Create a Home Recycling Station

There are special rules for hazardous waste and electronics. Some towns have centers or days set aside for disposing of paint, cleaners and other hazardous materials. Most stores selling computers, electronics and printer inks also recycle them. “Talk to your local pharmacy about disposing of medicines,” says Robertson. “We can't just flush them down the toilet.” Setting up a recycling system entails thinking through what space you have, how much you collect, how often you recycle and what your town accepts. Photo courtesy of Organize.com. To find out about drop-off centers in your area, visit Earth 911 and enter the type of material and your ZIP code. To find out about your community's recycling options, see the map on the EPA’s Web site. Frequently, there are details about recycling in the information pages of your local phone book, and you may want to stop in or call your town’s Board of Health, which often handles garbage disposal and recycling. Organizing Your Recycling It may have been easier to throw everything in one trash bin, but those days are gone—which means dealing with many bins until trash day. To get organized, think about not only what your town accepts and how it accepts it but also where and how you use materials until you’re finished with them. “I have people think about the retention policy of everything they have in their home,” says Robertson. “I often have people set up a mail center with a shredder and a paper recycling bin. If you like to have access to magazines and newspapers, you can have a decorative bin next to the reading chair.” Space under the sink or in a mud room is often handy for recycling bins. To prevent odors and discourage critters, rinse food or drink thoroughly from bottles, cans and plastic containers. While your town may provide one big blue box for curbside pickup, you may want to organize recyclables in smaller bins until trash day. At home goods stores and on Web sites, there are a variety of bins and recycling systems to fit your space and keep materials sorted. Some kitchen designs usually include built-in recycling stations, but many new products make it easy to organize a system in your existing space. Photo courtesy of Organize.com. If you don't have curbside recycling services, set up larger bins outside. “Transfer everything from your smaller bins in the house into the large ones in the garage, and put a date on the calendar to go to the recycle center,” says professional organizer Christa Patchen Wagner, owner of Savvy Solutions in Seattle. Reduce, Reuse, Recycle Experts from coast to coast note that “recycle” is merely the third R in the mantra “reduce, reuse, recycle.” Reduce—what the EPA calls “source reduction”—comes first for good reason, say recycling and organizing experts. “Recycling is not a 'get out of jail free card,' ” says Peter Walsh, a decluttering expert who has a weekly XM156 radio show, is a regular on Oprah.com and is the author of How to Organize Just About Everything, It's All Too Much and Does this Clutter Make My Butt Look Fat? “When we buy something we assume responsibility for it—the manufacturing process, the resources that went into it, the labor costs, the recycling cost, the energy required, the shipping to get it to our door. Cutting down on the front end before worrying about the back end—I don't think one can exist without the other.” Standolyn Robertson, owner of Things in Place in Waltham, Mass., and president of the National Association of Professional Organizers, agrees that buying anything should be deemed an investment. Pay attention to packaging, for example: Instead of buying yogurt in six packs of little cups, serve it in small reusable containers for a school lunch box. Bring tote bags to the grocery store rather than using the store’s plastic or paper bags. “We constantly have to remind people to reduce,” says Anne Reichman, director of Earth911.com. “Everyone starts at recycling, but it's really the tail end of an overall strategy.”

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