This is the lid to a pack of wipes that I used up. I got it from the small paper bag that I use as a trash bag in my room. The experience wasn’t too gross since most of the stuff I throw out in my room is not sticky or smelly. The lid was pretty far down and I haven’t emptied this trash in a couple of weeks since it doesn’t fill up very quickly so it was a bit of a look into some of my activities in the last couple of weeks. There was something from my last period, which gave me a bit of a timeline for the trash which was kind of cool.
This lid was thrown out because its original purpose was to be part of the container holding wipes and when the wipes were gone, it no longer needed to serve that purpose. When I first threw it out I was not thinking about the potential uses for it. By taking it out of the trash and adding it to my collection of things to be used, I am doing what people of the past were described to be doing in the reading by Strasser. Even if I don’t use it immediately, it will eventually be given another purpose.
I could have saved the piece before ever throwing it away, rather than going back to find it. I have been trying to keep that in mind when throwing out other things. I have remembered to consider other uses for glass jars and some paper scraps, but those are the only two things I ever really think of before throwing them out. For the most part, I don’t often consider the possible uses for things I would otherwise consider trash.