I had a compost bin...purchased in my salad days of high wage employment. What a dumbass I was. Let's get something straight, plastic is a strange material, it really isn't that good at all the applications that it is used for.
So now you can figure out what kind of bin I had. So now it is going downstairs to get some mesh screen that I have and to the cull pile at home depot to pull out some cut chunks of 2x4. I figure that this will be a job for two boys who are bored on their summer vacation with me offering sage wisdom and generally unwanted advice.
Anyway, back to the point. Take a look through your house, and take an inventory of the crap you have. Pay special attention to the cheap crap that you have amassed. It is all usually injection molded plastic crap. You know that the crap is going to break at the most inconvenient time.
So, my recommendation today is to start purging it. Most of it you don't need, it is just crap you bought when you had more money than sense. If you can do without it, just throw it away, or use it until it dies and replace it with something well made, or sell it to some gullible fool at your next yard sale. If it is actually something that you need, replace it with a well made unit using metal, or glass, or ceramic.
The days of cheap are over. Manufactured items may very well start becoming more and more difficult to afford as the economy finds its natural state. Plastic is oil, we used it for everything so that prices could be lowered at the Wal-Mart, but even that is ending now. You will not be able to run and replace cheap with cheap, you had better have something that will last.
One of the things that we have to change is our attitudes. When we purchase something, it should be for a purpose and it should be well made. Too much of our massive pile of stuff is impulse buys and crap. You guys have it in your house, it is all over my house. We need to have less and have stuff that is a once in a lifetime purchase that our children argue over when we are dead.
This is one of the best things the Dead ever did, I would recommend listening to the whole thing, more than any song I know, it defines today's world.
2 comments:
I was gonna do a post on this, "metal vs. plastic", but ya beat me to it. Plastic sucks. It breaks down when exposed to UV, as I suspect a lot of our stuff will be when we bug out, or get kicked out of our homes. Plus rats and mice can chew through it pretty easily. It doesn't have the structural integrity of metal or wood, and is not easily repairable as metal or wood is. And plastic, being a petroleum product, is fixin to get real expensive, as are fiberglass products. We paid $300 for a drum of fiberglass resin 2 years ago. Today, it's around $850.
What about the "plastic" in quality rifles?
But I'm with you on the whole "offload crap" thing. I look around my place and it's chockers full of crap. Many, many things have sat idle pretty much since the day I or my wife bought them. Many things we have been given as gifts and they sit unused from the day we received them. When I try to throw them out the wife cries "but that's a gift from your mother". My response is that unused crap is a waste of space and unecessary clutter regardless of the source. Suffice to say the crap stayed - Sigh
I do urge everyone to get rid of crap but here's the kicker - don't buy anymore!
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