01.06: Almost Empty
Cleaning Out Chemical Storage
My grandfather instilled in his children and grandchildren the value of not wasting things. It is his mission to point out any waste and help us to be less wasteful…..
Ok. He freaks out when the refrigerator door is open too long. Or if someone is taking too long to walk in the front door of the house if the heater or air conditioner is running. He will scrape out the last particles of yogurt from the little cup for several minutes to make sure he got them all. Lotion? He’ll cut off the bottom of the bottle so every last bit can be used. He still uses a washable handkerchief because tissues are just too wasteful. Any and every piece of hardware that has ever come into his house is still in his house, probably in an old coffee can that he can’t seem to get rid of either.
I could go on. So it comes as no surprise that we’re all damaged. Some of us collect screws. Some of us freak out with the refrigerator door. Some of us take two-minute showers not to waste water. And some of us leave the refrigerator door wide open, lights on, and tap running just because he’s not watching! I won’t waste chemicals. I also don’t want to use up the last of a chemical if I can’t justify reordering it. “I might need that someday.”
A good example in this video is the tin(II) chloride solution. I mixed that solution back in the year 2000! I used about three quarters of the liter within the first year or two of its life. Then I stopped including the demonstration in my shows, and I couldn’t bring myself to use up the solution. I tried a couple of times, but I always left a little bit behind. It was down to about 20 mL, and I finally got rid of it! I used that solution to make a dilution, and I was “this close” to using that up, too. There’s no reason to keep it… unless…what if I need a known tin(II) solution for something?
While that might sound ridiculous, and it mostly is, my diverse chemical inventory has been called upon before. And I have used that exact same solution in the last six months, so I’m having a hard time justifying dumping it as “useless”. Although, I could just order some new tin(II) chloride and make solutions as needed… There’s a thought.
Alright. It’s gone!
It really is almost cathartic to dump out bottles of chemical that have been sitting there for years. I still have the six bottles from the first three videos sitting on a shelf marked “disposal”. I can’t bring myself to dump them, even though they’ve been tested and confirmed useless! You know what…
Alright. They’re gone!!!
The momentum is picking up for sure now!
–Jason
