The Right Home

As I have mentioned before, our new home will have half the living space (for our family; we are sharing the house with others) and also has ZERO closets.  A lot of de-cluttering is going on here while we prepare for our move at the end of June.  I’ve got quite a bit of orphan stuff that needs a new home.

The easiest thing would be to bring it all to a thrift store and be done with it.  But I have recently become more savvy about what happens to most of the stuff we donate. I think we soothe our consumer-consciences when we drop things off at a thrift store, thinking our trash will become another’s treasure.  But unfortunately a lot of it just becomes their trash.  Take a look sometime at the huge dumpsters behind these places.  Clothing that is out of season, items of which there are duplicates already, and things with limited appeal and deemed not worth the floor space end up out back.  Cindy of Wastewear Daily is clothing herself (very nicely I have noticed) solely on perfectly good clothes tossed into the dumpster.  Even thrift stores have too much stuff.

The next option would be a garage sale, but I really don’t think I have the heart for it.  The whole process - from pricing to setting up to haggling to STILL having to cart off a bunch of stuff - seems overwhelming to me right now.

So far I have found a few great alternatives, one new to me that I am just LOVING: Craigslist.  I had heard of it but never used it before.  It’s quick, easy and free, and it connected me with some interesting people that wanted some of my more obscure items. A film student wanted my old 8mm movie projector and camera, an older fellow who collects cameras wanted my dad’s broken 1950s Argus camera, an elderly woman who is homebound wanted my scrap fabric to make quilts with, and a new grandma wanted my old patterns for little girl clothes.  Almost all of these items would have surely been dumpstered had I donated them.  I even made a few bucks.  In addition, the grief caused by my insane emotional attachment to this stuff is quelled a little by knowing I have found loving homes for them.

I am now going through books – another major attachment of mine – sorting through ones I haven’t read but want to, ones I'm finished with but might be nice to have at the CW House for guests, and ones that I'm prepared to part with. For the last, I’ll try our second-hand book stores first: Omni, Book Gallery, and Books, Inc.  The remainders will head off to the Friends of the Library for their annual book sale.  

Every time I begin to feel aggrieved again by all this hauling off, I have to stop and have a little talk with myself about how I am not being evicted, that I am choosing a new and simpler life and freeing myself of a lot of extra baggage by giving it to folks who will actually use it. Much better than my kids having to sort through all this stuff someday (and probably end up throwing it all in a dumpster). 

Comments

[stacey]

http://www.freecycle.org (there is a local gainesville freecycle group) is another good place for giving away gently used items that are maybe a little 'too used' to sell on Craigslist, yet in better shape than what ends up in the dumpster behind the thrift store. : )

[Marina Martin]

I'm an efficiency consultant, and I love Craigslist for helping people to unload their extra stuff. You're absolutely right, just dropping off a load of boxes at the thrift store isn't usually the best way to go.

For the new house, buy a couple of inexpensive garment racks for storing your clothes outside of a closet. They can be wheeled out of the way as-needed.

Office Depot currently has a special on their brand of cardboard file boxes - 10 for $10, which is a serious steal. These boxes are great because they're sturdy and stackable, so you can keep the items you do want to save organized but still out of the way (and it's easy to move them to the next house!).

You should also check out Freecycle.org, where you can connect items you're left with to people who want them. You won't make any money, but they come and pick up, and you can be more selective about who gets what.

The best thing when you have cramped living quarters is a ScanSnap document scanner. It's about $400, but its scanning capabilities are amazing and lets you live paper-free with no more archives (beyond your birth certificates and social security cards). Everything scanned is full-text-searchable, and you can use a program like JungleDisk ($20) to automatically backup all your files to Amazon S3 storage space for literally just a couple dollars a month -- you don't have to transport them AND you never have to worry about losing records to a fire, a flood, or simply a box forgotten on a moving truck.

Good luck with your move!

[Waste Wear Daily]

If you have any..say..post apocolyptic fiction..I'll take it. I'll miss you being around the corner. I'm still here if you want to visit, and I'll be here awhile.
Cindy