Laundry Basket

Day 313: Laundry Basket

A sixteen-year-old boy with a driver's license can drive himself to late night basketball practices, and far off soccer games, and friend's houses, and the Y, and the library. For a nominal fee, he can also run a few errands for his mother, such as frequent trips to the Salvation Army to donate all the stuff she's giving away.

The downside: a sixteen-year-old boy sometimes might miss a tiny instruction among many when making those Salvation Army trips. He might, for example, not quite track on the fact that the stuffed animals get donated, but the laundry basket does not.

It will be interesting to see how we manage the laundry with only one basket.

Erasers and Markers

Day 267: Erasers and Markers

I shouldn't have been surprised to find yet another clementine box full of crayons, markers, pencils and scissors. Also eight erasers. Eight.

Right now, Sam is downstairs being tutored in foundations of science by a master's student in chemical engineering. We are fortunate to live in a town where extremely educated, intelligent and very nice young people are available to tutor children for $15 an hour. This is especially valuable if your children are learning things that might as well be in an extraterrestrial language, such as chemistry and calculus.

Even with such talented instruction, erasers are still a necessity. Perhaps not eight of them, though. One or two should be enough. Used up markers, never used decorative stamps and unsharpened pencils are similarly of little value.

I chalk all these office supplies up not only to Emma Jane's love for them, but also to my own love of buying stocking stuffers. The fact that my children opened little wrapped erasers and thanked me very prettily four different Christmasses speaks well of them, don't you think?

Garbage, Recycling and Extra Clothing

Day 146: Garbage, Recycling and Extra Clothing

My idea was that Emma Jane would be in one of four moods during the 24- to 36-hour drop-off period: cold and snarky, or calm and mature, or stressed and frustrated, or weepy and sentimental. Possibly, I figured she would be all four at various moments.

So far, it's been mostly calm and mature, with a little silly and excited thrown in. And affectionate, and cheerful too. No sign of snarky and stressed.

She packed the car all by herself, the stuff piled so high we couldn't see out the rear view mirror. An easy drive through pastoral Indiana. Our first stop upon arrival: the college book store to get her books for the semester. She held even held my hand for a moment during the walk there. The wait for textbooks was nothing like in my day, when the store was packed with customers and staff sweating and shouting, flipping through big stacks of computer printouts and if you forgot your schedule, too bad for you. During the 20 minutes we were there, we had the undivided attention of a calm and cheery clerk. A half-dozen students came to pick up the textbook packages they'd already ordered on-line, no sales clerk necessary. We were the only folks who were selecting and buying the books right then. Emma chose wisely what to buy new, what to buy used, and what to rent.

Then back to the hotel, where she (again wisely) decided to reduce her packed clothing by a third. I couldn't get her to agree to let me give this big IKEA bag of extra stuff to the Goodwil, but at least she won't have it choking up her dorm room. (I also got rid of a massive pile of trash and recycling from her room this morning.) She did give me the Wicked jacket that my mom bought for her when we went to see the live Broadway show the year before last, which I love because I love the Oz books (I've read each at least five times), and the book Wicked (I've read it twice), and the musical (which I cherish the memory of seeing with Mom and Emma in Detroit). And now the jacket is a souvenir of this night as well.

Then, onto Scotty's, the brew pub a block from campus that is on its way to being our place while we are here. Our first dinner with Emma in many months, since she got her lifeguarding job and started buying fast food dinners with her friends.

Now relaxing in the Ball State Hotel suite we got for the night. 

Thirteen hours until move-in.

Landscape Edging

Day 127: Landscape Edging

"The average American household contains more than 300,000 possessions." So states a recent blog posting by the Minimalists.

I read this with the same irritable suspicion I feel whenever I read such statistics. How do they know this? Did they take a random sample of American households and then count the objects within them? Seems unlikely. Did they combine aggregated retail sales data with census data and obsolescence assumptions? Seems complicated and fraught with distortion.

Furthermore, what counts as a possession? Every book on the shelf? Each sock in a pair? Every Band-Aid in a box of 100? Every nail in a box of 1,000?

And how do I know that Joshua Fields Millburn didn't just read a statistic somewhere, misremember it and type it into his blog, to be read and repeated by people like me?

With all these limitations, how can we ever really know anything outside of our immediate sphere?

One thing I do know: with the disposal of this landscape edging, there are no objects left behind my potting shed.

