Meet Me At Mygatt

Many things annoy me. But the top of the triangle of my Mom's Heirarchy of Irritation would have to be crap. Stuff. Knicknacks. Trinkets. Items. Collectibles. Things that come into my house through backpacks, bags, UPS deliveries, or clutched in little fists. Things that find a resting place somewhere highly visible and extremely inconvenient, where they dig themselves in with the tenacity of a disgraced politician attempting to cling to power.

I don't think anybody else in my family nobody notices or cares about this phenomenon except for me. I once left a pair of underwear in the living room (don't trouble yourself wondering how they got there in the first place, or whose they were) for THREE DAYS just to see if anyone else would notice and perhaps by some miracle pick them up and put them in the laundry hamper.

If it was not already blazingly obvious, I will tell you that the little pair remained crumpled forlornly on the floor next to the coffee table the entire time.

Although we are a typical family of four, I have become convinced that we make an atypical amount of garbage. Aside from the four humans living in the house, I believe we have an invisible Clutter Gnome that sprinkles random toys, broken pencils, newspapers, scraps of scribbled-on paper, and stray Cheerios all over the house, just to drive me batty.

Not too long ago, I spent an afternoon with some strange, yet strangely lovely people called "Freegans", who have inspired me to try to live a more neutral-impact lifestyle. So I have created the Mantra of Mess in accordance to the The Karma Of Crap: for each that comes in, one must go. Since we somehow accumulate approximately fourteen hundred new items each and every day, even our enormous, city-issued waste of my taxpayer dollars, garbage bin cannot handle the load.

So when the pile of stuff in our mudroom grows to a kitten-swallowing size of alarming proportions, I take matters into my well-manicured hands: I load up the minivan and head down to the Katrina Mygatt Recycling center.

I don't know who Ms. Mygatt was, or why she deserved to have a dump named after her. But I'm slightly envious because the dump is a rockin' Stamford hotspot.

I had visions of a smelly, grime-laden place overrun with flies and staffed by ancient, toothless, leather-skinned old men. Now granted, there are SOME flies, and SOME smell, and just a wee bit of mystery mush on the ground. But overall, it's relatively clean and well organized, featuring a surprisingly egalitarian and cosmopolitan mix of patrons. And Mr. Toothless is actually a pretty decent guy once you get to know him.

You hear languages ranging from English to Spanish to Creole. You see construction workers, gardeners, and other laborers hauling in scrap metal and yard waste. You see soccer dads in their Toyota Priuses dropping off year-old Nokias, no longer needed now that they got their new Apple iPhones.

You see Ugg-clad, blonde-helmet-coiffed, Lincoln Navigator-driving moms dumping loads of Land of Nod and Pottery Barn Kids catalogs. You see high schoolers furtively dropping off boxes filled with underagedly-drunk empty beer bottles (which are promptly snapped back up for deposit redemption purposes by the duct-tape bike-riding guy that shouts incomprehensible things at you when you're at the High Ridge Starbucks or sometimes the A&P). And you'll see me, freestyling unique strings of expletives after I smack my head on the open hatch of the minivan trying to dig all of the cardboard boxes out of the cargo area.

Since I am always in need of a few environmental offsets, I go to the dump whenever I can. I usually hit the Mygatt after a leisurely morning at the Stop and Shop, or sometimes as a way to psych myself up for that modern-day survival of the fittest expedition known as "Shopping Costco on a Saturday".

As far as my total carbon footprint, I probably waste more in gas driving to and from the dump than if I just waited for the monthly curbside pickup, but hey, we all gotta honor the earth in our own special way.

Besides, Mr. Toothless looks forward to my visit. I think he likes my furry Uggs.

For more info on the Katrina Mygatt center, click here.