When I was a kid, I’d see my elders consulting tattered envelopes with words like DISH LIQUID, FLOUR and CINNAMON written on the backs. None of the frugal folks I knew would waste a perfectly good piece of paper just for a list of what to buy at the Food Fair.
As an adult, I used a lot of Post-its. The little yellow squares festooned just about every flat surface I owned, from dining table to car dashboard to the inside of my wallet (where, as a bonus, they obscured my highly unflattering driver’s license photo).
One day my supply of stickies ran out. I plucked a utility-bill envelope from the top of the wastebasket -- no mixed-paper recycling in our town back then -- and scribbled the next day’s to-do list on the back. One of the first things I wrote was "TAKE OUT TRASH."
Read More...