One hundred twenty-seven down, 299,873 to go.

Interpreter of Maladies and Other Books

Day 110: Interpreter of Maladies, a Suitable Boy and Other Books Not About India

After what feels like an eternity sitting in the sun in a non-air-conditioned car driving back from Gros Cap (how peaceful it is there!), I only have enough energy to pick out a few books for the giveaway pile. Two about India, one about China, one about ancient Britain, E.L. Doctorow's fictionalized biography of two brothers/hoarders, a fantasy novel (come on Jasper Fforde, you can do better!) and a mystery novel (about the U.P. where I've just been). 

Also I found five books to move to the "future reads" shelf. "A year of..." memoir of the ilk that has inspired me to do this year of getting rid of one thing a day (about meat!), a Susan Sontag book (haven't you always wanted to read her and never quite gotten around to it?), another one about India (is there a theme here?), one about Niagara Falls and one with a really cool retro cover (and Herman Wouk wrote one of the stories!).

Last week I unearthed popsicle makers from the cupboard and elected to make popsicles instead of giving them away. A trend?

Tablecloths

Day 104: Tablecloths

I don't know why I have stacks of tablecloths. I have not used a tablecloth in at least ten years. They are not pretty. They don't match my dishes. They don't fit the table. Why do I keep them?

Just in case.

Reminds me of bedsheets somehow.

Pleather Purse

Day 94: Pleather Purse and Other Seldom Used Handbags

I love leather. Leather armchairs, leather carseats, leather purses, leather belts, leather coats and leather shoes. The way it smells, like a pasture in the sun. Its nubby smoothness beneath my fingertips. The way it improves with age, fading and softening. Its sturdiness. Its colors, and textures.

I love the way, when I dropped my scooter taking a corner too quickly, I got a scraped elbow instead of a broken arm, thanks to my leather jacket. I love the way our Mercury Villager kept smelling good after ten years of kids spilling milk and dropping lollipops. I can smell leather upholstery in a car from half a block away. I am so glad I bought my Fusion before I learned anything about the leather industry. Love, love, love those sand-colored leather seats.

I've been reading a 2,000-page novel called A Suitable Boy, which takes place in India in the 1950s. Some of the characters work in the shoe industry. The description of the tanning neighborhoods are stomach-turning: the smell, the noise, the contamination. The illnesses of the children who live nearby. Sadly, it appears that the tanning industry, especially in countries with fewer regulations like India, is still extremely damaging to the environment and the health of its workers and their families.

I was not able to find any reliable information about the treatment of animals in the production of leather. There was, of course, a diatribe from PETA with a healthy dose of xenophobia (your shoes might be cat and dog skins imported from China!). Another equally inflammatory diatribe against PETA's by a non-profit organization apparently funded by the restaurant industry.

I'm giving away a few little bags and purses, but I'll keep anything leather. Tanning does undoubtedly require the use of toxic chemicals, and those toxic chemicals are being released into water systems around the world. I'll hang onto my leather stuff, so I won't have to buy anything new in the future.

Still, leather's ecofootprint compared with other products is not clear, particularly when those other products must be replaced more often. Because one thing is certain: leather is durable. I bought this backpack purse a little over a year ago, in hopes that it would alleviate shoulder pain. The fake leather is already cracking and flaking; I don't feel comfortable carrying it to work any more. To replace it, I bought a smaller leather bag used at the Thrift Shop. It looks new. The leather coat that saved my arm? I bought it at a garage sale 15 years ago and wear it often. It, too, looks new. 

Another certainty: buying used = zero guilt. 

Not My Grandmother's China

Day 81: Not My Grandmother's China

Don't worry. This is not my grandmother's china. The pattern resembles her desert rose, but this is a later manufacture. In the 1930s, chinamakers did not produce cruets with "V" and "O" embossed on their caps. Perhaps this is why I've never liked this salad dressing set, which I believe my mom found at TJ Maxx in the early '90s. (Sorry, Mom!) The "V" and "O" lack verisimilitude. 

Plus, the "V" and "O" cause this set to violate my new "no single-use kitchen items" rule. Without the "V" and "O", think of the possibilities. Maple syrup. Honey. Salt and pepper. Half-and-half. It's mind-bogling. 

Why are they ugly, when the rest of the desert rose set is so lovely? Is it the basketweave background, which the rest of the set doesn't have? Is it that there are too many roses and not enough background? Is it my eyes?

