The Dump...

Just some food for thought today. More house photos coming soon....

I've learned many life lessons during the past three years:

• You can live a much more, ahem, sparse life then you think (try boxing up and avoiding all non-essentials for two years - it's an interesting experience)

• You can cook A LOT in a toaster oven

• There is life without cable (and heat, and carpet and a dishwasher...)

But one of the most interesting experiences by far has been visiting the dump. Everyone should visit their local dump at some point in their life. It's a very odd experience. I find it equally cathartic and disturbing.

It's so nice to rid our house and our yard of our demo and building scraps. But on the other hand, it opens your eyes to what happens to all the 'stuff' once it's no longer your problem. Seeing cars and trucks line up and the passengers tossing their debris into a massive, well, trash pit, is just mind boggling. There is so.much.trash.

Some dumps are more disturbing then others. The one pictured above is only a few miles from our house, slapped right in the middle of an upper class neighborhood. It's not called a dump, it's called a 'transfer station.' You pull in and dispose of your junk while the employees are rocking the latest pop music. Kind of a dump-cum-dance club atmosphere.

The other dump that we go to if we're working late is south of downtown. It's huge and open 24 hours. There you literally drive your truck up a steep ramp and then just let it rip. A huge room full of everything imaginable.

I'm never going to try and convince anyone that I'm an A + recycler (although I try hard - we even compost), and our house is not going to be LEED certified by any means, but a regular trip to the dump really does make you rethink all the things you buy and all that stuff that you put out at the curb...