The Urge to Purge

In addition to remodeling the living room, another resolution is to purge the house of unwanted, unneeded stuff.  Clothes, housewares, books (yes, books), gadgets, a waterbed missing important parts that we've been storing for someone for years now, etc.  It's all going.

Kevin's making out pretty well with my resolutions this year.  Sometimes I come up with some real doozies and announce them, even before January 1st, with, 'Things are going to change around here!' or some such proclamation.  Give it a few weeks and turns out things haven't changed very much at all.  But he could get into a remodeled living room.  And I know he'd love to see me toss out a buncha stuff.  There's probably not too much stuff to toss, but it feels good to get it outta here anyway.  Clearing stuff out always feels good.  Having a lotta stuff just complicates life.  When part of the house was remodeled a few years back, it forced us to toss a buncha stuff then.  I don't think I'll be tossing as much stuff now as we did back then.  Although who knows.  I have been clearing stuff out pretty well so far this year.

Our choices were to give away the good stuff and toss the junk OR have a garage sale and toss the junk.  I was kinda tempted to have a garage sale, but then I remembered the last time we did that.  It's a lotta work, there'll still be some stuff left over (although we priced things really low iot move stuff out), weather can be a problem, and it might just be easier to donate the good stuff.  And Kevin wasn't too keen on having another sale.  Theoretically, I could get into having a block-wide sale with some neighbors, but when the time came, I would prolly regret it.

Last year, I purged a bunch of clothes, some house stuff and a few pieces of furniture.  A former neighbor of ours would say to Kevin, 'I was going to throw this out, but then I thought I'd give it to you.'  I know he meant well, but it  made me laugh the way he said that.  So one day I came home to find their old dining room table, three of the surviving chairs and the hutch in our house.  And, while we could use a new dining room set, that particular set, while I always liked it in their house, was too dark for us.  And I knew that, if I kept it, I might never get around to getting a set that did suit us.

But the point of all this is that it's not as easy to give away stuff as you'd think it would be.  The clothes were easy: there's a clothes drop box at the mosque down the road.  (After 9/11, one local yokel opined that putting clothes in that drop box supported terrorists bc they sold the clothes and used the money for nefarious activities.  Hmm.)  Now, supposedly some veterans' group will take stuff.  And there's the Salvation Army.  But some places will take stuff, but not clothes.  And other places will take clothes, but not stuff.  And some places will not take furniture of any kind.  And most places will not take exercise equipment (bc they get so much of it? bco liability issues?).  Now, I'm not saying I've got premium stuff here and folks oughta be tripping over each other to take my leavings, but I kinda thought it would be easier to give this stuff away.  I guess I can kinda see why charities are picky about the stuff they take.  I imagine some people donate some real crap and then the charities are stuck with disposing of it.  In the case of lots of crappy stuff or large crappy things, they probably end up paying a lot in disposal fees and time.

So, the stuff/areas I want to purge of extra stuff:

• there's probably some stuff in the eaves up-upstairs; what was the attic is now the bedroom, which is fortunate, bc now we don't have an attic to fill with junk; but there is a little storage space left up there; there's probably a little purging that can be done there
• the pc room, esp. the closet
• the spare room closet
• the pile o' junk in the library
• and, finally, the dreaded basement; this area could get ugly and messy

The garage needs to be replaced; purging that is a whole 'nuther project, too big for this list.  As you can probably tell, I'm very much a LOP (list-oriented person).  I find lists are very helpful.  Of course, now that my lists are here, y'all can follow my progress or lack thereof.  But they say (whoever they are) that it's helpful to go public with resolutions bc then you tend to feel accountable and stick with them longer.  Well, I can't see that I feel accountable to my dear known and unknown blog readers.  I know that, for every resolution I blow, you've all got some resolution or goal or whatever that you've blown.  You just haven't blogged about it.

Anyway, other than Kevin and the cats, pretty much anything is fair game for getting purged. 

Comments

[Kevin]

So, I get special dispensation. Explicit exemption from the Big Purge.

What will we do with all that empty space??

[Annie]

Yes, I've granted you special dispensation.

I dunno about the space...get more cats? What do you wanna do w/it?