Been Busy, Part 3

Getting rid of old pressure-treated lumber and boxes...

When I busted up the 25 year old garden beds last Fall, I collected them in a corner of the yard.  And there they sat.  Meanwhile, thinking I might move, I was collecting boxes that were of same shape.

This past week, I decided the old lumber had to go, and I wasn't going to move.  It was time to bring stuff to the landfill and the recycling center...

I did the old lumber debris first.  I was surprised at how much I had.  480 pounds of the stuff according to the landfill scale.  1/4 ton almost...  It took some work.  First, I had to haul all the 480# from the far backyard to the front yard.  Then into the hauling trailer.

Then drive it all 10 miles to the landfill.  Then drag it all out of trailer into the landfill disposal area (with dinosaur-sized bulldozers screaming around me barely 2 meters away).  And it cost $16 just to get rid of it.

And THEN I had a basement nearly full of identical boxes in 2 sixes.  One group of 4 dozen wine boxes and a group of 10 chewy.com boxes.  I was going to store them all in my attic, but decided "why".  So I packed those all into the back of the Highlander SUV.

They never would have fit by themselves into the car.  So I got inventive.  The chewy.com boxes could hold 3-4 wine boxes.  But there were still wine boxes left over.

I am spatially creative.  I looked at the leftover wineboxes and thought for like 2 minutes.  It hit me that a little reshaping of the wineboxes might fit them into the existingly-packed ones.

I crushed the narrow sides like paper grocery bags fold, and darn if they didn't fit right down into the other boxes!  Two boxes in the space of one and 2-3 pairs of boxes inside the larger ones

I filled up the back of the SUV and drove to the recycling center.  Free riddance of reusable materials!  There were even guys there so bored that hey emptied my car for me...

Getting rid of 480 lbs (1,056 kilos) of old lumber debris at a reasonable cost and 58 boxes for free is a good day!

Energy Use After New Insulation and Other Stuff

1.  Energy Usage After New Insulation:

One month does not prove anything much, but my first post-insulation project usage for October shows that my Oct 2013 usage was 1326 "some unit" and the Oct 2014 usage was only 973.  It is promising, but weather in one month can be different one year to the next.  I'll wait to see the next few bills.

But it does look good.

2.  The framed raised garden beds are progressing.  3 of 6 completed and the boards for the 4th are all cut.  Now that I have the process of building them routinely, the 4th will be easier than the first.  And I am set to buy the lumber for the 5th and( last) 6th  any day the weather is "OK".

3.  I'm continuing to accumulate a pile of donatable items in the basement.  Its not the "usual stuff".  Today I cleaned out the top shelf of the pantry.  Anyone have  a bamboo multi-layer chinese steamer?  I do, and I haven't used it in 20 years.  Onto the pile it goes.  I hope the Salvation Army knows what it is.  LOL!  I keep holding off calling Salvation Army for a pickup because I keep finding new stuff to add to the pile.  I wonder what they will do with a 4" lens refraction telescope, for example.  But that's their problem/good luck.

4.  I'm loving the new trash pickup!  I got rid of 12 bags of kitty litter last Friday and 10 today.  They say they don't accept "lumber", but I have a barrelful of scrap ends, and so far as I can tell watching them mechanically lift and dump the dedicated container they provided, they can't see what is in it.  I can keep cutting the trash lumber into 6" pieces and put them in bags all month until is is all gone.  It sure will be nice to not have to drive to the landfill this winter!  And I have a lot more junk to get rid of.  I'll fit it it into the dedicated Evergreen container even if I need a sledgehammer to break it up.  And I'm not trashing any recyclable or compostable stuff.

5.  Last night was the first hard freeze here.  I dug up 4 Basil plants to try to keep them growing inside on the south window.  Picked the last tomatoes too.  A few were at orange, so they might ripen.  For the others, I will look up "fried green tomatoes".

6.  Got out my 3 window box planters tonight.  I can get some fancy mesclun lettuce from them over the winter,  I have just enough potting soil left from last Spring to fill them.

7.  The lowering sun this time of year is now blasting my eyes through the kitchen window.  I found a tension rod to fit across the window and a valance to hang just low enough to prevent the glare as I make my lunch.  28 years and I'm finally getting around to doing that!  I had a choice of 2 valances.  One white lacey and one red.  I chose the red; white lace isn't quite my style.  Red doesn't fit the white wall and black appliance colors, but who cares.  The cats won't complain.  I've been considering having the kitchen tiled in various shades of 4" green and painting the rest of the kitchen celery.  Maybe I'll hang a little label on the red valance "annoying red dissonance".  LOL! 

Actually, I like red/green/black as a color scheme.  My living room is hunter green, the TV room (traditionally the dining room) is dark red, and all the other stuff is black except for the medium wood furniture.  Oh well, I never expected to be displayed in "House Beautiful".  I like what I like.

