Harpo's Girlfriend

Day 42: Harpo's Girlfriend

Harpo's girlfriend is nasty. I've washed it several times, but it still smells of our old dog Chester and who knows what else. Every time I sit on the sofa near the dog crate, I can smell it. Sorry, Goodwill. I know you would have sold it to a ragpicker to make into household insulation, but I can't bring myself to make your volunteers go through the experience of handling Harpo's girlfriend. It's going straight to the trash.

I'll make a new cushion cover for him out of old towels. I hope he doesn't pine for too long, but I believe it's healthier to end this obsession.

History Books

Day 41: History Books

Today is Tina's birthday. Mine will follow shortly. I don't want to give away her (our) age, but it ends in zero, is greater than 40 and less than 60.

I've been trying to think of something I can get rid of in Tina's honor. She's taught me a few lessons:

1. Clothes that are too big make you look fat
2. Cheap make-up looks cheap
3. Spend more to get what you really want, because you'll keep it longer

I either like reading history books because I have an MPA,
or I have an MPA because I like reading history books.
Upon reflection, I'm keeping Lincoln

I've learned these lessons so well that I don't have any too-big clothes or cheap make-up. I'm working on the unwanted crap.

I thought of giving away all my public administration textbooks. We went to graduate school together in public administration and policy, and worked together as budget and policy analysts for many years. I doubt either of us will ever be a policy analyst again. Unfortunately, it turns out I already let go of all my old textbooks.

I also thought of buying myself a Ford Fusion hybrid, but that is probably taking lesson three too far. Would it count as getting rid of something if I got rid of my trashed RAV4? Would it be an homage to Tina?

Happy birthday, Tina. Here's to the next 25 years.

Sawdust

Day 40: Sawdust

Sawdust for chicken bedding makes me cough.
Probably not good for the chickens either

I can't get ahead of the economics of chickens. We buy about two bags of feed ($15 ea), two bags of bedding ($10 ea) and about $10 on miscellaneous other stuff like oyster shells or scratch every year. That's about sixty bucks a year. We spent $200 building the coop, $100 buying two water dispensers and a feed dispenser, $30 on a water melter, $15 on an extension cord long enough to in plug the melter, and $15 on a permit. So that's $360 in start-up costs for about six years of laying, an average of another sixty a year. Two chickens give us about 400 eggs a year. So that's $120 in annualized costs for $3.60 a dozen.

My co-worker Judy sells her Happy Hens eggs for $3.50 per dozen. So for just a dime a dozen, I get all the fun of cleaning the coop, tromping outside all weathers in my bathrobe and boots to open and close the coop, driving fifteen miles to the Tractor Supply store for chicken feed, and finding someone to take care of the birds when we go on vacation.

I am motivated to minimize my chicken care costs, and neither of us remembers why we have this big bag of unopened sawdust. Might we have gotten it from Fingerle's years ago, thinking it could be used in lieu of salt on ice? Nothing else comes to mind.

Backyard chicken web sites unanimously agree that sawdust is no good for chicks, but most seemed to think that as a supplement to regular bedding, sawdust is okay for layers. It's absorbent and it smells good, but in large doses it's too dusty for chickens and humans. It can cause respiratory problems. I went ahead and mixed it in with the cedar shavings. I was interested to read that construction grade sand makes warmer, cleaner, cheaper reusable bedding. Next time I'll try it.

Re the wisdom of using sawdust as bedding: I'm still coughing.

Quarter-Sized Stand-Up Bass

Day 39: Quarter-Sized Stand-Up Bass

Some things feel very good to get rid of, and some things feel very bad. It was a bad day when Cluck Ole Hen, my little string band, lost its fiddle player, Jess. Jess and her husband Nil and their two little sons were our most favorite next-door-neighbors ever. When we lost our fiddleplayer, we also lost our fellow chickenkeepers, our tiny basketball players, many lazy over-the-fence conversations, and the feeling of community that only a good neighbor can give. Their excellent jobs, their great new house, their proximity to family and their love of Quebec are all well and good, but we're talking about me here.

Things got even worse when Cluck Ole Hen lost its bass player, Connie. Jess told me Connie was the coolest person she ever met, and that might just be true. Connie doesn't talk much about herself, so it takes a while to figure out that she can actually do anything, like teach karate, ride motorcycles, prune fruit trees, build a chair and identify every Michigan native plant and almost every ornamental. She's a natural musician. And she has a really big heart. So now Connie is living the dream on the west coast, being a small-scale farmer with her boyfriend Stu. Stu and Connie probably watch the sunset while skinny dipping in Lake Michigan. Sigh.

