Loose, footloose. Kick off your Sunday shoes. Please, Louise Pull me offa my knees.
CIMG1372, originally uploaded by nickatnight.This is most of the stuff that we took out of our garage yesterday afternoon. We have slowly been working our way through our house getting rid of excess stuff. I have cleaned under both sinks, organized the pantry and laundry room, even gone through the junk drawer and tackled the small closet on our balcony. But the one I have been avoiding and dreading was the garage which hasn’t been organized since I shoved everything in there back in July. As you can see we had quite a bit of excess stuff.
I (N.) suppose we could have tried to sell it but we’ve tried that on ebay and craigslist to no avail. We lost money on ebay and were never able to sell anything on Craigslist despite deep discounts. Perhaps because it was after the holidays and heading into Spring when everyone is downsizing or perhaps no one wants our stuff… Either way we just decided to freecycle stuff or donate it to Goodwill. I figure we can earn ourselves a little of positive karma which is better then money anyway. The only thing we do sell is our books and DVDs, for that we use half.com and we have had great results with that. I think we have made almost $300 to date.
What we can’t give away or sell we recycle. This pile is the recycle pile.
As you can see it’s mostly cardboard and paper (newspaper and magazines that no one else wants). We both have a bad habit of holding onto the cardboard boxes that things come in and they just end up taking up space so we finally got rid of all of them. In this pile there are also office supplies that I took to work since we never use them at home. Is it sad that I have to bring scissors from home in order to have them at work?
Anyway, it’s snowing outside now and I’m not so motivated to go downstairs and out to the garage to take a picture but I promise the change is amazing. I can now fit almost everything onto the set of metal shelves we have and my bike can coexist peacefully with the car. I hope this this inspires others to clean out the garage, drawer, closet, whatever…
Often the reason why I don’t buy clothes via craigslist is because often its not worth the effort to get the one item that I like. Same thing for ebay which is why I prefer buying from thriftstores.
We used to have alot of cardboard boxes lying around as well, but now we add it to our vermicomposter and its gone in weeks leaving behind some rich soil Its like magic!
You are now tackling what I dread doing… I have been putting off cleaning the garage as it is housing all kinds of junk in addition to creepy, crawly things. Good for you for getting it done…you have inspired me to do the same…
CLM
i’d like to see you downsize your christmas stuff!!!! if you do that i will truly believe you have given in to the eco-friendly-hippie lifestyle.
Isn’t it amazing how much crap we acquire over time that we inevitably nee to dump? Great article, cool photos.
Cheers. We have been doing the same thing. It is tough for me though, I see all of the *stuff* as money. Ouch. Money that I never should have spent, damn it. The positive side of it is that I now see my purchases as future *stuff* and haven’t bought anything in months! (aside from, of course, food)