Sometimes when my brain is busted from the triple whammy of work, studying, and writing, and I can’t find the motivation to go stick handling in the garage, I start pacing the room restlessly. My next step is to dash (yes, I run indoors because it gets the dog hyper) into a random room and start opening cupboards, dressers, and closets prowling for things to get rid off. This makes DW uneasy because the next thing I do is to head back into the living room and ask DW whether we “really need” this item given that it’s covered in dust, or it was found in an archeological clutter strata corresponding to May 2007 (the deeper it’s buried, the older it is).

We didn’t use to have these confrontations since I always had a problem throwing perfectly useful (albeit never used by us) items out in the trash and finding other ways to get rid of it was hard. However, now we get request in the mail that we donate something to this and that charity every other week. This request comes with a large plastic bag and all we have to do is to fill the plastic bag and put it out on the street at a specific time. Now, I don’t know what am I actually donating to, nor do I care much. I see it mainly as an easy way to downsize, yay! 😀

So this time I’m donating.

  • My old fitness inline skates. They are pretty good skates with a rocker chassis from a time when rockering was state of the art. However, they just couldn’t stand up to the abuse of power slides and toe drags, etc. so eventually I bought real hockey skates. Thus I’m giving my old skates away in the hope that some dude with size 9.5 feet can get off his butt for 3 weeks and exercise a little before my skates end up in his garage and he goes back to watching NHL.
  • A book about how to obtain a private pilot license. I had this idea that when I moved into an area with a local airstrip and where the skies were filled with small airplanes that I wanted to join in the fun. However, $5/gallon high octane fuel is too discouraging to merely fly around. Also it is apparently illegal to do simulated strafing runs on SUVs on the interstate which kinda takes the fun out of flying if you ask me. Therefore I’ll go back to being an arm chair pilot: fox two – splash one.
  • A hot chocolate maker. This was one item I found in the kitchen. I’m not really sure what this gadget does but it’s been taking up space on the top shelf for about a year and extracting it from the clutches of DW wasn’t too hard.
  • A vest that was once in a commercial for a granola bar (seriously!). While it’s a nice vest I never wear it because it makes me look dorky. Now it can make someone else look dorky.

The total volume of this donation corresponds to one standard moving box or 13 pounds of mass. Ceteris paribus the mass of something is a good proxy for its environmental impact. Also that is 13 pounds less we have to move the next time we relocate.

What have you gotten rid of lately? Do you find it easy or hard? Logistically and emotionally speaking?

Originally posted 2008-02-14 07:44:06.