A lot of guys get dragged out to the stores with their wives, but that seldom happens to me, because she loves online shopping. She's also good at it. She can turn a keen eye toward hundreds of posted reviews and separate the useful ones ("This product works as advertised, and is priced appropriately") from the useless ones ("You should buy JOE'S THING instead!" -- notjoe1; "THis IS stuppid a nd shuld'nt be used and i demandd my mony back an they sed no becaus i shoplifted it").
The convenience of shopping online is unbeatable, and she's a whiz at getting free shipping. Returns are a pain, of course, but it doesn't often happen. The only real downside: I'm drowning in cardboard.
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| Not a picture of my cellar, but it could be |
Our trash goes out through the cellar to the garage, so when she gets a new purchase, she flings the box down the cellar stairs. This serves the dual purpose of getting it out of her hair and getting it away from baby dog Izzy, who chews cardboard and paper into bits like it's the best thing ever. (We let him have some sometimes, because it's the world's cheapest toy, but the bits are hard to pick up and, coated with dog saliva, can be virtually glued to the floor.)
What happens is, I resolve to get rid of the boxes on recycling day, but am faced with a decision for every single box:
❐ This box is bad and technically I should break it up and tie it for recycling, but everyone throws garbage into the recycling collection anyway, like my neighbor who through half a bottle of Thousand Island dressing into his last week, and I know it all goes in the landfill, so why do I even bother?
❐ This box is good and maybe I should save it because we want to move and get away from these lousy neighbors, and boxes are expensive, but God knows when that will be, and even if the box is too small for moving it will be useful to ship Christmas presents in December.
❐ This box is not worth keeping but it's full of Styrofoam peanuts/shredded paper/Bubble Wrap and I'd have to find something to do with that, and those peanuts get everywhere and it looks like it's been snowing in the cellar.
What I wind up doing is taking an empty box, filling it with scrap paper from the recycling bin, and carefully put it out with the recycling so it can go in the landfill (while the town follows the state law that requires "recycling").
As you can guess, I am dead certain this kabuki recycling theater is another reason people don't trust institutions these days. They lie to us, spend our money, and nothing works the way it's supposed to. Meanwhile, I'm about ready to demand to take my wife shopping, just to avoid any more boxes piling up. Let me get rid of the ones we have first, honey!
3 comments:
Abandon all hope. I can assure you it only gets worse.
When we were semi-lockdown because of the missus tested positive for covid, I had to order cat litter. It was shipped in a box which had printed on it "This Box is for Your Cat". Now we can't get rid of it. The young cat liked it and so did one of the ferrets. Ferret can't read.
Yes, you need to get a cat our three for all those boxes
rbj
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