For years my wife has talked about having a yard sale. For years, she has stuffed things into the attic, the shed or the loft — not to mention my sock drawer, my closet, my desk, the car, the utility room, the pantry and a closet packed so tight that we have since boarded it up and plastered it over to keep it from exploding.
All this saving has been in anticipation of an imaginary garage sale she figured would one day whisk down out of the heavens and solve our clutter and junk problems.
But it has never come.
So things piled up. Let me be honest here, I’m just as guilty. I can’t just place blame. Whenever I had something I thought I might need in the future, say a guitar with a broken neck or some old used reporter’s notebooks, I threw them in a box in the attic. What I would use them for in the future, I have no idea.
Now the roof is literally splitting at the seams from this overflow of stuff. When your roof looks like a boiled sausage about to burst, it’s time to do something.
And then, as if her prayers had been finally answered, it happened. Our good Sanford Street neighbors organized a block-wide yard sale for this Saturday. My wife hasn’t stopped trembling from the excitement. She had just about resolved to walk away from the house altogether and start from scratch with a new home and new stuff. Now she has visions of selling all this, um, stuff at the yard sale.
(I still think it would be easier to burn it in the backyard, but who am I to argue?)
For the past week we’ve been getting ready. It’s been grueling. And dusty. And fascinating. We’ve sorted through things, opened old boxes, looked at everything we own with new eyes, and learned so much about ourselves — mainly that we’re packrats who must not understand how to properly use a garbage can.
What is it about the human psyche that refuses to discard anything? Why can’t we set it free?
Have you ever gone through a desk drawer and marveled at all the crap you’ve kept? Do we really think that science will one day be able to bring back to life the 32 million dried-up pens in there?
If we don’t use it, why do we keep it?
Part of the answer is my wife hates the idea of waste, of filling up landfills and discarding perfectly good, um, stuff just because we’ve tired of it.
“Someone could use this,” she says, holding up a dusty wicker basket that looks like it has survived — barely — orbital reentry. “Why just clog up a landfill when someone out there might want it?”
The basket then crumples into a heap on the floor and begins to moan.
But my wife does have a point. We’ve become such a disposable society, putting no value on either the stuff we buy, or what happens to it once we tire of it. Everything we own is temporary — a weigh-station until we buy something new or better. Then we discard it. How wasteful we are. So at least she wants to give new life to perfectly good things, rather than just throwing them away.
That has us weeding out for the yard sale. And what a liberating experience it’s been — a sensation of freedom and independence that we haven’t felt in so long. Freedom from the clutter.
We’re turning over a new leaf. Even if we don’t sell it all, it’s going to someone who needs it, like Goodwill. Someone will want it we’re convinced. Or maybe they’ll just think they do, and it will end up stuffed in a new attic waiting on another yard sale. And then the cycle of recycling will continue.