Well, things change and sometimes you say goodbye to good things and good people. It's coming up on a year since Jess left. I might almost be ready to give her a call and not boohoo through the whole conversation. Maybe we'll try camping on Stu and Connie's land this summer.

When you say goodbye, sometimes you make room for something or somebody new. So today, Suzanne is buying Sam's old quarter-sized stand-up bass, now too small for him. We can never replace Connie, but Suzanne is a pleasure. She knows how to keep her place and how to keep time. Better yet, she ends every song with a huge grin and victory whoop. What's not to like?

Next week, we're trying out a new fiddleplayer. She's not Jess. But someday, she might be a friend.

There is disagreement as to whether we are Cluck Ole Hen
or Cluck Old Hens. Julie prefers Cluck Old Hens because it's more accuate.
I prefer Cluck Ole Hen because it's cooler.

Computer, Printer & Other Electronics

Day 38: Computer, Printer, VHS Tapes, ADATs and More

Fight!

I left the house for less than an hour, and when I came back, I found this:

Rich was moving old electronics out of the studio in a wheelbarrow! His plan was to take it directly to the drop-off center ... without even telling me! 

How will I ever get through an entire year of giving something away every day if my own family sneaks stuff to the dump when I'm not looking?

And all this only a few days before the Ann Arbor Public Schools and the University of Michigan team  up for their e-recycling event. eWaste has those all-too-familiar stats associated with it: Americans are the biggest waste generators, annually we discard an average of 65 pounds of it per person, almost 10 million tons of it end up in U.S. landfills per year, blah blah blah.

Okay, okay, hurt me daddy I'm bad.

On the plus side, if you recycle, a lot of the raw materials can be reused. If you can resist the temptation of the latest shiny object, computers and other electronics have a much longer lifespan than they once had.

The e-recycling event reminded me a bit of a rock concert, what with the orange traffic cones, young men in reflector vests and baseball caps, long lines of cars and semis in the parking lot. They took everything.

More Bedsheets

Day 37: More Bedsheets

Enough said.

I bought cute new sheets for our third floor guest room after my beloved
mother-in-law had to sleep in a bed with a bottom sheet that had little
cars on it, a top sheet with ladybugs, and two mismatched pillowcases.
I bought a cute green polkadot sheet set and a yellow feather comforter for Jane,
put the old sheets in this pine trunk, and forgot all about them. Three years ago.

Shoes

Day 36: Shoes

I "needed" a pair of black slip-ons.
I wanted some Birky rip-offs.
Cork = good (reusable)
Chinese leather = bad (unregulated effluvia)
Synthetic rubber = mixed reviews

I don't do drugs. I don't gamble. I don't drink (much). But I found myself sneaking the two new pairs of shoes from DSW into the house when no one was looking. I hid them in plain view, on the shoe rack. I made a futile attempt to exculpate myself by putting six other pairs of shoes into the growing Goodwill pile.

The effort was futile because, just like everything else I'm learning about during this stuff project, it turns out shoes have a big environmental, economic and social cost. My new shoes were made in China. Most likely, so were yours. 84% of our shoes are. As usual, we are the gluttons at the table: Americans buy an average of almost seven pairs of shoes a year compared with a world-wide average of about two and a half. Worst of all, some shoe factories still use child labor.

Sigh. 

I just can't stop buying shoes. Not an option. No way.

On the plus side, these trashed, ill-fitting,
outgrown shoes will have a useful afterlife.

Furthermore, I'm not going to limit myself to those few companies - Timberland, Simple, Keen and (surprisingly!) Nike, for example - that are working to minimize their impact. But there are some things I can do. First, instead of mucking the chickens, pulling weeds or shooting hoops in whatever shoes I happen to have on, I'm keeping a pair of rain boots by the back door. (I even bought them used!) That ought to prolong the life of the shoes I already have.

Second, I'm firm in my resolve not to buy any shoes that do not fit perfectly, no matter how cute, or how cheap the clearance price. At least two of the shoes in the Goodwill bag were cheap, cheap, cheap - but not quite right. I should have skipped it.

Third, I'm going to check out the used shoes on eBay. 

After all, you can never have too many shoes.

Sinister Sudoku Challenge

Day 35: Sinister Sudoku Challenge, Foreign Language Dictionaries and Cheap Paperbacks

Sinister indeed

Did you know that pigeons are more responsive to intermittent reinforcement than consistent reinforcement? That must be why I keep doing these sinister sudoku puzzles, even though I've only correctly solved about one in five. I feel certain that the book contains the word "sinister" in the title because the editors have placed random numbers in the boxes of the other 80%, such that it is impossible to solve them correctly. It is part of their plot to convince puzzle-doers that they are becoming senile. 

