Give It Away, Give It Away, Give It Away NOW

If there were a market in second-hand, withered jack-o-lanterns, I'd get rich with this week's curb offerings.

 We've got to COMPOST in these parts, too.

As it is, the goods just keep finding me...

After more than 30 years in the same house, a great friend from my private school teaching days is moving. She's staying in the neighborhood, but whether the destination is near or far, the process of sorting and packing is the same kind of torture.

I'm a low-level believer in the spirit of things; I honor the memories they contain. If I did not, I certainly would not pick up some of the things I find on the curb: heavy old steamer trunks and battered suitcases, vintage but incomplete children's toys, ice skates...have you seen me skate? Adds new meaning to the title "Ice Follies": "And now, Ladies and Gentlemen, Tall Awkward Women...on ice!"

Anyway...

This friend is, I think, a high-level believer in the spirit of things. I feel pain watching her eyes silently reflect each item's story--the hands that gave now grown or gone--before she sighs and gently lays it in a box for me to take away. At times, I feel like the Attic and Basement Kevorkian, a term I mean playfully, though my hubby (probably rightly) finds it utterly appalling.

I do believe I'm doing my friend a service. I hope someone will do the same for me when it's time to say goodbye to this home.

That said, she has A LOT of stuff, more than I can fit into my own basement, which already looks like the spare parts warehouse for the set of Sanford and Son.

No joke: on humid NY days, my hair looks just like Lamont's.

Each of the four loads I have collected so far have been dispersed between my favorite places to Take the Excess:

Some went to The Cherry Door,

 

 some went to Goodwill

A couple walkers ended up at Tarrytown's Neighborhood House. I needed crutches after 9/11, and they gave me some for free. Good to know that someone else won't have to pay for an essential item.



 

Why have a minivan if I don't stuff it so full of things that  complete strangers give me startled or dismayed looks when I open the back?

 

I have kept two things for my home: a bookcase my friend painted long ago

 

and a lamp from her children's bedroom

 

Some things can never be turned into Trash.


Copyright 2013, Tanya Monier