I do this every day. I throw it out at night, after the last tea bag. it’s a habit I got into. I used to compost my tea bags and loose leaf tea and coffee grounds after I took them out of the French press or the glass pour over. now I use just bagged tea, k-cups and there’s no composting services around here, let alone competing ones, city ones and private subscription based ones. my roommate and I used to compost every little thing. banana peels, garlic skins. leftovers and produce that were past their prime. it all returned.
it stayed outside, the forest green compost bin. we’d put it out once a week on the curb. we took turns, but never had a strict “I did it last time” thing. just, hmm, I think he did it last time. first person to notice it’s full. overfull. I’ll take it out. I remember feeling strong, and capable. lugging a big trash bag outside, yanking and dragging the trash bin from near the shed, over the cracked, raised pavement and finally wrangling it onto the curb. I remember having to put shoes on, leaving slip-ons by the door. his and hers, but not like that. just mine and his.
in winter, I’d lace up boots with traction, or put on big rubber galoshes. wind, rain, snow, ice. black ice. big puffer jacket just to walk the length of the driveway. skull cap. I never used gloves because I couldn’t feel. they’d freeze out there, even for a few moments. so frozen they burn. come back in and warm them up, rub them together, so frozen the fingers don’t bend, just slowly soften, return to room temperature.
I felt rugged. low-maintenance about the maintenance. a girl who wasn’t too precious about compost and rotting food and sometimes flies and taking multiple trips. the paper, the cardboard boxes we always found ourselves breaking down, from deliveries, especially during the pandemic. shredded mail. magazines and newsprint. somehow the paper goods bin was the heaviest. then the recycling. then the trash. trash builds up between two people over a week. but not as much as it could be if there wasn’t also plastic and paper and cardboard recycling, and compost. who knows what happened after the recycling truck came. we did our best, minimized best we could, and then it was out of our hands. out of mine. usually three trips, sometimes four, lugging it all.
but I can’t lie. I always day dreamed, imagined. someday there’s going to be a man. and he’ll know I can, but won’t let me. who’ll think, “she can, but she shouldn’t have to.” carry it all, get her hands dirty. one day. and I don’t mean Alex, my roommate.
these days, there’s no man, but I don’t take out the trash anymore.
she does. she never got her considerate trash man either.
but I try not to create much trash. I don’t really. lots of what I eat is unpackaged, like fruit. or in cardboard boxes, cans, now and then. a tin of nuts, a big bag of seeds.
wrappers. teabags with string. plastic pods. eggshells from hard boiled eggs. I can’t stand peeling them, but I can stand to peel them. faster than frying or scrambling. banana peels. apple cores.
I toss the cans and boxes into the recycling, a paper bag on the ground.
if it’s food scraps, I toss in a plastic bag in the laundry room. no trash bin, just a bag on the floor.
but the little things, the tiny things. I’m not going to make a trip for every one. every stray wrapper, every stray tea bag, every pod.
I’d be going back and forth all day, because I sip all day, nibble all day. need a little energy support, gentle energy, sugar for blood sugar.
so I’ve developed a habit of putting them in bowls I call nests. usually one bowl, sometimes two if it’s been a heavy trash day.
at the end of the day, I see what I’ve produced. and what supported me throughout it, kept me going until it’s time to call it a day. a reverse inventory. “let’s see what we got.” let’s see what I had. a visual record of the day, and no two days look exactly alike. at least not the nests. a different configuration each time, unrepeatable in exactly the same way. same color, texture, shape, size.
a brief history of one day.
then all at once, or two trips, they go into the big bag. and once again, I have an empty nest.
the nest — the bowl — doesn’t go back in the cupboard. it sits there, waiting for the morning. whenever morning starts.
I realize now how important it is to have vessels. a bin, a glass, a bag, a basket, a jar, a bucket, a mug, a bowl.
something to hold, somewhere to put things, so they have a place, so they have somewhere to go.
