Mom, Mom, Mom #35: Saving the Earth Gets Messy

I didn’t realize that it’s been so long since I’ve posted. I am busy on Twitter (@mommommom), though, if you are interested in tracking me. This is the latest Mom Mom Mom column and is scheduled to run in the February 26 edition of the Alameda Sun. (I will post the link when it’s live.)

Saving the Earth Gets Messy

My sixth-grader came home from school recently and informed me, with a tiny glimmer of fear in her eyes, that someone in school declared the doom and destruction of the earth in 2010 due to global warming. He read it on the Internet or something to that effect. I laughed it off, telling her that if every prediction of the end of the world were true, we wouldn’t be standing in the kitchen talking.

When she left the room, a little relieved, I turned to see my own form of doom and destruction due to global warming. My kitchen is a mess. More so than usual, that is. In our own humble efforts to extend our lives beyond the next few years, our entire kitchen has turned into a mini-recycling station—and a not very organized one. This is garbage we are talking about here. And it isn’t pretty.

We have many recycling projects going at the same time. In addition to keeping the doom of our planet at bay, we are also trying to get something in return for consuming stuff. In one corner of the room are shopping bags full of plastic and glass bottles and aluminum cans waiting for their trip to the recycle station. My eldest-by-less-than-a-minute twin daughter is hoping the cash refunds will contribute to paying for her own trip to Washington, D.C. with an organization called Close Up. Recycling hasn’t been very lucrative so far, but every little bit helps.

In another corner of the kitchen is the actual garbage can (lined with recycled trash bags) and next to it is a brown paper grocery bag filled with table scraps and food. I am looking for small recyclable bags that fit the small green bin that Waste Management provided to carry organic waste out to the large green bin. That little green bin just gets so incredibly nasty; the brown paper bags are better for now. On any given day, a glass jar or tin can bound for the recycling bin sits on the sink, getting rinsed out for its eventual journey through the land of green. The rain we’ve been having is great for our drought conditions, but contributes to my kitchen’s clutter as the waste usually kept outside is inside staying dry until garbage day.

The point of the multiple recycle stations is to reduce the amount of actual garbage we create. The recycled stuff gets, well, recycled somehow, somewhere.

I am not the only one who struggles with keeping a green kitchen clean. Renee Marx, whose kitchen is otherwise pristine, keeps her food scraps in a decorative ceramic bowl on her sink and struggles, too, with where to put recyclables. My Dad in New Jersey has to tie piles of newspapers together and keep them separate from the plastic, from the cardboard, from the glass.

Jodi O’Neill, a single mom based in Cleveland, Ohio commiserates with my plight. “I keep missing the every-other-week recycling pick up. Plastic bottles line my counters and are taking over my garage!” she told me.

Meanwhile, my sister in Vermont with her husband, five children, two dogs, three cats and rabbits has figured out the ultimate green circle of life. On the kitchen counter next to the sink is a large metal bowl. Throughout the day, as they complete each busy meal, they toss food scraps and debris into the bowl. At the end of the day during last summer, the scraps got tossed to the hungry pigs in the sty behind the big garage that looks like a barn. When the pigs grew large enough, they were sent to slaughter, with the meat ending up in the family’s giant freezer and then on to the table in the form of breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Now that it’s winter and the pigs are gone, the food scraps get tossed into the big compost pile behind the chicken coop. The pile is frozen right now (yes, they have several feet of snow in their yard) but once it thaws, it provides fodder for the garden they’ll start growing in the spring when it thaws. In a few months, their garden will be full of vegetables that make it to their table, and, well, I think you get the picture.

It would be tough to emulate my sister’s lifestyle here, considering we are trying to be vegetarian and there’s no room for pigs or chickens. Still, I am working on green ways of my own. I am working on the plan for a Victory Garden in our tiny back yard. It will be a challenge for my brown thumbs, but it’s important to put in the extra effort to being green. Then, our food scraps can go to our very own compost pile.

