Round two of Throw It Away.

[agoodwinsmith]

I wrote this as a response to someone else's post, but I want to be able to find it again, so I am reposting it here:

Thanks for the 10 items if one becomes homeless.[1] Although we in Canada are not hurting like people in the States, we're all usually just one or two rent cheques away from no place to stay. Whenever my job has disappeared it has always taken me longer than that to find a new one.

Anyway. What I wanted to say was that the people I see suffering the most (other than those who are so far gone in addiction they are never coming back) are the people who have become trapped by their stuff, and push it around day and night in a grocery cart. Keeping things that might be useful *someday* is a trap.

And people throw away good things everyday. It is very easy, when one has nothing, to feel that some how this abandoned thing will be useful.

Hah. I'm struggling with this *useful thing* issue because we've had tight times and people have given us things they no longer want. I've never used them because I don't need them, and so I have moved them from house to house to house - and some of them have never been out of the moving box. But just throwing them away seems so wasteful - and ungrateful. But finding someone who can actually use these things has been and still is beyond my current power (no car).

I have reached my no-go point. I now have a week off from work and I am going to THROW AWAY perfectly good things that I haven't been able to find a home for. OUT.

Keeping things I don't use doesn't actually make me any safer from poverty.

[1] - http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090803/ten_things

Comments

[cat63.livejournal.com]

While applauding your effort to declutter, is there a local Freecycle group where you are?

Or does the need to join Yahoogroups make that a no-no?

[agoodwinsmith.livejournal.com]

There is - but then I have to hang onto the stuff until someone decides to keep their appointment to take it away. For many things, I can put them out near the mailboxes in the lobby, and someone will find them useful enough to keep for themselves or take to sell.

For other things, though, although the item still has "use", no one wants these kinds of things any more. Most of them are like the electric typewriter I threw away in 1992 - it still functioned but I couldn't get ribbons for it anymore, and, if someone wanted something like that, they wanted one of the new computers.

It is these "useful" things that have gotta go.

[cat63.livejournal.com]

Ah, I see.

I know what you mean, I think - it seems wasteful to throw things away when they're still serviceable, but on the other hand if no-one's conceivably going to use them ever again there's no point in having them sitting around taking up space.

This wasn't going to be a rant response, but, oh dear

[agoodwinsmith.livejournal.com]

Yeah; I didn't mean to be brusque - on the other hand: can I interest you in a newish floor model air conditioner that is broken and that no one in the lower mainland[1] fixes and/or has parts for? :)

[1] - I mean: this is Vancouver for pity's sake: 3.5 million people in the mushed together municipalities knot, one of the scenic ports of the world, more celebrities and rich people than you can shake a stick at (even if you started in the Renaissance and shook that stick for only 30 seconds at each C&RP and continued until we have humans living on Mars), and you still can't get a two-year old DeLonghi air conditioner fixed anywhere west of Kamloops.[2] I arsk you.

[2] - it would cost me more to ship it there and back, never mind the repair, than it would to buy a new one (from another company, I think, don't you?).

Re: This wasn't going to be a rant response, but, oh dear

[cat63.livejournal.com]

I didn't mean to be brusque

Oh don't worry, I didn't think you were :-)

And if you had been, it would have been my own fault for sticking my beak in :-)

you still can't get a two-year old DeLonghi air conditioner fixed anywhere west of Kamloops

1. That's bloody disgraceful.

2. Kamloops is a wonderfully silly name. Nearly as good as Nempnett Thrubwell :-)

Re: This wasn't going to be a rant response, but, oh dear

[agoodwinsmith.livejournal.com]

Well, see, I figure by posting, I am inviting response, so it is kinda mean to flick the noses of people when they respond. It felt like I was committing nose-flicking and it is kind of you to say I did not.

Re: This wasn't going to be a rant response, but, oh dear

[cat63.livejournal.com]

It felt like I was committing nose-flicking and it is kind of you to say I did not.

By dose ib fide, dank yoo :-)

But seriously, it sounded like a perfectly reasonabubble explaining of Stuff to me.

Re: This wasn't going to be a rant response, but, oh dear

[agoodwinsmith.livejournal.com]

If you like Kamloops, can I interest you in Spuzzum (real place, although not big)?

Re: This wasn't going to be a rant response, but, oh dear

[cat63.livejournal.com]

[hands on hips]

Now you're just making stuff up! :-)

Re: This wasn't going to be a rant response, but, oh dear

[agoodwinsmith.livejournal.com]

Hee. :)

You go to Google Maps, and type in Spuzzum BC, and you will find it on Highway 1:

http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&tab=wl

Follow Highway 1 North to Lytton, go North-East to Cache Creek, and then follow on East to Kamloops. :) If you keep following East on Highway 1 you will come to Tappen, just before Salmon Arm (you may need to go in closer for Tappen to show). This summer I will be spending five days in Tappen with my parents.

If you go South-West from Spuzzum, eventually you reach Vancouver.

Ta dah! :)

Re: This wasn't going to be a rant response, but, oh dear

[cat63.livejournal.com]

Good grief, Penfold! :-)