Shopping for Solutions

A few of you asked, in comments or emails, to be updated on the composting.

Parts of it are going well. I like using my garbage disposal less, it's encouraging to see how many veggies we are eating, and the adorable little trash can composter I got from a catalog eliminates the smell.

However, we went to the shore for a week and I forgot to take out the composting before I left. We came home to fruit fly city. It is totally disgusting and we have the fruit traps and the vinegar traps out and hopefully working.

Add to that the minor tragedy of our freezer drawer--someone, either our friends who stayed at our place while we were gone, or one of us, getting freezer packs out before we left--didn't close our freezer drawer all the way. So my entire kitchen freezer defrosted. That was a whole trash bag of food out the door. I only kept the butter from the whole batch. On the bright side, it was an excellent opportunity to clean the freezer back to the orginal white, and I have been trying to clear out my other freezer for defrosting anyway. We emptied that one almost halfway since the upstairs one now has space.

So I really do feel stuck in the Composting of the Damned. Really, how hard should it be to let my produce rot? And yet I find new ways to mess it up.

Of course, what's really messing it up (besides my laziness at not wanting to actually walk outside with veggie scraps every night--the horror) is my reliance on adorable or chic products to encourage me to compost in the first place. (For example, if the scraps had been smelly, I wouldn't have forgotten to put them out. But if they were smelly, my husband would not be on board with this composting spree. And after the fruit flies, he's off board anyway.) But I do tend to like to shop for solutions. I was thinking about this at the shore. My husband had an incredibly unfortunate crib accident culminating in an emergency room visit less than 24 hours in to our trip. He's ok, fortunately, but did bleed all over the comforter in our rental house. All week, I kept thinking, I have to get to the drugstore to get some hydrogen peroxide. I'd hate to lose my security deposit over a bed-in-a-bag. But I'd totally understand if the owners didn't think blood stains went with the decor.

So along comes the last night of the rental. I still haven't gotten to the drugstore. Desperate to avoid losing my deposit, I try the oldest, lowest-tech solution of all: cold water on a towel. And you know what? Not a speck of blood remained. All week I was so sure I needed to purchase the answer I didn't try the easy one.

That realization became easy to extrapolate. And it goes with the composting too. While I don't regret my cutesy carbon filtered composting container in the slightest, what's causing my composting issues are all the accoutrements--none of which are technically necessary at all.

That, and a slight sunburn all over my face were the takeaways from my vacation this year. Oh, and the crab soup from Avalon Seafood. That was amazing. It reminded me of my childhood. That was a purchase on a night I didn't feel like cooking for ten. See? Sometimes shopping really does provide answers.