Six (and a half) lessons learned

2/14/10 Plastic bin, given away; three phones and a mile of telephone wire, trashed

I sincerely hope, Dear Readers, that many of you are undertaking radical downsizing yourselves. To help you in your journey, here are a few lessons learned today.

1) One man's trash is anther man's treasure. We have a responsibility to try for Reuse over Recycle. It's more work to find a new owner for something than just to throw it away, but it's the better way to go. Whatever it is, someone might want it.

2) Lean on your friends and family to take stuff off your hands. As we enjoyed our weekend with Meyrick and Donna, Donna asked where I got the plastic bin that I scoop the used cat litter into. The bin is actually one of the plastic containers that the litter we used to buy came in. I downsized all of my unused bins months ago and wrote, I thought, one of my more inspired blogs.

3) Organization can lead to hoarding (and that's bad). Underneath my workbench, stacked neatly among other neatly labeled boxes, was a neat cat litter bin with the word "Phones" printed neatly on the side. Inside were neatly packed phones and neatly bundled phone cords. It was all done so neatly, it looked like it should stay there forever.

4) One downsize often leads to other downsizes (and that's good). So, here was a perfectly good cat litter bin I could give to Donna, but I now needed to deal with what was inside it.

5) Sometimes you've just got to throw stuff out. At least one of those phones was broken, which I knew when I stored it. The others were so old, I'm reasonably confident nobody would want them. So, they got tossed. (Except one that belonged to my parents that they may want back; I need to check. Thus, lesson 5B) Rarely are downsizes cut and dry.)

6) Downsizing feels good. The bin went to Connecticut with Donna, the phones and cords went to the dump, and now I have another empty space in that confounded basement.

With those tips in mind, you are hereby challenged to downsize something of your own today. Let me know what it is, and any lessons you learned that I may pass along to my other Dear Readers. Can't wait to hear from you...