Come Out Clean

There is a large closet located just inside the entrance to my apartment that was pretty well-organized when I first moved in. Five years later, it has turned into a danger zone. I can open the door, but in order to reach anything, you have to lean precariously in and utilize every ounce of balance and care to not fall into the giant mess of boxes, coats, bags, and endless other junk accumulated over the course of my life.
I say “course of my life” because there is seriously stuff in that closet that I did when I was as young as 8 years old (a folder of work from all the art classes I took as a kid and teenager in particular). But there is also the roll of posters that adorned my various dorm rooms in college, now yellow from age and sticky on the corners from multiple layers of tape. One of those is a keeper. One is not. So after another practice run-bike-run yesterday, I figured there’s no time like the present and finally decided to tackle the closet of doom. I’m a little late on the “spring” part of spring cleaning, but oh well.
Here’s what it looked like after I pulled a bunch of stuff out. Keep in mind that this is only the stuff that was preventing me from actually walking into the closet. Which means there’s still plenty of other stuff in there too.

Doing a major bout of cleaning like this is always both fun and difficult for me. It’s fun to discover all the things I forgot about, and yet if I forgot about them, I probably don’t really need them. I want so badly to be a minimalist, but at age 30 I’m forced to admit that it’s not a natural part of my personality. Here are some things I rediscovered, and what I did with them:

• The x-ray and MRI films from when I dislocated my knee in June 2000. (Trash.)
• A laminated poster of the Braves World Series-winning 2005 team. (Considering mailing this to Carter, but he says he already has a couple of them in a box somewhere.)
• Way too many of those cheapo bag “backpacks” with the strings for straps, most of them received from various races. (Goodwill.)
• Five empty shoeboxes. I am really bad about keeping empty shoeboxes, because they always seem like such a good size for storing small stuff. I assumed something was in there. Wrong. (Trash.)
• Huge negatives from my section for an issue of The Technique. (Trash. I’ve got a book of all the issues I did already.)
• Six pairs of shoes in good condition that I don’t wear. No, they were not in the shoeboxes. Funny. (Goodwill.)
• Original box and packaging for my first iPod, a 10 GB model that I traded in to Apple 2.5 years ago for a discount on a video iPod. (Trash.)
• Ancient camera tripod that belonged to my parents. I bought a newer, nicer one a few years ago. (Swap shop.)

Here is my biggest isse though: I know I don’t need most of this stuff, and yet I don’t want to just toss everything in the trash can. There are plenty of things in that closet and in other places in my apartment that I don’t use or no longer want, but are in good condition and I think someone else could use. So how do I get rid of stuff without throwing it all in the trash? I’m not talking about the obvious stuff. Clothes and shoes in good condition will go to Goodwill. Books (as well as CDs and DVDs) will go to Half Price Books.
But where does the other stuff go? I’m talking about picture frames that I’ve never used, and home accessories that I don’t want anymore (like candle sconces and storage baskets). What about a couple extra lamps, and my old college TV that I never use? Where do I take this stuff so that I don’t have to just throw it away?
I don’t want to deal with Craigslist or Ebay, because most of this stuff is not worth enough money to make that worthwhile. It’s just garage sale stuff that I’d sell for pennies, or even give away for free. But how do I get someone to take it? I just want it to magically disappear…