Ten years ago, a puzzle-doer could easily solve expert-level sudoku puzzles. If, occasionally, she could not solve a puzzle, she could at least reach a stopping point without making any errors, and could correctly complete the puzzle by cheating. Ten years ago, a puzzle-doer almost never made mistakes such that she would have to bail on the puzzle altogether. And certainly not 80% of the time.

Clearly, it is the book's fault, not mine. Therefore, the book must go.

Also gave away some cheap paperbacks, a serious French-English dictionary and a serious German-English dictionary. Kept a pocket French and pocket Spanish phrasebook, a Lonely Planet guide to Brazil, and some teenage girl books that aren't mine to give away. We may yet visit Rio de Janeiro, or Congo, or Machu Pichu before I become too addle-brained to appreciate them.

Wicker Shelf

Day 34: Wicker Shelf

Needs a good scrubbing
but otherwise it's in great shape!
Perfect for all your garden stuff

I'm just a gal who can't say no. This wicker hand-me-down from my parents is perfectly nice and perfectly functional. Why not? Right?

Wrong. This shelf has been blocking the electrical outlet, the fuse box, the garage door opener and the people door for years. We've got plenty of built-in empty shelf space in the garage. It took five minutes to move the few things off this shelf onto another empty shelf. If I'd said no to begin with, it would probably be a lot cleaner now.

Old furniture is not easy to recycle and often ends in landfills. I found out that the best thing you can do to keep furniture out of landfills is to buy used furniture instead of new. The good news is that there is plenty of it. High quality. Cheap.

Case in point: do you like this wicker shelf? It's advertised on Craig's List right now for $0.

Act now.

Air Pop Popcorn Popper

Day 33: Air Pop Popcorn Popper

Good riddance,
air pop popcorn popper

I'm feeling disappointed because, after 33 days, I figured I'd be in the sweet spot: less troubled by annoying extra stuff, but not yet digging deep. Instead, I've barely noticed any change. To keep up my momentum, I've decided to target annoyances.

First on my list: this air pop popcorn popper. Why in the world would anyone (read: we) purchase an appliance that actually makes worse food than a pot on the stove? To add to the humiliation, we bought this a month after my parents offered to give us their old one for free. The only reason anyone buys air poppers is because they're on a diet, like Rich and I were after Emma was born. (Yes, she's 17 now.) A cup of air popped popcorn has 30 calories; stove top, 60. But just as I would rather not eat styrofoam packing material, I prefer to eat less and better popcorn. This air pop popcorn popper is especially annoying because it takes up a lot of space; we have a 1920s-size kitchen, long before the era of single-use appliances.

Curse you, Joe Mooney, for putting this
cheesecake pan on the free table at work!
Cheesecake! Mmm!

Unfortunately, old single-use appliances don't appear to have the happy afterlife of textiles. Air pop popcorn poppers do not get shipped to impoverished countries. Who needs an air pop popcorn popper when you don't have electricity or unpopped popcorn? Air pop popcorn poppers do not get shredded for household insulation. The best you can say about air pop popcorn poppers is that some other sucker on a diet might buy yours from the PTO Thrift Shop.

My sister pointed out that donating stuff doesn't do anything to remove it from the vast river of stuff that's out there. Tracy Artley, the University's recycling guru, pointed out that sustainability isn't just about throwing stuff in a different bin. It's about fundamentally changing how we operate in the world. So I'm resolved: no more single-use appliances.

In the meantime, though, this one goes into the donation box.

Carbon Copies of Checks

Day 32: Carbon Copies of Checks and a Big Tuition Payment

Our friend Derek, inspired by the stuff project, got rid of carbon copies of old checks and suggested I do the same. I found carbon copies of checks dating back to 2002, which neither Rich nor I have looked at or used for any reason. When I do our taxes annually, I look at the check registry to make sure I haven't forgotten a charitable donation. When I forget to tell Rich I've written a check, he can just click on the link in our on-line statement and see an image of the actual check.

Why are we keeping these? Why do we even order checks that have carbon copies? What a waste of trees and storage space. Note to self: next time we order checks, change the style to nix the carbon copies. Thanks for the suggestion, Derek.

Oh, and one more thing we are getting rid of today: big fat tuition payments to Emma's private high school. Was it worth $1900 a month for four years? Who knows? She seems to have turned out well, though, so I can't complain. Would we do it again? Most likely.

On my wish list now that I've got a lot more money: a really good haircut, a gym membership, and a working garage door. On my wish list that I probably won't buy, at least until we've built up our savings a bit: a new car, a Vespa and wooden instead of 15-year-old plastic Adirondack chairs.

