Living in Suburbia

I love our neighborhood. We have a park that is perfect for running, rollerblading, walking, playing sports, or climbing on the jungle gym. We are an easy mile walk to Main Street. The houses are not huge, but not too close together, either.

Our neighborhood is also very attractive to all sorts of door-to-door people. We get:

• Salesmen: lawn care, pest control, home improvement, books, magazines, and (of course) Girl Scout cookies and Boy Scout hoagie sales. The last two don't bother us as long as we know the kids.
• Religious groups traveling in pairs: Jehovah Witnesses to Baptists, often on Sunday mornings when the heathens are home. What they don't know, is we often go to an evening worship service.
• Political Groups: the kind that won't leave any literature behind unless you first give them a donation and sign their forms. Hmm...
• Entrepreneurs: people who can identify a specific need and have a short term solution -- ideally one that does not cost us anything.

Last week we had one of the latter people knock on our door. A high school-aged kid, roaming around the neighborhood with his dad and a pick up truck saw our old treadmill next to the trash. He asked if he could have it for scrap metal. Since we had been planning on taking said treadmill to the scrap metal heap that weekend, we were glad to give him that PLUS the pile we had been collecting in the garage.

They were thrilled to have metal to add to their collection. We were thrilled to have it out of our house. The last time I explored collecting money for our scrap metal I was told I needed 100 pounds of it. Instead, I often give it to the last person in line. This saved me the drive to Trenton.

A win-win for everyone -- including Mother Earth.