Lesson Three: Setting Up a Recycling Center in Our House

 (from the Martha Stewart website)

I've been wanting to set up a recycling center in my house since we moved in. Frankly, I'm ashamed it's taken this long to get it done. I got this idea from none other than Martha Stewart. She suggests putting together several wide, interlocking bins to create your at-home recycling center. You can even put these bins on rolling castors to make them easier to transport to the curb, or in my case, the car since my town doesn't offer curbside recycling. Each bin should be labeled with what goes in and you can even post a list of what can and can't be recycled nearby.

I finally got my rear in gear and picked up some bins. If you want to be even more green, find some used on sites like Craigslist.com. I would have loved to go this route but since I've put this off for far too long, I just went out and bought some.

 

This is not exactly what Martha suggests but it was the only thing I could find at Target. Sterilite 3-drawer bins are a decent price and come with optional wheels. The ones I picked up are not as wide, which I am not happy with, but they will work for now. When I find the perfect solution, I will repurpose these bins for closet storage (another thing I desperately need).

Do you have a home recycling center? What do you use?

 

Goal #70. Set up a recycling system - Completed

Course Syllabus

I am completely in love with the idea of homemaking in the traditional sense. When someone loaned me a copy of Martha Stewart's Homekeeping Handbook: The Essential Guide to Caring for Everything in Your Home, everything I was trying to do around my own home started to make sense. My husband could not understand why I wanted things positioned a certain way around the house, or why I made a list that thoroughly described how I wanted each thing around the house to be cleaned. I didn't really understand it either, except that I wanted it that way. After reading that book, I realized I was sliding into the role of homemaker. It came naturally to me to want to do these things. What didn't come naturally was the knowledge or the organization. The want-to is all here, the know-how is not. Hopefully this blog can help me get there and stay there.

 

I want a place to share some of my recently gathered homemaking knowledge. Martha Stewart has filled me up with all this information and I feel like if I don't write it down, process it, share it, I may not put it to good use. It will just sit in a dusty filing cabinet in my head and never be useful to me.

I'll also occasionally use this space to talk about Martha herself. I am completely in love with the woman. She is a genius and I absolutely look to her as a role model. Some of you may not understand why but I intend to fully explain that, all in due time.

I also want to display my home throughout its transitions. We bought the home in semi-decent condition; the previous owners did beyond their fair share of trashing the place. It's 2600 square feet make for a difficult home to clean and keep organized but I'm up to the challenge. I want to show our home as it takes shape into something beautiful. Join me as I embark on one of the craziest ventures of my life :)