Sun Hats

 Day 31: Sun Hats

Estate sales are magnetic. I've been trying to limit my purchases during the stuff project, but the advent of garage and estate sale season will make it a challenge. Especially estate sales.

People say you are what you eat. I believe that we are what we have. And what better place to peer into the inner workings of our fellow human beings than to paw over their earthly remains?

Reluctantly we part.
One too floppy, one too stiff

I'm not alone in this. At 10 a.m., not an hour after the sale had started, the street was already full of parked cars with stuff being loaded into them. People were testing out tools in the garage, trying on baseball hats in the bedroom, playing the oversized grand piano in the undersized living room, peering at medicines in the bathroom cabinet. It reminded me of when the undertaker and the charwoman stole Scrooge's bedcurtains and nightshirt to sell to the pawnbroker.

What can you tell about the people who died in that house? A grand piano, a sailboat, a treadmill, a safe. No kids' stuff. Men's shirts still in the package. Sturdy Sorel boots, lightly worn. Oversized log furniture, at odds with the spare Frank Lloyd Wright style architecture of the house. Garage so packed with stuff there was no room for a car.

My camping gear, garden tools, and sun hats should tell you I like to be outside. But why so many sun hats? Is it because there are so many beautiful ones, so much variety? Is because I'm always forgetting to pack one when we go camping? Or is it because I am perpetually searching for the Platonic ideal? I don't know, but I know this. I have a lot of sun hats, but I didn't want to give any away.

The perfect sun hat. It must shade your eyes but not block your view. It must be tight enough to grip your head, but not so tight that it's uncomfortable. It must have give but keep its shape. It must have a generous rim without being ridiculous. It must not itch. It must breath. These five are just too good to give away

Complete Guide to Home Improvement

Day 30: Bookshelf #3 - Time-Life Complete Guide to Home Improvement, Julie & Julia, and Other Good Reads

My neighbors built this little
free library in their front yard.
Anybody can add or take away books.

If your looking for a good read,
these are in the little free library

Today I'm giving away good reads that will go over well in the little free library around the corner. Included amongst them, Julie & Julia, one of the books that inspired this stuff project. I love reading books about ordinary people who set challenges for themselves and gain insight from the experience. However, I found Julie Powell to be neither a deep thinker nor especially likable.

My minimum goal is to get to where the books are stacked only one deep. Also they should be standing on their edges and not stacked on their sides (which, as you probably know, fits a few more on the shelf).

Another internet casualty:
I haven't cracked this book in years.
I've been using DIY videos

I am keeping a 2009 Tappan Middle school yearbook (although perhaps those years are best forgotten), six plays and monologues for student actors, and a book about the history of soccer (authored by my brother Karl). I am also keeping two cookbooks: the Moosewood and Fanny Farmer.

Come to think of it, I couldn't find a sauteed chicken recipe in Fanny Farmer yesterday and had to wing it because my iPad was at work. Maybe I should give away Fanny Farmer and the Moosewood after all.

Nah.

AmEx Card

Day 29: American Express Card

Why is Hermes the FTD florist guy
and the AmEx guy?

I gave my credit score a ding by giving up my Costco American Express card. Huh. One would think fewer credit cards would make one a better credit risk. Not to mention holding a steady job, paying your taxes and making no late payments. But there's alchemy at work here. Rich's credit score is measurably better than mine, even though our finances have been combined for twenty years.

Even so, according to the Federal Reserve, "Overall, research...has consistently indicated that credit reporting, despite any limitations that it may have, provides an effective assessment of the relative risk posed by prospective borrowers." (1)

We got rid of the AmEx because we like to have only one credit card plus our ATM. Every bill that can be paid from the credit card goes on it, and the full balance of our credit card is automatically deducted from our checking account each month. Lots of frequent flier miles, and no time or postage wasted paying bills. The second card was intended as a gas card for Emma to keep in her wallet, but it just adds complications and makes my wallet harder to close.

Goodbye, Hermes.

Costco Membership

Day 28: Costco Membership

Twenty beautiful, sustainably
produced tulips for $10
What's so bad about that?

Costco does a fantastic job of getting me to buy stuff. So high quality! Such a good (unit) price! And their employees get health coverage! To give Costco its due, they not only politely cancelled my membership, they also refunded the $110 I paid for my renewal two months ago. No questions asked.

I spent $120, the exact amount
of my dividend check. Mixed nuts,
three cheeses, beer, dog food and tulips.
Not many items, but each one so good!

There has been a great deal of debate in our house about whether we save money or waste money at Costco. I'm sure you've had the same argument. Both sides make good points.

I have a friend who years ago had a credit problem. At credit counseling, their first and most urgent piece of advice: don't go shopping. It's essentially the same advice they offer alcoholics.

