happy at home

COMPOSTING AND COMPACTING

I FINALLY have started composting. I hemmed and hawwed about it long enough. I kept procrastinating "I need to find the perfect can for the compost", "I have to find a good place to keep the compost can", blah, blah, blah. In the meantime, I am just throwing tons of stuff in the trash...headed for the landfill...could have been making some good fertilizer:::sigh:::so I pulled my big 8 cup pampered chef measuring cup out (glass is great, won't harbor smells) that has a lid (in case I don't want to carry it out, I can just put a lid on it and deal w/ it later). No big deal. Now I am composting. I am always doing that to myself. Analyzing. Planning. Vascilating. Finally I spring to action after becoming overcome with irritation at my in-action and "poof" it's done...I'm composting! Feels good. Shouldn't have taken so long. So often, I wait for the situation to be perfect and don't do anything, when I should just do somehing and let good enough be, well, good enough.

Also, I am attempting to compact for the next two months. That is, not buy anything new except consummables, safety items, and personal care items. I make exceptions for shoes, socks, and underwear. I think it is gross to use those items secondhand. Ewww. So, anything that I need to buy that falls outside of those categories I will try to purchase from Goodwill, thrift stores, garage sales, craigs list, ebay, etsy, etc.

I am not going to beat myself up if I buy something new every once in awhile but I am going to try and become more aware of what I am buying and, if I am able, to buy it used. Should be a fun little adventure! It definitely has me thinking more deliberately about what I buy. I am learning to think outside of the box and come up with new uses for old things (making the fabric from an old shirt into a new apron, instead of heading to the fabric store, for example). If any of you have/are compacting, I would love to hear what things you have started buying used instead of new, and maybe some challenges you have faced with compacting.