Time to De-Junk
Every once in a while I get the urge to declutter my life. We have lived out here on this hilltop going on five years now and we shed a lot of junk when moving here and when moving our extra junk from Ithaca here, but I think we have only had a junk man come to take away excess junk to the dump one other time. Like most people, the urge for de-junking tends to come in the Spring season for obvious reasons of feeling the need to refresh. The process of de-junking is something I suspect Kim and I will need to discuss in terms of how deeply we feel the need to cut into our accumulation and which areas this should entail. Truth be told we uncluttered our closet much more often and make regular trips to Goodwill for that purpose, so I suspect that while the closet always yields some junk for the pile, that will not be the primary source for this go-around.
I am currently sitting in my office waiting to start a business call with a potential expert witness client and as I look around I can see lots of potential for declutterring here in my office (I am specifically NOT addressing Kim’s stuff, since we all know that we each have define our own stuff as being important or being junk, so I will leave that to her). But after a lifetime of accumulating stuff and winnowing it down as we moved and reduced homes, we are still left with a good deal of stuff that may have some sentimental value, but which goes largely untouched and turns into more museum pieces than anything. There is nothing wrong with retaining some museum pieces of memorabilia in your life, but its all about how much of it you choose to retain. Even the best museums curate their artifacts and keep only those that are most meaningful, so its not so surprising that we all have to do the same with our accumulated stuff. So, I will start the bidding by suggesting that between old books which have no further use for me and other miscellaneous junk, I have something like a 6’x6’ dumpster worth of junk that needs outplacement in my office alone. My master bath also has some junk that needs tossing, but I will give that room 2’x2’. As for the closet, there is always more than I realize so let’s say that a rather harsh triage in there (acknowledging that some like undershirts and socks may be a matter of upgrading to newer items) should yield 4’x4’ worth of discards. The bedroom certainly has another 3’x3’ trove of disposable junk, so in total, the north end of. The house has what I would quantify as 65 square feet of junk.
Before going on with this analysis, let us agree that I acknowledge that the hardest part of any triage is in determining what should go where for final disposition. There may be a few odd pieces that should be offered up to friends and family, but I think it is far too embarrassing to offer up one’s junk to other loved ones on the assumption that they may find it less junky. But that does not mean that others in our circle might not find value in our discards. Kim always offers up things to the cleaning girls and they usually surprise us by taking them gladly. Then there is Goodwill, which will generally take anything we don’t want with the understanding that their trash bins are not so inconvenient for the things they find in our junk that they too define as junk.
When we moved here there were some old cabinets in the garage that had clearly been old cabinets from someone’s house at one point in time. We chose to renovate our garage several years ago and things like old cabinets went by the wayside. Nevertheless, the garage has been accumulating far too much extra detritus and needs to be de-junked to a certain degree, as does the back tool shed. I have two downhill storage rooms on the south side of the house, one that has a concrete floor that I use to store our extra paint and all manner of tools that I have accumulated over the last five years for my various projects. There may be some need to throw a few things away, but that is what I would consider a rather harmless storage room that serves a specific purpose that might only occasionally gets called into service, but is still good to have when needed. The other storage room is really a large crawl space and has a direct floor. That automatically makes it less of a basement and more of a hole in the ground to stuff things. I have several ladders in there which are too big to keep in the garage, but otherwise, the other junk in there deserves to be tossed out if I haven’t used it so far. I do store some wood there and I do have an occasional need for a plank or 2×4, so I will probably keep that in tact, but toss whatever else I stuffed in that hole.
I also think it may be time to assess my various outdoor spaces and either toss or upgrade some of my outdoor elements. I have 13 windows spinners that range from very nice quality to junk. I am guessing that 3 or 4 of them might qualify as junk at this stage. I know that some of my bonsai plants also need thinning. I have ordered some new ones as replacements and will use that occasionally to toss out what looks junky. Pots never seem to go too bad and seem always to find a home, even if they break in certain ways. I have several broken pots in places where they look randomly design-worthy, but mostly they hold up just fine. I cannot say the same for some of my benches. They tend to bleach out in the sun and get a bit wobbly. I think it might be time to upgrade some of my benches, even if I am the only one who usually sits on some of them. Of the dozen or so benches I have in place, I think I can and should toss perhaps four of them and not bother with replacements (including one from the deck). I suspect another 2 or 3 could use an upgrade. Either way, there is some bench junk destined for the dumpster, not to mention a few other outdoor elements from the Hobbit House and/or back garden. This is all sounding like quite a big haul at the moment, so I will need to spend a moment contemplating how best to dispose of it all. I am the proud owner of a truck now, so I suspect that will figure prominently into the plan.
I have discussed it with Kim and she has agreed to do a purge with me in early May. I have also talked with Handy Brad and he has agreed to give a half day of his time in early May so that he and I can attack all of the outdoor spaces together and perhaps use his truck in addition to mine (his for the heavy duty junk for the dump, mine for the boxes of junk to go to Goodwill). I have also gone online and ordered new t-shirts, new play area toys (putters, frisbees, bean bags and bocci balls), and four new benches. That means that I am teeing myself up figuratively and literally to get this De-junking underway. I figure if I have the new stuff, it will prompt me to toss out the old stuff. I truly believe that strategy, along with enlisting Kim and Handy Brad in advance will force me to do what we would all agree is an unnatural act.