To Trash Or Not To Trash

My last post was early February. Has it been that long since I last posted? That should change now that there is a whole new season of recycling events about to take place.

Carol Stream, Elmhurst College, Lisle and Wheaton are all having recycling events on Saturday, April 20. And on Sunday, April 21, you can go to the Morton Arboretum for their EcoFest and meet the experts from EcoMyths who will bust some common ecological misconceptions.

Things that can be accepted by these events include

• Electronics
• Athletic shoes
• Clothes
• Home goods
• Classroom supplies
• Books
• Scrap metal
• Building supplies

There is a lot more, but I think I can come up with one or more items out of each of these categories. So now it is time to get to work.

You should check your county web site and see if you can find any recycling events in your county. I always go to the DuPage county recycling web page. I’ll bet you can find something that you aren’t using that you can drop off at a site nearby.

Of course, the season for garage sales is also upon us. The weather is beginning to finally warm up. If you prefer, hold a garage sale first. Then, if you still haven’t sold it, then drop it off at a recycling event.

Your house would look much better without the clutter and you will feel much lighter.

It has been way to long since I posted anything. Winter does not really encourage recycling. Even though I am not actively recycling, I have made it a habit to put things in a recycling box in the garage. It hardly seems worth it to make a special trip to a donation center if I hardly have anything to donate.

Does anyone have any clue what I should do with old smoke and carbon monoxide detectors? My old detectors were failing so I had to replace them. Now what can I do with the old ones?

My socks usually get holes worn out in the heels. My wife is notorious for wearing out the toes. We don’t sew, so what do we do? I reuse my families socks by recycling them as rags or garden ties to tie my vegetables to garden stakes.

First, I cut off the toe. Then I cut the sock along the back and bottom (that is usually where I wore the hole so I cut through the hole). Now I have a nice dust cloth. At the rate that I wear out my socks, we get a lot of dust cloths.

In the summer I take the dust cloth and cut it into strips about 1/4″ to 3/8″ wide. I use these strips in the garden to tie my vegetables to the stakes so that they aren’t growing on the ground. I don’t really like tomatoes that I have to first clean off a big glob of caked on mud before I can eat them. This technique does a great job of keeping the vegetable off the ground.

The recycling events are over. The holidays are taking over. What can we recycle now?

Do you have old strings of lights that don’t work? You would think that they would be made with higher quality in mind, but most of them are really made cheap. So they are made to break. I know of a couple of villages, mine included, that have collection boxes at various facilities around the village to collect old strings of lights.

I tried fixing the lights in the past. I have a BSEE degree, this should be a snap for me. Forget it, I ended up throwing them in a box. I will try fixing them when I have some leisure time in the summer? That never happened. I finally had a dozen sets of non-working lights in a large box.

Last year I took them all to a recycling event. When the holidays came up and I found a few more, I dropped them off at the village.

I have an old typewrite – over 50 years old. How do we recycle or sell it?

Yes, it is an antique. It is also in working condition. I tried recycling it at a couple of local recycling events. Nobody wanted it. They said that nobody wants mechanical typewriters.

I am thinking of putting it up for sale on the internet. A couple of possibilities come to mind. The Naperville Yard Sale (naperville.bookoo.com). I can also try eBay. I never tried that before. I sold some things at the Naperville Yard Sale, but I never tried eBay. The issue that I have with ebay is that I do not plan to ship what I sell, I want to have it picked up.

Another possibility is that I might even want to keep it for addressing odd envelopes. This is still a work in progress. What can I do? Do you have any ideas?

I had an old sewing machine. The motor burned up (what a smell) when the floor control apparently shorted out. The floor control left a burn mark in the carpet. I am just extra lucky that I discovered it before it burst into flame.

What to do with a burned out sewing machine? I had a couple of recycling events in the area – nobody was looking for anything like this. I tried iRecycle and sewing machines were nowhere to be found. I gave up.

Today is the day we put garbage on the curb. I put the sewing machine next to the garbage can. Within 30 minutes it was gone. It was picked up to somebody who probably thought they might be able to have a free sewing machine, or at least they can selling the scrap metal. Recycling resolved.

I know. It has been to long since I posted anything. A lot has been going on in my life, not all of it good.

There are only two recycling events left for this year. I will go to the electronics recycling event in Elmhurst. I have an old TV and a cell phone to get rid of. There is also misc. electronics from some dishwasher repairs that I can get rid of. I have some clothes and other things to get rid of. These I can off at Goodwill on my way back from this event.

Next week there will be one more event in Glendale Heights. This will include shredding. I have a bag of information that I want shredded. This is mostly just day-to-day info that I received in the mail. It may have my address, some account numbers, and other personal data. You especially want to shred anything that will have banking account numbers, social security numbers, birth dates, and anything else that can be used to open an account in your name. It is better to be extra cautious when it comes to your personal data.

There was no progress. The heat was horrible, over 100° F outdoors so I couldn’t work. Even with the air conditioner the 2nd floor is not really cool enough to work in. Also, the humidity was so high that I can’t paint. And I can’t stain the door without getting big blotches on it. Progress is at a standstill.

Weeds are overrunning the garden. That had to take priority. So I was working on removing the weeds in the very early mornings before the heat of the day made it to hard for me to work.

My daughters on vacation this week so I won’t get any more work done this week. Her vacation is over tomorrow so I will get back to work. I will try to shop for lumber and register covers before the week is over. Also I want to patch the plaster so I can paint next week.

The second floor back bedroom is painted and has a new floor. I will convert this into an office. Right now I am using it as a staging area for my work in the center room.

The center room had bookcases loaded with documentation for a computer that I recycled some time ago. All the documentation went to recycling. I don’t have the time or inclination to try to sell them. The bookcases will work in the new office.

What am I going to do with all of the 3.5″ and 5″ floppy disks the I found? I tried the iRecycle app on my iPhone to see if I could get any help. There are plenty of places where I can get rid of the Floppies, but I have to make sure that none of them have critical data.

I have a lot of used binders now that I would like to get rid of. I have to many to use myself. Where will I recycle them? The iRecycle app shows at least one place to recycle it but this is not a reuse place but a place where you take various plastics, etc to be converted into something else. My preference would be to locate somebody who can resell them for reuse. Some of them are like new. I plan to taking some to Goodwill and other places that can benefit by reselling them.

The demolition stage of the center room is done. Now I have to do some patching and painting. The last couple of weeks have been disaster. A whole week near or above 100 degrees. In addition, 5 days of that were without power. No work done during this period. I am looking forward to getting back to work on it.

We cleared out everything but the old couch. This is a hide-a-bed so I will have to hire movers to bring it down the stairs. We covered it with plastic so it wouldn’t get damaged by the paint and I painted all of the walls. The color is a shade of yellow but with an brown or earthy hue to it. We removed the old doorway.

Now I have to

• get the trim
• cut and paint the trim
• install the door frame and prime it.
• install the floor
• install the trim

Then the fun begins. I can begin moving in. Now what can I put in there?