This is probably the only ode to landfills, ever.
I love going to the local landfill. I remember my family dropping things off once when I was young, and how amazed I was at the immense possibility of what could be made from stuff I saw lying around; I envisioned robots, go karts, an epic treehouse. Unfortunately we couldn’t take anything from the junk piles, but the sense of wonder I felt in that landfill stuck with me.
Where I currently live the landfill is close enough to go there and back in well under an hour, yet far enough that I don’t smell anything. Huge win win.
I will note that on my first several trips to this landfill I was unaware of how pricing worked, and as a result paid more than expected…which took away some of the magic. The first time I was one bag over the lowest price tier, and on another visit I didn’t know I could have asked to pay by weight instead of by bag (which would have been nice since I was dropping off lightweight insulation batting). But never fear! I’ve now optimized my landfill approach and the magic is back.
My current approach is to wait until I have the maximum number of bags allowed under the lowest payment tier. With all of the home improvement projects and ultimate scrap challenges I’ve been doing, it doesn’t take long before I’m loading bags in my CRV for another lovely trip to the landfill.[1]
My preferred time to go is in the early morning, right at open. The sun and cool air make going to the dump almost a poetic experience, which is probably a brand new sentence (at least in this context).
And I know it sounds weird, but every visit has been like taking a huge weight off literally and figuratively.[2]
Call me odd but nothing quite matches the feeling of driving home in an empty car, a brilliant sun coming over the trees, to a house that’s more free from unneeded items and clutter.
So take a look around and consider what you could improve by what you could remove, and do that. Start small; fill just one bag. Then fill another. Call your local landfill and ask about pricing, and when you hit the limit for the lowest price make a quick trip and see how you feel, too!
[1] This once again proves the magic of CRVs. All sorts of stuff goes into the bags, and a ton of bags go into the CRV.
[2] Ha. Ha. Ha.