Declutter summer concludes

August brought dumpster days, recycling, and Freecycling galore to Chez Haiku. We had never rented a dumpster before. A 19.5-yard dumpster in one’s driveway is a sight to behold. (Why the half yard? No idea.)

Unfortunately, our house and yard were full of random stuff when we moved in. We got rid of some things over the years, but some items proved harder to get rid of due to size and shape. Our neighbor rented a smaller dumpster, so the lightbulb came on, and we made it happen.

It took two days to get almost everything into the dumpster. (We had allowed ourselves four days, so we did more than we planned.) We didn’t fill it top to bottom, but we did fill it front to back. We feel so much lighter, and the garage is practically empty now.

The big win was metal recycling. There’s a new place for metal recycling, and they took everything and—surprise!—paid us money for it. We need to get rid of a recalled A/C unit, and it turns out they’ll take that, too.

Most of my Star Trek toys went to father-and-son fans, via Freecycle. Habitat for Humanity ReStore took a load, too. We have more room to breathe, and we opened up space for creativity and maybe even a home gym.

Photo by Shannon Kunkle on Unsplash