Garbagemetrics

I've been thinking about garbage recently.  Its the smell.  I forgot garbage day last week and had a bag of garbage sitting in the recycling closet waiting.  We used to have a two bag limit in town.  We'd get special fluorescent stickers to put on bags of garbage.  No sticker... no garbage removal.  This year, garbage stickers have been abolished as a cost saving measure.  Hand delivering a package of stickers to every household apparently became more expensive than dumping costs.  There was even a public meeting to debate options...  I didn't care much, seeing as we never used our allotted stickers with our family of either four or five.

There is also a bylaw that all garbage had to be put out in clear bags, theory being that this would encourage recycling.  I haven't exactly grown up with the idea of recycling, but we're young enough to still have been adaptable.  Many people aren't.  It always shocked me when taking big items to the dump how many easy recyclables - that had a weekly pickup - still got dumped.  Paper, tin cans, and pop cans.

Anyway, waste wise, in a typical week (there is more garbage when we have a foster kid.  We have yet to have one who understood the concept of recycling!) we dispose of:

• One full 35 litre kitchen garbage can - bitty things, non compostable food waste, dumpings from the vacuum canister, plastic, styrofoam, whatever else.
• Between half and two thirds of a 12 litre step on garbage can - mostly diapers and wipes.  We used to be 100% cloth diaper, but Leaf had a hard time keeping up with laundry when the septic froze last winter & I was away at school.  Getting better again, but still use disposable 10-15% of the time, most often when carrying bags of wet and smelly cloth diapers is not practical.
• Between half and two thirds of a 50 litre blue box with aluminum, steel, glass, and plastic
• Between half and two thirds of a 50 litre grey box with cardboard and paper
• Three 2 litre ice cream containers of compost (this goes into our own compost pile)

I've managed to improve my recycling skills.  The kitchen garbage would get overfilled by one or two days before garbage pickup.  The lid wouldn't close, it would smell bad, the bag would get pushed down into the container and make a mess...  I started being pickier about what got recycled instead and managed to cut it down by enough that  we now fill, rather than overfill, in the course of the week.

I feel bad about the amount of food we waste, but that is inevitable with two young kids.  Other than that, I think we do a pretty good job without going overboard or being inconvenienced in any way.

Adventures in Pottysitting - Episode One - This will be Easy

Our kid is so much smarter than all the other kids. He wears cloth diapers, so it will be easier. The very first time he was ever sat on the potty he had a nice poop, was proud, had to be the one to flush, and he was potty trained.

Well, that very last bit wasn't true. He did poop the first time, was proud, and had to be the one to flush. But that was the last successful potty trip for ages. He just would not go. Couldn't get him to even sit on it. So we tried reading. He loves books, we all read a lot, and I often read him three or four before nap time. He sits on the potty, we read a book while we wait for some action. A second book, a third, a fourth, a fifth. Nothing.

We did get him on the potty though. It went on. Some minor successes, but still mostly in the diaper. He did start saying when he needed to go potty though. "Read me a book, read me a book!" Eventually, it struck me as funny that Mars desperately needed to go potty when Odin was getting lots of attention, or mummy was making dinner, or daddy was on the computer. He'd sit on the potty and demand to be read books, but nothing ever came out. Hmmmm..... So he is a smart little fellow.

This led to problems. The boy who cried wolf and all that. Reading is good, potty time is good, reading while going to the potty is good. But you have to do the doing part, little dude. So we no longer had unlimited reading. A book or two, if we don't have success, its off the potty again. Of course the wolf shows up. Plop plop plop as soon as he gets off. Sigh. Potty training is not easy.

A digression. Its hard to maintain parental composure when you're trying not to laugh. Like many parents, I find Elmo to be insipidly annoying. Mars loves him though. I think it started with cheerios. Three to be precise. "Look Mars, there's Elmo's nose and his two eyes!" His beloved Elmo could be found anywhere: 3 chocolate chips on peanut buttered bread, 3 coins, 3 rocks, three cups. Just about any time he saw what could be two eyes and a mouth. Of course he had to admire his handiwork on the bathroom floor, and of course he had to say "Look mommy, Elmo!"