This Damn House

Woke up inspired this weekend. First step to do anything to this house is to clear out some space. Basement, attic and garage are all packed to overflowing. Simple gridlock keeps us from progressing!

Truth is, both the Mr. and I are packrats. Some gems you'll find in storage at This Damn House: a foam "flip chair", circa 1981, hasn't been used since the late 80s; three large boxes containing the Mr.'s beer can collection from high school (including a can of Billy Beer, I kid you not); a full slot car set, circa mid 70s (NOT bought on eBay; stored for 30 years waiting for little boys or girls to pass it on to); a TV that was cutting edge 30 years ago and last worked 15 years ago.

On my end, it isn't so much emotional attachment (no, really!) but an aversion to throwing anything away that might someday be useful. So, yeah, that digital camera is 5 years out of date AND has a cracked lens, but some tinkerer somewhere will surely find a use for the photosensitive internal element? And those "pictures" of cars constructed out of bits of junk, that's ART! Ugly art, to be sure, but, y'know, art! You can't just throw it out.

So first thing Saturday morning I enlisted one of my older sons to help me identify and photograph the biggest space-eating items in the garage (can someone explain to me how this mostly non-bike-riding family ended up with over 12 bikes?) and I sent out a note to our friendly local "re-use" email list.

The goal? Clear out the floor of the garage by next weekend!

Prepping for the Great Giveaway, Bay1:

Prepping for the Great Giveaway, Bay2:

I love Freecycling.

It really doesn't make a ton of sense monetarily -- a lot of the stuff I have could be sold for small or medium amounts of money (someone told me the Time Machine could pull $30 on eBay), and even the stuff that's not worth selling could be used as a tax deduction if I donated it. I do, in fact, frequently donate boxes (and boxes! and bags! and more bags!) of stuff to Big Brother/Big Sister and Salvation Army.

But selling stuff is a pain. It takes more time than giving it away, because (reasonably so) people who buy things want to take greater care to make sure they are getting the thing they want, and they want it quickly and on their terms. My time is valuable enough that going through that just isn't worth it. But more importantly, it just doesn't suit me to worry over whether an item is worth $5 or $7, whether shipping costs should cover the cost of packaging, etc.

And donating leaves me feeling unsatisfied. I donate or recycle because I don't want more stuff to end up in landfills...because making more new stuff uses precious resources...and as a small, quixotic jab at the consumer culture that encourages people to buy more MORE by making things cheap and disposable. But I don't know what happens to the stuff I donate; I know they sell it to raise money...but do they cull out the most desirable items and toss the rest in a landfill, thereby defeating the entire purpose of me not just throwing it away to begin with?

But...Freecycling is also its own kind of PITA. People are shockingly picky about stuff they are getting for free. :-) And on the flip side, people tend to not taking it seriously...claiming items and never showing up to get them. And there's scheduling and exchanging email and answering questions....

So I tend to freecycle larger items, ones that are too big for BBBS pickup or Salvation Army drop boxes...and also ones that are attractive enough that people will travel whatever distance to come get them.

Yesterday I tried tossing up some smaller items up. The response has been good, but I'm not yet sure whether it feels worth it to go through the trouble for items I could as easily toss in a box and leave on the front stoop for some charity to come get.

On the plus side, people who freecycle are generally very friendly and nice (if not always 100% reliable). Today I met: a man who fixes up bicycles for charity and for neighborhood kids who can't afford them (he took all our four fixer bikes); a woman who works for a community theater in a nearby town, who took a coffee table to use as a prop; and another woman who happily chatted with me for 15 minutes about co-housing before taking my garment rack.

Now I'm wondering if it is worth it to Freecycle books. We have SOOOOO many; I'm dreading the idea of typing them all in, sorting them, etc.

Parting with stuff, that is. And the Mr. and I have plenty of sweet sorrow to go around!

As I'm digging through deeper and deeper layers of stuff (this morning I found my toaster oven from college!) I often wonder why I kept this stuff, and moreover, why I sometimes have a hard time letting go of it.

A lot of it, as I said before, is because I hate contributing to waste and consumer culture, so I want to pass potentially useful items on to someone who will use them. But that still leaves a substantial body of stuff we have that will never be useful to anyone, ever.

So what's in that body of stuff?

- Mr. TDH and I both have boxes of nostalgia: in my case, papers from grad school, letters from old flames and distant relatives, small stuffed animals and misc. bric-a-brac. In his case, old models of airplanes and cars, Star Trek paraphernalia, fraternity mugs and enough change to cover the GNP of some small third world countries. This stuff we hold on to, I think, because we anticipate some future review of these items will bring us (or our children) pleasure, because they will remind of us times gone and paths taken and not taken.

