Home Truth

Confession: I am not the world’s best housewife. Housework does not interest me. Being house proud is not in my nature. I do the bare minimum to keep the family ticking over.

So when my husband told me he was proud of me this morning, I was dumbstruck.

Then he went on. He was in fact proud of how empty our dustbin was when he put it out yesterday morning.

• Positive spin: we reuse and recycle and waste very little.
• Negative perspective: I never get round to clearing out the rubbish under beds and emptying the dustbins!

I choose to believe it is the former rather than the latter.

This conversation stemmed from the latest report in the media that a third of household rubbish is in fact food and that a quarter of all food bought is thrown away. A shameful statistic.

“Eat up your dinner. Just think of all the starving children in Africa”.

How many kids actually have had the nerve to reply “Well, send it to them then!” ?

I suspect we all agree the line our parents used is outdated and unhelpful. I’ve had to bite my tongue not to say the same thing.

Maybe the time to think about others is when we are actually doing the weekly shop. How often are we tempted to buy more than we actually need? How often do we overcater for fear of seeming stingy?

Gordon Gecko was wrong. Greed is not good. The world is in the process of discovering that the hard way.

Filed under: Reduce, recycling, simpler lifestyle on July 20th, 2007