Use Less Stuff By Dorothy Rosby Mark your calendar! November 21 is Use Less Stuff Day, not to be confused with "Useless" Stuff Day, which, for many of us, falls on December 25. On Use Less Stuff Day we should all ask ourselves, "if I had to haul my own garbage to the landfill, would I have so darn much of it?" According to the Use Less Stuff (ULS) web site, the average American throws away 4.4 pounds of trash every day-unless they leave it heaped around their living room as my family does. And there is a reason why Use Less Stuff Day comes just before the holidays. Americans throw away one million extra tons of stuff per week during the holiday period, wrenching their backs on the way to the curb and wrecking the holiday for sanitation workers everywhere. The ULS web site offers some tips for using less stuff during the coming holiday season: Bring your own shopping bags. I already reuse my grocery bags over and over until the bottom falls out. I'm quite proud of this, though occasionally it means I have to recycle a milk jug sooner than I intended. Rather than buying new ones, have your children make Christmas ornaments out of items you have on hand. But supervise closely. Several years ago, my little boy made an ornament by cutting his face out of his new 5x7-school portrait. He punched a hole through his forehead and hung his creation on the tree with a bread bag tie. While I had to admire his ingenuity, that is not what I intended for the photograph I had just paid the equivalent of his first year's college tuition for. Clean up your Christmas card list. The 2.65 billion Christmas cards sold each year in the United States would fill a football field 10 stories high. This would definitely interfere with the game. I would like to tell all my family and friends across the country that I have all but stopped sending Christmas cards out of concern for their neighborhood landfills (and their neighborhood football stadiums). But that would be a lie. On the bright side, my negligence has benefited my landfill too-since I've stopped sending cards, everyone I know has stopped sending them to me too. Cancel some catalogs. In 1981, the average household received 59 mail order catalogs. By 1991 that number had increased 140% to 142 catalogs. The ULS web site did not say how many catalogs we are receiving today, but if it has increased another 140% that would be . . . uh . . . a lot of catalogs. Reuse holiday ribbon and wrapping. According to the ULS web site, if every American family reused just two feet of holiday ribbon, we could tie a bow around the planet with the ribbon saved. I'm not sure why we would do that, but I do reuse my holiday bows. I think the fact that they are often squashed makes me look more organized by giving the impression that I purchased and wrapped the gifts months ago and have been storing them since, possibly under a stack of catalogs. The ULS web site also encourages gifts that don't have to be wrapped at all, for example tickets, gift certificates, and plants. I know I appreciate all of these. You could also just give me money. It is better to regift than to receive. Just make certain you don't give a particular gift back to the person who gave it to you in the first place. If this should happen, you could tell them that you liked the gift so much that you thought they might like one of their own. But I suggest you be honest. Tell them gently that you felt it was better to regift than to add the item to the 4.4 pounds of trash you're already throwing away every day. That should make them feel better.      Read all the guest columns in the Messenger.