My Recycled Life — Coming Home to Reuse, Recycle, Sell, Keep, Giveaway and Reduce

A surviving daughter is dedicated to integrating recycling, reducing, and reusing into our urban and suburban California lifestyles

Although some may brand my parents hoarders, I wouldn’t — neither lived the kind of lifestyle seen on TV reality shows and news features, where homes are literally knee-deep in trash. My mother and father were products of the Great Depression where nothing got thrown away if it was “still good,” like Jeff Foxworthy’s description of a “redneck” as someone who keeps the old non-working TV around because the wood’s still good. Both my parents also were truly great procrastinators, their living spaces full of multiple projects that never got done. 

Hoarding and collecting is to an extent subjective, depending somewhat on what we do with our acquisitions once they enter our lives. My mother watched in horror what happened after the elderly couple next door to her died within a few months of each other. Their daughter parked a giant truck-sized dumpster in front of the house and threw what looked like the home’s entire contents into it and everything got hauled away to enter the waste stream. I assured my mother I’d never do that.

When my father was facing his last days, I persuaded him to let me put the contents of his apartment in storage, telling him I’d find him another apartment where he and a caregiver might live comfortably for the remainder of his life. Part of me knew it was a lie and he’d never leave the care facility, but the other part of me knew there was no predicting the future and maybe, just maybe, he might live long enough for me to get him into his “own home” one last time. Once he died, my focus shifted to reducing, recycling, and reusing what he left me. That’s become one of my ongoing projects — and not one I procrastinate about, either.

When my mother entered a care facility in July 2019, I told her I’d sell my mobile home, move into her home so she could come home and I’d be her caregiver. I set my timeline to move in September but she died that August. I moved from my single-wide one-bedroom mobile home, which seemed so small, to a three-bedroom house that seemed so large, until I took stock of everything that was crammed into it. My mother’s closets weren’t even like Fibber McGee’s on that old radio show, because when I opened the door, the contents were too tightly crammed for anything to fall out. I integrated reducing, reusing and recycling what my mother left behind into my lifestyle, which has been pro-environmental since back before the first Earth Day.

I may be leading a lifestyle dedicated to recycling, reusing and reducing, but I’m also recycling a life — or two or three. In months to come, I’ll be offering guidance for leading a “recycled” life, specially tailored for our local urban lifestyle.