Everywhere I go, I'm being invited to buy, buy, buy! Stuff I don't need, or stuff I need in mind-numbing quantities. Even at work, sitting in my office with the door closed, I can go to the on-line store. Or the on-line store comes to me in the form of yet another email solicitation.

Costco is one big temptation. And lately I've been thinking a lot, not just about the stuff I have in my house right now, but about how it got there in the first place. I'm not an aesthete. I like stuff. But I am trying to get to a place where I intelligently populate my world with useful, pleasing and sturdy things that increase my utility. No more bright shiny objects. And Costco is a temple of bright shiny objects.

Copyrighted material. Sorry, New Yorker!
Not shown:all the items I put into my cart and took back out again. 
Six pairs of garden gloves. Thirty La Croix sparkling waters. A market umbrella. 
A gallon of seaweed salad. Individually-wrapped whole wheat fig newtons.

Eggcase

Day 27: Eggcase

Some stuff is better in concept than in reality. In concept, this egg container is an excellent addition to your camping gear. Plus, a person with chickens could really use this when the eggs start to accumulate. In reality, the little prongs that purportedly hold the eggs in place are specially designed egg-piercers. If you get your eggs from any hen except a bantam silkie, this eggcase will give you nothing but a soupy mess.

Emma loves this little eggcase. She imagines the chickens putting on a business tie and strutting off to Wall Street.

They are clucking right now. We can hear them through the glass doors. They know we are about to give away their eggcase.

Old-Stained-Ratty T-Shirts and Shorts

His navy blue Polo t-shirt
matches his navy blue Polo socks

Day 26: Old-Stained-Ratty T-shirts and Shorts

This is the era of disposable underwear and saggin'. It's no wonder we Americans discard 70 pounds of textiles every year. Last year's outfits are embarrassing.

Parents of growing children must be driving up the average. Sam has decided he wants to dress nicer, which in the world of 15-year-old boys, means khaki shorts, a belt, and socks that go halfway up his calves.

To earn his new clothes, Sam must wash, fold and put away all the clothes he already owns, separating out the ones he has outgrown. This time, there is very little he's outgrown: just two or three pairs of khaki shorts from last summer (now covered with stains) and a couple of old-stained-ratty t-shirts. Oh, and a grocery bag full of mismatched athletic socks.

Instead of throwing his old-stained-ratty stuff away, I put them in the Goodwill pile. In doing my research for this stuff project, I learned that if your old-stained-ratty clothes are too old-stained-ratty to sell to U.S. thrift store shoppers, they'll go to textile recyclers (aka ragpickers) who either ship them to impoverished countries as clothing, turn them into cleaning rags, or sell them as scrap to be turned into sound insulation or carpet pads.

But that's only if you give them to the Goodwill. 85% of the 70 pounds of textiles each of us discards each year goes directly into the garbage can.

What a waste. 

So, does it count as getting rid of something if you just buy something new to replace it?

Electric Guitar

Day 25: Electric Guitar

The annual cleaning of the music studio has begun. This is a converted barn out behind our house, the oldest structure in Burns Park, a big open room filled with musical instruments, cords, recording gear, mics, music stands, sheet music, tuners, plectrums, old computers, and banged up furniture. Parts of it occupy that gray space between indoors and outdoors.

First on the list to be got rid of: an old kid's electric guitar that no one ever really played. Off it goes with Rich and Sam to Sam's bass lesson at the Ann Arbor Music Center, where some other kid might buy it and we might realize a little cash.

Sam wants to know what will happen if we ever want to
get rid of something quietly. "This blog is taking over your life," he says.

Cranberry Sauce

Day 24: Cranberry Sauce and Other Forgotten Foods

Many of these have not been
touched in months

I've been trying to figure out just how beneficial it would be to the American economy if everyone in the U.S. bought American cars. We build a lot of "foreign" cars in the auto corridor. It's also not clear how much country-of-origin impacts people's decisions about car purchases.

Food, on the other hand, is a much simpler question. Michigan is the number one U.S. producer of squash, beans, blueberries, tart cherries and a dozen other agricultural crops. You can head down to the farmer's market right this minute and buy milk, honey, meat, fruits and vegetables from the farmer down the road, and you won't need any complicated economic models to determine whether or not you helped the local economy. You did. 

And you won't need a PhD in chemistry to tell you that what you're eating tastes a whole lot better than the unripe food harvested two weeks ago and shipped 5,000 miles to your grocery store.

Of course, almost none of the stuff I got rid of today came from local farmers, except maybe my sister's homemade Thanksgiving cranberry sauce (so delicious, but I took too much!), stovetop popcorn and stale Avalon bread. All of which the chickens greatly enjoyed.

