library service is so great, with inter-library loans, we still have access to the books. Also, some are now open-sourced online (eg https://archive.org/details/MetamagicalThemas) so I can look them up in the future if I ever want to re-read them.
 
One reason for hanging on to them was to pass on to my daughter. One day, she’d read them, and then we would share how great they were. I can still point her in their direction, and hopefully she’ll like some of the same books that I did, but we don’t need them hanging around in the meanwhile.
 
Only time will tell if this was a foolish decision.
 
¹Nearly all of them. I’m keeping books that I refer to often, ones that I’ll read to my daughter in the next few years, and my rare copy of Raymond Briggs’ “When the Wind Blows” which I see is worth between $100 to $150 already.