Monday is trash collection day in my neighborhood. And yes, most of my trash and recycling does make it into the appropriate bins and out of my life.

But I’ve always enjoyed playing with discarded things, finding new and unexpected ways to use them. It’s free art materials! Why not use them? So not everything gets tossed on trash day.

Unfortunately, I’ve never been good at putting those materials to the amazing, creative use I intended. Even when I’ve had great ideas, they’ve too often gone untried–because unless I take immediate action when my interest is fresh and new, and I’m excited? Forget about it. So many previously-inspiring, carefully-accumulated materials have ended up discarded later on. If they didn’t, my house would look like something from an episode of Hoarders (and I admit there are times when it’s come scarily close to that).

When I started giving serious thought to getting serious about blogging, it was during one of my periodic clean-outs. I filled the gigantic wheelie bin for recycling to the very top, and for the first time in over a year had a full trash can. I felt rather guilty at discarding all this stuff unused, and rather stupid at having expended so much thought, effort, and storage space to accumulate it in the first place, but out it went.

Several days later, it finally dawned on me that I could start using all that trash to creative ends, and hey! I could blog about it! And of course I realized this in the exact moment I watched the recycling guys tip the contents of my bin into their truck. But while I couldn’t go out and rescue my stash of materials (without looking like a complete nut), that’s okay–in a relentlessly throwaway society, there’s always more to be had.

I like the idea of making Trash Day a regular (perhaps weekly?) feature here, so I’m going to give it a try. On as many Mondays as I can manage to do so, I’ll post a piece of art, a craft item, or some other creative re-use of something that would, in a normal person’s household, end up on its way to the landfill or the recycler’s. Anything in my trash (or that I’ve picked out of someone else’s trash, or otherwise found discarded) is fair game.

So with that in mind, here’s my inaugural Trash Day project: coffee bags.