In the meantime, my kitchen will remain a mess, all in the name of saving the planet and keeping us around a little longer.

Mom Mom Mom #33: Be Thankful for the Past

Hi, All~ 

This is scheduled to run in the Alameda Sun Thanksgiving (11/27) edition:

I spent last weekend clearing out a space in our home office to make room for the piano that joined our family on Monday. In the process, I took the first steps to making peace with my past.

My office has been in need of a clearing for years now, but nothing has really motivated me to do anything but shift the mounds of paper and the boxes full of accumulated stuff from one place to another. Sure, I’ll feel guilty and overwhelmed and try to clean it all out every so often, but mostly, I pack the accumulation up into more boxes and move some downstairs to the storage space under the house. Or, I just try to keep the piles neat—moving them behind doors, underneath the desk, fooling myself into thinking that it looks “lived in.” I’ve even had professional help to clear it all out, but there is only so much someone else can do with your stuff.

After a lot of consideration, I discovered the only spot in the house that can hold the five-foot-long upright Baldwin, which is basically an enormous piece of musical furniture, is here, along the wall behind my desk. Having it come Monday provided a deadline to make an impact and get the office—really this time—organized. I tend to work best under pressure.

I have a history of avoiding organizational activities, but even more so as the years pass. Archiving the boxes of my papers—personal, professional and financial—usually gets relegated to the bottom of the To Do list, right behind making dinner, napping, watching movies, cleaning the bathroom or getting a tooth pulled. The trip back in time is not nostalgic for me; it’s a painful stumble across the minefield of every mistake, every heartache, every boneheaded move in my life. Even looking at the old toddler photos of my now teenagers makes my stomach twinge just a bit. I don’t want to acknowledge how fast the time is slipping by or see the family that once was. I don’t want to see the list of things that never got accomplished. Let’s really talk about denial here:  I have an entire bag of undeveloped rolls of film in the back of my refrigerator from a two-year period that I don’t want to re-live. I am not even sure if I can get them developed. (Does anyone even develop film anymore?) Why don’t I throw them out? Good question. That’s how I got to this cluttered mess in the first place.

Maybe I haven’t thrown any of this stuff out because deep inside I understand that you cannot just throw your past away. It’s a part of you. I can dump the papers in the recycle bin without looking at them, but I know that at some point, that act of exorcism will serve to haunt me. (There is a short story I wrote that got dumped in a clutter-clearing wipeout years ago and I still have not recovered.)

Accepting my past and its mistakes is just a part of life. I don’t think I can move forward until I realize how it has brought me to here, standing in my office, sorting through old photos, old reminders of me and the people I have known and grateful they have joined me for part of the ride. But, how can you be thankful for a past filled with heartaches and lost friends, names you cannot put a face on, children who are growing so fast it’s hard to keep up with them?

With a deadline looming over my head, I dove into each and every box, resolved, toughened up with an unsentimental approach. It’s just stuff, I told myself.

And, as I sorted through the terrible, black-and-white pieces of evidence of my time here, I discovered what therapists call a coping mechanism. I made a decision to do something with each item, even if it was only “just for now.” “Just for now, I’ll put the music CDs in this case.” “Just for now, I’ll put the girls’ photos in these photo boxes and stack them on shelves.” Just for now, I stored away in a special place the photos damaged in a flood in the garage. I found homes for all the chargers and cords that get tangled up on the desk; just for now, I put all the art supplies in a big basket for the girls to sort through. Because, it’s not just cleaning up the clutter on the floor, it’s going to take reorganizing the closets and cabinets to really get the job done.

It takes some time and distance to make peace with your—my—past. I have to admit that I did handle some things well. I have been rebuilding my life and each step has added character. When you leave your past in a box as you live your life, step by step, it gets easier to look back. Maybe I’m not so messy after all.

Just for now.

Here’s to a happy and truly thank-full Thanksgiving.