Out of Chaos an organizing newsletter

Compost

I was thrilled to read last week that New York City is bringing back curbside composting. I love everything about composting: the sustainability, the way it lessens my guilt if we don’t quite make it through the clementines before they turn, the way the garbage doesn’t smell—they’re all wins to me.

There are other things in my life that I think of in the same way: shredding a bunch of old credit card statements and putting the shredding into recycling; putting my holey socks into the textile recycling bin in laundry room. These things make me feel virtuous, because I’m getting things out of my house, but not adding to a landfill.

Of course, maybe it would be better to manage it from the other end: Can I manage my groceries so I don’t have waste? Can I go paperless with my credit card statements? Can I darn my socks?

I do a pretty good job with my grocery list; but my husband likes the paper statements, and no, I can’t darn socks (and it’s not something I want to add to my list).

Still, it’s useful exercise to think about the entire life cycle of items I buy, especially the nonfood items. Is it going to last? Do I really need it? Can I rent it, borrow it or buy it second-hand? Sometimes there is, and sometimes there isn’t, and sometimes thinking about all of that is so exhausting that I just decide I don’t need anything at all.

On the bright side, when you find you really do need something, there are a lot more options than just buying. There’s Rent the Runway, neighborhood list serves, Freecycle, Craigslist. Libraries aren’t new, but now you can borrow e-books, saving paper as well as the need to buy books.

There’s even a wave of “free stores.” One of my clients says what she likes about getting things from a free store is that if an item she’s taken doesn’t work out, she just returns it. She hasn’t spent money, she’s not attached, it’s a very enlightened approach.

I know landfills are not going to disappear, but I still love the idea that our purged and shredded files could become someone else’s recycled notecards, my old socks could be spun into someone’s new T-shirt and this week’s apple cores will help feed next year’s tomatoes. For things that aren’t easily recycled, the sharing economy has a lot to offer: you can save a little money, cultivate a healthier relationship to your objects and maybe help save the planet. And that, my friends, is a triple-win.