I would have given the chickens the "light" Spartan yogurt, except I'm afraid it might kill them. If I had noticed the "light" label, I never would have bought it. As if plain non-fat yogurt isn't "light" enough, this "light" yogurt actually has chemically-reduced calories. I don't know how they did it, but I can tell you that the texture resembles Jell-o more than yogurt. 

Does this count as food?

Which reminds me. It's probably time to get rid of the plain Knox gelatin we mixed up and applied to Emma's hair once upon a time, in order to create a hard Playskool figure shellac that kept its shape in the water. She hasn't been a synchronized swimmer in over five years.

Note to self: add yogurt to Calder Dairy milk order.

Empty Drawers

Day 23: Empty Drawers

Nothing under the bed but dust

1000 unfilled square feet

You may have gotten the impression that this stuff project is like a written Buried Alive. That I've got stuff dripping out of cupboards, begging to be culled. Not so.

Our basement is virtually empty. Our attic has blank shelves. We have empty drawers in the bureau.

So what is the point of this project?

Guest shelves by the guest bed

I don't know. But I am giving away a set of empty drawers: the file cabinet I emptied a day or two ago. I haven't figured out why I'm holding onto all these other empty shelves and drawers. I'm just not ready to give them up.

Not yet, anyway.

No socks in these drawers

College Marketing Materials

Day 22: College Marketing Materials

How did those dozens - hundreds? - of colleges and universities find my daughter's name and address? How did they know she was graduating from high school, college-bound? Why did they inundate us with brochures, bumper stickers, business cards, pamphlets, postcards, maps, letters, fliers, tickets, invitations? How did they get her email address? Mine? Rich's? 

Will they take us off their mailing lists now that the decision is finally made? I hope so.

Congratulations, sweetheart. You decided what you wanted, set a high bar, organized auditions, applications, and visits. You got admitted.

Goodbye, small liberal arts school and big scholarship. Hello, big public school and small BFA-acting program. Goodbye, huge pile of marketing materials. Hello, targeted information. Goodbye, uncertainty. Hello, plan. 

Goodbye, child. Hello, young woman. 

Congratulations, sweetheart.

Recycling bin, here we come

TurboTax

Contents of the Junk Drawer

Day 21: TurboTax & School Pictures
When is it okay to throw away multiple copies of school pictures? What about photos from your brother-in-law's long-since dissolved marriage? How about never-opened 2003 Encyclopedia Britannica DVDs?

Can old CDs and DVDs be used as roof tiles?

If you get rid of TurboTax program disks, can you be arrested when you can't access old tax returns?

If you've completely emptied a set of drawers, is it okay to give it away? Or should you keep it so you can fill it again?

Bike Helmets

Day 20: Bike Helmets and Other Bike Stuff

The curse is lifted! These tulips
were busily growing under snow

Spring is here at last! Time for riding bikes, gardening, working bees, eating fresh greens, shooting hoops, grilling steak, opening windows, birdsong, long hikes, fresh eggs. Time for all the garbage that's been hidden under the snow to peek out. Tulip time.

Time to clean the garage

It really doesn't matter that I gave away three bicycle helmets and kept five (one for each of us plus a back-up), since Emma doesn't ride her bike at all and Sam refuses to wear a bicycle helmet. I dearly hope his oh-so-precious head doesn't get smashed because I decided to teach him - allow him - to ride the scooter. My thinking is this: on the scooter, he will wear a DOT certified helmet. On a bicycle, he will not wear any helmet at all. On the scooter, cars might see him. On a bicycle, they certainly will not. On the scooter, he will never go above 30 mph.

This is not just fantasy. On NPR news, they aired a story suggesting that the rate of serious accidents and injury is lower on 49 cc scooters than on motorcycles and bicycles. I heard it on the radio. It must be true.

Please, Sam. Do not remove your helmet as soon as you are out of my sight. Do not take passengers. Do not listen to music through headphones. Do not do wheelies, stoppies, donuts, or burnouts. Do not text. Please, Sam. Be safe.

I also gave away a torn bike basket that broke due to constant (over)use, and two perfectly good Kryptonite u-locks with no keys.

Dictionary

Day 19: Dictionary and More Books
I used to open the dictionary at random just to see if there were words I didn't know on the page. My favorite book. The heft of it. Its translucent onion-skin pages. Fifteen definitions for every word. Alternate pronunciations. History.

I found this on the bookshelf when I cleaned it out. \Emma and my mom, at Halloween 12 years ago.
Aren't they cute?

