Friday, August 29, 2008

Stuff

We got rid of a lot of stuff yesterday.  A LOT of stuff.

When we inherited the house after my father died, it was full to the gills with stuff.  Random stuff (plastic caps for glass soda bottles to keep the fizz in if you didn't finish the bottle), treasures (his baby book, a journal of the last year of a friend's life), useless stuff (credit cards from out of state department stores, expired for 30 years), furniture (some useable and some not), books of all shapes and sizes, and lots and lots of trash.  We filled a 40 yard dumpster to the top, and still there was stuff.  The shredding company came and hauled away a truckload of paper and disks, and still there was stuff.  The electronics recycling people came and filled two HUGE boxes six feet high and still there was stuff.  You get the picture.

Stuff.  What a great word.

There was supposed to be an estate sale this past weekend.  Object - to get rid of stuff.  Any stuff that didn't sell was going to be picked up by a charity, and (here was the theory, anyway) the house was to have been empty of stuff by today.

Apparently, the estate sale lady realized there was too much stuff even for her to deal with.

Honey - what are we going to do with all this STUFF?!?

My father had some good points - most of us do, even the total assholes, right?  I mean, there's probably even something about George that Laura's fond of - but he was not by any stretch of the imagination a charitable guy.  He was the kind of guy that not only would ignore the homeless person asking for help, he would talk louder - like a little kid on the playground.  (I don't hear anything, Sally...do you hear anything?)

We decided to give away the stuff.  All of it.  Okay, almost all - there are a few good pieces slated for the consignment shop, and our friend the designer is trading us his services for the really cool retro 50's modern bedroom set, but everything else...  

Lisa put an add on Craig's List - free stuff.  I posted to my Yahoo group - free stuff.  This address, this day, this time.

People came.  A lot of people.  And carried away armloads and carloads and truckloads and vanloads of stuff.

Everybody was nice.  Everybody was respectful.  Nearly everybody said thank you.  Nobody argued or said hey - I saw that first!  Perfect strangers helped each other carry heavy things out.  A few different people came up to me and said I found something I think you probably want to keep and handed me a set of keys, or a vintage movie projector, or an inscribed book, or a photo.

A guy who was taking lots of things asked me if we were keeping the wheelchair.  I said no, and if he knew someone who could use it, he should take it.  He got a funny look on his face (like an I'm a macho guy and can't be emotional kind of look) and said his father was 90 years old and had been needing a wheelchair.

Two women who had lost their house and their stuff were thrilled to find glasses and coffee mugs - they were down to one cup, they told me.

A young mom with a baby was ecstatic over the kitchen stuff - she'd been needing kitchen things and didn't have the cash to buy them.

A four year old girl was totally happy with my childhood bright green plastic Goofy.

At first it was weird to watch strangers carry away stuff that I remember growing up with.  Part of my brain kept wanting to say WAIT!  That's MINE!  I remember those pink plastic cups...I went outside once when I was five and it was hailing and I got some hail and sat for an hour watching it melt in ONE OF THOSE CUPS!!!

But as the afternoon went on and more stuff went away, it started to get positively therapeutic.  We smiled and chatted with people.  We thanked them for helping us by carrying away stuff.  It stopped being work and became an exercise in letting go...in clearing out a bunch of intangible stuff right along with the physical.

And it felt like some sort of completion, to be able to be charitable with my uncharitable father's stuff.  Some kind of healing of the universe, somehow.  I hope wherever he may be, he felt it, and understood.

Suz