So we arrived home last night to find a large blue ‘wheelie’ bin in our driveway. We now have two wheelie bins, one black, one blue and not a bruise between them..

All this means that South Lanarkshire council has finally decided to go ahead with it’s recycling plans. About time.

We were spoiled when we lived in Aylesbury as the local council there were pretty hot on recycling; distributing two ‘shopping basket’ style containers to every home allowing you to sort your cans and plastics easily, and providing a separate external bin for each type (plus one for general waste).

Things seemed to have progressed though, as our Big Blue Bin takes cardboard, newspapers, magazines, plastics, cans and tins. We even got a nice little calendar showing how the pickup schedule will be altered (black one week, blue the next).

Admittedly it’ll take us a while to get back into the habit of recycling this amount. Previously we did paper/cardboard and glass but the plastics (the worst of all) I’m ashamed to say got ‘binned’ as there was no local repository for them.

Of course this means that our little galley style kitchen needs to make room for another tub somewhere as temporary storage for Big Blue Bin items. Or we could move.

Although having listened to the prices some people are paying at the moment for houses that’s not really an option. We deliberately bought ‘smaller’ and decided on only twice my salary for the mortgage. I’ve recently heard of someone getting an extra 45% over the valuation price for a house. Now I’m not sure how that works but I’ll be damned if I’m going to get myself into that position.

Of course I’m lucky. I’m not that bothered where I live as long as it’s quiet and Louise is with me. I understand people wanting to live in the city though, and sometimes yearn for the hustle and bustle and ‘involvement’ that it seems to offer. But after a crap day at work, it’s really good to come home to a quiet cul-de-sac, lock the door and shut out the world.