Why I Hate Recycling...

Would someone please tell me why oh why my MIL feels the need to “save” everything as if she were saving a kitten from imminent death?

My MIL cannot stand to waste at any cost. This leaves me with cupboards toppling over with used cans, jars, bundles of newspapers, used sporks-you name it!

It drives me insane! At first I thought it was the coolest thing that she was the modern recycler and that we were learning to makes use out of our trash. I agree that we Americans are far too wasteful and I agree with recycling.

What I can’t seem to agree with is reliving my dirty fast-food secrets over and over. For example: I open up my pantry to locate some flour. Sounds simple enough, right? Wrong!

The flour, five varieties of dal, the fried onions, the sugar, you name it, are each carefully wrapped and tucked into random KFC, Ragu and Wendy’s containers. This “storage” system makes absolutely no sense to me and makes me so angry. How the hell am I supposed to find the damn flour I want to scream, but I smile and bite my tongue one more time.

I opened up my cupboard to pull out a pan to fry an egg with. I am greeted with mounds of newspapers and old-junk mail envelopes, which are carefully stuffed between each pan, and it’s lid. She stands over me, telling me to be careful not to scrape the pans. “They are pans for God’s sake, they DON’T have feelings.”

Every once in awhile my hubby will interject. He will scream and go on a rampage and start pitching the plastic sporks, JC Penny fliers and KFC buckets into the trash.

The next morning, the twice-over garbage will be found washed and placed right back at their original place. My MIL has an obsession with “saving” the trash and cannot and will not let it go. While my MIL is here, the beautiful home that both DH and I work so hard to create is turned into the junk-yard found at Sanford and Son.

Help! I’m drowning in my own consumption.