8.  Next indoor project is to arrange the planting area.  Everything since Spring has just been piled into the grow-light shelves.  Since growing season starts indoors here in 2 months, I better get started on that soon.  Or I'll need to do it fast the day I want to start planting.

Trash Pickup

Before I moved here, I rented a house in another county where trash pickup was a single-contractor county service, paid through taxes.  When I moved here, it was all private multiple-contractor service, and I signed up.  All had 2 day per week pickup and all cost the same (about $35 per month and that was 20 years ago).  It was all OK for a while.

But then, the county started recycling pickups AND I had started a compost pile.  Between recycling and compost, my "trash" dropped to almost nothing!  My one bag of trash once a month got ignored because my pickup company guys kept forgetting I was a customer.  And paying $35 a month for one bag seemed ridiculous.  And back then, I had Tinkerbell, then Skeeter and LC and they preferred to do their business outside.  I didn't even have much kitty litter to toss.

I tried 3 companies and they always lost track of me on the routes.  They said "well just put out your trash can twice a week with a small bag in it.  I didn't even have THAT most weeks.  So I cancelled the pickup service and switched to saving it for a few months and then driving to the county landfill paying $1 for the bag (my "trash" is not smelly, almost anything "smelly" is compostable).

Things change.  Ayla, Iza, and Marley prefer to do their business indoors.  I've even seen them demand to come in, use the litter box, and then demand to go back outside.  And I've started ending up with some bulkier trash.  So I was going to the landfill sometimes with a few 100 lbs of non-recyclable, non-compostable trash, and the price of gas was going up.  So between the flat disposal rate of $5 and a gallon of gas to get there in my SUV, it was starting to be noticible.  And who wants to have to drive to a landfill to unload in Winter or mucky Spring rains?

Well, 2 days ago, a guy knocked on the door and asked abut my trash pickup service.  I told him I didn't have one.  Now, I usually automatically just (politely) blow off door-knockers.  If I want something, I'll find it on my own and comparison-shop carefully.  But he managed to get my interest.

I explained that the cost was too high, and that I usually didn't have enough trash to put out the barrel once or twice each week and that what I really needed was a service that charged half the price for a single monthly pickup.

I was surprised to discover my 2 major problems were resolved!  First, they provide company-identified trash cans and the cost was half what it used to be.  So, no matter how infrequently I put the trash out, they won't miss me!  Second, at only $20 per month, the cost begins to approach my own cost of landfill dumping and gas (and time).  And the contract is only quarterly, not annual.  If I don't like their service, I can drop them.

Most of my trash is kitty litter, followed by styrofoam packing peanuts,and blue or black styrofoam containers (which are not recyclable here), and some strange odds and ends.  I can manage a small bag each week.

And the cool thing is that I HAPPEN to have a LOT of unrecyclable, un-compostable trash right now.  Heavy old rotting preservative-treated wood from the old raised framed garden beds I am replacing now!  I estimate that the cost of landfill-dumping of all that stuff would be about $50 at least right now, and I'm less than half through tearing out the old wood.  So I should actually save money through Spring and getting rid of it a LOT easier.

And I'll mention that the landfill is inundated by seagulls searching for scraps of food.  They normally don't bother visitors, but one day they got all scared up and flew over my car.  Raining poop...  If you don't know about seagull poop, it dries quickly and turns to cement.  It took me 2 hours to clean the car after that 1 episode.

I hesitated to hand the trash guy a $60 check for services I hadn't yet received, but he presented a pretty good collection of legitimacy.  His car had the trash company logo (Evergreen Disposal) and I see their trucks each week.  He had a well-worn Evergreen hat, pictures of him in an Evergreen trash truck, pictures of him with other Evergreen people, a picture of him at some trash conventionpictures of him receiving an award at an Evergreen company meeting, and I imagine a check made out to Evergreen Disposal would be awkward to cash...  He suggested I use my smart phone to check their website (where he said he is a route manager) assuming I had a smart phone (who doesn't?  Well, *I* don't, but he didn't know that).  I think I was sufficiently cautious.

If I got scammed by a door-knocker, it will be about the first time ever and I might even tip my hat to him.  I have a pretty good mental "BS meter".

But I expect I will be getting regular trash pickup starting Nov 4th at a really good price and saving myself a lot of trips to the county landfill.

All That Trash

Re-reading the Wednesday post about the tubs of used kitty litter and bags of trash, I thought I should explain a bit.

I don't pay for weekly trash pickup service because I have so little.  I used to pay $40/month for weekly trash pickup, but since I only accumulated enough to bother putting it out once a month, they tended to forget I was on their pickup route.  THEY said to just put out my little one bag each week and the driver would remember I was a customer.  Still, that was only a 5 gallon bucket per week, and seemed not worth it.

