Day 18: Igloo Chest Cooler

Ok, not the best day on the getting rid of stuff front when I'm wandering the house at 10 pm looking for something to offload and everything looks suddenly essential. In every room, every object I contemplate seems to have either great sentimental significance or impending usefulness. I am reminded of something Al Hoff, the founder of the zine ThriftSCORE once wrote to me about "shopping in your house" when you walk around before going to a birthday party, looking over all your stuff to see what you can wrap up as a gift. (This of course assumes that your friends are into the same groovy ironic vintage crapola you are and would actually appreciate the gift of a Rainbow Brite coloring book and ceramic mini Shriner guy/candle holder).

The problem is that I have plucked the low hanging fruit here in the house, parted with all the things sitting around that I've mostly been meaning to get rid of anyway. The real mother lode of meaningless junk is not in the house, however; it's over in the garage and studio, and the problem there is that my brain locks up whenever I enter (or, more precisely in the case of our garage, stand outside wishing but unable to enter) these filled-to-the-brim spaces. I am plunged into despair whenever I contemplate even attempting to deal with all this stuff. I think I would rather just move to a different house and let this place's new owners deal with it.

But persevere I will, and eventually our mountainous heaps of belongings shall be tamed: sorted, organized, stored or discarded. Once again I have hopes to begin the process this weekend, but for now one small step. One eentsy, mostly token gesture toward clearing out the garage. I ventured out there hoping to find something, anything, to post on Freecycle before midnight in order to fulfill my Impedimenta compact, and just inside the door stood Coolerhenge. Maybe I was wrong to disassemble it; I might have been better off claiming it as installation art and applying for grants. But there this no reason we need three identical blue and white chest coolers plus multiple smaller beverage coolers (at least four). I merely reached in and plucked one cooler from the precarious pile. Done, and done, everybody won. I barely had to enter the garage and the offer went up at 10:30 pm exactly.

The thing is, nobody wants the cooler. Thirteen hours later and not one request. (Maybe everyone already has their own home Coolerhenges?) I feel slightly outraged; is my stuff being dissed? At 10:29 someone else had posted a "taken" for a toilet. A USED toilet. I mean, come one, this is a nice cooler!