Welcome to The Prose Filter, where I have a cup of coffee and curate the best bits of a book to pass on the wisdom to you guys!
Today’s quote is from the classic book “Robinson Crusoe“ by Daniel Defoe. The book was published in 1917 and is a fictional autobiography.
This is hands down one of my favorite books as it is full of wisdom, religion and excitement.
“We enjoy just as much as we can use and no more“
My family always tried to get me and my brother to be better about wastefulness, especially after moving to America, where at my dads job, he saw a lot of Americans throwing away perfectly good food EVERYDAY. Restaurants and Donut shops’ dumpsters get filled at the end of every night with tons (60 tons annually, to be exact) of one-day old food.
Robinson Crusoe on the other hand only ate as much as he needed to be fed for the day and tried to not waste the already scarce food on the island, that was also hard to catch. Though he probably wasn’t perfect as he killed a whole goat with no fridge to store it in.
Robinson also used other resources such as wood, and supplies he got from the boat that left him stranded, to their full use without wasting anything. He’d cut down a tree for a canoe, use the same tree for paddles and whatever is left goes to additions to his cave such as shelves and spoons. You get the idea.
When my family was making a gazebo for our home’s deck, the leftover wood ended up in the garage for months. We jumped over it every time we went to our cars but my dad didn’t want to throw it away as “we might need it someday”. Eventually that day came and I made a towel rack in our bathroom from a leftover board and some hooks, as well as some dice for board games.
The easiest way to come up with an idea for repurposing some trash, I recommend going into google and typing “One board woodworking ideas”, for example. You will get tons of ideas and picture of other people’s crafts that you can either copy or come up with something similar.
Whether you stop wastefulness because “I might need that someday” or for a more charitable contribution, such as when our high school friend invited our small class of 90, to the Dunkin’ Donuts he worked at, to give out everyone who came, a half a dozen dunuts, because that day was slow and they were going to throw them away, always remember about the time Robinson Crusoe used leftover goat-skin to make himself an umbrella which kept him cool throughout the day.
The point is, there are some things you will end up throwing away but before you do, stop and think, “Can I repurpose or use this for something else, a goat-skin umbrella perhaps”.