- There's a set of items (like the toaster oven) that we have because when Mr. TDH and I joined households, we were not yet married, and therefore, I think, still keeping in mind the possibility that in the future, we may again find ourselves furnishing our own domiciles. So duplicate kitchenware and coffee tables ended up stashed in the attic, and later (when it became clear that a) we'd be together for the long haul, and b) even if that turned out not to be the case, neither of us would be wanting to live like college students) we were too busy to deal with it, and it was subsequently forgotten.

- Then there's stuff to which we are emotionally attached simply because of inertia. That is, we've been lugging that item around so damn long, we can't imagine not lugging it through the next move! An example would be a little metal file box I used to store photos in. Back in the day, all my photos fit in the 1.5 cubic feet in there. Now I'm a bit of a photobug (all my friends are now laughing at this understatement) and my photos and associated equipment couldn't fit in a box ten times that size. I have no idea where the box came from, it has no nostalgia value, but...I've always had that box and I've always had photos in it, and even though I really couldn't care less about the box...it's just...there.

The bar I'm trying to set for whether to keep or toss this stuff is: is whatever use or pleasure I anticipate I or my kids will get out of it in the future enough to outweigh the space it takes to store and effort it will take to pack and move.

It's shocking how much I've been carrying around for years that doesn't rise above that bar.

I feel motivated to keep a list of the stuff we've given away! I don't know why....
(updated 2/16/09)

Thanks, everyone, for your response to my last entry and for helping me hold the despair at bay. Knowing others are keeping an eye on me keeps me going, as I knew it would.

Still, today we mostly took advantage of the gorgeous weather to visit friends in Maine and swim in their lake, to take a family bike ride, to go geocaching, and other things that have nothing to do with selling our house.

But I ventured into the garage this afternoon to repair my poor once-loved now decrepit and busted desk. I had tried to freecycle it without results, and figured I might do better if it worked!

An hour and a half with a box of wood screws, a screw driver, a drill and a lot of sweat turned it into this.

I suppose this is only nominal related to The Project, but I was glad to get it done.

What on this good green Earth should I do with all this vinyl?

You know what I mean, the things that come in 33 1/3, 45 or occasionally 78? The ones the kids describe as large, black CDs?

Over the years I've mostly culled, but I'm still left with some 50 or so LPs. I've kept them because, dammit, Thriller was an awesome album and make no mistake about it; and my autographed boxed set of Dr. Demento's Funniest Songs of All Time is truly irreplaceable. But, you know, 20 years has passed since I got my first Sony Discman, and in all that time I haven't blown the dust off Pat Benatar's Precious Time or Rush 2112 even once.

The music itself is chock full of nostalgia (I am not ashamed to admit I downloaded Paradise by the Dashboard Lights during my very first iTunes session) but what about the medium? Truth is, the bygone tunes that still move me I already have loaded onto my iPod. What's left are albums that are nostalgic simply to own; although John Valby's humor turns out not to be so freakin' hysterical once I hit the ripe old age of 22, my autographed ("To Mrs. TDH: Lots of love and hot cock") copy of Philosophical Bullshit holds a warm place in my heart and a dusty spot on my shelf.

So what do I do with these several linear feet of 70's and 80's pop music?!? Anyone out there been jonesing to listen to some Journey or Moody Blues?

(I will surely not part with my first and best album ever, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band till iTunes manages to nail down some Beatles!)

This morning, I had a pickup scheduled with Big Brother/Big Sister to come get my donation items, and the designated area in front of my garage looked like this:

Now, after the designated pickup time, my garage looks like this:

This is not the sort of before and after pictures I find satisfying.

(BBBS is usually pretty good; not sure how we got dropped today.)

Yesterday, we had a huge, ungainly broken treadmill in our basement. We were sure we'd have to figure out how to lug this 300 pound monster to the dump. And all that metal and electronics filling up the landfill, releasing toxic chemicals...oy.

So we tossed it up on Freecycle without much hope. Who the heck wants a broken treadmill?

This morning a guy came to take it away. No dump lugging! He makes a hobby of fixing and reselling broken treadmills. (?!) No landfill! He makes a few bucks selling it, we save a few bucks not paying to dump it, and the environment saves a few virtual bucks for not having to absorb the destruction of one big piece of equipment and the manufacture of another.

win-win-win. How cool is that?

(Hey, I'm still maintaining a list of all the freecycling I've accomplished, as well as my freecycling failures.)