I’m reading Annie Leonard’s The Story of Stuff at the moment, and was reminded of the everyday waste that is junk mail. The amount of junk mail we create is staggering. I couldn’t find any well-cited facts for Canada, but the average American household receives 848 pieces of unwanted commercial mail a year. That’s more than a billion pieces of junk mail a year.
I made a sign for my mailbox. Then it occurred to me that it would only take me ten or fifteen minutes to make a bunch of signs to enable my neighbours to opt out as well. Here’s what I ended up with (click to enlarge):
I came down the next morning and all the signs had been removed off my poster. Unfortunately, about half of them had been stuck on the outside of mail box doors, instead of inside:
Speaking as somebody who’s written a lot of instructions in my life, humans are universally lousy at following them.
Make Your Own Signs
Want to do this for your own apartment? Awesome. I updated my poster so that “inside” is bigger, and post a template for the signs and the poster itself on Doc Stoc. Just click through and you can download the PDFs. I recommend printing them out, cutting them up and attaching tape to each sign like I did. The more work you can do for people, the better.
If you do this (or already have), leave a comment and let us know.
UPDATE: Incidentally, you can also opt out of junk mail from Canadian Marketing Association members. I suspect that this represents just a small amount of the total junk mail I receive, but I’ve emailed the CMA to confirm that.
I’ve written before about our apartment composter. I wish my family had one when I was young, because watching the accelerated process of decay would have delighted the eight-year-old Darren. I’m still a little amazed that I can dump, say, some old lettuce into the thing and, 24 hours later, it’s magically turned into dirt.
The device hasn’t worked perfectly. The first one pretty much gave up the ghost after a year–the motor appeared to have rusted out. After some hemming and hawing, the manufacturer sent us a replacement, though, and that one’s been working like a charm for six months or so.
I have learned a few things about optimized composting, though:
The composter is sensitive to humidity. It rains in Vancouver nearly twice as much as it does in Victoria. We keep our composter on our deck, though out of the rain. Still, the additional humidity means the composting material can get too wet. When this happens, we just chuck in a cup or two of sawdust. Top tip: get free sawdust at Home Depot.
Compost can get smelly. This is only a problem when you open the bin to add material, and it doesn’t matter since it’s on the deck. If you’re keeping your composter inside, you can add some baking soda to reduce the odor. Besides, I kind of like this smell. It’s very loamy.
It helps to poke at the dirt every few days with a spade. That way it doesn’t stick the walls of the bin, or gunge up the churning arm.
To my dismay (per Lauren’s comment in this earlier post), the composter won’t break down so-called compostable containers made of corn resin.
In Victoria, we didn’t have a garden, so I would, oddly, illegally dump the compost in a local park or something. In Vancouver, we’re hopefully going to have one of the community garden plots associated with our building. In the meantime, on moonless nights, I’ve been stealthily dumping dirt into a couple of the garden plots.
From the residents’ newsletter of a friend’s apartment building:
At the beginning of April, one of our residents approached our caretakers with a most unusual request: it seems that she had been sitting out on a fine day–minding her own business–when a crow swooped down out of nowhere, snatched up her dentures (which she had discreetly placed on the bench next to her) and flew away.
Being quick-witter and understandably rather fond of her dentures, the resident carefully watched the progress of the crow as he flew away and deposited the dentures on the roof of Townhouse 3. And here’s where the caretakers came into the story. The resident reported what had happened to Mark and Luke, and wondered aloud if they might be able to recover the dentures for her.
Although perhaps a wee bit dubious, they were certainly not dismissive of this tall tale and undertook to aid this damsel in distress. Equipped with a long ladder and a healthy dose of curiosity, the two investigated the roof of the townhouse, and found, undamaged, the very dentures they were seeking!
A tad Reader’s Digest, but heck, it’s Friday.
When I was in university, a crow once briefly landed on my head. I assume he mistook my greasy, 19-year-old hair for something shiny. I also know somebody who was repeatedly dive-bombed by a crow who wanted her metal hairclip.
About two weeks ago, I was anticipating a painful, tedious search for an apartment in Victoria, BC. In particular, I wasn’t looking forward to trying to rent a place from abroad. We didn’t mind doing it–we rented places in Malta and Morocco sight unseen–but we feared that landlords wouldn’t be down with that.
Thankfully, after only a couple of weeks, we’ve secured a furnished, two bedroom suite in a heritage house in Fairfield. I was somewhat worried about living in a small building, but the owner assured me that every is quiet and pretty much keeps to themselves. The place has a big office upstairs, and a large south-facing deck.
We had to lobby pretty hard to get the place, but I think my aunt sealed the deal. She did an inspection in our place, and talked us up to the owner. We’re taking her out for dinner when we get to Victoria.
And though I bemoaned Craigslist for its crappy interface, that’s where we found this place. So, Darren 0, Craigslist 1.
During the move, the movers (or ‘removalists’, which I prefer) packed out our large bookshelves which sat in our dining room. That room got a lot of sun (as you can see here). I was struck by how much the tone of the hardwood floor has changed in less than a year:
I hope the new owner is going to put something large and rectangular there as well.
As you may have noticed, things are both slow and mundane around here. That’s because I’m running around like a madman trying to finish up projects both personal and professional before we jet for Europe tomorrow afternoon. Sorry about that. Things should return to normal once we’re settled in Malta in a couple of weeks.
If you’re looking for something to entertain you, try my Links page.
