Day 15: Kiddie Pool

Posted our kiddie pool on my mom's group and it went in a flash. It's going to be above 90 degrees every day this week so I can see why.

Am I depriving my own children of cool, watery fun just so I can continue to get rid of stuff? Oh, my, no no no. I am getting rid of this pool because we got a BIGGER one. Which might seem to kind of defeat the entire purpose of this little Impedimenta exercise; I mean, if every time an object gets escorted from the premises we merely replace it with another, possibly even larger one, then why bother?

Gosh, I had intended to end the post there but I guess if you ask a rhetorical question then blog etiquette pretty much requires an answer. I never said that, as part of Impedimenta, I'd stop acquiring stuff. Last week on one single day I purchased probably thirty pounds of clothing from a thrift shop and Old Navy's summer clearance, literally dozens of shirts and shorts and pants. It sounds extreme in the telling, but we all desperately needed summer clothing. Usually I try to shop off the retail grid at yard sales and thrift or consignment stores, not to mention Freecycle and Craigslist, but have not had much luck recently finding decent clothes. Hence the visit to Old Navy's made-in-China cornucopia of inexpensive clothing -- seriously, some of O.N.'s stuff was cheaper than the used clothing I scored at the thrift.

Such sumo-weight shopping doesn't happen very often around here, and I must admit I had sort of a buzz from the experience. I even thought about starting a companion blog listing every purchase we make while Impedimenta is going, but it's already difficult to find spare corners of time for identifying objects to give away and then deciding how to unloose them. I had no notion of how much time it would take to do this; the offering, emailing, lining up pickups, and trying to write clever or at least amusing little blog bits about the whole process is like having a part time job with not even weekends off. So if you are wondering why, if I am giving something away each day but this blog is only updated every several days, it's because some days I simply cannot find time to sit down at all, much less in front of the computer.