non-toxic wastebaskets

Eee gads, we've been steeping in the toxic waste of the mortgage-backed securities mess - and bailout, which didn't pass in the first round, then passed in the second after some changes. We generous taxpayers came through for our poor, suffering corporate dimbulbs. I hope it will be a better move than many of us feared and will help settle the markets down. (Whispering now . . .) Hey, if anyone sounds as though they understand this mess, don't believe 'em. As Don's economics professor said, no one really knows what affects markets and how to fix them. But don't tell anyone, this is just for you, because I know you can handle the ambiguity and not get freaked out knowing no one really knows what will happen.

Anyway, all that waste presents a good opportunity to show you my little wastebasket collection.

This one is in l'atelier. I picked it up at a yard sale.




This one is very old, and sort of falling apart. I think I bought it at a flea market, for the guest room. If you come for a visit, please don't throw anything into it, I think it would disintegrate. I see it as a sort of faux wastebasket, a wastebasket wannabe, a piece of art posing as a wastebasket. I should probably make a little sign to lean on it: PLEASE DON'T PUT ANYTHING IN ME. You can just throw your kleenex in the sturdy plastic bathroom wastebasket (which I'm not showing off here, as you see).

This one is a treasure because it was my mother's. It sat in her study for as long as I can remember, under her secretary desk. I think it was her mother's before it was hers. I keep it by my dressing table (not on the bentwood chair on the porch where I posed it for a photo). Peter and Lesley can fight over it when I'm gone.

Detail of my mom's wastebasket.

I guess I'm just as guilty as anyone of covering up and prettifying my trash.

I don't know about you, but this is what we do:

• recycle everything that can be recycled around here: plastic containers, newspapers, glass, magazines, junk mail, paper, tin cans
  
• get paper bags at the grocer to use for paper trash that we burn (I hope our little bit of paper burning doesn't hurt the atmosphere too much); goodness! some checkout clerks do not like bagging in paper! Yikes!
  
• give food scraps to the chickens, except what isn't good for them, which we dump in a compost pile (that isn't being dealt with as compost yet; we're lazy so far about that)
• the rest of the unrecyclable, uncompostable garbage goes into old plastic bags from the store; we finally stopped buying garbage bags - what a waste! We hardly have any garbage that goes into the dumpster now.
• Oh, and when I'm gone, I want to take up as little space as possible. I want to be cremated.
  

I've been excited to hear about NYC and LA and their recycling of food scraps for compost for farmers.