Dump of the month #3

Heartbreaking toys, rancid lunch and some pretty but useless PVC

1. Lunch
   I once harshly judged a new boyfriend for choosing a salad on our first pub Sunday lunch. He, meanwhile, said he was “impressed” by my carb loading capacity when I opted for a chip butty. (Nonetheless, we’re now married.)

   

   So maybe this selection reflects an equally pivotal scenario, albeit one that didn’t work out so well? Gassy shredded cabbage, breath-tainting onion, carrots and mayo could be a risky choice for an early romantic picnic. Or maybe they were just THE WRONG TYPE OF DOUGHNUTS FFS.
   
   But why are these abandoned eats here, so neatly and prominently placed atop a bin? Have a closer look.

   
   “Baked with love” kind of kills me. A pair of untouched cream doughnuts rapidly going rancid in a heatwave, a metaphor for our lovers’ doomed romance?
   
   It seemed as if someone really wanted these unopened items to be eaten by a passer-by, though. But man it was hot that day. Wishful thinking. Opened and emptied into a food waste caddy, they’d at least have been able to meaningfully biodegrade. I’ve got nothing more for you on this one.
   

   
   

2. (Really) miscellaneous toys

   

   Lurking just out of sight behind the MDF (number 3, below) was this lot. Discarded toys always make me a bit tearful. And much as I’m screaming: OMFG WHAT WERE YOU THINKING? when I look at the totally donate-able books and sparkly little purses all bundled together with all the random kid ephemera (the nurse’s hat!), I’m also feeling empathy. See how they’re contained within the type of fabric boxes that clearly came out wholesale from a kid’s room and got dumped as found? I get that: I don’t know where half the flammable, plastic, broken tat comes from in our house and I feel powerless to prevent its accumulation and sometimes this is what I fantasise about doing with it all.
   
   I had a particularly manic clear-out a few months back and have probably emotionally damaged my seven-year-old for life because I gave away her wooden play kitchen. She never played with it. Nor did the four-year-old, and it was taking up floorspace and I just suddenly couldn’t handle the bulk of it any more in my life. So I rashly rehomed it to a very grateful two-year-old, along with all the assorted and comfortingly familiar pans and plates, toy fruits and vegetables and tiny cutlery and wooden spoons that we’d accumulated. When the two of them got in that day, the empty space where the play kitchen had stood was the first thing they both noticed. “Where’s our kitchen?” They asked. Upon being told, the seven-year-old gave a sort of primal howl that lasted, on and off, for weeks. The tears kept coming. “You HAVE to get it all back Mummy! Pleeeeeease!” And I understood: I suddenly missed the little frying pans and plates that’d regularly be filled with strange plastic and wooden meals for us, too. The unusued play kitchen was anything but, I realised. They may not have pretended to cook or wash up in its little wooden sink, but they lovingly made family meals with all the things stored in and under it. I am a terrible mother, I thought. I hope the kid whose bedroom just got a makeover here isn’t at home wailing: “I WANT MY NURSE’S HAT BACK!”

   
   Two things come to mind:

   

   First, a lovely neighbour who would never consider anything secondhand for herself and, therefore, wouldn’t generally think of offering her used kids’ things to others, because new is nicer. But one day we were chatting and she complimented something the older one was wearing and asked where it was from. “Charity shop,” I said. A few months later, she tentatively appeared with a fantastic kids’ leopard-print coat that her friend had been going to chuck out. She reminded me of the time I’d told her I bought stuff secondhand, worried I might take offence. “It’s been washed,” she added. That coat has now independently been a favourite of both children.
   
   Which makes me think that, if the tat-beleaguered former owner of all the chucked-out toys above had had a comparable conversation, it could have ended differently… for example, see the photo above.
   
   We encountered this similar clear-out last week. But it had all been sorted and put in open boxes outside someone’s house. It felt inviting and we all enjoyed rummaging and plundered about eight brilliant new children’s books and an unused drawing pad. If the boxes had contained dolls with matted hair, chipped toy cars or bits of lego, the kids would have taken those just as gleefully because children love tat, even when it’s pre-loved.

   

   Secondly, if you have kids you may (like me) have a box of doom. If so, check out this promising-sounding initiative, which collects broken hard plastic toys for recycling into new products and supplies books in return. You need to get your kids’ school to get involved to take part.
   
   

3. A bit of coated MDF furniture
   MDF is a largely unrecycled material, because it’s made from glue-bound particles and is full of formaldehyde (btw, if you’re not familiar with the term off-gassing, I urge you to investigate – it will make you want to buy all your furniture secondhand). Generally it’ll be incinerated, along with everything else in the wood bin at your recycling centre.
   
   This looks like it was once part of a wardrobe. Wardrobes are hard to get out of the house without dismantling and, once dismantled, then what? No charity or secondhand shop will take a flatpacked piece of furniture. I recently came across a wardrobe dismantling and recycling service by York-based rubbish collection company, Divert (link below). Ikea also has a buy-back scheme for some of its own pre-loved pieces, but sadly won’t take wardrobe systems nor dismantled furniture.
   
   Hinge repair plate kits are good for prolonging the life of relevant MDF furniture or kitchen cabinet doors. And if it’s the colour that needs changing, professional resprays are entirely feasible, as is a can of Zinsser primer (requires no sanding! Goes on ANYTHING – we transformed our horrid uPVC windows) and careful rollering of your new hue.
   
   

4. Paddling pool, assumed punctured

   

   Paddling pools are the best and the worst. Your kids might only splash about in one for 10 minutes before wandering, bored, cold and dripping, into the house and leaving damp bum prints all over the place, but those 10 minutes contain intense joy. Such intense joy that we buy these unwieldy, annoying-to-store bits of plastic again and again, despite knowing they’ll ruin the grass, inevitably go slimy, probably get a puncture fairly quickly and are generally unrecyclable. Although this one’s former owner didn’t quite get it into the general waste bin it’s next to, that is pretty much the only place for it once done.
   
   That’s because this ubiquitous type of pool is made from PVC and no one wants to recycle PVC because it’s really complicated and long. Incinerate it and it releases noxious fumes, landfill it and it might degrade a bit after about 450 years, during which time it’ll have potentially leached phthalates into the earth (which are linked to loads of un-fun stuff such as male fertility issues, ADHD, breast cancer and plenty more). Some PVCs can be recycled but only at a commercial scale. There was a cute-sounding company on the Isle of Wight that turned old paddling pools and other inflatables into cheery bags, but they went bust in 2023.
   
   All of which kind of suggests: don’t buy them! (Right?) But paddling pools are fun!
   
   My solution? I bought a dog paddling pool (see below for link). It’s still plastic but it’s indestructible and, while, it’s not as pretty as your average colourful blow-up, it can’t get a puncture and it’s foldable. I love it.

   Find out more:
   Recycling PVCPhthalates 
   Dog paddling pools! 
   The Recycle to Read scheme
   All about furniture and off-gassing
   Divert wardrobe dismantling and recycling
   Ikea’s buy-back service