In which PhysicsGirl declutters: Sew For a Change #1

The first month of Sew For a Change is over, and I've more than met the decluttering challenge. At first I thought I would have a hard time finding 28 more items to get rid of; I'd just gotten rid of a bunch of stuff which I could have counted toward the challenge, but I wanted to see if I had more. So I started to make a list, as I do...

Turns out, it's addictive. There is stuff on this list that I've been meaning to get rid of for years. It feels very good.

Here's the thing: if Goodwill or Value Village can't sell it, they throw it out. Sad, but true. Since the purpose of the challenge was to avoid things ending up in the landfill, I thought I'd list where I sent everything in case somebody wants to do the same.

I sold my projector. I listed it on kajiji and had a few offers at my asking price, but one of the art teachers at school said she might be able to buy it. Love that.

Freecycling. Love it so much. I had a bunch of items that wouldn't be sellable due to missing parts or some slight defect, but were otherwise functional. Who wants an old Palm Zire 71 or slightly cracked immersion blender? Somebody on Freecycle, that's who. You can even get rid of broken items, as long as you say how they're broken. Somebody snatched up my no-longer-heating space heater for parts or to practice on or to fix and re-donate. Who knows? You can even find takers for reusable videotape and floppy disks. Electronics will always get snapped up quickly. Scan the "Wanted" posts too; somebody may ask for something you forgot you had or wouldn't have considered donation-worthy.

Not everything is equally attractive to freecyclers, of course. Protip: group items in lots and you will be more likely to get rid of everything. Of course, you can't be sure that people won't throw out the stuff they didn't really want. I'm counting on the fact that other people find it as hard as I do to throw out potentially useful items.

I dropped some still-in-the-box bike tubes (from the Tank era) off at Bike Pirates.

My green Mahalo uke and a penny whistle (and two of the DC's flutes) went to ArtsCan Circle, an organization that brings musical instruments and teachers to indigenous communities.

I did take a bag of clothes (mostly shoes) to Value Village. I usually wait until the Diabetes Clothesline or the Cerebral Palsy people come to collect, but they aren't making their next runs until late March. (And my local VV is associated with the CP foundation anyway.)

I had a year's worth of magazines in my magazine table. Recycling still takes a lot of energy, so I wanted them to be useful before that last step. I mentioned Arts Junktion before; they take anything that can be used to help the TDSB make art. Save your yogurt containers -- they make good paint/brush/pencil holders! (BTW, I did ask our art teachers first, but they're pretty good for magazines right now.)

By the way, always contact the organization before you drop off anything for donation to make sure they can use it. No point in saddling someone else with a disposal problem.

Speaking of which, not everything can/should be donated. And you should not just throw these out:

Alkaline batteries and CFL bulbs. I tend to hang on to these until I have enough to take to school, where we have a safe disposal program thanks to the Environmental Club. You could also take them (and used ink jet cartridges) to Staples. U of T also has containers in the lobby of Sidney Smith.

Dead laptop and Palm Zire (the one that died in Paris). I harvested the 4 GB hard disk (yep, that's how old that was) from the laptop and, while I probably could have freecycled them, preferred to put them out for the city's electronic disposal collection.

Digging around in my back cupboards for donatable items, I came across a stash of Crazy's old cat medicine. I took this to my vet's to dispose of properly. I could probably have taken it to a pharmacy as one does for people medicine, but I was hoping to give them the unused water filters for my long-since-replaced cat fountain.

Some other things, like a package of coffee filters, bird seed, and old tap shoes have been given to friends who can use them. At the end of the month, my whiteboard looks like this:

I have added a few more things since the beginning of the month. I'm going to keep on until I've crossed them all off.

So that's the output. Input? Ooh, that means a scorecard!

Ugh. I was really hoping to keep the number of points as high as I could, but I forgot myself right before my birthday and bought a pair of nylons. With seams up the back, but still, that's a whole 6.5 points. I didn't even think about the challenge when I bought them. Grrr. Then I got... I won't say bullied, exactly, more like strongly encouraged to get two new pairs of shoes because the insurance will cover them with the orthopedics. And then there is the 2 m of cotton fabric I bought for the Sew Dolly Clackett challenge. So, you know, not so good. I want to hoard all my points for wool and fabric and jewellery-making supplies. At least I did buy a pair of shoes off a friend, so that was 0 points.

This has been a shoe-heavy month. I think I'm good for shoes for a while.

Onward. The March challenge is up; the theme this month is energy. I'm going to have a hard time with this one because I already forget to unplug stuff/flip the power strips. I'll need to make a daily checklist. Ooh! Lists!

There's still time to play along if you're interested.