Green Thursday
January 11th, 2008
Hello! Welcome to Green Thursday. I’m Robin and I write the “Green Like Me” column for Primal Parenting and now I’ll be blogging each Thursday.
Every January, I get into a purging frenzy. It seems like for the entire month of December, I trip over stuff around my house. Presents I’m trying to hide fall out of closets. Presents I don’t need to hide pile up in my dining room. The living room becomes over crowded with a large Christmas tree (which I insist on). Then on December 25th, we become the owners of a whole lot of new stuff. I mean a whole lot. By the time the decorations and tree come down, and all the new stuff is put away, I’ve got myself fully convinced that there are far too many material possessions in my house and I begin to purge. So in the relative quiet of each January, I become a woman on a mission.
This year, that mission took on a new dimension. Not only was I on a mission to purge, I was on a mission to purge responsibly. I hate to admit it, but a lot of what I purged in past years went right into the trash. I donated some things, but some useful things ended up in a landfill.
This year, I’m making a special effort to keep useful things out of the trashcans. It’s more time consuming and trying to decide whether some items really are still useful (a cracked CD jewel case with no CD?) can be a bit ambiguous. But I’m doing the best I can. So, how am I disposing of everything responsibly? Here is where most of my stuff is going:
Freecycle.org – If you’re not familiar with Freecycle yet, check it out right now. It’s a site that allows you to post items that you want to get rid of to other people in your community. You post an offer, people can e-mail you and ask for it, and you can choose whomever you want to give it to. The person getting the item has to come and pick it up. It’s perfect for big items that you can’t get rid of yourself or perfectly useful infant/toddler items that some charities won’t accept. I once got rid of about 20 half used cans of interior house paint that an artist came and hauled away for me.
ebay – Every once in a while I look at an item I am about to throw in a donate box and think maybe it’s really worth a little money. So I do a quick search on ebay and see if I’m right. If I can find the item selling for an amount I think is worth the effort, I auction it off. It makes my Paypal account happy.
My local library – I am a bibliophile, and I often need to purge my shelves to make room for more books. Many libraries take donations of books, music and movies that they then sell off to raise money.
My local used CD/DVD store – We’ve got a fantastic second hand music and movie store nearby. They buy used media and resell it. My husband and I purged our CD cabinet about a week ago and have a huge box waiting to be sold.
Friends and neighbors – I’ve got a friend from church who takes all of my five-year-old’s hand-me-downs. It’s great to be able to give stuff to people I know really need it.
Charities such as Goodwill or Purple Heart – These are usually the last places I turn to. It’s not that they aren’t great options, it’s just that personally I like to know my stuff is really going be used. When I pull up to the big loading dock with a van full of stuff (which I usually do once or twice a year), I always wonder what really happens to it all. It’s just a personal preference of mine that if I can get rid of it elsewhere, I do.
It takes a lot more effort to get rid of all my stuff this way, but I believe it’s important to keep as much out of landfills as possible. Does anyone have any other great ways that they get rid of their still useful things?
