Garbage + Recycling: A Great Starting Place

When I was young, I remember loving Shel Silverstein’s poems. I’d flip through and marvel at his black and white drawings. His poems were some of the first I read to my children as well. I’d name Where the Sidewalk Ends as one of the essential books of childhood. For parents and kids alike, “Sarah Cynthia Sylvia Stout Would Not Take the Garbage Out” illustrated a vivid account of the consequences of not handling the garbage (and now recycling) in a timely manner. We all have to start learning about household management and the impact we have on the home somewhere.

You have a process.

The garbage card is a great place to start when discussing household chores with those who live your house. Whether you have smaller cans in each room or simply a large can in the kitchen, your household has a process for handling garbage and recycling. Folks know where to put items that need to be discarded. They know that every so often that bag of items disappears. They also know that there are consequences (smells, unpleasant spills, etc.) that potentially occur if the bags of trash remain. Therefore, the garbage card is a great chore example to break down The Fair Play Method’s steps.

Break your process down into parts… all of them.

Before garbage and recycling gets removed from the home, you have to decide that it’s an important task to be done. That’s where “Sarah Cynthia” comes into play. Talk to your family members about why it’s important to remove garbage from the home. It seems like a simple thing, yet it’s where the value behind tasks stem from. Not every family decides to remove garbage from their home. Not every home has someone physically able to do the task of garbage removal. (Remember, I’m an organizer.)

Your reasons could be your particular sanitation standard, or it could be having guests being able to come by with ease. Your reason may be that you grew up in a house where deciding what’s trash and what’s not wasn’t done as frequently, therefore you want to approach this chore differently. Talk about what makes something garbage versus recycling versus what’s usable. Get curious if everyone in the home has the same understanding of the words “garbage” or “trash.” Don’t assume you all see things the same way, and use “Sarah Cynthia” as a model. (It’s okay if this breakdown seems simplistic, that’s the point of highlighting all the hidden parts of the mental load.)

Notice who notices.

Garbage, and any other chore, shifts into motion the moment someone notices that it needs to be removed. When I’m talking to my kids about additional chores that they’re capable of handling, I spend a lot of time explicitly talking about noticing. When is the garbage “full?” Is it full at halfway? Is it full when you put raw chicken trays in the can? Is it full when you can’t close the lid? Is it full when someone else tells you that it’s full?

Digging into the specifics, rather than making assumptions, is a great way to help your housemates see that noticing is a skill. If you’re eager to have your partner do more of the car care, for example, use garbage as an analogy. (You notice when the garbage is full… how can you notice when the oil needs to be changed or the insurance needs to be reviewed?) Having conversations around noticing helps others to understand that caring for a home is work, and that it doesn’t happen by magic.

Set your minimum standard.

We have two apartments. Therefore, in our home, everyone cares for their own bathroom and bedroom smaller trash cans, and no one person owns the garbage card. (Shhh… don’t tell the Fair Play team!) Our minimum standard is that you bring the full garbage to the central kitchen garbage on Sundays. You can either dump it directly into the main can and leave your liner intact, or you have the option of removing the entire small bag of trash and replace the liner. Everyone knows that the replacement bags live beneath the kitchen sink. Everyone is responsible for taking out the kitchen trash can when material reaches the top of the bag. If the lid can’t be closed, it’s past due. Everyone is also allowed to “call in” their housemates if they haven’t met our household minimum standard. What’s fair is fair. We all make garbage; we all take it out.

Your minimum standard may be different. Setting your minimum standard involves having everyone in the home know what qualifies as the dividing line between “too much trash” and “an acceptable amount of trash.” If the waste management team comes by your home once a week, your minimum standard might be getting all the trash out of the kitchen bin and larger receptacles down to the street. We place ours in a trash chute, so we set our own schedule. It also involves having everyone know why the task is valued and who owns the task at any given time.

Build from there.

The garbage and recycling card is a great starting place because a majority of folks value it. Use it as an example, use “Sarah Cynthia” as an analogy to help your team understand the steps of The Fair Play Method: Conception (noticing), Planning, and Execution. These steps are replicated with every other task. You can make the steps parallel when teaching others (You can’t only empty the small cans and leave the main one full… you can’t fold clothes before drying them.) Each step matters, and everyone can learn to contribute. Running a home is a collective, collaborative effort, and it happens by talking and teaching, one skill at a time.

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