But I haven't used a printed dictionary in years. They are a thing of the past. On-line, you can find every word or phrase under the sun. In the printed dictionary, some words are there, and some are missing. Like the S word. Or proper nouns.

Who needs the dictionary? There's an app for that.

I'm ruthless. A favorite historic mystery, Medicus, and its sequel went in the mail for a friend. A few old travel guides went to the Thrift Shop. Not Your Mother's Slow Cooker went to a single mom co-worker who has to get dinner ready for herself and her girls every night. Ditto Fromer's Guide to Chicago with Kids.

Half-empty bookshelf: a sight I haven't seen in many years. Must. Not. Fill. Shelf. With. More. Books.

Nail Polish

Day 18: Nail Polish

My mother would be proud. I spent three hours at the mall yesterday, looking for the perfect prom dress. We tried on dresses at Von Maur, JC Penny's, and Macy's. I went back and forth to the racks, looking for different sizes. I found matching shoes. We had coffee in the center lounge and talked about whether to buy the crenoline and mesh that made her love her shoulders, or the sleek and slinky that's trending.

It started badly, with my usual lecture about waste (you'd only wear it once!), and the clothing industry, and money. There were tears and disappointment. Just this once, why couldn't we have fun and enjoy being together? Why couldn't she be a princess and I the proud mama? Why couldn't I relax? I panicked. I couldn't relax. I couldn't. But, "Buy her whatever she wants," Rich said. "It's a ritual. A rite of passage." So I winged it. I pulled a dress off the rack, bright pink and heavy with beads. "I love this color," I said. And in a minute, it was alright.

Isn't she lovely, made from love?

Flashback! My mom would have loved for me to try on pretty dresses. Mom insisted that I have a special outfit to get married in, and patiently stood by while I rejected this one as too expensive and that one as too frivolous. In the end, my wedding dress came from the clearance rack at Macy's, and I only agreed to let my mother buy it for me because I thought I could wear it again. I never have.

Sorry I didn't let you come to my wedding, Mom! (We had only ourselves and two witnesses.) Thanks for not making me feel guilty. If I could do it over again, I'd ask you to sit in the front row, right beside Dad.

Can't post a picture of the dress
because Emma doesn't want
 to spoil the surprise

The other girls and moms in the dressing room at Von Maur made me proud of my own. One girl in particular was so rude to her mother and grandmother, I figured she must be in middle school. It turns out she was shopping for a dress for her boyfriend's graduation from the Naval Academy. Poor guy.

Emma was nothing but gracious, and grateful. She said she was glad we don't do this all the time, because it made the day more special. Back home, she modeled the dress for her dad, and stood up straight, and beamed.

It's true, Emma doesn't need another dress, or any other stuff. Sometimes we both count the days until she leaves for college. For me: the car will be clean! The bathroom will be clean! The living room will be clean! For her: no more nagging! But today, she's off to Chicago and Indiana with her dad, visiting colleges, trying to make that final decision. Sam is on a houseboat in Tennessee, having a blast with friends. And I'm at home with a poofy prom dress for company. The house is quiet.

I'm giving away a basket of nail polish in Emma's honor, because she loves nail polish, hair curlers, and poofy princess dresses. My own nail polish is drying out in the bottle while Rich and I run the final lap of this twenty-year long distance race - raising kids - for which we changed our city, our climate, our careers and our community. 

The kids may not be carbon copies of us. But the kids are alright.

Clocks & Watches

Day 17: Clocks and Watches

Everyone in our little family is punctual. Very punctual. While other mothers spend their mornings shouting at their children to wake up, get up, hurry up and get a move on, I am more likely to have to reassure them that we have plenty of time, that we will not be late, and that, even if we are late, being late is not the end of the world. 

Every room in our house has multiple clocks. 

I should shroud the clocks. I don't recall Anne Elliott and Captain Wentworth ever making an appointment for a specific time of day. I like to imagine that they retired when the sun set, woke when the sun rose, ate when the sun was at its zenith, and met in the afternoon.

I have five watches. One, a classy Citizen water-resistent high-end diamond-chipped piece, was a gift from the University upon my tenth anniversary of employment three years ago. It is the only watch I have worn since the day I got it. It is comfortable, attractive, and sells for $300, which means I don't want to lose it. The reason I have so many other watches is that I formerly lost them about as often as I lost cheap sunglasses. Which goes back to the china shepherdess. Maybe if I'd bought myself a classy Citizen years ago, I wouldn't have had to buy all those Timexes.

Three of the watches went in the give-away box. I'm not 100% confident that I won't lose the Citizen, so I'm keeping a Timex back-up. I also finally removed the mounted GE clock radio that I have hated since we moved into this house over eleven years ago; we put it in the car and drove it directly to the Salvation Army. 

