The Great Purge of 2011

I moved to Little Blue three years ago and joined the ranks of the American Homeowner. The Suz and I lived in the same apartment in Brighton for eight years, and during that time we accumulated a lot of stuff.

The Suz moved in with The G-Man by varying stages, so she was able to sort through her stuff and discard as she went through the process over a number of weeks. I was working full time and finishing graduate school and working an assisitantship to pay for said graduate school, so when it came time for me to vacate the premises at Corey Road, I threw everything into a series of boxes with the thought that I'd sort through and purge later.

Those boxes came to inhabit my basement... and, eventually, my nightmares.

This week I decided it was Time to do the Big Sort on the material evidence of the last decade of my life. I plugged in some dance music on the iPod and descended the stairs. It wasn't a terribly difficult job. If you've managed to leave things boxed up in a basement for three years, that's a pretty good sign that you can live without them, and they need to become yard sale or donation fodder.

I had a few moments of debate over a few items, and these generally ended with me telling myself, "That's not who I am anymore."

I don't kid myself. Deciding what stays and what goes is a deeply existential process. You journey through memories and determine what your aesthetic tastes are... and what they were and will be.

For example, I no longer understand why I own any shirts that are not black and tee. So pretty much anything that didn't fit this description went into a bag destined for Goodwill. I'm also not sure why my mother felt the need to send me a collection of seasonal door wreaths. She's a very generous person, and for that I am grateful, but sometimes I wonder if she's met me. Because someone who has met me would probably not associate me with a Christmas wreath sporting a little plastic snowman and sled.

Unless the little snowman had a noose around its neck and/ or was anatomically correct. Or if the sled had "Rosebud" written on it.

So the bulk of this stuff had to go, and while my basement isn't entirely clear of debris yet, it looks like a normal basement and not a Very Special Episode of Hoarders.

But I have some sympathy for the Hoarders that I didn't have before. Basically, unless a crew of workers comes to your house to clear out the crap, it is incredibly difficult to get rid of things that have accumulated.

Not in an emotional sense. I have an actual emotional attachment to a handful of the things in my house, and the rest of this stuff if purely functional.

But in a practical sense, it is just not easy to get rid of stuff you don't want or need anymore. I don't like to be wasteful, so I can't just throw these things out with the trash. Someone out there might be able to use this crap.

Hence, the yard sale.

I took two carloads of stuff up to the Ponderosa, the dwelling place of The Suz and The G-Man. We put it all out on tables, took out an ad in the paper, hung up signs, and worked our asses off for two days. I never worked so hard for so little. And at the end, we still had a truckload of stuff to take to the Salvation Army.

But I DID earn enough money in the yard sale to buy a heavy bag, and now I have a basement to put it in. I can't decide if this is a genius idea or if it will end with me facing charges at some point in the future.