Be Creative!

Today I want to pose a question to all of you. You have a large tea pot in your kitchen that you found in the back of a cabinet full of used cooking oil. It has been sitting in the corner of your sink for three weeks, and you want to get rid of it.

What do you do?

A) Tell your supervisor at the Board of Education and ask him to take care of it?
B) Ask your neighbor for help
C) Figure it is someone else's problem and throw it in a plastic bag and then into the garbage
D) Say, 'Screw it' and dump it down the drain

Well what would you do?

If you have two eyes, you could easily see that your supervisor has a crazy schedule, and works on the weekends as well as late hours during the week. It may be Christmas before he gets around to it.

If you ask your neighbor for help, they probably have never had to get rid of that much oil at one time and have no idea which garbage/recycling group to put it in.

If you figure it is someone else's problem and throw it away, it might work. But you would then have an angry garbage man who looks at your trash and won't let you get away with anything from now on. He might also say, 'Screw you right back' and refuse to take it because pots and pans are recycled separately. Then you have a VERY gross mess and no idea what to do next because his note is written in Japanese.

If you try to dump it down the drain, call a plumber. The Assistant Language teacher before you didn't cook a lot, and this oil is probably over ten years old.

So, now you may ask, what did you do Kate? Here is my answer:

Given the following:
two disposable chopsticks
one small black plastic bag
one small milk carton
scissors
an almost empty bottle of cooking oil
an empty coke bottle

I made this

I took the milk carton and cut the bottom off.  Then I cut one corner of the plastic bag.  I put the plastic bag inside the carton, and pushed the cut corner out of the carton's opening.  Then I put it on top of the almost empty cooking oil bottle.  

I used the chopstick to push the plastic bag into the plastic bottle.  Then I poured the used oil into the plastic bag/carton.  I used the chopstick to make sure the bag stayed open and allowed the oil to go into the bottle.

When the plastic bottle was full, I switched to the empty coke bottle.  It took about half an hour, but now I have two bottles to take to the BOE and a clean sink.  The tea pot will go out with the cookware recycling next week.

If you're wondering why this wasn't one of the options to choose from, it's because it wasn't an option for me either.  Is this a 'normal' idea; I don't think so.  

I figured that it wasn't fair to make the garbage man deal with this mess.  I guess it wasn't fair for me to deal with it either, but someone had to.  I could have just crossed my arms, stomped my foot and pouted, but sometimes all you can do is just deal with the problems that are sent your way.  

Now what was a problem is a great success!  Since none of you are hear to properly congratulate me, I'll do it myself.  That was F%@# ing awesome!  

I missed my calling to be one of those people who work with the astronauts and make a round peg fit into a square hole.