I replaced the battery in our wall clock. For several weeks, it has said the time is 3:58.

Knickknacks

Day 16: Knickknacks

Knickknacks featured large in my childhood, especially Hummel figures, courtesy of a flock of Scottish ladies. Aunt May. Aunt Nettie. Aunt Bessie. Aunt Effie. Cousin Barbara. Auntie Mo. Grandma Abrahams. My mother. One of my earliest memories is of sitting in the backseat of the car in Windsor, Ontario with my 98-year-old Scottish great-grandmother while the U.S. Customs Department unwrapped two cardboard cartons full of figurines, looking inside each and every wee precious lassie, bathing baby with a bluebird in its hair and whistling hiker in lederhosen. (I'm sure the baby needed a bath, what with a bird defecating in its hair.) Luckily for my mom and me, Grandma wasn't using porcelain figures to smuggle heroin over the border.

Remember how Caroline Ingalls would carefully wrap up that damned china shepherdess, put it in the covered wagon, and patiently wait until the new fireplace mantel was built in the still more remote cabin so yet again the shepherdess could be unwrapped and put in pride of place? Remember how Laura, Mary and Carrie would have rather cut off their hands than pick her up and risk breaking her?

I admit it: I hardly have any knickknacks. I just like the word knickknack so much, I wanted to use it as a title for one of my posts. Knickknack. Knickknack. Knickknack. So I'm scouting around the house, looking for something on topic that I can get rid of, and here's what I found: a cookie tin that Nil and Jess left for us after they moved, a sewing kit Barbara left for us after she moved, an empty box that displays photographs, and a few Christmas ornaments that we never put away. Into the Goodwill box.

I bet if we had only one of each thing, we wouldn't lose so much. Like spoons (where do they all go?), water bottles, sunglasses, reading glasses, travel mugs and Tupperware. Admit it: you've all had to buy more of these because the ones you had got lost. So I'm launching a "Why So Many?" theme. Look for WSM in the title once a week or so. Starting tomorrow: Clocks and Watches.

More Bedsheets

Day 15: More Bedsheets

A man with a baseball cap, a friendly smile and a fringe of gray hair came over to ask me if everything was okay when I had the contents of my car spread out in the parking lot at the Holiday Inn. I explained about my project - getting rid of one thing a day for a year - and he laughed. "If I got rid of one thing a day, it would be 3,000 years before I ran out of stuff."

As I've imagined this project unfolding, I've fantasized about the lightness I will feel as my house is relieved of its burden of stuff. I've imagined that as the year progresses, it will gradually be harder and harder to find stuff to get rid of. I've joked that in a year, we might be living in a tent, with just two of every article of clothing, a camp stove, a mess kit, a sleeping bag, a toothbrush and a flashlight. I thought Rich and I might have some conflict as I cut deeper into the stockpile of stuff.

Then I noticed this:

More bedsheets! These have been tucked away on a high shelf, out of sight and out of mind, for years.  TJ has come and gone, spiriting away sheets for the animal shelter. I've since learned that the Thrift Shop or Goodwill can actually resell any textile to rag pickers, who in turn ship them to third world countries (if they're good enough to salvage but not good enough to sell on the resale market in the U.S.) or recycle them for home insulation (if they're trashed). I know what to do.

But that's not the point. The point is, I own a whole shelf of sheets I had completely forgotten.

Our pleasant modest house

Already day 15, and ideas for stuff to get rid of are crowding my brain. Teapots and tea cozies! Towels! Trays! Trinkets! Tablecloths! Single earrings, silver bracelets, watches! Nail polish, dental floss, perfume! Suitcases, briefcases, grocery bags! Furniture! Pens, games, puzzles! Embroidery hoops, yarns, fabrics! Water pistols, basketballs, badminton sets! Water bottles, vases, dinner plates! Watering cans, composters, tomato stakes! Coolers, canoes, greeting cards! Books! Books! Books! CDs and VHS tapes! Musical instruments and sheet music! Speakers, iPods, receivers! Rugs, baskets, space heaters! An entire rental house! Thermoses and travel mugs! Camping gear! Coffee pots, cocoa sets, food! Toothbrushes, plastic cups, cleaning supplies! Dog crates, leashes, bowls! Pots and pans! Cameras, computers, a GPS! Athletic gear! Hole punch, stapler, protractor, compass, ruler! Gloves, hats, scarves! Picture frames, posters, potted plants! Purses! Pillows! Coats! Flower pots! Binoculars! Shoes!

Look at my house. It's a nice house, but it's not a mansion. We have a nice life, but we're not rich.

Now I have a new fear. What if I get rid of something every day ... and nobody notices?