Fall Cleanout Time. Something Else to Do to Take Me

[MineralMan]

away from the Primary Wars on DU.

A 20 cubic yard roll-off dumpster showed up on my driveway this morning. My wife and I have lived in this house in St. Paul, MN for 11 years now and have slowly accumulated an amazing amount of clutter. I swore I wouldn't do that when we moved here from California. I was ruthless in tossing stuff then. But, there it is. To my surprise, the accumulation began shortly after we moved in. I should have expected it.

I'm starting on the garage, where there has been barely room for a car for some time. Then, I'm moving into the house, where everything that hasn't been used or thought about in over a year or two is heading for the dumpster. The technology stuff won't go in there, though, and there's plenty of that. There's a Tech Dump place that recycles that stuff. Leaving it there is free, except for CRT TVs and Monitors. We have several of those. We have to pay to dump them. Oh, well.

What is going is extra furniture, stuff in boxes that is not needed. All of the VHS recordings we kept, just in case we might want to view them again. We never have in those 11 years, so out they go. A couple of superfluous tables, a number of ugly chairs that have flaws. Piles of paperwork that we retained for some reason or another. It's all going. The carpeting in the basement is coming up, too. It's nasty and has been wet once. No smell, but screw it. I'm going to pull it all up and paint the floor with epoxy paint this winter.

Everything will get assessed and judged. If it doesn't matter, it's outa here. If it's reusable, I'll haul it to a thrift store. If it's ugly or not really of any value, it's dumpster fodder. The closets, too. Old shoes, old clothing that's too ratty to donate, but that just went back in the closet instead of the trash. Junk, crap, and useless anything is history. It's everywhere. I'll have no more of it.

I have 10 days with the dumpster. I'm going to fill that sucker and then call for a pickup and say adios to the clutter. I'm 70 years old, or I could fill it in three days, but never mind. I'll take it slow and easy, but I'll get it all done.

Then, maybe, I'll take another look to see if anything has changed politically. I doubt it. I expect the same arguments will still be going on and the same people will be saying the same things. I doubt I'm going to miss anything, and I know damned well I'm not going to miss the stuff I'm loading into that dumpster. I'll still check in every day when I take breaks from the clean-out, but that's it.

[Lars39]

1. Wish my inlaws would do that, but I think they'd need a bigger dumpster.

They literally have not gotten rid of any thing in about 30 years. Gives me nightmares knowing we'll have to deal with it.

[MineralMan]

2. Yeah, we cleared out my mother-in-law's house

when she moved into assisted living. What a mess! I don't want to leave that kind of mess for anyone to deal with.

[Lars39]

3. Mess is right!

About 2000 sq ft of basement just packed.

[cry baby]

4. It's so hard not to accumulate "stuff".

I wish you strength in your endeavor.

[MineralMan]

9. It really is. I lived for 30 years in my previous

home. When we moved to MN, everything had to fit in a 24' UHaul truck we bought. A dumpster and many, many pickup loads had to go. It was interesting, but I found that I didn't miss any of it. You'd think I'd learn, but no.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

5. Best of luck with your cleanout, my dear MineralMan!

My brother is dealing with the same sort of thing in our parents' house: Over 25 years of "stuff." They grew up in the Depression and they never threw anything away.

As a result of what we found there, I am also cleaning up, although way more sporadically than you. Still, progress is being made.

I will not leave this mess for my children!

[MineralMan]

10. I have no children, but I'm older than my wife, so

I'm trying to simplify for her sake.

[csziggy]

18. My sister is working on my parents' house

While Dad was alive he never let us look at anything. Since he's been gone Mom lets my sister go through stuff. Plus the house flooded last spring so she had to empty some of the closets on an emergency basis then had to move everything to get new flooring put in.

The thing is that they accumulated stuff and it runs in the family. After the last of us children left home Dad bought a larger house, filled it up and didn't empty the old one. About ten years ago my sister convinced Mom & Dad that the old house needed to be emptied and she worked on that for a couple of years.

She found treasures - two paper bags full of old negatives and prints that date from around 1910 through 1951; two sacks of silver coins Dad kept out of his pockets when the fake silver coins were introduced in the 60s, and lots of other odds and ends Mom and Dad had forgotten. She found the receipt for the big safe that Dad had in his office that proved that it had come from a house that is now on the list of historic places and is being restored as a museum - that got donated back to the house Dad had purchased it from sixty years before.

The problem is that so much of what they have is of historic value - like the photos. Pictures of levee construction from the 1910s are rare. Photos of the Army Corps of Engineers in France during World War I. Pictures of the Michigan College of Mines a hundred years ago. The wallet with the little notebook in it with notes on "money I took from home when I left in 1812" that also had a recipe written by a women who was widowed twenty years after that. Possible movies of the 1939 New York World's Fair - those reels are at a lab that does work for the National Archives being processed to see if they can scan them to find out what is on the film. No one alive has ever seen them.

Now my sister and I are trying to sort through those things and figure out what is valuable to us in Mom's current home. Mom knows she can't keep up with it all and she just doesn't care anymore. We're all finding out things that we never knew about our parents - and things Mom didn't know about Dad even though they were married for 67 years!

[Galileo126]

6. Me too!

I found the local "environmental waste" collection site in my town, and dropped off all the unused/unusable electronic crap that's been piling up. Gone are the two tube TVs that have been occupying needed space, and other junk.

Other "bulky items" are scheduled for pick-up tomorrow morning, aka - my garbage day.

For a mid-week day off, I got a lot of house cleaning done today. Time for a glass of wine.

[MineralMan]

11. Excellent. I had a couple of

gin and tonics. 9 days to go. I'll be overjoyed to see the truck leave with that dumpster.

[roody]

7. After I bring a donation to the Goodwill,

I go in and shop.

[MineralMan]

12. I'm trying to skip that second step.

[csziggy]

19. I used to send my husband off to the dump with a load

And he'd go dumpster diving and bring home nearly as much as he took. Also, he'd stop by our storage building and leave some of the things I wanted to get rid of there before he left!

He's better about that now - and they have people working at the drop off point now and don't allow dumpster diving.

[malokvale77]

8. I freakin wish.

I have nearly 45 years of accumulated stuff I would love to have the time to deal with.

I'm trying to retire but I have a client (home healthcare) that goes berserk every time I mention it.

[MineralMan]

13. The worst thing is that it's expensive

to get did of worthless stuff. Yikes!

[malokvale77]

14. No joke.

I have no clue what to do with old, obsolete and possibly toxic stuff.

I'm not rolling in dough.

[MineralMan]

15. Many places have free hazardous

household waste disposal days. Check with your city hall and county.

[malokvale77]

16. Well...

Dallas is suppose to have it, but I have yet to find a day they are open.

Things are not normal here in Texas.

[ecstatic]

17. I'm going through that now. Was going to pay someone to help

but I'm not eager to part with hundreds of dollars.

[Thor_MN]

20. Might want to do that epoxy paint while you still can have windows open...

I have not used it myself, so I can't say for certain, but you might not want to be closed in with it during the winter months... For what it's worth.