Life on the Road

I did the Compact last year for 4 months, from January to May. Why only 4 months? Because I knew that moving into an RV was time-consuming and would require things we didn’t already have and couldn’t get otherwise. I like to think that by selling, giving away, and recycling nearly everything else in my house, I was promoting Compact-friendly ways. Other Compacters didn’t necessarily agree, however, and I was lambasted for buying a fuel-consuming home instead of, oh, I don’t know, continuing to rattle around in an enormous 3 bedroom home with 2 bathrooms, washer, drying, dishwasher, hot tub…. you get the idea.

Anyway, aside from a few comic books over the weekend (which are, in fact, for work), I haven’t bought anything new since the first of this month. And I’m thinking maybe I will go back to the “no buying new stuff” thing for the rest of 2008. It was good for me, good for the environment, and I managed to do everything I wanted to do during that time without spending a lot of dough.

I don’t entirely know what the Compact’s total goals are, and I suspect they vary per person. For me, the goals are to get away from impulse-buying (which I’ve mostly done), reduce clutter, reduce waste, and in general streamline my life. Notice that “save the planet” isn’t in that list. That’s because I think “Save the planet,” while an admirable goal, is probably not practical when your home gets 8 miles to the gallon.

At any rate, here are the things I spend my money on the most:

• Yarn.
• Books about knitting.
• Comic books (for work).
• Romance novels.
• Postcards.
• Arts and crafts supplies.
• Online media and services.

Of these, the books, yarn, and arts and crafts are the biggest offenders. A few postcards don’t stop my wheels from turning, and they’re good for giveaways like the one I did last week. I inherited a box of stationary from my grandmother, so I don’t really need any more stationary. Nor do I need any more arts and crafts supplies– I’m full up on glue sticks and I can always cut up stationary if I need to glue some pretty pictures into a scrapbook.

I have for you all, my friendly readers and passers-by, a question about saving the environment.

It’s about bags.

Yes, those bags. Those awful plastic grocery bags that everyone hates.

It would be trivial to switch to canvas bags around here. We have the bags, and we used to be a bag-reuse family before moving into the RV.

However.

We also bought plastic garbage bags for taking out the trash. Once or twice a week, we’d go around the house and empty all the garbage out and throw it away in… plastic bags.

Some of that trash was pretty gross, especially since we recycled all cans, bottles, plastic, and paper, and composted all organics; that pretty much left meat products and pet waste in the garbage. Have you ever tried to take out meat products or pet waste in a paper bag? I don’t think the garbage company would have taken our trash– too gross! And it’s not lawful to just toss some of this into a garbage can directly– there are ordinances against free-flying cat litter, and it’s not a good idea to flush it into the septic system.

Now that we live in the apartment-on-wheels, we recycle less*, and empty the trash daily. Our trash container is a very small kitchen garbage can, almost exactly the size of:

a plastic grocery bag.

As a result of using this size of garbage, we almost never need store-bought garbage bags. When the bags come in, we store them under the sink until use. We rarely run out of bags, because the amount of “stuff” coming in is roughly the same as the amount of trash going out.

So, here is my question for all of those who use reusable canvas bags for your grocery shopping: Do you buy plastic garbage bags? If not, how do you dispose of your stinky trash?

*Sorry– there’s a limit to how many glass bottles we’ll carry around looking for a campground that has recycling before they become a moving hazard.