One of the hottest books last year was the Japanese organizing book called The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up. I checked it out of the Coronado library earlier this year and, like the two million readers before me, found myself deeply inspired by the author’s advice to get rid of excess stuff and completely reorganize my home with only the things I truly love and need.
I would like to put more of the book’s ideas into practice, but there is one thing stopping me.
What do you do with all the stuff you want to get rid of?
I know this is is something we struggle with in Coronado. We are a busy group of people, and there is a constant cycle of new things in and old things out. What do you do when you really want to purge?
The book’s author suggests you put it all in trash bags, but she is vague after that. What you do with perfectly good clothing mixed up with used lotions and extra shampoo and knickknacks? I kept reading her book to find out what she suggested.
But she suggested nothing. She was not concerned about the stuff she purged. After reading the entire book, my best guess is that she puts all of it in a dumpster and forgets about it.
But when I look at my pile of “no longer wanted” stuff in our garage, I can’t imagine just heaving it all into a dumpster. There’s a pair of barely used Chacos and three pretty vases and two boxes of books and stacks and stacks of kids’ clothing.
There are two reasons I can’t just dump all this stuff.
The first is thrift. If I go through my closet and really, truly only keep items that “bring me joy,” as the author suggests, there are going to be a lot of perfectly good jeans and dresses and shoes that go into trash bags. And the idea of throwing them into the dumpster isn’t just wasteful, it’s also sad. I bought all of these things in the past five years or so, and some of them brand new and for full price. Am I really going to throw them all away? Or take them to Goodwill and barely recoup any of my financial investment?
So I don’t. I put them in the garage, and when I have a few minutes I photograph them and try to sell them on Coronado Online Yard Sale (that page is wonderful and terrible, isn’t it?!), or on eBay, or on Craigslist. I try and I am successful about 25% of the time. I make a few dollars. Is it worth the trouble?
A penny saved is a penny earned right?
The other reason I can’t throw things out is that I value reusing and recycling things. Almost all of my children’s clothes were already used when I acquired them. Some of them have a lot of life left, and I’d rather encourage reusing and recycling in our culture and help people who also don’t want to buy new.
But then I stop and look at a lot of the secondhand things I am attempting to resell, and I wonder if it is worth selling some of these clothes. By the time my children have worn their secondhand clothing, even the nice brands are very worn. Is it fair to sell these things and not donate them? Is it worth the time and effort?
What do you think? What do you do? How do you recoup your initial investment, and how do you just let go of things?
I would love to live in a home where we use what we own and where we love everything in our house. I enjoy living simply and thoughtfully and thriftily. But besides the really obvious point of only buying what I absolutely love and absolutely need from here on out, how do I get there?
While I wait for your advice, here are a few resources in the Coronado and San Diego area that I have found. I hope they are a help to you as you live with just the things you need and that make you happy!
- Coronado
- Coronado CA Online Yard Sale: a secret Facebook group (member invite only) with over 4,000 members and growing, this is the main way many Coronado/IB residents buy and sell used items
- Freely Given Coronado: a closed Facebook group exclusively for giving things away
- Thrift Stores: Graham Memorial Presbyterian Church and Christ Episcopal Church both have small thrift shops on the same block as their churches, and they accept donations
- Organize a mom’s group clothing/book/toy swap
- Yard sale!
- San Diego
- San Diego Craigslist
- Goodwill and Salvation Army in
- San Diego Military Outreach Ministries: an organization to support young military families which relies upon donations for its operating budget.
- Online
- ThredUp: an online consignment shop. For free, you can order a ThredUp bag, fill it up with gently used brand name women’s and children’s clothing, and send it back to ThredUp for them to consign online.
- Twice Clothing: like ThredUp, an online consignment shop that will accept women’s, men’s, and children’s name brand clothing.
- eBay
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“Coronado Living” is a weekly column written by one of eCoronado.com’s staff writers, Becca Garber. She writes about choosing simplicity and practicing hospitality with her family at home in Coronado. You can read more of her writing on her blog.
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Becca Garber
Staff Writer
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