Nothing a Little Dumpster Diving Can’t Solve

In this house, we do chores. All of us. No one is exempt. My kids are on commission. Each chore has a value and, upon completion, a sticker is placed on the chore chart. Payday is Friday, unless I forget, then it is whatever day I remember or am reminded. When I was a child, my mother was raising two girls on her own, and there wasn’t much left over. We did chores, but we were not on payroll. We had piggy banks full of change that we emptied out when we wanted to walk to the roller skating rink during summer vacation. (Yes, we walked, alone to the skating rink at ages 7 and 9, hard to believe. I don’t even want my kids to walk across the street!) And when the money ran out, my older sister and I went scavenging. We lived in a poor part of town and there were several apartment complexes near by. They each had a large green bin full of the week’s trash. The pungent aroma would have been enough to fend off most folks, but we were kids who wanted to do stuff, and stuff cost money. So she and I took turns hoisting one another up over the side wall and down into the sea of waste. If the image you have in your head right now is a bin filled with white trash bags, neatly tied together, you probably didn’t grow up poor, at least not the same kind of poor as me. We never had trash bags, the garbage was tossed directly into the can and when it got really gross, we sent my brother outside to hose it out. Anyhow, we collected cans and bottles from the bins and turned them in for cash. Once, we even found a working bicycle for my then two-year-old brother. Lucy, you can tell Jeff “you’re welcome” for me! Uber’s CEO, Dara Khosrowshahi, said “Sometimes desperation drives innovation.” My seven-year-old self agrees.

Anyway, what does this have to do with my garden? Tonight, I went to sit at the table and noticed that the Jiffy greenhouse was buried under a mess. Stacked on top of the thin plastic lid was a tub of multi-colored clay, the Square Foot Gardening book, papers, and mail. The lid was caved in a bit. That is one sticker that needs to come off the chore chart – that’s not how I would have cleaned off the table! Anyway, I got excited when I got all of the junk off of the greenhouse and saw the glimmer of a sprout. I couldn’t remember what we planted in that particular pod, so I reached for the scrap of paper I used to write down each pod and what was in it. And it wasn’t there. It wasn’t in the pile of junk or folded in the book; it wasn’t in the Ziploc bag with the seeds in it or under the greenhouse. And then it occurred to me that in Kaden’s haste to “clean” off the table, he probably threw it away. I hollered at the kids to join me in the kitchen and inquired about the paper. As most ten-year-olds would, Kaden denied ever having seen the paper. We all spent a few minutes hunting, but I knew where it was. It was in the trash, outside in the green bin. My first thought was “Well, I guess I am going dumpster diving.” And then, just like he has so many times, my amazing husband came to my rescue. He walked outside, rummaged in the neatly tied white Glad bag and returned just moments later with the sacred scrap of paper.

For a moment, I felt defeat creeping in. “You have a sprout and you have no idea what it is. It hasn’t even been a week and you have already failed at gardening. I told you your thumb is brown,” my subconscious roared. But I’ve read “Girl, Wash Your Face”, and Rachel Hollis told me that “Embracing chaos might be the journey we take to finding peace.” So, tonight, I am embracing the chaos, hoping for peace. And salsa. I still want salsa.