Reduce, Reuse, Reboring.

I need to make a confession: I’m a lazy recycler. I know that this is an unpopular stance, but honestly, if CB didn’t do all of the recycling for us, I’d likely do very little (read: probably none?) It’s a weird part of my personality that I don’t really understand, but I’ve always been a lazy recycler and I’ve done next to nothing to fix that, admittedly. But I blame CB because he’s created a spoiled, lazy, non-recycling monster by always doing it.

Annoyingly, though, like, all of our friends are super-recyclers and it comes up more often than you’d think. Which makes us sound insanely boring but my guess is that everyone just wants to be part of Leonardo DiCaprio’s Green Squad or something and so they separate their plastic from their cardboard.

Anyway. So CB has set up this little recycling area in our front closet – one little bin for our bottles and cans/plastics, I think, and another for our cardboard, paper, etc. He separates it and then puts it in our recycling room which, I should add, is on our floor, across the hall, so that shows you JUST how lazy I am. I’ve almost never actually used our recycling room.

Except one time, just after the room had been “revamped” and there were shelves and labels for different things to be placed in different areas. So I put a box in there (no, I didn’t break it down or anything) and left. A few hours later, CB went to recycle some stuff and came back and said “They re-did the recycling room with nice signs and shelves and everything!” (See? We’re losers.) And I was like “Oh yeah, I saw that!” and then he was like “But it’s annoying because someone has already just thrown a box in there, not even paying attention to the signs!”

To which I was like “Um, yeah, that was definitely me.” And then he talked to me for a few minutes about what was wrong with me and I nodded until he realized it was all wasted time he’d never get back.

Well, yesterday, as CB was yet again recycling (seriously, dude, get a hobby), we had this exchange:

CB: “Um, Beck?”
Me: “Yeah?”
CB: “You do know that the recycling bag is actually a bag and not a shelf where you just sort of place your recycling stuff on top of it…right?”
Me: “Ooooh, that’s a bag. I was confused.”
CB, laughing: “I figured because that’s the only logical explanation for why you don’t simply open the bag and place the recycling inside of it.”
Me: “Yep, that’s the only logical explanation!”

And then I walked over to the closet in front of which he was standing.

CB, pointing to the bag: “See? This is a bag. You just open it up and place everything inside. It’s how bags work.”
Me: “Ooooh. That makes total sense now!”
CB, laughing and shaking his head: “You’re a piece of work.”
Me: “Actually, to be fair, you should really be thanking me.”
CB: “Oh yeah?”
Me: “Yeah. Remember a few weeks ago when you told me that I shouldn’t be putting the paper with  the plastic all in the same bin, and then showed me the bag where the cardboard and paper should go? Well I listened and I’m not putting them all together anymore.”
CB: “You’re right, you’ve made a very small step in the right direction. Now if you could just comprehend the concept of a bag versus a shelf, I’ll never mention it again.”
Me: “I’ll work on it, probably.”

I see no problem. 

Happy Thursday!