Take Out the Paper (And the Trash).

Good night blogville. How I wish this was all I had to do in life. Read and post blogs. But there are more important matters at hand aren't there, like taking out the paper and the trash. And there is so much paper.

In this digital world you would think the amount of paper waste a household creates would greatly be diminished. That is not so. Most of the trash in my house is paper.

If you were to weigh the weight of trash from food and plastics and steel and the weight of trash from paper, I'm almost certain that the weight of the paper trash would be on par with any variable of garbage found in the modern home even in 2007.

You think we would have had enough. With our cable Internet and our satellite TV and our cell phone and text message and web sites. You would think we would have had enough of this paper mess.

Not so. There is still the everyday deluge of Junk mail, Credit Card offers, bank solicitations, Club fliers, newspapers (some of us are required by our jobs to read three daily), business cards, receipts. Trashy books.

All of this can be very overwhelming. Paper is almost a part of everything we do. There is toilet paper, newspaper, newsletter, magazines, posters, poster ads, tocket stubs, and the like.

How do we process so much information so fast. You can spend 24 hours a day processing the various paper press of your community.

And the trash. That's what all this paper becomes eventually. Trash. The Sunday times and all its magazines and coupons and circulars and arts and leisure section become trash come Monday morning. So do your plastic cups after you've drank the contents. And so does your french fry cup and your hamburger case and the wrapper its in and the brown paper bag they put it in.

We should all eat digital food. You got your plastic soda bottles and water bottles and your plastic ketchup bottles and your plastic condoms and your plastic this and your plastic that.

All of this becomes trash.

Is there digital trash. The delete button is most convenient. Look how easily we dispose of unwanted files on our computers. And all we have to do is raise an index finger. Not even a hand. If you so desire you can somewhat trade your terrestrial life for a digital one. My cellphone and bank and credit card companies all offer me the option of cancelling paper billing solely for online billing. I always deny them for the simple fact that if my online fails me I still the paper in hand to take care of business. Did I just imply that I am backing up my online activities with tangible objects.

The times they are a changing.

Storage had gone from space to material. From four walls to carbon to glass. It will take a long time though. Blogs and what not are the way of tomorrow, but you can't buy it a newsstand for 50 cents a pop. Till then, organize your paper, organize your cash, set your accounts in order, and take out the trash.