More National Geographic Magazines

Day 64: More National Geographic Magazines

The final few dozen National Geographics
are going to the library free shelf.
Friends of the Library no longer
accepts them.

Rich and I have been going to open houses to fantasize about our life after the kids leave home, the point at which we will retire from this twenty-year joint project and define ourselves again as individuals. When we finally do move to our modern house on the Huron River, or our 7-acre homestead, or our cheap Victorian in Depot Town, or our Water Hill bungalow, or our Mendocino hillside cabin, we won't be paying extra to move 200 pounds of magazines.

Time to move on.

Just One Word: Plastics

Day 55: Plastics (specifically a couple of broken Adirondack footstools)
Large topic, plastics. In 1967, plastics were the wave of the future. Before then, cheese came wrapped in waxed paper and toothbrushes were made from bone and bristles. Now there are 46,000 pieces of plastic per square kilometer in the Earth's oceans, and the doldrums is a floating plastic continent.

If the chairs won't give up the ghost,
why must the footstools keep breaking?

But look on the bright side: our teeth are gleaming.

We've had these Adirondack chairs since the summer of 1998, when we moved to Ann Arbor from San Francisco. They cost $12 each and I guess we thought we'd have them one year, then get the real thing. That was back when I hadn't had a full night's sleep in over two years and couldn't think past the next diaper. Sixteen years later, the chairs have faded a little, but otherwise, they're pristine.

If these chairs had the decency to wear out,
I'd feel more comfortable replacing them

Not so the busted footstools. "Bulky plastics" can go right in the recycling bin. Unfortunately, it's not clear that recycling plastic is better for the environment than making new plastic from raw materials because of the high use of fossil fuels in the recycling process.

Better: if you have plastic bottles, packaging or furniture, keep using them.

Best: avoid using or buying plastic at all.

Good luck with that. Avoiding plastics is like running between raindrops.

Cell Phone

Day 51: Cell Phone and Case

The case is harder to give away
than the phone, because it
belonged to my greatly loved
father-in-law, Bill. So much
stuff has great sentimental value

Beam me up, Scotty.

In the 60's, the flip phone was the limit of our imagination, the apex of unattainable high tech, a fantasy as remote as traveling by molecular rematerialization. Now it's a piece of junk in the bedside table.

This is Rich's old phone. He was more Finnish than American in his attachment to it. Finns replace their phones every 74 months, Americans, every 21 months. The environmental consequences are severe.

Although the perky, dumbed-down language of the Story of Stuff: Electronics can be irritating, the analysis and recommendations are spot on. This tour bus we call Earth is heading for a cliff. No matter how well-meaning we are as individuals, legislative change - in this case, extended producer responsibility - is the only way to change course. In the meantime, given the questionable nature of electronic recycling, hanging on to your phone for 74 months - and writing your Congressional representative - is the best thing you can do to avoid poisoning the environment.

Sorry for the high horse. Have you seen the Global Change Research Program's report on climate change impacts, just released this week?

You can view it on your mobile device.

GPS

Day 44: Garmin GPS

Have we sheep thoughtlessly surrendered our personal freedom in exchange for the latest shiny object? eProbation - whereby people wear an ankle tether that tracks their location and raises an alarm if they leave home - is available to alleviate jail overcrowding and reduce costs in some jurisdictions. What with the incursion of GPS devices, some say we are voluntarily slipping those e-tethers into our pockets every day.

The Man always knows where I am.

But that assumes that the Man is actually interested in me, and smart enough and organized enough to track me down. As far as I know, the only interested man is Rich, and he doesn't need to be that smart and organized. He can just give me a call.

A co-worker pointed out that the location of any kid who plays Angry Birds can be pinpointed. So if you've just been through a contentious custody battle, perhaps checkers is the way to go.

I've had the thought that it is both harder and easier to commit crimes these days. There is now such a wide variety. The choices are dazzling. Some of the possible crimes would be quite interesting to design and implement. On the other hand, what with location services and all, it's a lot harder to disappear forever with your spoils.

My Garmin GPS is now for sale on Craig's List for $50. Yes, that's right, just $50, $15 less than the other 205Ws on Craig's List. The Garmin actually works a lot better than the iPhone for giving directions, but I never use it any more. The iPhone is always in my pocket.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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?