As you can see, I'm gathering things for a GoodWill drop off. How on earth do I accumulate all of this stuff? Honestly, some of it I can't even remember where it came from!
This start out very innocently. It always does. I received some new books at Christmas. Yay!~ Books! And when I went to put them on the bookshelf, I realized that there was no more room. Clearly some editing was in order. So I carefully went through all of the books on all of the shelves and was able to part with just enough to make room for the new books. I have to get really tough with myself when it comes to reading material. I have to ask myself the big question..."Am I honestly going to ever read this book again?" If the answer is no..out it goes. It ain't easy, let me tell ya! But finally I had a nice little stack of books in a bag. I put the bag-o-books on a shelf in the utility room out of the way for the time being. It seemed a shame to go out of my way to haul that one bag to Good Will. I decided to poke around and see if there was anything I could add to the bag. It was about a month or so afterward that I found myself standing in the pantry looking for...something...I don't' remember what...and I noticed that up on the top shelf way over to the right were about six or seven vases. I had forgotten that I even owned them. And it occurred to me that not once in the nearly 3 years that we've lived here have I used any of them. Not because I haven't had any flowers in 3 years, but because I have other vases that I use instead. Probably I could add those unused vases to the pile. So I dragged over the step stool and carefully brought each vase down, wrapped it in newspaper and bagged all of them. Now I had two bags of stuff. But they really weren't very big bags. Not really. I wondered if there was anything else I could add to the pile and make this trip really worthwhile. The bag of vases joined the bag of books in the utility room for a couple of weeks. Then one very sunny day, as I grabbed a hat before heading out on a walk, I realized that in my stack of hats, there was one particular hat that I have only ever worn once. If I've only worn it one time, there must be a reason. That hat could go in the pile. A few days ago it occurred to me that I don't use my piggy bank anymore so the pig goes too! That was a hard one. I adored my piggy bank. I've had it a long time and it is a cute as can be. But Piggy turned out to be a greedy little bank. The money inside is almost impossible to remove. And in fact, right now there is at least one quarter still in it that no matter how much I shake and tilt and finesse, refuses to leave so that the piggy bank is going to GoodWill with a twenty-five cent donation inside. Another moment of realization in the pantry just yesterday had me adding these very cute round metal trays to the GoodWill pile. I bought them on a visit to a consignment shop with my sister one day. In my mind I saw myself using them to bring food or drinks outside. But in reality, it turns out that I cannot seem to balance anything on a tray while carrying it. Food is safer than drinks. We will just say that and leave it be. It's harder than it looks. Remember that the next time you eat at a restaurant and your servers bring everything on trays without spilling anything!!! When I started looking aound more closely, it got easier. Dribs and drabs of this and that joined the discard group. Most items are things whose origin is an utter mystery to me. Why do we have this? Where did it come from? At the end of the day yesterday, I looked at the pile of random stuff which had grown to three bags and a full milk crate and decided that this is getting ridiculous. I need to just put it in the car. Once it's in the car I'm more likely to actually drove to GoodWill and drop it off. I need to just pick a day and do this. So I am now committed. Friday is the day. Between now and Friday I will comb the house for anything else that I do not use, do not need, do not want. It will go first into the pile, then into the car, then off to GoodWill. Friday...Good Friday...will also be GoodWill day. We have only lived here for three years. Well not quite three. At the end of May it will be three years. Before we ever left Colorado to move here we purged like mad. We had a gigantic yard sale, we listed things on Craig's List, we donated masses of things to GoodWill and Salvation Army and there were things that, in the end, we finally just gave away. All to live smaller and simpler. But apparently, we did not clear out quite enough because here it is, 3 years later and I'm still getting rid of things we do not need. How did this happen? Are other people sneaking over inthe dead of night and putting the stuff they do not want in my closets and on my shelves? Or do the things we want to keep reproducing? Are we the other side of a wormhole in space and any random thing that goes through shows up in my pantry? It's a mystery. But it's one that will shortly be solved when I finish gathering stuff this week and haul it all to GoodWill on Friday. Right now we are standing at 3 bags and one milk crate of stuff. I wonder how big the pile will be by then?
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AuthorYup, this is me. Some people said, "Sam, you should write a Blog". "Well, there's a thought", I thought to myself. And so here it is. Archives
April 2024
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