29 May The Thrift Store as “External Storage Drive”

Recently I met a REALLY mobile couple.They live on their motorcycles, and everything they own fits into their panniers.

Me, I'm not quite there. And I don't really aspire to be there. Though I too have a relatively small footprint, there are things I'm not quite ready to part with. Things that take up space. Mainly photos, memorabilia, books. If I had to go mobile, I could manage with just a little backpack, mainly containing my laptop computer and art supplies. But that's not my preference right now.

And so, like many other people, I wrestle with STUFF. Everything I own fits into my 9 x 15 micro-apartment … but you would be surprised at how much stuff it's possible to cram into a space that size! 

The other day I had my latest wave of de-cluttering. At times it was like pulling teeth. (At one point I stopped and looked down at an object I was having a terrible struggle with. It was a plain glass jar! LOL.)

The clothes weren't too hard — other than the part that involved admitting to myself that I will probably never again fit into the crocheted bell-bottomed pants I bought in Tokyo 20 years ago, and putting those pants into the bag to take to the thrift shop. Ouch! But I'll get over it. (The leather hot-pants, the ones I used to wear for firedancing, went into the bag too. I was kind of surprised to see that I even still had them!)

Books weren't too hard — I culled four or five to donate to the library of the UU church I attend.

Papers — I was surprised, after so many years on a downsizing path, to find I still had so much superfluous paper. Bank statements from 2001, documents from cars I no longer own, that sort of thing. The burn/shred pile is ready to go.

Craft supplies! Ah, yes. All those pieces of fabric I've been saving to make into "something." More sheets of embroidery canvas than I will use in a lifetime. THREE embroidery hoops. Three? I boxed up the craft stuff – the thrift store down my block has a great craft section too.

As often happens after a purge, the first thing I did was start feeling creative! I did a bit of sewing and writing. Sometimes the best way for me to get myself to make something, is to get rid of something. It's like I'm freeing up space in my head as well as my closet.

It's hard for me to just throw stuff in the trash. In fact, I don't do it very often. My preference is to be able to take stuff to a thrift shop.

How do I love thrift stores! They accept our junk and cull the pearls. Just about everything finds a home. I imagine the thrift shop gets a lot of totally unusable, unsellable junk (much of it from me, over the years). But much of the time, they are able to turn it into merchandise, usually for some good cause. 

The thrift store down my street (here in Ormond by the Sea, Florida) supports a foster home for abused kids.

Even if it isn't supporting a charity — even if it's a purely for-profit operation — a thrift store is always supporting a good cause: optimizing the distribution of our excess STUFF. One person's burden and dust-collector is another person's great find.

It occurs to me that I use the thrift store down the street as my external storage drive. Things I'm not willing to keep around, yet not quite 100% ready to be totally done with, I take there. Sure, there's always a chance that my things will get snapped right up by someone else — but that doesn't usually happen. So the thrift shop feels sort of like a "buffer" or safety zone. (And if something I donate does get snapped right up, even if I was conflicted about parting with the item — well that's just fine with me too!)

Do you have any "external storage drives" yourself?

The other day, I noticed that my beloved burgundy-colored leather platform boots are still there in the thrift shop, displayed alluringly on a high shelf. 

"Wow, I can't believe nobody snapped those up yet!" I exclaimed to the friendly ladies who run the cash register and arrange the charming display windows.

"Everyone wants them, people keep trying them on but nobody can fit into them!" they told me. (Kind of surprising — my feet are just regular-sized.)

It's good to know that if by chance I should come down with a case of donor's remorse, I can always go to the thrift shop and buy back those beloved boots. That notion might seem absurd to some (donating something and then buying it back? What a waste of money!), but to me that option is far better than keeping stuff around in case I MIGHT want to need it or wear it someday. It sure is nice having a storage unit I don't have to pay rent on! 

By the way, the thrift shop (called Community Closet, and located just across the street from the Atlantic Ocean) has an excellent craft section. Whenever I need sewing supplies, I check there first.

The other day they didn't have the white thread I needed, so I had to go down the street to the dollar mart and buy it new. Of course, the dollar mart only sold thread in packets of four spools, four different colors. You couldn't just buy a single spool of white thread, a la carte.

Since I didn't need the other colors, I saved out the white spool … and took the other three spools right over to the Community Closet! 

Buying used stuff is a way to extend our return on the embodied energy of an object — the energy that went into making, transporting, and marketing the product.

And getting rid of stuff, instead of succumbing to the temptation to hoard it, is a way to free up our CREATIVE energy, the most precious energy of all.

Note: I still have piles of books and old photos and craft supplies which I refuse to part with! For now, anyway …