The Wrong Tea (Day 2 Redux)

Oh! I almost forgot. On Monday, the day I thought I'd forgotten to offer anything to anyone, I gave away a box of decaffeinated tea. OK, so it was hardly one of the bete-noir belongings clogging our closest and our lives, and also I gave it to my mom. But I'd bought it by mistake and would never use it, and it had been reproaching me every time I opened that particular kitchen cabinet, and I am relieved that it's gone. So it counts.

It had been bugging me that I'd screwed up such a simple endeavor ON THE SECOND DAY. It had actually been bugging me really quite a lot, though I suspect certain allowances can be made for sleep-deprived mothers of young children who have across-the-board brain fog (like the time recently when I could not recall my own phone number. Just. Could. Not). I kept telling myself that consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, but since this little endeavor is sort of all about consistency an uncomfortable whiff of botchery lingered in my mental airspace. That is until my mom, probably just to get me to shut up already about bungling the project, reminded me about the tea. Thanks, Mom.

Day 5: box of baby boy clothes, 6-12 mos., Towson

This was the toughest to part with so far. Not that it's anything we need; Cole has been out of these clothes for months, plus they're cold weather things. Don't need those teeny tiny, oh so adorable fleece footie dinosaur pjs in July, do we? But it wrings my heart to remember him wearing these clothes, remember how he'd just lay there small and inept and kind of bemused, looking around, taking it all in. That was at four months. Now he's kind of an old guy, 11 months old and clearly on top of things. He has definite opinions and a master plan. How did he get so big so fast?

So far this offering has been the biggest Freecycle hit -- 14 requests and counting. Happily I am able to give them to Melissa H.-M., someone who a few months back very generously responded to a Freecycle wanted I posted and gave us a terrific baby swing set. It's so serendipitous, to be able to pay back karmic debt while clearing out some crap! Not that these clothes are crap. My my no, especially not those super cute little stripey overalls...sniff....

Day 4: Case of usps priority mailer boxes, towson

Today's offering: a box of boxes. Case of 25 flat rate priority mail boxes that my mother gave me when she mistakenly ordered twice from the USPS, through which they are free for the asking. They'll even deliver them to you gratis, which sort of makes me wonder why anyone would want mine. They've been sitting in my studio for a good long while, dating from a time when I thought I might try to make back some of the mounds of money we've spent on baby parapharnalia by reselling it on Ebay when we no longer need it, typically about ten minutes after we've opened the package. That plan was stymied when they closed fabulous little post office that was literally around the corner from our house. It was an eentsy little post office, and going there was like having your own personal postmistress. Now when I have things to mail it's no longer a short walk and a chance to chat with neighbors; instead, it's a 15 minute drive to the next closest P.O. where the lady is really grouchy and sighs loudly when you ask to send something with delivery confirmation. So I'm not mailing much these days, even at an all-you-can-stuff-in-a-box flat rate, although that is another potential strategy for making junk leave our house. Maybe if I offer something nobody asks for I can mail it out at random, an entirely new form of junk mail!

Once again, four requests for the booty. Gone to Mike B., who says he often mails books and small objects. I take it that means Ebay, so good luck with that, Mikey.

Day, um, 3: Fisher Price toy toolbench, Towson

I thought we'd get a fair number of requests for this particular freebie, since toy toolbenches are expensive, but only 4 people requested it -- one of them twice. It's on hold to go to a pair of proud grandparents.

One (Two) Three

The first days are the hardest days. Sort of. Actually Sunday, the very first day was the easiest: I bagged up two grocery sacks full of plastic tubs, deli containers, and bowls plus a bunch of more or less corresponding lids and delivered them to our next door neighbor, who makes big batches of salsa to give away. We are trying to get rid of the plastic in our kitchen, and this was a whole big wad of it gone in one fell swoop. I walked back to our house dusting my hands victoriously, if superflously, and feeling quite pleased with my little project.

Day two was a little hairier. Monday was action packed and I basically forgot about the whole thing until I was nearly asleep for the night. Just shy of twelve o'clock I got back up and paced through the house, looking for something to post on Freecycle, but the things that presented themselves all seemed so...paltry. Why would anyone want a bag of used plastic baby dishes and utensils? A single teddy bear? A free bag of baby clothes sounded better, but there were only four things in there. Not worth the drive. Hey, at least my paltry offerings were better than the one I spotted the other day on Baltimore Freecycle from someone in Parkville offering, and I quote, "A Lot of Dirt."

The problem I faced during that bleary-eyed march through our House Stuffed Full of Stuff was that everything I came across seemed too useful to let go, too necessary to part with. Sure, we have never once used that food dehydrator in the seven years I have lived here, but you never know...I realized that midnight had come and gone and with it my deadline to give an item away in that particular 24 hour period, so I gave up and went to back to bed.

Day three is going much more smoothly. I woke up with ideas for several expropriation candidates and a renewed sense of excitement over getting rid of stuff. First to go on Freecycle: a Fisher Price toy toolbench. We bought it for Jack at a yard sale five years ago before he was even out of the hatch, two bucks. Reason for dispossessing: have upgraded to bigger, nicer Little Tikes toolbench with even more gadgets -- tools, fake wood blocks, giant screws to screw the fake wood blocks together. I'm throwing it out there, let's see if anyone nibbles.

Give It Away, Give It Away, Give It Away Now

So I have been growing increasingly restive with the sheer amount of stuff cluttering up our house. We own probably the average amount of stuff for a four person middle class American family and, I don't know, maybe it's not the stuff itself, it's just where you put it. But our belongings are oppressing me. Everywhere I look there is something that needs to be picked up or put away or cleaned or otherwise dealt with, and I am just plain tired of dealing with all of it.

I'd been feeling this way for awhile but, other than muttering under my breath whilst stuff-wrangling, had not actually done anything about it. And then last week it was time to go camping.

The list of things we could not find is long and wide. Our tent, for example, though that might actually be my brother's fault. Also we own not one but two mountain pie makers, but can I find either of them? Nope. On the day we were leaving for our week in the woods I raced around like a crazy person from house to garage to storage room unable to find anything I wanted. And the reason I couldn't find the damned pie makers (or the tent, or the baby's swim float, or any of a half dozen other crucial items) was that there was all this other stuff, everywhere. Objects of every use and description, totally disorganized, piled in crazy heaps, shoved into every corner. STUFF. It's to the point where you literally cannot walk into our garage; the wall of stuff begins just inside the door. In order to actually enter the garage you must first dismantle a path into the interior. It's kind of stunning, really: We have achieved complete and uttter craplock.

My solution? Give it away. If it's all sitting in untouched piles in our garage, then clearly we don't use it. So why do we even have it? Time to go. Bye bye. Sayonara, stuff. Starting today I am giving away an object a day for the next 30 days.