#@$*&((*&% unholy packing peanuts!

Christmas is (was) here!

As I've gotten older, Xmas has lost a bit of its edge, but I still like presents as much as the next guy. It's just harder to buy for me because I've lost interest in a lot of things that you get 40 year old men - stuff for cars - and what I really want - stuff for bikes - I get for myself all the time. I do manage to hold off and make a list and I got some good presents this year. Some family members latched on to my newfound interest in growing vegetables and fruit.

One problem with having a far flung family is that a lot of the stuff is shipped. And from the middle of nowhere, stuff gets shipped in big boxes stuffed with these...



The dreaded styrofoam packing peanuts, destroyers of landfills. And they get all sorts of static cling on them such that they jump off and hide everywhere, you find them all over your house until next Xmas. A lot of shippers moved to plastic blow up bags that are not nearly as crappy, and now there are some that use shredded newspaper stuffed into recycled paper shapes - good stuff. But in the boondocks shippers don't want to pay extra to hug a tree - and here come the styrofoam peanuts.

Dilemma - What to do with them?

I got rid of multiple boxes - including the peanuts - on Craig's List It's amazing what you can divert from your trash can on CL. Even better - try FreeCycle. Over the years I've managed to get rid of all sorts of things that would otherwise be piled up in our landfills - there is a college student in Reno sitting on my old couches from Lake Tahoe to this day. My less enlightened management company was going to charge me $150 to haul them off to the dump - I told them to give me a week. I knew there had to be someone less finicky willing to give extra life to my old couches - still functional but not exactly goodwill quality.