Old magazines, newspapers, a deluge of plastic covers from every mall shopping stint my husband and/or I go on, old bills, loose papers, medicines that no longer find use...the list goes on. Even my kitchen resonates at times with things I do not need. I could go on with my guilt trip. But of late I realised something.
Happened to watch an NDTV Lifestyle show featuring actor-director Rajat Kapoor's home. For a director-actor and anchor of his repute, I obviously expected a home done up by interior designers, with diffused lighting, cushy wall decors, drapery and everything that goes into such homes.
Amazed. That's probably the word I can use for getting glued to the channel instantly. Watching the father play with his kids, mess up the sooji while making ksheera in his match-box of a kitchen, and wash bicycles with the children... makes one nostalgic about their days. His home's unassuming middle-class look was what baffled me most, for a city where I find even the middle-classers aspiring for style. He did have a word or two to mention as the episode wound up, about not complicating his life with too many desires.
What a value to pass on to children! He talks this in times when parents, teachers, schools and our society teach children to want more, to desire and aspire to achieve just that. Rajat Kapoor's focus on `live and let live' is a breather no doubt.
He was right about the fact that we tend to complicate our lives with too many desires and wants. That dress out their on the shop window, those earrings I saw at Lifestyle...that piece of furtniture I want to buy...or wall decor I want to do the home up with...we never seem to be happy with what we have. We want to buy more and earn to buy. It would do so much good if we learnt to achieve in spirit rather than in material.
It's probably what is leading to so much trash in our homes. In wanting certain things for home, we do end up buying them. Once we are done with the buying, we end up not using everything we buy. At times, we are not merely spending money but indulging in retail therapy.
When the spending gets too much, it is no longer about retail and therapy but addiction...to buy, to hoard. To let go of some pent up emotion by letting go some cash.
This lost cash could translate to some veggies we buy and do not use, to furniture, furnishings, and mostly clothes. At times I look at my kitchen and wonder if I am actually using some ladles that were handy initially, or some spoons that hang on to the stand. The result however is horrifying. I have a deluge of plastic covers that I do not want to throw. It's all simply the result of forgetting to pack a plastic bag or shopping bag into my purse. Else, it is about a supermarket's lousy rule that they will pack the purchase only in their own plastic bags.
If I alone have hoarded a hundred plastic bags, what about the other 96 households in the colony I live in, and the thousands of other households in the city! Also, we make on an average, at least half a kilo of household trash, do not segregate it into organic and inorganic as there are hardly any options available for doing so! Imagine the amount of trash that accumulates as a result!
I may not be another Sharyn who made her life miserable in trying underneath, to get away from pain. But it sure does hit me when I look at the aisle between my kitchen and bedrooms.
I discovered it is possible to do away with a lot of trash, by first not making it.
If on an average your home generates a kilogram or less trash in a day, you could cut it by at least one third by not buying veggies that you do not eat, not buying the flour from the provisions' store if you do not use it, by carrying not one but two bags when you venture out. The bag's size could depend on places in the city you may visit, and the distance from home.
As for clothes that you're dying to buy, try putting them off for `next month'! A lot of times such temptations are momentary. You do feel a lot better when you reach home and remember you did not waste. A bit of gandhigiri, but helps. It has worked with me.
Me heading to my pile of magazines...to sift, sort and toss them out (I mean sell them off to the raddiwallah)
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