I have so little "regular" trash other than the used kitty litter.  50% of my "trash" is recyclable.  Another 20% is "film plastic" (shopping bags and shrink wrap) which my grocery store recycles to make new bags.  Most of the rest is compostable (almost nothing goes down my garage "dispose-all").  The remainder is styrofoam that nobody will accept, and that gets collected in bags in the garage for months.

That leaves the used kitty litter.  I keep a half-gallon lidded plastic container lined with a plastic shopping bag near the litter boxes and scoop everything in there.  When filled, I tie the bag up tight and set it into one of the tubs the litter comes in.  So I have a tied bag, in a tub with a tight lid, in the garage.  You can't tell its there even after several months.  And just to be a "little" more environmentally friendly, I'm looking for small biodegradable bags to use for the litter.

The landfill charges a flat rate of $5 for all "household trash" you can fit in your car.  You can pay by weight, too (they weigh the whole car going in and then leaving and charge you by the loss in weight), but I found that after 143 pounds, flat rate is cheaper.  I usually accumulate about 300-400 pounds in used kitty litter every 4-5 months, plus about 4 large bags of styrofoam and other odd stuff I can't recycle.

So basically, I got rid of 500 pounds of trash for $5 (plus gas) by driving 10 miles to the landfill, instead of paying $160-200 for weekly trash pickup I seldom used and got skipped over most of the time.

Doing Useful Stuff, 3

Biannual Trash Dump:

I visit the landfill twice a year.  I recycle and compost so much that I seldom have anything for the trash collectors to haul away.  Maybe 1 bag per month.  And since I have to pay private trash collectors at least $40 per month, that's not a good deal.

And since what IS trash isn't organic, it doesn't smell.  So it can sit in bag in the garage for 6 months.

The kitty litter is the bulk of my other trash.  I can't compost THAT! But with the scoopable litter in plastic bags in the plastic tubs the litter comes in makes a good storage. I can wait on that too.  Seriously, the scoopable litter in the plastic tubs it comes in DOESNT cause any odor.  To me anyway.

So I filled up the car with the tubs of used kitty litter and the bags of  clean trash and drove to the landfill.

I can't BELIEVE I didn't take pictures of the SUV all filled up this time...  This isn't the picture from THIS year, but it is about the same amount.

The difference is that I learned that if I could put it all in the back of the car, I could pay just a flat fee of $5 for the whole load.  A trailer MUST be paid by weight (and that weight cost $10-$15)  So I do that by carload now.

Now I start another 6 months kitty litter and uncompostable, unrecyclable trash collection in the garage.  LOL!

Spring Has Sprung

It is time to start projects again.  I'm just not good at doing stuff during Winter.  Even indoors.  It's weird.

But every Spring starts off with "Spring Cleaning".  This time, the major kickoff event was TRASH DAY.  I should explain.  I don't pay for regular trash pickup, because I only generate 1 bag per month of households trash and 1 small bag of kitty litter.  At $35/month for scheduled trash pickup, that's hard to accept.

So, since I regularly have stuff to bring to the recycling center (which is also the landfill), I just pay for trash weight at the same time.  They have a flat fee of only $5 for all the residential trash you bring.  I DO have curbside recycling, but they don't pick up boxes, bulky metal, etc.  So I end up going to the landfill every few months.

Well, with the snow in Feb/March, and since I was saving winebottles since Oct thinking I might try making my own, I had a real load.

Part of it was my trash.  I compost everything organic and recycle everything possible, so there isn't much per month.  1 bag.  And it doesn't smell. 

The stuff that DOES accumulate is kitty litter.  I buy the new kitty litter in tubs and keep them for the used litter.  Gaze on this and be amazed...

That's 6 months worth of used kitty litter.  I bet ya haven't seen that much ever.   Don't worry, the sealed bags I use prevent any smells...  But still, that's a LOT of used kitty litter, LOL!  300 pounds of it!

The car itself was filled up with boxes, trash, old fluorescent tubes, unrecyclable styrofoam, etc.

I expected an easy delivery process.  Thursday afternoon right after lunch.  Who would be there?  Well, the whole world, it seems.  I forgot this was Spring Break Week and apparently a lot of adults take the week off too.  The line to get IN to the dump was 15 minutes long and the line to get OUT (and pay) was 30 minutes.  I ALWAYS forget that school is out this week...

And then I discovered that the $5 flat fee doesn't apply to trailers!  It cost me $13 instead.  Still, I can't complain much.  6 months of $35 trash pickup would have been $210!  So I'm $197 ahead (minus 1 gallon of gasoline).  That's a lot of steak and wine...

At least the weather was perfect.  70F, sunny, and a light breeze.

Next, Spring is really here and the gardening is underway...