I crossed another milestone in my journey to becoming European. It isn’t really something I aspire to, but something that seems to just happen to me. Ever since we have lived here, trash has been a problem. We have two small (by American standards) trash cans that have to make it through each week. We struggle each week to make it without overflowing both of them. The garbage company won’t take anything that isn’t in the can because we pay only for them to pick up what is in the can, nothing else. While we have managed to make it with normal household garbage, when anything out of the ordinary comes along we are stuck. We have tons of cardboard boxes from bringing things home from the US, from things we have bought, etc . . .and I can never get them in the trash. These have been piling up for over a year now.

This morning I had a breakthrough. I’ve noticed that other people burn their trash on a regular basis. We are always smelling smoke of a fire a couple of houses down. I’ve always wondered why they burn so many things. Then, it hit me, that this was the answer to my dilemna. I started the fire in the backyard and within 30 minutes, I had reduced my pile of boxes to almost nothing. In fact, I folded the ashes into the dirt so that you can hardly tell they were there.

What a GREAT THING. I will be doing this again.