Sanity Check: Junk Day

It’s “junk pick up” week in my town. What this means, technically, is that all the stuff we’d normally have to pay to have the city haul away—example: that mattress with the sprung spring—will be picked up with the usual trash. It’s a municipally-blessed spring cleaning.

But what this means, really, is a once-a-year opportunity for a curb-side view of human nature.

For example, the old saying, one person’s trash is another’s treasure, comes to life during junk pick up week. Folks drive around just to see what’s lurking curb-side. Sometimes they even hop out of their vehicles and poke at trash, picking over it for hidden gems.

Those old two-by-fours that you were going to craft into some project you now only vaguely remember?  Trash to you… a future bookshelf to someone else.

It’s a hard impulse to resist. When our neighbors started hauling out their junk, my husband and I looked at each other, our expressions clearly communicating: hmm… Our adolescent daughters gave us looks that clearly communicated: Don’t. Even. Go. There.

After all this non-verbal communication wrapped up, though, we caved. And. Went. There.

Specifically, we went to a neighbor’s curb that sported a huge dresser drawer. No dresser. Just the drawer. To the neighbor, trash. To us, framing for a future raised bed for tomato plants.

And, I admit, while carting home the drawer-turned-tomato-bed-framing, we also espied another neighbor’s small parson table. To the neighbor, trash. To me… a nice solid wooden piece that just needs a little sanding, painting and stenciling to transform it into a cute little end table.

A certain social etiquette must be observed during Junk Week.

For example, one doesn’t want a junk pile that completely disappears before the official city pick-up, because that implies bit wastefulness. The majority of your junk pile should remain intact until the official pick-up, to show that you have truly gotten the maximum use out of your stuff, and are not adding to the landfill just because you’ve given in to over-consumption.

Then again, it is important to have at least one item disappear from your pile. Otherwise, you’re sending the signal that you’re willing to live with junk that really is junk for a whole year.

Perhaps the worst junk-week faux pas, though, is to have absolutely nothing to kick to the curb. This implies a certain I’m-too-organized-to-have-junk snootiness.

And yet, it’s a faux pas we have, sadly, committed. We keep pointing out to our neighbors that we’ve only been moved in for less than a year. We got rid of our junk before we moved, and we just haven’t had time for our stuff to morph into junk! If only we’d planned ahead, we’d have brought some junk with us, just for Junk Week…

All we can do is try to appease with the promise that next year we really, really will have junk to put out.

Maybe that little parson table, if I don’t get around to refurbishing it this summer?

Or… maybe to be on the safe side, we should just scavenge some more junk from our neighbors’ piles this year, and save it to put out at OUR curb for Junk Week next year…

Now that’s hard-core junk-recycling.