The Great Donate 2017- Week Three and Desk-Free

by - Monday, January 30, 2017

This year, I set an ambitious goal for our family- donate or recycle 2,017 items from our home. It sounds crazy, but it isn't as crazy as you think. The average American home has 300,000 objects in it, so giving up 2,017 isn't even 1%. We are taking on this challenge for a number of reasons-

-A cluttered house wastes so much time. I have two small children, and everything in my house needs to be worth the time I am going to spend picking it up off the floor. Less stuff= less to clean= more time to spend actually playing or making or writing this blog.

-Too much stuff keeps us from even knowing what we have. Have you ever bought something at the store only to find you already had it at home? Me too. And that is waste.

- Someone else can use it. We have stuff sitting in wait for us to need it or want it again, but someone else can use that blanket/ coat/ book; now. And if we give it to them, we can do so much good. If they can't afford it, we can help. If they could but get it used instead, we are keeping something out of a landfill. I love that.

- I believe in a re-use culture. Our generation can be the first in quite a while to really appreciate reuse. Part of that is being willing to buy things used. The other part is to keep putting things we aren't using back out for other people to use.

So this is the dream, and I feel fired up to clean out our house in the right way. I am not going to send a bunch of stuff t the landfill as part of the purge. We will get rid of things in a way that is good for the environment and helps other people only.


Alright Donaters! How is everyone doing out there? We had a pretty good week, and our number is up to 67! We gave blankets to a shelter for women, kid scissors to where I work (this accounts for the big bump in the number), and best of all, we got rid of this desk.


We got this desk in a big bunch of hand me downs from my mom. It was in my brother's room for a while, must have been her husband's before that, and we used it as a tv stand in our first apartment. Boy, it is ugly. I actually think this ugly picture does not do justice to its ugliness. It has metal bars on both sides that just take it to another level. I is supposed to fit in a corner, but honestly we never used it that way, so it was just this weird space ship shaped uggo. But it was free, and we could save up our money for something we really liked and seems timeless, and I bet we will buy a tv stand maybe one more time in our whole life. So in that way, this hand-me-down eyesore gave us a big gift (much like 90% of our furniture, which is either from my mom or Buy Nothing).

That being said, no one else wanted this lovely gift of ours.

We have offered this desk on Buy Nothing multiple times, and we always say we will take it to Goodwill, but it never quite makes it. This week, a music-teaching neighbor named Hank needed any furniture possible as he had just moved to the city. Little did we know, this desk was waiting for a fiddle player.

So it is off to greener pastures, and I think with a visit to another homeless help center this week, we should be in the triple digits any day now. We have been going through all those corners where stuff accumulates, and our area for things on their way out is really filling up, so I am optimistic.

How is it going for all of you? Have anything you are ready to be rid of but not sure if you can dispose of it in an ethical way? Let me know and I will start doing my research! We all still have plenty of time to donate 2,017 items in 2017!

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