Goodwill Run
John and I did our twice yearly Goodwill run today. I gathered up a bunch of clothing and useful things we don't use anymore and it's amazing how much you can gather up pretty quickly if you are ruthless with yourself. We took about five bags of stuff with us up to Newmarket to give to the large Goodwill up there. John was surprised, though, that they wouldn't take an old TV that he had. The volunteer told us they don't accept TVs more than five years old. Interesting. He also told us there was a list on-line of items they don't accept, so we'll take a look through it before we do our next run later in the year.
Doing these kind of regular culls always feels good, rather cleansing. We found it was a major turning point in our lives about a dozen years back when we made the decision to move from a rental townhouse to an apartment to save up for the townhouse we have now and we had no choice but to whittle down a townhouse full of stuff into what would fit comfortably into an apartment (our apartment was much smaller and had no storage locker). It's amazing how quickly your attitude changes on "what we must keep" and "what can go" when you have to whittle down your stuff out of necessity. In fact, since we sorted everything over six months I found it interesting how many things that were put into the "we must keep this" pile at the beginning of the move process ended up in the "we really don't need to keep this" by the end of the move process. But it was quite extraordinary to me that at that time we probably parted with about a third of what the two of us owned, either to Goodwill or used item stores or to recycling or to the garbage.
So once we moved into a townhouse and had the space again the goal was to try to keep to the same habits. We don't always succeed. For example, my craft room/office is overflowing and badly needs a culling at the moment. Still the twice yearly Goodwill runs does keep the idea in our head and it does make us deliberately part with things that we don't need.
We both read an excellent book last year that we first saw discussed on "The Daily Show" called "The Book of Stuff" by Annie Leonard. It's based on this youtube video here. I'm sure you've all read books or seen documentaries like it- you know, those ones you walk away from saying, "Huh, I kinda wish I didn't watch/read that because it makes so much sense and now I'm going to -have- to go through the trouble of changing my life because of this new knowledge, aren't I?" :). It's a sobering and fascinating study of the consumer chain and the part we play in it. It had its impact on us and it really has caused us to think harder before we buy stuff. Do we need it? How badly do we need it? Will it end up in one of our Goodwill runs two years from now? Or can we see it as an indulgence and a treat, which we all need, too? It seems good to be going into malls, department stores, on-line shopping, etc. with that kind of pro-active thinking.
So it's interesting that after our Goodwill run we went on a walk-about in the biggest mall in Newmarket, one we hadn't been to in a year. It amused us to realize as we were driving home that we only bought one thing while we were there- a $3.00 scarf rack which I badly need to sort the scarves I have that didn't just go to Goodwill.
I hope we can keep up the habit throughout 2012 :).
Doing these kind of regular culls always feels good, rather cleansing. We found it was a major turning point in our lives about a dozen years back when we made the decision to move from a rental townhouse to an apartment to save up for the townhouse we have now and we had no choice but to whittle down a townhouse full of stuff into what would fit comfortably into an apartment (our apartment was much smaller and had no storage locker). It's amazing how quickly your attitude changes on "what we must keep" and "what can go" when you have to whittle down your stuff out of necessity. In fact, since we sorted everything over six months I found it interesting how many things that were put into the "we must keep this" pile at the beginning of the move process ended up in the "we really don't need to keep this" by the end of the move process. But it was quite extraordinary to me that at that time we probably parted with about a third of what the two of us owned, either to Goodwill or used item stores or to recycling or to the garbage.
So once we moved into a townhouse and had the space again the goal was to try to keep to the same habits. We don't always succeed. For example, my craft room/office is overflowing and badly needs a culling at the moment. Still the twice yearly Goodwill runs does keep the idea in our head and it does make us deliberately part with things that we don't need.
We both read an excellent book last year that we first saw discussed on "The Daily Show" called "The Book of Stuff" by Annie Leonard. It's based on this youtube video here. I'm sure you've all read books or seen documentaries like it- you know, those ones you walk away from saying, "Huh, I kinda wish I didn't watch/read that because it makes so much sense and now I'm going to -have- to go through the trouble of changing my life because of this new knowledge, aren't I?" :). It's a sobering and fascinating study of the consumer chain and the part we play in it. It had its impact on us and it really has caused us to think harder before we buy stuff. Do we need it? How badly do we need it? Will it end up in one of our Goodwill runs two years from now? Or can we see it as an indulgence and a treat, which we all need, too? It seems good to be going into malls, department stores, on-line shopping, etc. with that kind of pro-active thinking.
So it's interesting that after our Goodwill run we went on a walk-about in the biggest mall in Newmarket, one we hadn't been to in a year. It amused us to realize as we were driving home that we only bought one thing while we were there- a $3.00 scarf rack which I badly need to sort the scarves I have that didn't just go to Goodwill.
I hope we can keep up the habit throughout 2012 :).