trash.

My family does not generate very much trash.

My mom's family? Every single day I have to take out at least one trash bag, because of my brother's diapers and then just all the random things, mostly food packaging stuff, that get thrown away.

But my husband and I? Pretty much what we throw away is limited to:

- the disposable diapers we use at night (so, seven of those per week)
- the occasional food package, or discarded food

Everything else is recycled.

It's pretty cool to me how that has worked out. My systems are finally working! We cloth diaper (and as of a few weeks ago, cloth wipe as well); we now compost (I WILL post about that later, promise), so that takes care of much of our food waste; and other than that, everything else is recyclable.

I'm not like an anti-trash psycho or something, but I don't like things going to waste. It now takes about 2 months to fill up our trash can. I made the mistake of actually letting it fill up before I took it to the street last week; not doing that again! Poor garbagemen! So this week, I took the trash out to the street, even though there were just two grocery-bag's worth of trash in there (one bag of diapers, one bag of random junk [read: old makeup] I threw away from the bathroom cabinet). The two bags looked so lonely and pathetic there in the bottom of the 35-gallon trash can. At least they had each other.

We've experimented with having Nathaniel be cloth diapered at night, and every time it's worked out all right, but I just haven't bought enough overnight inserts to make it work yet. I might go do that today. I figure that it's an investment. Yes, it will take 3 months of use to earn back the cash from buying overnight inserts, but we'll use them for many more than just 3 months. So I might as well do it.

If we do that, though, who knows? Maybe we'll never have to take out the trash again!